Community & Economic Development Committee - Special Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. The sorry about that. The Community Economic Development Committee will start late today, and I apologize for the inconvenience that this may cause. Good afternoon. And for our online and in person speakers, once again, the community economic development committee will start late today, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the community and economic committee meeting for today's date, November 18. The time is now 01:30PM, and this meeting has come to order. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit a speaker's cards for items on this agenda. If you are here with us in chambers and you would like to submit a speaker's card, please fill one out and turn into a clerk representative, your right, my left, before the item is read into record. Online speaker requests were due twenty four hours prior to this meeting.

The meeting came to order at 01:30PM. Speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after this meeting has began, making that time 01:40PM. With that, we will now proceed to take roll. Council member Fife? Present. Council member Ramachandran?

Present.

Thank you. Council member Unger? Here. And chair Brown?

Present.

We have four members present. And before we begin, chair Brown, do you have any announcements for us?

Excellent. We'll welcome everyone to the community and economic development committee. Given the number of speakers and all of our council committees starting now until the evening being relatively impacted For this committee we will limit public comment to one minute. Thank you so much.

Thank you for that, chair Brown. Moving to item one. There are no minutes to be approved as this meeting is a special meeting. Moving to item two, which is determination of scheduled outstanding committee items, also known as your pending list.

Oh, have announcement.

And we're gonna go back to council member council's announcements.

In addition, I also had one other announcement around the so calling your attention to the agenda and the order given some requests we are going to change the order. So we will hear item number three and then followed by item number five then seven, four, and six. Excellent. Thank you so much.

Thank you chair Brown noting the agenda change, items on agenda that's changed. Moving to item two, determination to schedule outstanding committee items also known as your pending list and there are no speakers for this item.

Excellent, thank you. To the city administration any changes on this administrator like?

Thank you chair. No changes at this time.

Okay. I'll make a motion to move this item. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you. We have a motion made by chair Brown seconded by council member Unger to accept determination to schedule outstanding committee items as is on the roll. Council member Fife. Aye. Thank you. Council member Ramachandran?

Aye.

Council member Anger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. This motion passes with four ayes to accept the termination of scheduled outstanding committee items as is. Moving to item three. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a memorandum of agreement with the city of Piedmont establishing that the city of Piedmont will process planning entitlements the building permits for the five five one square foot addition and remodel of an existing single family dwelling at 30 Blair Place, a property located at both jurisdictions and adopting appropriate California Environmental Quality Act findings. And you do have five speakers for this.

Okay.

Two speakers for this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And so, I believe for this item we will be hearing from Heather Klein.

Yes. Good afternoon, Chair Brown and committee members. Heather Klein with the Bureau of Planning. This item is a request for the city administrator to enter into a memorandum of agreement or MOA with the city of Piedmont, establishing that Piedmont would be the lead agency in processing both planning entitlements and building permits for an addition as well as the interior remodel of a single family dwelling located at 30 Blair Place. The property straddles the jurisdiction line at an angle resulting in the majority of the lot being located in Piedmont.

By long standing arrangement in these instances, if a city provides emergency municipal waste, school and voting services, that city generally takes over the processing of development permits. In this case, the services are provided by Piedmont and the majority of the addition is in Piedmont. In the past, for projects straddling a city border, the Oakland City Council has adopted similar resolutions. Based on the scope of the development and who provides the city services to the site, staff recommends that the CED committee for this resolution to the full city council in support of the city of Piedmont processing, planning, and building entitlements via an MOA. I'm now available for questions and so is the architect if you wish.

Thank you. Excellent.

Thank you so much. Relatively straightforward. Colleagues, any questions before we go to public comment so we can hear from the public speakers? Oh, council member Ramachandran.

Thank you. Just a quick comment. This is in my district, and we've been briefed by staff, and this is all good with us. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. And we can hear from the public speakers.

When I call your name, please approach the podium. State your name for the record. You do have one minute. If you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so you're easily identified, and we do take in person speakers then Zoom speakers. Bradley Shuckart and Laura Gearser and I apologize for mispronouncing your name.

And I'm so sorry are you trying to comment on item number three that we're currently Okay so you would need to fill out a public comment card. Okay I think I'm hearing that you filled out your form for item number seven and so did you mean three? If yes you can speak. No? No.

Okay, thank you. So any of the public speakers whose name have been called please approach. If not we will move on.

That concludes your public speakers for item three.

Excellent. I will entertain a motion on this item.

So moved. Second.

We have a motion made by council member Unger seconded by council member Fife to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the December 2 city council agenda and that is on consent. On roll, council member Fife. Aye. Thank you. Council member Ramachandran. Aye. Council member Houston. Council member Anger? Aye. Thank you. And chair O'Brien? Aye. Thank you. This motion passes with four ayes. To ex to approve the recommendations established before this item to the 12/02/2025 city council agenda on consent.

Moving to item five. Adopt the following pieces of legislation. One, a resolution establishing economic aviation zones under the Town Alive program to support entertainment zones and responsible artificial intelligence. Intelligence, activation zones in the city of Oakland bringing innovative programming to the public and community spaces, two, authorize a city administrator to award, negotiate, and execute a grant agreement with Oakland Fund and Public Innovation in the amount not to exceed $1,000,000 to in implement the Town Alive program for a two year term from 11/01/2025 to 10/31/2027. Two, an ordinance one, adding chapter nine five four in title nine of the Oakland Municipal Code to establish and regulate entertainment zones pursuing SB nine six nine two thousand twenty four to promote economic aviation.

Two, making other making other conforming changes to sections nine zero eight one eight zero and nine zero eight one nine zero and the Oakland Municipal Code three, classifying an entertainment zone event in a tier two or tier three special event pursuant to chapter nine fifty two of the Oakland municipal code. And four, adopt appropriate California's environmental sequel act findings and you do have 12 speakers for this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much. We do have a presentation for this item and I will try to keep my remarks to fifteen minutes. So if you want to set the timer. And so while we are pulling that grateful for everyone that has showed up to speak on this item.

For many of you you may be aware that prior to me taking this role I had the opportunity to serve at the state level when this initial legislation around entertainment zones was being brought by Assembly Member Matt Haney. And so knew really early on that Oaklanders could benefit from this type of activation here in the city. And so during the city council budget process it was a priority of mine along with my council colleagues to place a million dollars in the budget to really try to bring this to life. And so I'm super excited for all of the work that we've, myself, my team have been able to put into this initiative and so we're going to roll through all of the attachments that you'll find in the agenda packet that showcases what this initiative is planning to bring to Oakland. And so I did want to start first by just acknowledgement of just all the amazing partnership on this initiative.

So economic and workforce development, the office of the city attorney so Nari Chan as well as Brian Mulry. I'm super grateful for your leadership in assisting with the ordinance. Oakland's Department of Transportation Planning and Building, Oakland Police Department and the Office of the City Administrator. And then the entertainment zone partners a part of the pilot, Port Of Oakland, Jack London Improvement District, Uptown Downtown Arts And Entertainment District, Broadway Valdez, Northlake District, as well as the Timiscal bid. And the responsible AI partners, Laney College, Mills at Northeastern, Unity Council, CAPER Foundation, and the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation.

And so what you see in your agenda packet will be the following that we'll be voting on. Establish four pilot entertainment zones, create AI activation zones as well as entertainment zone implementation and requirement, award a $1,000,000 grant to Oakland Fund for Public Innovation to facilitate the Town Alive initiative, and it also requires an informational report in OctoberNovember of next year to really measure the findings and help to potentially ensure that this program is something that is sustained within the city of Oakland. And so this afternoon I'm going be walking through both of the parameters for economic activation zones, both entertainment zones and responsible activation zones. And so starting first with entertainment zones. This is quite exciting because we're the legislation brought about by, you know, state legislation is meant to activate commercial corridor streets and plaza activations to create family friendly programming.

A key component of the legislation is enabled by SB nine sixty nine that has to do with supporting restaurants and bars around to go alcohol sales as well as reoccurring events to increase foot traffic and encourage ongoing support of our businesses in the various corridors. And so more specifically just for everyone's awareness the SB nine sixty nine legislation requires a city to designate locations, types of alcohol zone hours. The city must also The city and the entertainment zone lead must also be able to verify everyone that is entering that zone and partaking in alcoholic beverages have to be 21 and up and there are special regulatory cups that need to be purchased as well. And then most importantly any verified entertainment zone within the city of Oakland must receive the approval and feedback from local law enforcement about any of the above details and any potential health and safety impacts. And just quickly I do want to go over the legislative landscape.

It was, I would say at this point I'm kind of quite well versed in the various entertainment zones that are happening in our region. So San Francisco was the first to launch the pilot program about a year and a half ago. Started with four locations. And as of last week they are now up to 21 locations. Some of those include the Chase Center, Valencia Street, Front Street, as well as Fisherman Fisherman's Wharf.

You'll find that in their detailed management plan they all are activating these entertainment zones in various ways. And then as of 2025 San Jose, Santa Monica, and Sacramento have all moved forward with the establishment of entertainment zones which is very exciting and Oakland is next. And so as far as for the pilot zone entertainment zone locations, Some key things that were really important as we and you know I As I you know I've worked on this proposal since the summer following the budget into the fall And I think many of you know that there were a handful of renditions if you would of where we wanted these pilot locations to be. But the list really got narrowed down very quickly because for a few factors. The SB nine sixty nine actually requires a specific ABC license in order to activate an entertainment zone.

And so a key criteria of activating this legislation, there has to be a concentration of bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. The other key factor that we took into consideration was that the potential entertainment zone lead has a strong track record of hosting similar events in the neighborhood as well as the geography as well. A low impact to public transit and other traffic measures such as street closures. And another key component also had to do with public safety and really getting that sign off from OPD around you know what kind of support they would be able to lend and even if the said entertainment zone you know were already operating with private security for example. And so a part of the pilot zone locations you have Jack London District both including the square and the outside parameter to support those restaurants.

This zone if anyone is interested Santa Monica also has their Santa Monica Pier. And when you look on their website you'll see just how detailed they got for their entertainment zone and I believe that Jack London could mirror that given its waterfront and so many of the businesses have been really asking for support in and around the area. In addition also the Broadway Valdez, Northlake area, as many of you know in committee we recently changed the zoning in this area trying to ensure that more of the retail space in this area instead of the vacant storefronts really trying to activate that space. So this was an amazing candidate for the entertainment zone. In addition just the proven track record of the events that have been occurring in the Temiscale District and also outreach and interest in this initiative and wanting to be a part of a pilot given that, you know, when you're a part of a pilot you are the first to do this thing.

And so there is so much really on your shoulders as far as getting this up and running and being activated. And then lastly we were able to the Uptown Downtown Arts And Entertainment District as was mentioned very loudly was was amongst the first to be called an entertainment district and zone over a decade ago and so it's only fitting that they are part of the pilot. And so so many questions that I've received is, hey we want to be an entertainment zone. And so one clear thing to note is that any neighborhood commercial corridor in the city of Oakland can become an entertainment zone. As mentioned at the onset San Francisco started about a year and a half ago with only four locations and as of last week they are now up to 21 which I think is just quite beautiful.

And so in becoming an entertainment zone, once we pass this legislation that will be really key. Any said stakeholder can contact their council member, economic workforce development, and then all additional entertainment zones does require approval by ordinance. And then the other most important thing even with the passing of today's piece of legislation all pilot locations and all future entertainment zones must work closely with EWD to develop a comprehensive management plan that's focused on a handful of things I will go over on the next slide. And upon completing the detailed management plan that requires engagement with multiple stakeholders then at that point you can apply for entertainment zone funding because you will have an entire lay of the land of what it will take to pilot this in your area. And so what is a management plan?

This is a tailored plan for each entertainment zone lead that establishes location specific requirements, operations, public health, public safety during the events. And so this is produced in partnership with EWD, OPD, Oak Dot, Oakland Public Works, and any other relevant department. So want to make clear that even with the pilot locations that are listed today they still need to generate this detailed management plan in order for the entertainment zone to take off. And so once again management plan is the entertainment zone lead and the participating businesses will provide to EWD the programming vision, location, hours, noticing, health and safety measures, age verification. There are specific cup requirements and all applicable permits.

Just wanted to note and this is open to the public that with all the entertainment zones that have been established regionally you notice that they're they're all different. So Front Street for example their entertainment zone you know is listed as Wednesday through Saturday but Front Street is known for their first Thursday event and that's really kind of what they've been focusing and concentrating on. I did think that an interesting outlier is the Valencia Street entertainment zone in San Francisco. This is one that is noticed for seven days midnight. However not publicized and that is a group of merchant businesses that put that one together.

