City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Good afternoon and welcome to this city council meeting, which I'd like to call to order. This is the afternoon of September 1st, 2026. Tony, would you please call the roll?

Thank you. Now, if you're able, please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you. Today's invocation will be provided by Jai Indra, dance school, and Councilmember Condellas will tell us more. Welcome.

Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon and happy September. I'm excited for District 8 to host Invocation this month and especially excited to kick it off with Jayendra Kalikendra Dance School. Founded in 1989 by Suganda Iyer, Jayendra Kalikendra is dedicated to preserving and sharing Bharatanatyam. Sorry, I probably messed it up. But the classical dance tradition of South India. What began as a class of just one student has grown into an institution with teaching centers across the Bay Area, including right here in San Jose, as well as locations in India. Now celebrating its 37th year, the school h

Thank you so much. We really appreciate you joining us today and sharing your talent with us as we begin our city council meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Condales, for arranging today's invocation. We're going to move on to our ceremonial items. Council Member Ortiz, if you would join me at the podium, we will recognize and proclaim September 6th as Lowrider Day. We'll invite our guests down as well.

Yes, and if you help sponsor Lowrider Day, please join us here. Hello, everyone. As a representative for East San Jose, I'm no stranger to a lowrider or a cruise. For years, I've joined in these celebrations alongside our brothers and sisters as we've cruised down Santa Clara Street, Alum Rock Avenue, and, of course, through the iconic intersections of King and Story, an area in which I'm proud to represent. For me, Lorain has always been about so much more than cars. It's history, it's family, and it's cultura. It's something many of us grew up around, and it represents the creativity, ingenu

And that was David Polanco, president of the United Lowrider Council. Thank you. Let's go over here so we can take a picture. Let's go this way, to the left. Did you get in there? Okay, all right, all right.

All right, Councillor Condellas, we are now going to recognize and proclaim September as National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

Thank you, Mayor. So September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, a time to recognize the incredible courage of children battling cancer and remembering the young lives we've lost and standing alongside the families whose lives have been changed forever. Childhood cancer diagnosis affects so much more than one child, it impacts parents, siblings, caregivers, friends, and quite frankly our entire community. This month reminds us that we all have a role to play by raising awareness, supporting families, and advocating for the research and resources needed to develop better treatments

Thank you, the Mayor will present the proclamation.

and your story and everything you do. We're grateful. All right. Thank you to everyone who brought forward a ceremonial item. We're on to orders of the day. Council Member Mulcahy, I understand you want to move to defer an item?

Yes, Mayor. I'm requesting that we defer item 8.2. and want to acknowledge Eric and our housing department for their efforts to help us work a bit tighter with the community as we bring this back in September 22nd for that meeting, three week delay.

Great, and I know Eric is aware of and on board with the essentially two council meeting deferral. So this would be till the 22nd? Yes. Great, and we have a second, I heard? Second. Okay, great. Any other requests to change the printed agenda? Okay, I don't see any. Tony, do we have public comment on orders of the day specifically? Great, thank you. Coming back to the council, let's vote.

Okay, thank you. Moving on now to the closed session report.

Great, thank you Susana. We are on to the consent calendar. Are there any items Council would like to pull from consent and I believe Councilor Campos has one, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to pull 2.11 for comment.

Yeah, okay. Any other requests? Okay, Council Member Kompas.

Thank you again, Mayor. And I want to begin by appreciating the work of the city manager's office and PBE staff to ensure that the city is in compliance with the state law. Item 2.11 is an amendment to city council policy 6-14, our guidelines for child care. And I also wanna thank and share gratitude to the mayor and council member for Dios Cohen and Casey who joined me in submitting additional recommendations that will increase the accessibility of childcare to families throughout the city. Our council policy 6-14 imposes requirements on childcare and has not been updated in over 20 years. An

Great, thank you, Councilmember. Appreciate your advocacy and work on this. Thanks to all the colleagues who signed on. Any other comments or questions? Oh, I'm sorry, Councilmember, do you mind including the rest of the consent calendar in your motion?

Yes, and also move to, motion to move the rest of the consent calendar.

great so we'll add that to the motion okay thank you is that okay with the seconder great all right i don't see any other hands tony do we have any public comment on consent yes matt matt tinsley come on down followed by brian and kristen online

We will have open forum at the end of the meeting. It's no problem. Thank you, Tony. Any other questions or comments on consent? Seeing none, let's vote.

Thank you. We are on to item 3.1 report of the city manager. I

Thanks, Jennifer. I enjoyed my day with Sinatra. He's quite a dog. And I saw other council members out there with their dogs. Thanks for your ongoing advocacy for our animals. I know it's something you personally really care about. We will move on now to our next item, which is item 3.3. This is the amendment to the contract with the California Public Employees Retirement System, which would allow employees in the Deputy Chief Investment Officer classification within the Office of Retirement Services to enroll in CalPERS retirement benefits. There's no staff presentation, so we will start with

SECOND. GREAT. MOTION AND A SECOND. ANY OTHER HANDS? TONY, LET'S VOTE.

Thank You Tony road item 3.4 a grant of franchise to Tokay energy storage one LLC for electric services for public rights of way no Staff presentation, so we'll start with public comment Roland.

Hold on, Roland. There we go. We'll start your time over. Your mic, let's make sure it's on. It doesn't look on.

Okay, thank you for the public comment. Going back to the Council, I'm going to go to Councillor Casey first.

Great. Thank you, Council Member. I don't see any other hands. Do we have a motion on this item?

Okay. Tony, I think we're ready to vote.

Great, thank you. All right, we're on to item 8.1, alternative financing recommendations to spur affordable housing production. We have a staff presentation, so Eric, as soon as you're ready, please proceed.

Great. Thank you so much for the presentation. Look forward to the discussion. Let me turn to Tony for