And that is one of the 21 that is actually detailed in that manner. And then more frequent than not most of the entertainment zones are mainly a couple days a week between a limited timeframe. I would note that in our ordinance we did not push any boundaries where we could have said you know till midnight but we kept everything in line with just being till ten. And so once again next steps for pilot locations to establish initial proof of concept, additional commercial corridors added in 2026 in partnership with lead organization council member EWD requires passing an ordinance and development of a management plan. And so that's the entertainment zone piece.

And now to just talk very high level about the responsible AI zones which is quite exciting. And so ultimately this will be one of the first AI activation zones in the state of California. So that's big. This is set to energize our economic revitalization, strengthen youth and workforce development, transform city services, as well as change the narrative for the city of Oakland. We've also in the agenda packet you will find the city's values as it relates to responsible AI but this is what they are in short.

Has everything to do with inclusive access, fairness and accountability, community engagement, transparency and privacy, as well as workforce development. And so the goal of the responsible AI activation zones is about hosting the conversation whether it be at by conferences. So AI in supporting small business, AI in local government, the list goes on. Community education, civic tech, internships, and business development. And so a part of the initial launch is Laney Community College being one of the first in the state of California to have an applied AI program which is absolutely amazing.

And and for this zone it already anchors near the Oakland Museum who's already doing amazing programming as well as the newly reopened Henry J Kaiser Center. So there's a lot of activation there and so we look forward to piloting AI innovation days and community education programming. And for anyone who attended I think it was earlier in the year the AI Hackathon that was an amazing showcase of youth talent in trying to solve a lot of the big issues impacting the city of Oakland. In addition we're proud to partner with Mills at Northeastern that currently hosts a Bridge to AI program working closely with OUSD students as well as being a partner in the city's AI working group to help develop those AI principles that I just show shared on the slide and also in your agenda packet and already doing transformational work with our business community and supporting them. And so this ensures that all across the city of Oakland will have access to this being that Mills at North Northeastern is located in East Oakland.

And so they will be a key partner for professional conferences, civic tech pilots, as well as community education programming. And then lastly for the last eight years the Unity Tech Hub located within this the Fruitville Transit Village has been leading out with the partnership with Google helping teach our young people AI workforce development skills and overall tech skills. And so they have also joined in as a partner here to assist with workforce and business development programming mid twenty twenty six. And so those are our program partners for the responsible AI zones and you'll notice that those are situated throughout the city of Oakland. And so lastly we are proud in addition to be partnering both with the Kapor Foundation who is leading out in this tech space and then the physical sponsor of this work and this programming will be the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation and they will also be leading out in fundraising to ensure that the we can have a program that is sustainable.

And so the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation, you know, their mission and aim is to really ensure that the new ideas that we have internally within local government that we can pilot these and bring these new strategies to Oaklanders and really bring the vision forward. And so they will be the physical sponsor for city funding for both entertainment zones, AI activation zones, entertainment zone event grant management, AI activation zone project management, program design, development and evaluation, as well as fundraising. And so lastly this slide just really showcases just based on direct feedback. I'll start with the first line. So for entertainment zones as mentioned we are starting off with four pilot locations.

And so what we're really focused on is ensuring that the proof of concept and that we can actually move forward effectively. And so you'll notice that there is a small amount of funding in the first year for entertainment zones to ensure that economic and workforce development can really take the needed time on those management plans with the entertainment zones to bring this vision to life. And then kind of already mentioned I know that so many of you are interested in becoming an entertainment zone. Then in year two we'll have more funding for that initiative. We'll also be supporting our AI activation zones in the first year so that also in year two we will see those of that vision and that programming come to life.

And then all of this effort as mentioned is going to be led by the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation who will bring on a project manager to facilitate this work and then small administrative costs to get those grants out the door from Oakland Fund For Public Innovation. So that's just really what I try my best to summarize everything that is in the agenda packet. And so of course if there's any questions or comments please do not hesitate to reach out to my office and we'll definitely open up for questions or comments but I would love to hear from the public speakers first.

Thank you, chair. Going to our public speakers, when I call your name please approach the podium in no particular order state your name for the record. And if you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so you're easily identified. We will take in person speakers before we take Zoom speakers. Isaac Kosred Kosred, excuse me, Sharon Lay, David Boatwright, Kyla Munging, Kyra Munging?

Mungia. Mungia, thank you. Nikki Laui, Tristan Begulov. And I do apologize for mispronouncing your last name. Daniel Swiford. Richard N. G, Tuan Thong, Josephine Guzman, Stephanie Tran, Nigel Jones, and Peter Nye. And please state your name for the record. Thank you, you have one minute.

Isaac Cost Reed, d two resident and business owner, also founder of Salsa by the Lake, an outdoor lake merit dance activation that's been around for about fifteen years. And I rise in support of this legislation. It's absolutely fantastic to see the city making moves around economic development. It's kind of the missing piece of the puzzle. We're we're we're rebuilding, we're turning the corner, I think economic development is our path forward.

The entertainment zones will be great. The four zones will really help activate those parts of the city, and I candidly, I hope help deactivate some of those part of the cities that have been overrun by activity that isn't as well coordinated. And then also I think the AI zones, the city needs to be on the cusp of this amazing new technology that's changing the world. And I think this will be a way to help give that a sense of place, right? Because right now AI is somewhere in the cloud. Here we need to give it a place, a responsible place, a place with deep social values like Oakland has. And so I'm very excited to help manifest and implement this going forward in partnership with the city. Thank you.

Good afternoon, City Council. My name is Sharon Lai. I am the Chief Strategy Officer at the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation. I am here to speak in favor of this really exciting program. My actual former job, I was working in economic development and activating Downtown San Francisco.

So really good to see this being expanded here. Just want to encourage those councils to consider expanding it into areas where you already have community partners like Yipaltzi that are also planning on investing in community and economic development. One of our core pillars of work other than affordable housing is actually in economic development. We do a lot of small business support including technical assistance, concessions to make sure that small businesses can thrive in Oakland. We currently have about 100 commercial tenants within our portfolio in the city and we would love to be partners in this.

We are already planning on investing in Chinatown in Swans Market, is one of our properties as well as Preservation Park in Downtown Oakland, and we would love to see partnership and amplification in this cross sector partnership. We can't do it Thank you for your comment.

David Boatwright, District four. Three questions or clarifications. I assume 100% of this funding comes from the city, And it's not clear what happens in these future developments. The $1,000,000 covers four. What does it cost for each additional entertainment zone? And what kind of entertainment is going to be allowed in these areas. I didn't see any examples in presentation. Thank you.

Good afternoon counsel. Keira Mangia District 6 resident. I am here with the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation. The Oakland Fund is the aims to be the city's public sector innovation partner. We pilot, evaluate, and derisk new ideas before ideally they transition back into the city, into permanent operations or policy. We are here to help you all bring this vision to life, to move this quickly, stand it up, manage grants, contract with partners, and adjust operations without the usually longer lead time required by the city's administrative structure. Council Chair Brown, you already talked about our role but happy to answer any other questions you may have. We are excited to bring this vision to life and to support you all with your work. Thank you.

Good afternoon chair and members of the committee. My name is Nikki Lowy. I'm the director of social impact at Northeastern University in Oakland on the historic home of Mills College. As one of as Oakland's first r one research university, we are deeply honored to be designated as one of the city's AI activation zones along Laney College and the Unity Council's Unity Tech Hub. This designation reflects our commitment to equitable access to AI education and economic opportunity.

The responsible AI activation zones will allow every Oaklander to benefit from the growth of the AI industry through work equitable access to education, workforce development, and small business resources. Over the last year, we've already demonstrated this commitment through initiatives such as the Bridge to AI program, workshops, conferences, and support for the AI working group, and are so excited to have this vision aligned with this legislation. Every Oakland student and every business owner should have access to AI education. Thank you so much for this initiative.

Afternoon council. As community action chair for the

To the chair, to the public speakers, please state your name for the record.

Sorry. Tristan Magoula. As community action chair for the Associated Students of Northeastern Oakland, I would like to endorse Council Members Rounds initiative to support responsible artificial intelligence activation zones. Thousands of students nationwide attend Northeastern University computer science programs today with often with concentrations in artificial intelligence. It has been nationally recognized as one of our best, most growing programs.

Our university has been focused very strongly on sustainability and ethics regarding AI holding grounding for future development. In my time here, I've spoken with dozens of computer science students. They are some of the most hardworking people I've ever met in my life with drive put into every opportunity about for learning about and working with AI in new ways. Building a strong relationship with the city through public innovation and economic development would not only enable new opportunities for students, but a greater positive influence the campus can have in Oakland. Let's build greater cooperative measures and let us let us help build sustainable economic growth to the city.

Hello, Richard Ng. Thank you, members. My name is Richard Ng, and I manage a program called Indigital. We work with indigenous communities and look at how emerging technologies can create community governed and owned systems. My comment is regarding the AI economic zones and to talk about the community's role in the development, design, and governance of these zones in the future models as well.

Specifically, does data and digital sovereignty look like? I think if there's the opportunity to create more infrastructure around this, the AI models that could be tied into this could be tied into enterprise models. So I wanna encourage the committee to explore what hyper local language models look like, what does local compute look like as well too. Tools such as data trusts and other tools that ensure the systems will be deployed and governed and owned by the community. We advise a lot on community visioning and engagement sessions. Happy to see that's gonna be happening. And to really have the community understand what the impact of these zones will be, what does it mean for their economic opportunities, and also their overall welfare. Thank you, committee.

Good afternoon. My name is Tuan Nguyen. I'm the department chair, AI department at Laney College. I do support Council Lady Rowena Browns on the economic zones. In particular, I really like to call for more collaboration between the city and the Linde College.

I'm thinking Linde College should be the center of AI because we are the Bay Area AI Center of Excellence. I'm serving the interest of 28 colleges in the regions. Oakland is my home, Linde College is my home. I would like to think more of it. My long term plan is to offer a bachelor degree in applied AI and machine learning. Currently, there are only three community colleges in the nation that offer the bachelor degree in applied AI. And, Leni College would be one. We are working hard. We have to save in term of financial saving and support. I hope that Oakland City can support us too. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Nigel Jones and I am the owner of Calabash Restaurant. And I'm definitely here a 100% in support of this initiative. And so I like to just, know, provide a little context as a business person here in Oakland, and been grinding and out.

And so I'm happy to see the city council and the city in general leaders join in the businesses, rolling up your sleeves and trying to make it happen versus what we would hear is that resources are limited, we can do so much. So you have to invest and this is an investment. This city does not have any ball, you know, sporting good teams. We don't have anchor stores. We don't have oil.

And we don't have tech here. But what we do have is robust culture and small businesses that are driving the economic growth. So, you know, we've been doing it on our own, out of our own pockets with our friends and family and sometimes at great costs in terms of trying to stand up.

Good afternoon, council members. My name is Stephanie Tran, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. We're here to express our support for the economic entertainment and AI zone. This is an important step towards revitalizing our commercial corridors, supporting small businesses, and expanding equitable access to innovation and workforce opportunities in Oakland. At the same time, I want to express our disappointment that Chinatown was not included in the initial pilot zones.

As Oakland's oldest and most culturally significant district, Chinatown urgently needs these tools to increase foot traffic, support cultural programming, and strengthen our small business community. That being said, Chinatown Chamber also represents businesses and partners across multiple neighborhoods, and we understand the importance of establishing these zones so that we can scale it citywide. So we respectfully urge the council members to move this legislation forward. We also request that the city also work with the Chinatown Chamber and our community partners to ensure that we will be considered in future phases. And thank you, councilmember Brown, for your vision and leader.

Good afternoon, everyone. I am Josephine Usman, public policy manager for the Oakland Metro Chamber of Commerce. I'm here to express our full support for the Town Alive initiative, which offers a creative strategy needed to reenergize our neighborhoods and economy. We strongly support the city's commitment to start with targeted pilot programs, which is critical to learn from early implementation and grow the program based on real world experiences, especially in areas that need support the most, which allows the city to test what works and make data informed adjustments and expand it responsibly. In our most recent chamber poll, we learned that more than 90% of people support small businesses to open new businesses, and more than 80% support attracting technology companies to Oakland.

This said, this responsibility, this initiative aligns with what Oaklanders want, what small business need, and what the city must prioritize to restore economic vitality, activate public spaces, and strengthen community well-being.

I'm Peter Mui. I'm the founder of Fix It Clinic. We hold repair events in all of the public libraries in Oakland and makerspaces now. Our work is becoming more and more around digital literacy, digital equity, and digital inclusion. Along those lines, I want to present to you an x Chromebook. These are school district Chromebooks that have been converted away from being Google Chrome specific to being now cloud device I mean, devices that basically anyone can use as a portal perhaps to AI. So what I'm offering for example is that we can offer every resident of Oakland one of these devices as a teaching tool and we're set up right now to start distributing these. I mean, and obviously you have to make both sides of the market. If you tell me you need 20,000 tomorrow, I'll have trouble. But they're available.

The school districts are e wasting these by the hundreds of thousands. Oakland Unified School District e wasted 28,000 Chromebooks three years ago. So, let's figure out a way to keep these devices in place, in service, in our communities building wealth and bridge the digital equity, digital inclusion, digital literacy, and digital sovereignty divide. Thank you.

Hi, I'd like to respectfully request that my comment be submitted to the public record. I put my request over there and I just wanna make sure that it's there.

State your name for the record.

Oh, sure. It's Candida Haynes. Thank you. So my name is Candida Haynes and I've lived in Oakland for nine years supporting small businesses and holding the community in care. My passion is workforce transformation and opportunity for marginalized people.

As a registered sole proprietor, I am also a very small business myself. It is extremely important to support very small businesses and I'm hoping that there will be opportunities for very small businesses to benefit from activation zones either through direct contract or partnerships with larger partners. I'd also like clarity around what it means for what activation zones mean for community centers as I live about a block away from one. And they might not be for profit businesses but they might also be activated to support the bars and restaurants in our neighborhood. I also want to raise a flag on the fact that

Thank you for your comment, Ms. Candida. Thank you.

Good afternoon, council member Brown and committee members. My name is Petra Brady. I am the director of community engagement and membership for the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce. I wanted to come today to show our support from the chamber about the AI and entertainment initiatives and I wanted to remind you that even though there are five chambers in one Oakland, Oakland African American Chamber has done some of these things already. We've already had an AI workshop at Northeastern University, and we have started doing a few activities that are kinda like entertainment zones.

So I just wanted to keep our chamber at top of mind and let you know that we are here to support you and to advocate for our businesses. Thank you.

Chair Round, members of the committee, my name is Daniel Swafford for the record. I work in service to three of Oakland's business improvement districts, Laurel, Montclair, and Temescal, and I'm here to speak in support of the item. On behalf of Laurel and Montclair, we're excited for the opportunity to apply as soon as the window opens and understand the importance of setting a solid foundation with a pilot program. On behalf of the Temescal District, we appreciate the opportunity to pilot. The Temescal just was renewed for its third decade as a BID and has hosted hundreds of events over those years.

My management team in particular produces about 50 public events each year. So we relish the opportunity to create safe spaces for the arts and culture for the community, in particular the entertainment zones. We recognize how powerful that is in transforming small businesses, supporting their success and supporting the arts of Oakland. Thank you.

That concludes your public speakers for item five.

Okay. Excellent. And so just for my colleagues' awareness, I know that leadership from planning and building are here in the room as well as director of economic and workforce development and perhaps on online should be a representative from OPD as well just in case you all have any questions specific for them and then as well as many of the partners that are named in this legislation are also here. So at this time I'll take any questions or comments. Council member Fife?

Yes. Thank you. And thank you for all the speakers who came out to lend their voices to this item today. I will share that I'm a little disappointed I didn't see any of my bid shares. Three out of the four activation zones that are mentioned in this legislation all fall within District 3.

And unfortunately, I just got to see this legislation publicly when everyone else did, so we didn't have to we didn't get that deep community engagement where I could actively answer questions about this legislation as I would have liked to. I hope moving forward there is a reflection of my district's representation in this work as, you know, I've been meeting now especially with the uptown downtown folks for for several years since I've been elected, and some voices feel that they've been left out of this conversation. I I think it's important that we move forward with these entertainment zones. I I think there needs to be a lot more education on the AI space because it's a little confusing to people about what exactly that will do. But I have very specific questions about public safety especially with some of the incidents that we've been experiencing in the uptown downtown area and some of the other areas that are mentioned in this legislation but more so uptown downtown because that's where we're seeing an uptick in in some violence that doesn't exist in some of these other spaces.

So that said, would I do have very specific questions about how this funding will be allocated. There is a table in the legislate in the in the packet, but I I wanna get a better understanding of the ongoing costs and when this pilot will be analyzed after we get through the next I don't know if it's in the next budget year or the 2027 budget, but I I have to say that with the limited amount of funds, it this does raise questions about how they can be effectively used. So I have questions about how the funds that are set aside for the activation zones will be be distributed amongst all of the different groups that are listed. And I can go through all of my questions or I can go through them one by one. So yes, I wanna understand how the funds can be will be allocated and what ways will they impact the businesses because there's four pilot zones and I have questions about how additional zones will be added particularly with the $350,000 not being used for programming.

So because off the top there's 350,000 that goes to administrative cost to Oakland Fund for public innovation for them to hire a program manager. I wanna understand how the rest of those funds will be used and how specifically will they be allocated to these four pilot zones. And then what if one of the zones identified in the pilot, one or a few of them don't want to participate in the pilot? What do we do then? How are we engaged with the Jack London bid?

If there's some tension in Jack London Square around the major developer and their prohibition on alcohol. So I wanna understand that. I also wanna understand what the plan is for extended well, who is the target? Is it for families? Because I'm hearing different things from different people. Are we trying to activate space for multiuse for families or will it be later into the evening with adult use? Because if we're extending open to go alcohol opportunities, I I just want some more clarity about that. And I'll I'll end there. I think that was quite a few questions.

Okay thank you so much for the the questions. Hopefully I made note of all of them but I want to start first from the top with your concerns around public safety and some of the outlined areas. And so in kind of direct conversation with OPD one of the things that was a part of determining the criteria was whether or not you know said entertainment zone you know actually funded private security or had ambassadors to kind of help support. And so originally you know I kind of went to OPD with a long list of potential activations as I was you know really wanting to spread this program equitably across the entire city of Oakland. And it just became really apparent that you know even in seeing some of our other partners regionally as they pilot this program there was no precedent for pilots being more than four locations.

So I had to really narrow that down. And so as I was kind of mentioning in the detailed management plan that is required for each entertainment zone lead, the said entertainment zone will need to work closely on that management plan with EWD to establish what will be the programming. And so for example when we think about the uptown downtown arts and entertainment zone we're going to be focused on the hours of like four to eight to really support the restaurants and businesses during that time and not really pressing the boundaries of you know ten or midnight where we see a lot of the you know between midnight and four a. M. Where we see a lot of the negative activity occurring.

So we were really intentional around ensuring that you know these events aren't going into the into the late hours. And then to your point around you know entertainment. So there's a component of the state legislation and it's quite clear that this is enabling to go alcohol sales within a parameter of a location. So not only are we encouraging those who live in and out in and around the area to frequent restaurants and bars in the zone. But depending on the type of programming that you know the entertainment zone will initiate it will be quite broad to be honest.

Right? So let's just say and you know the truth of the matter and Director Kennan I would invite you to come up because even in the passing of this ordinance and you'll notice that most of the funding allocation is actually in year two because EWD still needs to program out the city of Oakland's you know management plan template as well as the questionnaire and other items. And so and then but following this this the passing of this ordinance all of those named in the pilot will begin working closely with EWD to plan the programming. And so you know any of the the pilot locations they could opt into you know as I mentioned as an example second Thursdays only between three and seven but that would be up to that specific entertainment zone. But Director Kennett did you want to offer some additional insights?

I know were engaging on this for some time and we still have much work to do as far as bringing it to life.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Ashley Kannett, Director of Economic and Workforce Development. This is very much a pilot. We're seeing the success of these entertainment zones in other cities across California and wanting to take advantage of the legislation to the extent possible.

So we're all learning as we go from a staff perspective as the implementers of this legislation should it pass. We know that our responsibility will be to come up with a robust mechanism for interacting with the applicants who are designated as the folks who can speak on behalf of the entertainment zones. We'll prepare a template and prepare a management plan and that management plan, while the legislation really sets the broad parameters of what are allowed in the entertainment zone, sets the boundaries, the management plan is where the details will be worked out and where the requirements for private security will be identified. The requirements for the to go cups, all of those, the hours of operation, the type of entertainment, all of that will be worked out in the management plan and we're our intention is to develop a template so that it's a more straightforward and equitable process for entertainment zones. But that work is ahead of us.

We have not done that yet and so when we look at the allocation of funding it makes sense in my mind that more would be in the second year so that we have time to put together that programming or the work to set up the management plans.

Excellent, thank you so much. And I know that one of the questions that council member Fife had was around how we add additional zones. I think you spoke a little bit to that because as was mentioned you know a lot of the outreach we've received is we want to be an entertainment zone. And so just really working through that we're starting this pilot now. But even in passing the ordinance local local chambers could they also begin to be in conversation with their council member and with the office of EWD to figure out what are these parameters that they should be making sure that they have in effort to kind of put them in line if you would to be a part of the pilot?

I think so. I'm eager to establish what those management plans are going to look like so that collectively we understand all the components of the plan. I think that will be the best indicator to future potential economic zones of what will be required to be an entertainment zone. Not only does it need to be established by, the boundaries need to be established by legislation but we're also looking for capacity of organization. We're looking to make sure we have the restaurants and the bars, the assets there.

They'll be the ones with the ABC licenses for example. The So infrastructure really needs to be in place in order for these to be successful. So I think taking all of that into account and then once we have the template for the management plan I think that will be really We'll start to have very clear communication about what a successful entertainment zone could look like.

Excellent, sounds good. And then one of the questions here is who publicizing said event you know the target audience. I think we see it all the time where you have families that are coming out with their kids but also wanting to partake in alcoholic beverages or even just folks folks that that are are out out and and want to be on the scene at the various restaurants going here going there. And so what we're really doing is opening up a space for that vibrant activity to occur. And I think that just in my research especially activation zones that are in San Francisco each one is different and each one brings their own kind of method and their their their understanding of what they want an entertainment zone to be.

As I mentioned in my remarks the Valencia Street example is actually one that's a 100% targeted on getting folks into the restaurants that are on Valencia Street. Whereas the total opposite is true around Front Street. That one is a 100% engagement around the activity that is happening on that day, right? And so I imagine that you know everyone who's listening to us activating these entertainment zones, your vision and what you may want to bring to it, that that is a part of the work that the management plan that will be developed and so each entertainment zone can be different and how it comes to life. And I think maybe lastly the question that you asked was around the funding allocation and maybe more specifically around just the role of Oakland Fund for Public Innovation.

In our long conversations kind of working to bring this program to life it really became clear that we needed to We want to make sure that this funding gets into the hands of those who are doing this event planning and trying to activate our spaces in Oakland and we know that unfortunately sometimes the funding going out of the door within the city of Oakland can be slow. And so that was one of the main reasons why we tapped the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation to help support with getting those dollars out to to the community. And then the the reason why we have slated here a program manager for a couple reasons because they're gonna be charged with maintaining and and getting the funding out of the door for the entertainment zones both in year one and year two. And then for the programming relative to AI activation zones supporting Mills at Northeastern when it comes to conferences as well as their Bridge to AI program, supporting Laney Community College with their tech innovation fairs and as well as supporting the Unity Council with their Unity Tech Hub as well. So and then and also take note in the packet that in year two the rest of the amount to support these initiatives will all be fundraised for.

So it's a small bucket in the first year. For a program that as I was kind of talking to community members about one of the biggest questions and takeaways was hey how do we sustain this program you know past the two year budget? And so that is really one of the questions that we still need to address. But hopefully Councilmember Fife.

Yeah. I just I wanna be clear that I'm not asking about the need to have a nonprofit provider to manage funds because I know they tend to be, you know, really slow when they come from the city of Oakland. My concern is that there is a limited pot of money. Off the top, it's $350,000 that will not be going to our businesses because we need someone to facilitate these grants. Right?

So off the top, we're gonna take a $125,000 per year for the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation to hire someone to manage this process for two years, and then we have to pay a 10%, it's a typical fee for nonprofit administration, but it's a 125,000 per year for the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation to hire someone, then it's another $100,000 for them to administer the program. So that's less money going to our businesses for these activations. Then I I wasn't I didn't get a clear answer on how much do these four zones is the rest split amongst those zones? And then do they have to pay for all of the how many activations do you think can happen out of that what's left over? Do the math for me, math geniuses over here.

Yeah. So if and if I can just chime in and and I think that that's really going to be determined like how much money each entertainment zone receives will be determined as a result of them completing the management plan right. So one of the things is around the special cups that each business actually has to purchase in order to be a part of this program right. So there's a fee associated with that. We also want to ensure that they are not paying out of pocket for the special event permitting right.

And so ultimately one of the things that the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation in that program manager will be tasked. That's why it says specifically that upon completing the management plan they will know exactly how much it will cost to do this programming. And so they will apply for event funding. And so that was one thing that is still you know really TBD. So you know we know that an event plan One event in the city of Oakland it could easily be at minimum $15,000 and it can go up.

And so so to answer your question specifically, you know each entertainment zone lead in that first year has access to that $100,000 to for the first year to do said event and programming. And then in year two the rest of the funds will be open to additional stakeholders that are becoming entertainment zones. So there's no specific answer but we know that in partnership with EWD they will help outline, hey how much are these fees? And so that's why the partnership will be so important in between Oakland Fund for Public Innovation as well as EWD to bring this program and this vision to life. Can't do it without one another.

And I would just show I would also just uplift one last thing that you know I got to have a lot of conversations with you know some of the cities that have activated this program And within our city we have one person who is managing a lot of these special permits. And so in San Francisco who now has 21 entertainment zones they have two people working on entertainment zones within the city and we just have one. And so I think that you know we're gonna need some some grace as far as like really getting this program off the ground.

Okay. Well I don't want to spend the whole CED committee on this one item. This does illustrate for me that there are so many questions because it sounds like if the four zones each get a $100,000 in the first year and activations run anywhere from 10,000 to a $100,000, they might be able to do maybe one or a couple activations and especially if they have to purchase, you know, private security for one and and I heard you say, you know, four to eight for the Uptown Downtown location. I wanna articulate to the public that out of the four zones, again, three are in my district, in District 3, Two of them are in the same bid. So we have the Northlake which is not necessarily a business improvement district that's inside of the Uptown Downtown District, so that seems like it should be one effort And but, again, there are a lot of questions to be had.

The last thing I I will just end with is that I think this needs more conversation with a lot of the businesses that have reached out to me in in my district that wanted to help inform this legislation that don't feel that they've been heard by the city of Oakland for the entire time that I've been in office and many of these organizations are around the Paramount, the Fox, and some of those areas and I want to make sure that this is is tailored for the organizations who are there and what they have consistently articulated to me over the last five years is that we desperately need help just to hang on and this feels like a very top down approach where they in the uptown Downtown Northlake area, they need basic services like trash pickup, graffiti removal, and what they've been really banging on is an after hours support because that's when a lot of the violence occurs, that's when there doesn't seem to be police response for emergencies and several there have been several incidents like it was the hottest summer and it's been a hot winter that people just have not expected and I want to know that whatever dollar that we put out, if it's 1 or 1,000,000, it goes to what the businesses are asking for and that they feel like they're a part of the process.

And again, everybody wants entertainment zones, it's the but the devil is in the details and we're not getting to those details quite yet. I know there's a management plan, but we're having to pay different sources to manage these things and I don't wanna seem like I'm pouring cold water on it, but again, I've been listening to people, you know, come to the city with their concerns that have to date not been addressed at all. And when they are angry, they call me because I am their representative. So when they're not getting the services that they need or certain special groups get funded and others don't, they call me and I have not been able to weigh in on this. I'm trying to do that now, so I'm asking for their voices to be heard.

I've been asked for small business supports, for struggling folks who are having trouble paying their rent. Coco Noir is is one of those and it's just there are a lot of folks that are struggling especially in the Black Arts Business District which wasn't mentioned here either. So I just have a lot of questions and a lot of desires for my businesses who are often they feel invisible. So that's that's what I'm asking for. I'm asking for a slowdown in the process to move entertainment zones.

They asked me to bifurcate AI from entertainment. So I'm lifting up what I've been hearing from folks and they're also I've also heard from residential residents that there's not a focus enough on how we're going to keep these spaces safe because we haven't been able to do it yet. So those are all things I'm just gonna leave on the table and hopefully we can have more conversation that includes these voices post this meeting.

Excellent. Thank you Councilmember Fife. I did want to clarify one thing. So at minimum we know that a special event could be $15,000 and then the other the up to maybe 45. So it's not a 100,000 per entertainment zone. So I wanted to make that note. Thank you so much. I know that in conversation with multiple business owners there's a lot of excitement around the creation of the entertainment zones. Definitely hear you. My hope is that we can pass this today in CED and I welcome more conversations. Council member Ramachandran, did you have some questions or council member Unger? Thank

you. First of all, thank you council member Brown for bringing this forward. I know that you've put a you and your team have put a lot of work into the details. It's not easy trying to bring something forward that's innovative and new. And I did get the chance to speak to the nonprofit partner, the Oakland Fund for Innovation, and, you know, initially, I had my doubts.

I'm like, I don't know this organization. I don't know why we're not using EWD's own capacity, but that's the reality. Within the city, the way our staffing level are right now, we don't have the capacity to do all the innovative things that we can. And I think I felt reassured talking to the implementation partners that are involved with this project. You know, at the end of the day, our business community is not a monolith.

You're gonna have a lot, clearly, we heard today, very excited about this proposal, and you're gonna have others that aren't. But I think it's important to take risks. And as co chair of the budget committee, I the budget team, I think that we all, six six of us who voted for the budget, made the choice to invest a million dollars in a biannual budget into trying something different that could potentially yield many more millions of dollars back to the city and back to our residents, back to job creation, back to having our streets activated again. So at the end of the day, things like this are experiments. I hope it works.

I see in San Francisco it working. You know, the other day I thought, you know, I should do a field trip to one of these areas in San Francisco. In turn, I've already been to three of them. I didn't realize this was an entertainment zone, but I was thinking, are they doing this illegally? The vibe is great. This is really cool. And I would love to see that in Oakland. To be honest, every time I travel to other cities that have bustling business corridors, you know, not just downtowns, but all over their cities, I'm like, we need to do a number of things. Entertainment zones, I think, is one of the many things that we can do to have that activation and excitement back. And I know that there's gonna be hurdles in implementation and that a lot of business districts wanna do it.

I certainly, hopefully, in the next round, hope to see some of those in my district implemented as well. But I think that this is a great start. I've heard nothing but enthusiasm from business corridors across the city, including those not selected for the pilot, but who think that, hey. This is a great start. We're using the state legislation. We'll be one of the first, you know, five ish cities in the state to do this. And I think we treat this as a creative experiment and push forward as much as we can. So my only question right now is about the future because we can't guarantee that we'll always have this pocket of money for entertainment zones and, you know, how the process for making sure that we're able to continue this beyond two years.

Yes and so we have been thinking very thinking a lot about that same question as well and so that's why we decided to put into the legislation a one year report back so that we can check-in and see how this program is going and really with much intention working on seeing how this is something that can be funded long term. I would note that you know the locations that have taken off in San Francisco none of those were funded by the city. And so I think that this is a hopefully I think my goal would be can we create something where this is act it actually funds itself? And so that that would be I would be interested in in trying to work to design something like that in the future, the very near future.

Then, just to follow-up with that, I I know that, in our budget, we also did fund an additional special activities permit coordinator in EWD. So, I hope that when the department is fully staffed that they'd be able to continue on this work past the two years and be able to leverage the staff that is funded internally so that we're not always relying on external partners, which I know as a pilot is helpful but long term continuity, I hope we develop that capacity in the next couple of years. But thank you.

Excellent. Thank thank you for reminding me about that position we added. I forgot. Council member Unger, any questions or comments? Excellent.

So I would entertain a motion to move this item forward and Councilmember Fife if you're open to it would love to I would love to set aside some time to answer some additional questions that you may have and really talk. I had the opportunity to talk with just literally two stakeholders that had concerns but very specific to the events that are occurring during Oakland's first Friday. That's what they were kind of upset about and making sure that this pilot does not create some of that same negative activity. I thought the conversation went really well when I explained the parameters of this. But I 100% welcome if you're interested working with me on some of the locations that we have here, talking with any of the stakeholders.

But as mentioned I think there has been a lot of positives to this initiative but of course want to make sure that we are placing all of the key parameters to make sure our community is safe. I would make one last note. You know I had the opportunity when I was kind of proposing this legislation to to meet with our now interim chief Beer. He was the one that joined the cause when when I was bringing up this idea to him. And so now for him to now be our police chief and he brought up a handful of really important points that he would want to see implemented in that management plan.

So I know that he's really laser focused on this pilot and making sure that it is successful and that everyone has the tools that will be attending that it is safe as well. So I just think that the partnership and the collaboration from so many of our city departments it's there. And so would love to the opportunity to make sure that you feel that support as well.

Council member Fife. Yes. I definitely wanna bring the history of the work that's been happening from the bottom up with our our businesses to this work. So I definitely appreciate the opportunity. As I said, I I haven't been included in this point and I bring so much to the table not because of me, but because of what I've heard and our our there are a lot of folks who feel left out and that certain organizations get favored And I was elected to bring balance to that that perspective with with so many of our stakeholders.

So, I definitely would like to participate in this process and I think it's important. Chief Beer, interim chief Beer is is great and I'm happy he's been made the interim and there are local officers who are a part of managing this this area every single day that their information doesn't necessarily trickle up in a way that impacts the businesses. So I you definitely need to sit down with some of the folks that I've been in conversation with

Yep.

And I invite that conversation because that's what they wanted to come out of this today. They wanted their voices to be heard. So yes and I will make the motion to move this forward if the motion hasn't been made already.

Nope, don't think so. So this would be not this is a public hearing? No. Okay. To the December 2 meeting on consent?

I would like us to meet with the stakeholders, the businesses in these different locations before this comes to the full city council meeting.

Okay. I think the motion that I would like is for this item to go ahead and move forward. It requires two readings and kind of as mentioned there is much work for EWD to do in the management plan process and so really being able to for any of this to take off we are literally looking at February, March. So we have we have a lot of time to really get into the weeds and really develop out a truly sustainable program with some of these pilot locations.

But I'm I'm supporting moving it to the next because it's an ordinance it needs to reach. I'm supporting it moving forward to the next full city council meeting. What I'm asking you is be before it gets completely solidified at the final city council meeting, before it even moves to February to have con to have those conversations. Absolutely.

Okay. Absolutely. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you. Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Fife, seconded by council member Ramachandran to approve the recommendations of stat and to forward both all pieces of legislation to the December 2 city council agenda on consent. With note, the ordinance will be the first reading for December 2. On roll, council member Fife. Aye. Thank you. Council member Ramachandran. Aye. Council member Unger. Aye. And chair Brown. Aye. The motion passes with four ayes to approve the recommendations of staff and to for all pieces of legislation to the December 2 city council agenda on consent. Moving to item seven.

Received an informational report regarding the citywide permit reform fall twenty twenty five update. And you do have four speakers for this item.

Okay, excellent. We will hear from planning and building. Excellent.

Council members can you hear me? Okay. Great. Hi. Robin Abad with the city administrator's office and the citywide permit ombuds here to update the committee on citywide permit reform, part of the Oak Permits Initiative. So, we do have a ten minute presentation here. The presentation is split into three parts. We'll talk briefly about mission, goals, and governance, how we're set up as an interagency team accomplishing this huge volume of work. I'll also talk about the four key action areas that the work is divided in. Then we'll dive into some of the specifics of these specific action items themselves that are sorted in those four key action items.

So, I'm here representing a large group of interagency collaborators and stakeholders who have actually been executing and carrying this work forward. So, we're joined in the chamber by representatives from departments of planning and building, transportation, economic and workforce development, and others. So, if we get to questions later and there are questions about specifics, staff experts are in the room available to answer. And, I also should have mentioned information and technology. Sorry, Michelle.

I know you're back there. So, Oak Permits, as I mentioned, is a huge interagency effort involving many disciplines, departments, and bureaus. You'll see here on this org chart how we are organized around Oak permits. Governance is coordinated out of the city administrator's office, which is, as I said, is where I sit and involves these different departments and their respective bureaus. You know, our mission is really straightforward.

We are focused on efficiency for our customers and our public as well as internally in terms of our systems and our administration. We have been making continual strides over the last couple years and even more are scoped and designed in queue for this upcoming year, which we'll talk about. Who is our audience? Who are we really trying to impact? First and foremost, as I mentioned, is our customers.

We want to create an increasingly efficient and easy to use experience for those transacting with the city of Oakland on planning entitlements, building permits, and everything related to acquiring approvals and permissions from the city. We want to make this highly accessible. We want to create a diversity of options in person as well as digital. And, we also want to make sure that our guidance and our assistance is clear and legible. Importantly, we also want to make sure that internally we're operating with maximum efficiency.

So, you know, we will talk about some of the old systems and infrastructure that we're seeking to replace and consolidate. That's really geared to making sure our staff, our experts and departments are working in as optimal and ergonomic an environment as possible in order to provide the best service and make the best use of time. So, are four action areas, broadly speaking, that the permit reform activities address. We'll go through some of those specifics and they're kind of grouped here by these four, but it's important to note that action items actually can address many of these at the same time. So, first and foremost, you know, reform is looking at policy and legislation.

Where in city code, especially through code amendments, can we create more efficiencies for both our public well as our departments. We also want to make sure that our customers, our clients are able to find information easily, they're able to transact, submit applications, get information, learn about statuses and so forth in the most optimal way as possible. We're expanding digital options and as I mentioned earlier, we're also really focused on updating internal systems and systems that the public interacts with. I'm gonna move quickly. I know we're, we only have about ten minutes for this item.

I may skip over some slides, but they're here for the record and for reference in case there are detailed questions we wanna refer back to them. You're aware that, the Department of Planning buildings, specifically the building, the Planning Bureau has recently brought, code amendments, to commission and counsel in order to vastly streamline, what are principally permitted uses, especially in downtown, the Broadway Valdez and Lake Merritt. So, here's listed some of those specific provisions and, we are in process this fall, seeing many of these provisions expanded beyond those, specific plan areas and actually to commercial corridors citywide. So, that's going to vastly reduce the amount of process that our small businesses and other stakeholders in these commercial corridors will have to move through in order to open a business and to operate and even, to to, expand the, vibrancy of their corridors. We're also seeing how, these code amendments are impacting our ability to deliver more housing.

So, some specific provisions here on streamlining around residential review. Both, entertainment venues and, entertainment venues were recently brought forward in terms of amendments and currently the Office of Economic and Workforce Development is working on crafting some, specific code amendments to make sure that, we have sensible, parameters for cannabis dispensaries and cafes that are also, efficient. Moving on to sort of bucket number two, which has to do with customer service and experience. The Department of Economic and Workforce Development does currently have a neighborhood business assistance program. We are looking at expanding and doing deeper outreach through this existing program in order to provide better upfront technical advice and service to small businesses and those seeking to create small businesses in the city of Oakland.

There is an incredible facility just across the way here at Building, 250, Franco Gaul Plaza, which is our physical permit center. Over the last year, the physical permit center, has slowly expanded the number of service hours and days available to the public. And, we have also begun to consolidate permit, departments into a single facility, minimizing the amount of effort and, kind of running around applicants may have to do in order to speak to or interact with multiple departments in order to get advice and make submittals. Critically, we've also as part, you know, in conjunction with those improvements and expansions at the physical permit center have created an integrated single appointment scheduling platform. In the past, you might for your project need to speak to many different departments.

The planning bureau, you know, the building bureau, maybe the fire department. And in order to get time with experts in those departments, you might've had to call one department or email another, maybe use a web portal to sign up. So that's all been consolidated into a single platform that, you can now use to schedule an in person appointment, a virtual appointment, and other types of interactions. We've also been, experimenting with different ways to get the word out about all of these improvements. So we've been showing up at Fora that our external stakeholders like the building owners and management's association has been hosting, the Housing Action Coalition, as well as developing proactive communications tools and assets like our video PSA series which we launched last year.

So, there's, if you look up on YouTube, you can watch some of the great videos from external stakeholders talking about how to access city services through these new channels. Our websites also, you know, our digital front door and in our digital world, people are expecting more and more of us in terms of digital services and what we're able to offer through asynchronous means. So, the communications office here at the city administrator's office last year just implemented a sweeping content rationalization exercise on our website, reducing a lot of redundancies and helping with more efficient navigation. They also transferred us from into a new content management system that will allow us to be more agile in terms of adjusting our digital environment for better accessibility. We're also scoped in this upcoming year, calendar year, to look specifically at the family of web pages having to do with permitting.

There's been a lot of incredible work to consolidate and make those pages as legible as possible, but there's still more work to be done and so we're excited to be doing that this year. Moving on to kind of bucket number three, which has to do with the, expanding our digital options so that patrons have both in person but increasingly, digital options at their disposal. One of the biggest innovations that departments have been executing and implementing on is creating a one stop digital submittal. So you can imagine in the olden days, you know, manual submittals, PDFs in person, sometimes submittals to multiple different departments and disciplines, separate packets for the same project. We're moving increasingly to consolidating those types of intakes into first of all, a single permit application or project application is the ideal, but critically, digitally.

So, instead of submitting something in person or manually emailing a PDF that then a permit tech and a process coordinator has to review and enter, create a record manually. These procedures allow us to, you know, virtually create a record almost instantaneously and speed the progress of a permit application through departmental review. One of my favorite examples of this is the digital special event permit, which the Office of Economic and Workforce Development Special Events Group spun up last year. A big topic of conversation so far in this hearing has been about outdoor activation and how vibrancy and economic development is not just about small businesses and, you know, building new buildings, but, allowing and helping our neighborhood partners create these ephemeral activations. So there's a kind of a subset of digital applications which is also really exciting and important and that is our same day permits.

So not only are we expanding the ability of patrons to be able to submit their materials digitally, immediately, but increasingly with many different types of permits to not only submit it but receive your permit in that same session, in that same day. So, as you can imagine, this cuts out a lot of time and expense for our consultants, our contractors, our GCs, our applicants, as well as for staff. So, the specific example shown here in the slide is building permits, specifically trade permits. These are mechanical engineering and plumbing permits that do not require structural review. We're moving we've moved from a paradigm where it might take up to a week maybe to process something manually to an applicant being able to submit their materials, pay, and get that permit printed out from their home computer within the space of twenty minutes.

So, the Department of Planning and Building has been, you know, really leading up our, experiments or to try and create a digital same day permit. Some statistics here from, the great work that the team there has been doing, we've been tracking volumes and we can clearly see that a greater and greater share of trade permits, the kind that don't require structural review, are being handled and processed in this manner. Beyond just building permits and trade permits, however, we're also looking at, other kinds of permits that can be issued same day. So in 2025, bollards on private property, some entertainment venues and minor encroachments like planner boxes in the public right of way are now available same day. And in 2026, we have, a number of other permits that we're hoping to incorporate, specifically, building alterations that do not require structural review.

Others, foundation, siding, windows. So some other exciting things that are on deck coming up. How are we making it easier for folks? Right now to scope a project, as we mentioned earlier, know, you might need to talk to planning to understand what entitlements you need, you might need to talk to building, you might need to talk to the fire department. Sometimes those are emails, sometimes those are in person interactions and it can be really challenging for a project sponsor to understand, okay, for the project that I wanna do, which permits should I apply for in which sequence?

How much is that all gonna cost? And so there's maybe a lot of inefficient information exchange that can happen simply in just helping the project sponsor scope their project for permits. So the digital project scoping tool is bringing us into this century in terms of, a dynamic tool that can help, project applicants begin to understand which permits they're going to need, in what order, and how much that's all gonna cost. So the tool would ask questions like, you know, where do you want to, where is your project located so that it can check land use controls and zoning to see if what you wanna do is even allowed to help you understand what entitlements you have to pursue and so forth. This will allow us to eliminate some of our manual intake tools like the zoning worksheet.

We're currently in the process of trying to eliminate the the building bureaus equivalent of that, which is the building worksheet. Finally, we're wrapping up soon, just a few more slides on bucket number four, which has to do with our internal systems. There has been a huge lift over the last couple years and still more work planned consolidating all of the permitting departments, especially those that are handling development services into a single database of record. So as you can imagine, you know, like many cities, departments can be on different systems, different systems of record. Consolidation is going to help us do a lot of things.

It's going to ensure that we can do comprehensive monitoring of progress across a single project. So the reporting advantages are manifold. It helps us integrate around communication and being able to work together also as a project team. So we have some major departments such as planning and building, which again being the pioneering group that they are got us started with Acela, our current database. We've integrated fire prevention, economic and workforce development is nearing their full integration as well and so are transportation and public works.

Another thing that will, item that will integrate with Acela is an electronic plan review platform. We are really trying to eliminate manual reviews, having many different versions of project documents floating out around there. This will be of great advantage to us and our clients because all departments, all disciplines would be able to see the most current set of plans and for example, see each other's comments, plan check comments. Sometimes one discipline might give one kind of advice that might not necessarily jive with another discipline. So this will help with our internal coordination and also the speed and rapidness with which we're able to communicate back out to clients about revisions they might need to make.

The city's also in the final stages of implementing a single point of sale platform. And so, the advantages of this are pretty evident in terms of us being able to collect fees and revenue expeditiously. It's important to note that, you know, one of the big goals with this project was make sure, was to make sure that we were meeting sort of like safety standards and privacy standards coming out of the ransomware issue from a couple years ago. So I know that was a bit rapid fire, but that concludes the formal presentation. And as I mentioned, department staff experts are here if there are questions about sort of specific items within that presentation.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And how many public speakers do we have? We'll go ahead and take the public speakers. Thank you. Thank

you, Cullen, and our public speakers for this item. Please approach the podium, state your name for the record. You do one minute. If you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so you're easily identified, and we will take in person public speakers and then Zoom. Bradley Shuckart, Tamika Gardner Gardner, Tony Carafale, and Laura Gassier.

Hi there. I'll be brief and I apologize for the earlier confusion. My name is Brad Shuckart. I am the regional president for Freehold Communities. We are the development manager as of first of this year for the Oak Knoll project in the Oakland Hills.

And one, appreciate the support that we've gotten from the city thus far in our new role. The city administrator's office has been particularly helpful in getting us up to speed on the city processes and I just wanted to encourage the city to continue to support the efforts of the city administrator to create streamlined processes. One of the biggest things we're hearing from our home builders is certainty is very, very important to them. And the lack of certainty with respect to the timing of approvals and the like it creates is, risk and has the propensity to cause them to look to make investments elsewhere. So we've encouraged the City of Oakland to continue to improve its processes.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Tony Caffarelli with A to Z Media Group. I'm a senior event manager with them. We work with the city of Oakland, the Oakland permitting process through the various events that we produce Oakland Pride Parade and Festival, the Unity Council's Dia de los Muertos. And we also agree that these streamlined processes have helped us tremendously.

It's created this one stop shop like you said approach. One of our things that we really appreciate are the interdepartmental meetings where we have, you know, all the various departments there. It eliminates things from falling through the cracks and so we appreciate that. And these improvements are really good because they increase efficiency. They streamline communication and cut down on unnecessary delays. We think that this permit process can also be very beneficial for newer event planners as it creates a real step by step guide making the entire process much easier to navigate. So we're in support of it and anything you guys can do to continue to streamline the process we appreciate. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Laura Geist. I'm the general manager of the Oakland Ballers baseball club. And as you can imagine over the course of the last two years I have submitted for a lot of permits as we have reimagined Ramadi Park. So we've done building, we've done conditional use, we've done special event, we have used the gamut of all of the permits that Oakland needs and offers.

And I just have to say that this process has been, you know you hear about permits and you hear that it's such an arduous horrible thing and I that has just absolutely not been our experience. Every department that we have worked with has been super helpful in walking us through the process and then once we've done it once we've been able to go in and self-service which has been a huge saving of time, effort, money on our part. And I will say that without the help and support that we have gotten from the permits department, we would not have been able to open in 2024. As a result of all of that help and partnership, the community has a new resource. The community not just for the ballers but also for little leagues and for partner communities.

We've hosted over 200 community groups into the park, and we hire over 150 different seasonal employees. Really Thank you for your comment.

And our last public speaker, Tamiko Garner. That concludes your public speakers for item seven.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Any questions or comments? Council member Ramachandran?

Thank you. Thank you for the very detailed presentation. I just wanted to go back to item three not item 3.7 on your PowerPoint where you talked about same day digital permits. I I I think you rushed through that one a little bit, but I'm curious about the kinds of same day digital permits that could be executed. Because I saw something bollards on private property and entertainment venues, and, private property and entertainment venues are the kind of permits that seem like they

could be issued fast and

is also ones that we get a lot of complaints about. What are those and what else can what else with this new streamline process can be same day digital?

Great. I'll I'll take a first crack at that and then I can invite Kat Torio who's the deputy director of EWD to speak specifically to the entertainment venues. In 2025, and this is slide 23 item 3.7. In 2025, same day digital permits were extended beyond just those trade building permits to include bollards on private property, minor encroachments like planner boxes, and some entertainment venues. So in 2026, we are scoped to expand same day digital permits to building alteration permits that are non structural and therefore don't require plan check.

So examples of this are kitchen and bath, simple tenant improvements, also foundation window replacement and siding including stucco. So Kat, I don't know if Say something more about entertainment. Hello.

Kat Toya with special activities permitting division. So with for our one day permits, if you have all of your documents in order for an entertainment venue which would include like a fire inspection, it would include your business tax license, it would include your insurance and a few other things. If all those items are in place then you're able to get your EV permit very quickly. It could be same day, it could be a couple days depending on if it lands on a Friday at 04:00 or not. So that's we have a lot of things that are set up that way. As long as we get the materials from the applicant, we can move forward very quickly.

Thank you. This is very exciting. I yeah. That that's all. Yeah. It's a very quick question. So minor encroachment, that would include like residential street closures?

Specifically, believe we're talking about planter boxes and assistant director of DOT Jamie Parks is here and maybe could answer that with more specificity.

Hi, good afternoon. Jamie Parks, assistant director with Department of Transportation. Yeah, there are a lot of different minor encroachment permits that are out there. This is specific to just the planter boxes, which are very simple. An actual street closure would have to go through a longer process where we review the details of what's being proposed.

Thank you.

Excellent. And so, I did have a couple questions. Well, first off, amazing work. Really appreciate seeing just the cross departmental collaboration to really bring this to life. We know that out in community we get a lot of feedback on a lot of these processes within the city so really delighted to see this progress. And so on that note I am curious do we have a method in place to gather before and after performance data to basically evaluate the effectiveness of the changes that are being made?

Yes, excellent question and we didn't present all of the statistics. I think we probably could have in this presentation. So departments are in various stages of spinning up monitoring dashboards so that we are really taking as much of a data driven approach as possible to addressing problems. So I might invite assistant director of planning and building Al Marid up to talk about planning and buildings, know, monitoring dashboards and the ways that we're looking at data and performance.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Alvin Marid, planning and building. Before we start, I just want to make one correction. The hours that were projected earlier, it it said walk in hours are 08:30 to noon Monday through Friday and it's actually Monday through Thursday and Fridays will be appointments all day. So And that will start December 1. Going back to the data, we have invested a lot of time and resources in developing dashboards to help us manage our internal operation.

We are tracking how well we're doing all the way to the individual level. And any time we make changes we do have the capacity to compare the before and after and make additional tweaks in order to maximize our efficiency.

Excellent. And so do we currently have a system in place to keep us kind of updated on this progress?

So we initially concentrated on our internal dashboard. Currently we're working on our external dashboard and that will be coming up in the 2026, calendar twenty twenty six. And we're actively working on it. So we're really excited and we'll be bringing that back up here.

Excellent, thank you. Director Gilchrist?

Yeah, just one thing and thank you. Assistant Director has been instrumental in bringing this on board. But I also heard in your question how we're using this on a regular basis and that was the whole intention when we started this a couple of years ago was to really look at data and tell we could drive our decisions with them, test the before and after, and see where we were finding problems, where we're finding the impaction. We convene regularly to check those. And to your point earlier, council member chair, we want to use these as a way to to really test what's working and what's not.

I mean, we seeing improvements? Can we identify different impactions in the process that need to be focused on? You know, once you improve one part of a process, then you may find there's something downstream that's holding you up. So then you can concentrate on that. So we are taking a very systems oriented approach toward this. And the data information, the dashboards we've been putting together over the last couple of years have proven very, helpful.

Excellent. Thank you. And then my next question, not quite sure who it maybe it's directed towards IT but just wanted to uplift during the council budget process we did allocate, well we added an additional 3,000,000 to help assist with Accella and so I think I'm just curious how that I guess investment has impacted like the process of this?

Yes, thanks Chair Brown. I'll invite Assistant Director of Information Technology, Michelle Noring Eisen to speak to the ASCELA budget as well as work program. You.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks. Michelle Nerring Eisen. So yes, we're really grateful for the investment and the, you know, the first thing that we've done is undertake a business process review with one of our contractors to have an independent look inside the system because we know that while we're focused on external improvements for our users and residents across the city, we also are mindful that there's a lot we can do systems wide internally within our system to create efficiencies and build things like customized reports that have been talked about earlier and some of these other items. So, you know, so we're looking at that.

We've also created like a three tier staffing plan and we're working on the tier of that staffing because we are mindful that that's what that funding was really intended for as well. So in addition to looking at resources that we can use to drive efficiencies in the system across the departments, are we looking at a selective certification recruitment for business analyst position that has experience or multiple that have experience in land use and permitting issues, whether it's with a seller or related system that we could train on. So we're doing that. We're also looking for, you know, to get some very specific project management support in that can help. And then another idea that we're working with is also trying to create resources that can be staffed or lent out to other departments that are either short on staff or require additional training or resources to use new permits or get ramped up and to try and be that resource to facilitate providing additional resources to departments and that's what we're currently working on.

Excellent. Thank you Michelle for that update. I'm really grateful for all of the time and energy that has been put into this effort. Colleagues any additional questions? I think maybe lastly definitely thank you Councilmember Unger for submitting the supplemental questions because a lot of the questions that I had were in there too. Really appreciative for staff for engaging those questions and answering them so efficiently. But if we do not have any Council Member Fife.

Yes, through the chair, thank you for the presentation. Can you just say really quickly how these changes to ours and the upgrades to the process are communicated to the public? How do we let people know?

Thank you so much for asking about that. We have a kind of multi pronged approach and I think we're seeking to increase that even more. One of the ways that we've done that is through these PSAs, these video PSAs. Increasingly, you know, the public is consuming information and news through social media. So we've been partnering with our incredible team at K Top to produce how to's and our lead producer is sitting right in the room next to us.

And so that's one way that we're seeking to sort of expand and make more accessible and just legible kind of these changes. Some of them can be kind of abstract and people are like, how does this help me? We've also been attending somewhat aggressively external fora that are hosted. I mentioned earlier, the Housing Action Coalition hosted us, the Building Owners and Managers excuse me, alphabet soup, also hosted us recently to learn about these and and also to provide feedback. The city administrator also convenes a group called the Development Services Advisory Group.

These are mostly development related stakeholders where we're listening, getting some deep and honest feedback, but also sharing out. Finally, I'd say, I think we're really excited to be before you here today because we know that you're hearing from your constituents day in, day out, and we've wanted to come before committees so that we can help equip you all with information that you can take back to constituents about the positive improvements that are happening. There are little improvements and there are big improvements. Some are very technical, some are more outward facing. So, the portfolio is really diverse and we hope that our briefing today has helped you understand kind of the breadth of that.

Excellent. Thank you so much. I'll entertain a motion.

I will move to receive and file.

Excellent.

I'll second that. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Ramachandran, seconded by council member Unger to receive and file this in the Community Economic Development Committee on roll. Council member Fife? Aye. Thank you. Council member Ramachandran? Aye. Thank you. And council member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye.

This motion passes with four ayes to receive and file this in the CED committee. Moving to item four, adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to forgive $3,000,000 in outstanding principal and all accrued and unpaid interest owed by the East Bay Highland Psalms the second LP for the high line for the Highland Psalms property 5,000,000, and outstanding principal and all accrued and unpaid interest owed by the East Bay Capital Fund two LP for the Eastlake property to preserve long term affordability until 2073 and facilitate the property's sale to a new owner. And you do have four speakers for this item.

Okay. Excellent. And so given the sake of time, I'd kindly ask five minutes for the presentation. We have to do it speedy. Sorry. Thank you.

I'll do my best. Okay. Good afternoon chairperson Brown, members of council. My name is Twima Early, manager of asset management services with the housing and community development department. May I have my slides please?

Thank you. Today I am presenting the recommendation to authorize loan forgiveness for the East Lake apartments and Highland And Palms properties to affordable housing communities in District 2 represented by council member Charlene Wang. And an approval with and approval will preserve long term affordability through 2073 and allow for a new qualified owner to stabilize these properties. The presentation will cover recommendation, the background and legislative history and analysis and policy alternatives, physical and equity impacts, implementation of the timeline and closing remarks. Went the wrong way excuse me.

Staff recommends counsel authorized forgiveness of 3,000,000 in outstanding principal and all occurred in unpaid interest for the Highland And Palm properties and 5,000,000 in outstanding principal Apartments. To ground this recommendation, it's important to explain the city's loan structure. City loans are structured as long term residual receipt, low interest loans that are subordinate to conventional senior debt. In this case, loans from Chase Bank. The city loans are not expected to be repaid as approved in the projects financing plans.

We make these loans with which function very much like grants as a way to secure long term affordability covenants that run with the property. Repayment on these loans only happen when the properties generate surplus cash flow. These properties have never generated surplus cash flow and repayment or refinancing is not permitted under the affordability restrictions. In this case, these properties in the case of these properties, the affordability covenants will remain in place even after forgiveness and after the sale to new buyers. It's also important to note that this action does not involve new city spending.

No new funds are being dispersed. This solely removes uncollectible debt from our books to facilitate a preservation transaction. Both properties were part of the ACCA acquisition and conversion to affordable housing program and the awards were funded by measure KK. Voters approved measure KK with the explicit intent to protect existing affordable housing and prevent displacement. These two properties were among the earliest preservation acquisition funded.

Excuse me. These properties were among the earliest preservation acquisition funding directly through this bond. The A CAB program was created to prevent displacement by enabling non profit developers to acquire and preserve rental housing for low income families. Both properties were part of the 2017, excuse me, both properties were part of the program and the awards were met and the awards were funded by Measure KK. Excuse me, I think I kind of skipped over a little bit.

Read that slide. I'm on slide five excuse me. Eastlake apartments which shows on the screen is 35 units that was built in 1957 and Highland And Palms which is also 23 units was built in 1964. Both require significant investment. Ebalzi put put in over 4,400,000.0 combined for seismic upgrades, fire restoration, and deferred maintenance.

They served working families, seniors, and households earning up to 80% of the AMI. The total income of these families is approximately $45,000 a year. Income streams vary encompassing wages, social security, SSI, and pension benefits and housing choice vouchers which account for about 5% of the tenants. Both properties continue to experience high operating costs, vacancies, and infrastructure needs. The financial condition.

Both properties are currently operating at a loss. Negative cash flow, zero operating and replacement reserves, any bosses advancing or make advances or keeping up the properties and keeping the properties afloat. Under the rent restricted model, revenue was never sufficient to build adequate reserves. The operating deficit forced to keep the building solvent. Without intervention, these conditions increase the risk of deterioration and potential foreclosure.

The properties are being sold at prices consistent with their brokers opinion value. The senior lender is Chase Bank. Sale proceeds do not repay the senior loan in full. Chase Bank is taking a significant reduction of approximately 1,500,000.0 on one property and 900,000 respectively. As a subordinate lender, the city would receive no repayment under any scenario.

Chase's willingness to write down 2,400,000.0 respectively underscores the severity of the financial distress and their commitment to also to preserve to to to the preservation outcome of these properties. All parties are absorbing losses to preserve long term affordability. Why full forgiveness is the only viable option? Full forgiveness will preserve 58 of the affordable 58 units of affordable housing in District 2. It'll prevent displacement of long term residents that are currently there.

It ensures a responsible transfer to a fully vetted affordable housing owner and it maintains the affordability on these properties through 2073. The incoming owner must demonstrate strong experience operating affordable housing, show financial and operational capacity, present a stabilization plan for these properties, and commit to property improvements. The new owner must also sign a full assumption agreement legally binding them to all affordability restrictions, all monitoring reporting and compliance obligations, enhanced performance covenants requiring timely reserve deposits, capital planning, and quarterly reporting until fully stabilized. If forgiveness is not approved, foreclosure can become a risk. In the event of foreclosure, affordability covenants are wiped out completely.

The city loans are extinguished. Rents instantly can convert to market rate. The current residents whom I will say is 71% of whom are African American face immediate displacement. A private investor typically acquires the building with no affordability requirements. Foreclosure would eliminate all affordability and cause resident displacement at these properties in East Oakland.

Loan restructuring is not an option because the properties do not generate sufficient net operating income to support any new debt as rents are capped at affordability restrictions and cannot rise to market levels. And if we reduce the interest which we looked at, the rates would provide minimal relief. And right now that loan is at 3%. We could go down to 0% but it wouldn't help the situation. If not approved, we're risking foreclosure, 58 families losing their homes, the city loses the affordability, protections, and financial oversight.

If we if it is approved, the properties can stabilize under a new qualified owner. The new owner will assume the property has zero legacy debt. Reserves will then be able to be restored given the property a buffer for operations and repairs. Cash flow will no longer be a burden by historic debt. The property will finally have a clear pathway to long term sustainability and long term affordability remains intact for fifty five more years.

Deferred maintenance can be addressed and vacancies can be reduced. East Oakland residents predominantly black households earning 45,000 or less can remain housed. The city protects its measure k k preservation goals. This is a unique corrective action plan not a precedent for future loan forgiveness request. The equity impacts prevents displacement again in East Oakland and aligns with our city's racial racial equity and anti displacement goals.

To speed this up, the timeline upon council approval, we would execute the city loan forgiveness formally releasing the city's lien on the property meaning that the controller's office will complete an internal account entry to officially remove the city loans balances and accrued interest from the city's financial records. Within fifteen days, EBALZ will go through with the purchase of a sale which they already have someone lined up. We will initiate the new owners to sign the assumption agreements and the transition of operations will begin. In January, we will record the updated regulatory agreement and our asset management services department will start enhanced oversight over these properties. Some of the enhancements are just monitoring the key performance indicators, their occupancy, their reserves, their NOI or net operating income, their rent their rent in arrears, conducting biannual inspections, and intervention triggers to if performance starts to decline.

From approval forward, the property begins to stabilize under the new owner. No legacy debt allow no legacy debt allows a sustainable path forward, and reserves will be rebuilt to support long term operations. Again, in closing, staff recommends this is a highly unusual I admit this is a highly unusual circumstance. Two distressed properties, negative NOI, no reserves, significant senior lender rights write offs or write downs, and a viable preservation buyer ready to step in. This will not be applied broadly across our portfolios.

I wanna iterate that, But will preserve 58 deeply needed affordable homes in District 2. Prevents foreclosure and displacement. Ensures a vetted new owner has the tools and financial structure to stabilize these properties, restores reserves, and creates a path to long term sustainability. It keeps the affordability covering this again in place through 2073. This preservation action, it protects housing, protects families, protects our city investment, and without this intervention we risk losing both the affordability and residents in the neighborhood deeply impacted by displacement.

I'm available as well as staff from EBALSI to answer any questions you may have.

Excellent. Thank you so much. We'll hear from the public speakers.

Thank you. When I call your name, please approach the podium. State your name for the record in no particular order. If you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so you're easily identified. We will take in person speakers and then Zoom. Isaac Cosread, Emily Bush, Sharon Lai, and then David Boatwright.

Good afternoon, councilmembers. I'm Sharon Lime, the chief strategy officer. Both Emily Brush as well as Isaac Cosbreed will be ceding their time to me. May I have their time as well? Great. Thank you. So hello again. Am the chief strategy officer at the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation. We are here as the requesters of this action before you today. First of all, want to really thank staff for your hard work in bringing this item forward as well as to the council members for your time and attention in this request, which the staff has already very thoroughly stated will help us secure the long term affordability of 58 units of housing in Oakland.

As the staff report noted, IBALTZ, we are the largest nonprofit housing partner in Oakland and we continue to be very committed to meeting the affordable housing needs of Oaklanders. The reason that this request is before you today is that IBALTZ was the city's biggest partner back in 2015 when we were piloting this program to protect naturally occurring affordable housing away from real estate speculation and then to convert them to long term rent restricted affordability. The specific properties that were acquired in this portfolio including the market downturn, pandemic impacts and other factors has contributed to the current dynamic where these two properties before you are no longer sustainable, financially sustainable for Ibaltsi to hold on to. In short, the current debt and cost to operate far exceeds the market value and the revenue that's generated from these properties and they are at risk for loan defaults. Defaulting on the loans would mean that the long term affordability restrictions would be jeopardized as well as impending displacement for the population that's currently there.

To guarantee the long term affordability of these properties years for the remaining term of this loan, the best option really is to sell to a new owner who will be owning at a lower value, which then in turn means that their operating costs will also be lower. Fortunately, Ibaltsi was able to secure a contract for sale with the affordability requirements intact. The sale however requires the bank, the city and Ibaltsi to all share in some of these losses. In sum, this request will not impact the city's general fund, will preserve long term affordability goals, represent the best option for all parties, and must be acted on promptly to avoid significantly worse outcomes. My colleague Emily Bush who is the director of asset management is also here today and we are more than happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration.

David Boatwright, District Four. Whoever was responsible for following this project from day one needs to come forward and explain all the learnings that we've had from this because it looks like it was a plan that was destined to fail from the beginning. It's so far off what was expected that something had to go wrong and I didn't hear any of those reasons today and I think somebody needs to look into that and find out why. Thank you.

That concludes your public speakers.

Okay. Excellent. Councilmember Unger.

Yeah. Thank you. I've got some questions for HCD and some questions for Ibal Syt. So, you said that this loan was essentially uncollectible and that you never really expected to be able to collect on it and that is typical for these sorts of loans?

Well, it's how the loans are structured. They're technically the you only receive repayment if the loans are if the properties are cash producing Mhmm. And the property has not been cash producing. Some of the loans that, I mean not all of the loans are not cash, you know, all of the loans that we give are not always non cash producing. If that answers your question.

It does, I mean I think in general we'd be able to do more projects if we were getting paid back for the projects that we're loaning on because they cease to be loans and become gifts.

Well, that is true. I can say a lot of the Abbasi properties they are paying back some of the loans that they have but we did do a deferment agreement with them because they had some properties that were failing. So in order to to prompt that those properties, we deferred our payments or the repayments on loans of properties that were in the in the in the black to uphold the properties that are in the red. So it was imperative that we do a disposition of some of the properties that are not cash producing to reverse that effect.

Okay. And and I appreciate you saying that this is a one off, but I don't know how we know that. I mean, we have another 40 something million in the ACAH portfolio and other millions of dollars in outstanding bonds. What's to prevent the sort of moral hazard of other recipients coming to us and asking for the same thing? What's to prevent us from being back here six months when everybody knows that we'll just forgive their loans?

I can say that the asset management services department is a new form department that was created about a year and a half ago when I started with the city's HCD. So I can't speak to necessarily what was happening prior to, but I know there weren't a lot of hands on deck to ensure that all of these loans were being monitored. Since I've started in the department, we've created procedures, preceded monitoring monitoring procedures to ensure that we are monitoring or actively monitoring the 150 properties that are actively in our portfolio and the ones that are coming down the pipeline. So I have three staff members. We're out doing the inspections.

We're collecting the financial audits and the budgets and all of the information from the properties. And if we see that properties are in trouble, we are holding kind of stabilization calls. So I've actually been meeting with Emily Bush from UBOSI for the last year and a half to stabilize this half portfolio. So any properties that are struggling, we do meet with them and try to come up with alternative suggestions of how to help them meet their goals and that's up until possibly deferment agreements, reducing their interest rates on their loans, things like that to to to to make this more palatable. We have not received a lot of requests for loan forgiveness.

Some properties that have asked for forgiveness, they were in the process of trying to refinance or take more money out on their properties, you know, and why would we reduce the loan for you to take out more debt? So those were all rejected. The what the reason this one was considered is because Ibozi is selling these properties. That would take away the debt for a new owner to come in and be able to stabilize the properties.

And thank you for that, I appreciate Thank you. And a question for Ibalzi's rep. Thank you. So, you know, I mean, I understand why we're in this pickle. You know, you bought at the peak of the market, there was more work than you were expecting, the pandemic, all of these sort of, you know, unforeseen events.

And I also really appreciate that IBALTZ is a huge part of our affordable housing in Oakland, you know, kind of too big to fail, you know, you've been here for fifty years, we need you to be here for another one hundred and fifty years. And so that's all really important. But I do I would love to know more about the deal you have lined up, right? We're essentially being asked as a council to give our blessing and our financial resources to a real estate deal that we don't know anything about and we're gonna end up with a new landlord, a new nonprofit partner, a building that's deed restricted, and as a city, we're gonna be judged by the outcome of this and, you know, I don't wanna read about who the buyer is in the papers. Like I feel like, mean I don't wanna intervene in this deal but I also feel like we are, like us saying yes today means that this deal is going through.

So we need, I would like to know more about who we're partnering with here.

Thank you for that Council Member Anger. Absolutely understand and you know we are here as partners and respect the city's process. TOIMA has actually laid out a very detailed approach where the city staff still has to run their vetting and approval process of the buyer after this point. So that's not our process, that's actually the city's protocol. So there is a very well laid out set of procedures for that.

Within the contractual obligations of the sale, we are not in a position where we can disclose the buyer, that's just part of the terms of the agreement. And so what I can say is that we understand this buyer has experience, the kind of experience that would qualify them to be a buyer in this case.

And just for everyone's knowledge, these units would remain deed restricted at their affordable levels that isn't gonna change with a new buyer?

Absolutely, that is the whole point of this and why we are willing to even sell at this point.

Okay. And are you worried about the rest of your portfolio?

This is actually the, it's a very unique part of our portfolio. We have done a lot of affordable housing work as you have named over the past five decades And we're really good at that. This was a special frankly an innovative approach that we were trying to step in for the city during the height of the market when we were seeing a lot of speculation and a lot of displacement. And we have learned from that but the rest of our portfolio without these properties will be at a much more stable place and that's really what's important here.

Okay, I'm done.

Thank you.

Excellent. So a lot of my questions were similar to council member Unger. I think I did hear staff lay out. So I had a question around ensuring that this doesn't like set a precedent of other developers coming in requesting the same thing. And so I think I heard a little bit around the process depending on you know why they are requesting this thing and there seems to be some parameters that are in place.

But I think I would be interested in there being maybe a more structured pathway to ensuring that this isn't a precedent. So that was the first thing that I wanted to uplift. And then you know the report does mention that you know the East Lake property has kind of had some initial like poor construction issues. And so I guess I'm curious like with the new owner like how are we ensuring that they are able to kind of overcome some of those issues? And then I'm mostly asking that question because how are we ensuring that we're actually protecting the tenants from this new owner and ensuring that they can you know these units actually stay affordable as what was stated.

Start. My name is Emily Bush. I'm the director of asset management at E Balti. We inherited extensive deferred maintenance at these properties. We invested millions of dollars over the course of the period that we held to try and address issues as they arose, health and safety issues.

Part of this debt forgiveness enables the buyer to purchase the property at a lower price and have then additional resources available which they are laying out through a capital plan to be able to reinvest in the property in the way that we have identified it needs without without our organization having having the funds to be able to make this type of investment. I see and without displacement? Without without displacement. I think another key part of this which Twima mentioned is that with the regulatory agreement in place, remaining in place, that enables the city of Oakland to retain all of its rights to monitor compliance with the regulatory agreement which includes enforcing health and safety standards.

Okay. Thank you. Does council member Ramachandran have her hand up? Nope. Any questions or comments council member Fife? Okay so I believe that we can entertain a motion to move this item to December 1 council meeting or December 2. I keep saying that December 2 on consent.

Council Member Unger. Yes I will make that motion.

Second.

We have a motion made by Council Member Unger, seconded by Council Member Fife to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the 12/02/2025 city council agenda, and that is on consent. On roll, council member five. Aye. Thank you. Council member Ramachandran. Aye. Thank you. Council member Unger. Aye. And chair Brown.

Aye. The motion passes with four ayes to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the 12/02/2025 city council agenda, and that is on consent moving to item six. Adopt an ordinance as recommended by the city planning commission to one, amending title 17 for the Oakland municipal code two a, adjust regulations for permitted and conditionally permitted activities and facilities for the purposes of providing greater opportunities for the ground floor activities and ease the permitting burden for commercial, civic, and low impact industrial activities and b, make related miscellaneous and administrative changes and two, making appropriate California Environmental Quality Act findings. And you do have four speakers.

Okay. And so I know we are now getting into almost time for LEC and so I would kindly ask for this presentation to be swift. Maybe highlighting some of the key changes that are being made and then we can take questions and comments from council members and then the public speakers.

I will do my best.

Thank you.

If you could pull up the presentation please. Hi, I'm Timothy Green. I'm a planner three in the strategic planning division. Staff are proposing planning code amendment package to streamline the conditional use permit or CUP requirements. CUPs are an important tool to address accommodation of uses with special site or design requirements, operating characteristics or potential adverse effects on surroundings through review and where necessary the imposition of special conditions of approval.

However, the CUP approval process is often lengthy and expensive and affords a high level of uncertainty. This can inhibit the opening of small and neighborhood serving businesses which results in a less vibrant commercial districts and reduced tax revenues. Additionally, it hampers the implementation of parks improvements and maintenance by the city. Mayor Lee has established a permit reform initiative included as part of her 10 plan for Oakland from which The primary focus of these amendments is to reduce the number of activities subject to the CUP procedure thus allowing these uses to be permitted outright. The zoning amendments in the Broadway Valdez district adopted in May served as a pilot for this project which which expands the effort citywide.

The proposed package amends the chapters of the planning code showed on this slide as well as this slide. The bulk of proposed amendments reduce the regulatory barriers to permitting commercial and civic activity in commercial zones. One of the key triggers for a CUP for these activities is the square footage of a proposal. Therefore the proposed amendments would raise many of these thresholds by 20 to 50% depending on the activity in the zone. Group assembly includes a variety of businesses that facilitate public gathering generally having a floor area of at least 5,000 square feet.

Such activities can serve as anchor destinations attracting patrons to a commercial district from throughout the city and region. The activity generated from these venues can support other businesses such as restaurants, bolster the reputation of a commercial district, and promote the city for as a center for arts and culture. However, they also have the potential to generate elevated noise levels that can disturb neighboring residents. Currently, the planning code regulates this issue by requiring most of group assembly activities to receive a CUP. The proposal aims to create more predictable permitting process by increasing the square footage allowed before a CUP is required and instead establishing performance standards in certain zones.

So for projects that so it increases the threshold and now for projects that still that don't trigger a CUP but propose to use amplified sound, an operational noise plan would be required. This would document the potential noise generation of the project and describe any mitigation required to meet existing noise performance standards. Traditionally one of the reasons to require a CUP would be to require this noise study and add conditions as a result. By requiring this with the permitted use as a performance standard allows allows retention of these requirements without the need for a more lengthy CUP process. Artisan production was newly added to the planning code in 2023 which will be added to most commercial zoning districts as well as certain industrial and residential districts as appropriate.

Regulation of mechanical or electronic games such as arcades very significantly throughout the city zoning districts and would be newly permitted in many commercial districts as well as certain industrial and residential districts as appropriate. Medical service and animal care are neighborhood serving uses that can generate activity on a commercial corridor but that contain sensitive operations that should be screened from public view. Ground floor transparency requirements were developed first for the downtown zoning districts then refined for Broadway Valdez. In those districts the relevant business must provide street fronting windows for reception lobby waiting areas while treatment rooms may not face the street. The current proposal expands these requirements to include other pedestrian oriented commercial districts.

The Lake Merritt station zones have been amended to maintain the highest possible consistence consistency with the surrounding downtown zones. This will ensure clear and consistent regulations throughout Oakland's downtown. The open space chapter of the planning code only regulates physical changes proposed or implemented by the city or other public agencies such as East Bay Parks. Within the scope of the planning code, our current permitting framework aims to maintain thoughtful stewardship of parkland by requiring rigorous public review process for proposed projects. However, this results in a trade off that results in high costs and lengthy approval timelines which has become a significant concern of the parks and rec public works departments as well as many Oaklanders.

The proposed amendments aim to balance these competing goals by reducing costs and delays while maintaining public review commensurate with the impacts of a given project. A couple permitted a couple activities are proposed to be directly shifted from prohibited to permitted meaning the uses would only go through the parks and rec approval process and not be reviewed by planning. Namely food service and other concessions would be newly permitted in active mini parks and linear parks. This activity only includes fixed structures and does not include mobile carts or trucks. We have drafted an amendment to clarify this which you all have received just now.

These limited changes would add a footnote to table 17.11 o six o noting that food service and other concessions does not include any temporary structures or movable carts or trucks. These limited changes would allow for activation of parks by providing concession booths in any type of city park. Meanwhile, basic park amenities would be changed from minor CUP to permitted. Examples include permitting pathways, basic utility infrastructure and kiosks in all park types. It would also streamline permitting of restroom and all restrooms in all parks with the exception of resource conservation areas.

Some activities would be shifted from prohibited to minor CUP. This would mean that instead of being banned planning approval could be granted by planning staff. These changes would allow for installation of low impact recreational amenities particularly in athletic field parks. However requiring a minor CUP would maintain thoughtful analysis of proposals particularly in regard to limiting expansion of inspervious surfaces and parks. Additionally, cafes would be conditionally permitted in most parks which would help to activate those spaces and provide revenue for their maintenance.

Restrooms and maintenance sheds and resource conservation areas would be shifted from major CUP to minor CUP allowing for these basic facilities to go through just one public hearing by the Parks and Rec Advisory Commission or PRAC instead of the two currently required with the Planning Commission also reviewing. This could shorten approval timelines by months. Many activity types would be changed from prohibited to major CUP. These changes would allow for installations of more impactful park amenities such as water play features, full service restaurants and alcohol sales while maintaining a high level of public review to ensure they don't cause negative impacts. Other key changes in the open space zone include clarifying that maintenance in kind replacement and small projects adding less than a 100 square feet of new impervious surface is not a change in use.

Permitting small storm water facilities and public art installations of less than a thousand square feet in all parks. Large facilities would require a CUP or be prohibited depending on facility and park type. And prohibiting athletic fences in many parks, linear parks, and resource conservation areas. More limited amendments are proposed to residential and industrial zones to allow for a wider variety of uses as appropriate. And miscellaneous amendments would be made to certain use classifications as shown on this slide.

Other miscellaneous cleanup and administrative amendments would be made to the chapter shown here. So there was a clerical error where staff inadvertently struck out the l four limitation for administrative civic activities. Staff is proposing to retain this existing limitation that does not allow the expansion of a non residential structure in an otherwise residential zone. This is a correction after the planning commission meeting and the language is shown on the slide and included in your CED package. Here's our tentative timeline hoping for implementation early next year.

So staff request that the city council conduct a public hearing and upon conclusion adopt an ordinance as recommended by the planning commission one amending title 17 of the Oakland municipal code. The planning code two a adjust regulations for conditionally permitted activities and facilities for purposes of providing greater opportunities for ground floor activities and ease the permitting burden for commercial, civic, and low impact industrial activities. And b, make related miscellaneous cleanup and administrative changes. And two, making appropriate California Environmental Quality Act findings with the following revisions. One, retain l four for administrative civic activities in all zones in table 17.17 o one.

And two, add footnote to table 17.11 o six o stating that food service and other concessions does not include any temporary structures or movable carts or trucks. See OMC chapters five point five one and twelve point six four. And that concludes my presentation.

Excellent. Thank you so much and for uplifting those important amendments. Council member Ramachandran.

Yes. Thank you. I am in strong support of the amendments and appreciate the clarification. And, also, I have received, you know, as I know the department has as well, a number of concerns about basically on the open space requirements, whether or not food vendors that private food vendors would be able to not go through the the regular permitting process. And to my understanding, the clarity, including the amendment, is that, no, that the process is unchanged for private food and concession vendors?

That's correct. How it how it works and would continue to work is is parks and rec or a similar department would submit an application to us that they want to to build some sort of concession stand. We would review that but then then that department would do would go through an RFP or other concession agreement process to find a concession concessionaire for that facility.

Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you. Council member Fife.

Let me get this going because we're

a little behind. But I I do have to ask, I see some of my in the chamber regarding this item. There's a lot of challenges around Lake Merritt. I saw a discussion happening over on the side, so I don't know if it was addressed. But I am concerned about something similar to what council member Ramachandran just stated and wanna know this is what happens with the existing vendors that are not regulated? Or will there be any type of enforcement to require permitting? Or how are we addressing some of the abuses that we're seeing right now?

Yeah. So I guess I wanted this is Laura Kaminsky, strategic planning manager. So I just wanted to clarify. So what is in the planning code is actually dealing with, you know, structure. So essentially what we're talking about is that if you're building a new kiosk that would allow for a, that this that the parks and rec department or public works wanted to build a new kiosk that potentially could then, in the future, house somebody through an RFP process, a a food vendor that would maybe want to be in that kiosk.

But it's only if it's something that the city wanted to do. That's what our proposal is is talking about. What I think the concern is that we're hearing from the public is these mobile food trucks that are that are not permanent, that are not fixed, and that that the planning code does not actually speak to those at all. That is a separate, process in the municipal code and that is done through the parks and rec department as a process of people applying for a mobile food permit process. And so that actually what we're changing right now does not change that other process at all.

So that is a separate issue as far as the enforcement of you know these existing vendors that are doing this illegally and that is done through I believe the economic development and public works.

When this comes back because we're we're bleeding over into my committee and I this needs a lot more conversation. I wanna figure out how we do address it. I know what you're amending doesn't address the previous issue you just mentioned that I mentioned that the public is mentioning, but we do I wanna understand if there is something that can be added to this language to deal with these concerns. It's primarily enforcement that doesn't have anything to do with you, I do wanna put that out there. But there I I just wanna find out if there's more that can be done. We just don't have the time to have a discussion today. So I wanna revisit it between now and the time that this comes back to committee to come counsel, As

a public hearing.

Yeah. Yep. So I'll I'll I'll make that motion. Excellent. I I think we have other questions. Okay.

And I'll also second it, but council member Unger.

I I know we don't have much time, but I I think it's really important that we not let this go by without heaping a lot of praise on planning and building for this item and the previous item. I think it's really amazing the kind of streamlining work you've done. This is one of the major problems we hear about from our constituents. The fact that we're making these permits easier to get at all types of levels is a lot of work for you all and I just want to say how much I appreciate it.

I agree and I wanted to also uplift that I guess any of the detailed questions that we have maybe that members of the public have offered we can send those over and we can also potentially produce that in a supplemental where we're actually answering those questions as far as where the questions around these mobile food vendors where that lies as relates to this item. But director Gilchrist?

I just wanted to to the chair to the committee, I just wanted to thank you for your acknowledgement and appreciation for the work the staff's been doing to improve operations overall. What I would ask also and I work through the CAO's office for any of these items that are relating operationally, we need to get the other parties in the conversation as well. Because I think what miss Kaminsky is impressing is that within the rubric that we have delegation of authority over, some of the issues you all are raising would not fall within the planning code. So I understand that it's all, you know, working together in the real world. But if we're going to affect, you know, changes that are falling into these various categories, we've to make sure we have everyone at the table we need. Okay.

Excellent. Thank you.

Sounds good. And we can hear from the public speakers? Thank you.

Thank you. Wanna call your name, please approach to the podium. State your name for the record. If you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so you're easily identified. We will take in person and then Zoom. Isaac Kosereed, Kate Steele, Christine Brigaliano, and Leanne Alameda. Ready?

Mhmm.

Hi. I'm Kate Steele with the Lake Merritt Community Alliance. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Thank you planning commission for your good work and most of your work we we agree with. But this is not ready for prime time. We will receive this amendment today. I don't think it answers some of the questions we have. Right now under the conditional use permit, we have a rigorous review process. And what the proposal will do is remove the planning department from that review process. And that will leave it in the current process we have now is with PRAC and the park the park department itself.

And those processes do not allow the public a meaningful opportunity to participate in the process. We don't get the PRAC agenda, you know, if there was a proposal before then, we don't get the PRAC agenda until one day, supposed to be longer than that, before the meeting. And the conditional use permit notice requirement.

Thank you for your comment.

Thank thank you. Okay. If we called your name, please approach.

I I think I you called Isaac next but I don't see him in the room.

You can go, yeah, thank Thank you so

you. I'm Christine Brigalviano, I am here on behalf of Lake Merritt, I'm here on behalf of Lake Merritt Institute. And it's unclear to me whether the things that we're worried about are actually pertinent to the planning commission's suggested changes now that they've done the amendments. But, we are very concerned about any permitting process for food vending and vending in any of the parks, particularly Lakeside Park, that would not include an environmental impact review. Our parks are precious assets and we are worried that any outdoor space lost or space lost in the parks that would be given away for commercial purposes will never be recaptured.

So we urge the city council to limit the use of the parks for enjoyment. We totally support the suggestions for improvement rest

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you. And any more public speakers? Excellent.

Moving to our Zoom speakers. Leanne Alameda, please unmute yourself and begin your one minute comment.

Hi. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I'm Leanne Alameda, chair of the Lake Merritt Community Alliance. I urge the committee to remove the permitting changes for food servicing concessions in our parks. I am confused about this amendment and how this changes anything around the concerns myself and other park leaders have.

I met with the city planning staff, and they did not make this point at any point about it being for city structures, and they knew what our concerns were around vending in our parks. This fundamentally in your packet shows that they are changing minor CUPS, which involves the planning committee, to permitted, which means it goes to Parks and Rec and PRAC to approve these. It does it does not allow for the more rigorous review that the planning committee would do, which includes public review, public hearings, and mailed notices to residents within 300 feet. This needs to be removed until there is more clarity. Please remove this portion of the

Thank you for your comment. That concludes your public speakers for item six.

Okay thank you so much. Just want to share out that the section within the code, within our code 8.6209 is the one that specifically relates to the mobile food vendors. So I just wanted to share that out. It does sound like maybe there's some additional questions and concerns but I know that each of our offices could reach out to planning and building to ask some of those specific questions. But currently on the floor we have a motion and a second and we know that there were two amendments that were read into record and so accepting the motion with those two amendments.

And to be on the December 2 agenda as a public hearing.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member five, seconded by council member Brown to approve the recommendations of staff and afford this item to the December 2 city council agenda as a public hearing. On roll, Council Member Five? Aye. Thank you. Council Member Ramachandran? Aye. Council Member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. Motion passes with four ayes to approve the recommendations of staff. And this is to be forwarded to 12/02/2025, city council agenda as a public hearing. Moving to open forum. You have two speakers. Please approach the podium, state your name for the record. If you are participating via Zoom raise your hands you're easily identified. David Boatwright and Jennifer Finley.

So maybe Jennifer.

That concludes your public speakers for open forum.

Excellent, thank you all so much. This meeting is adjourned.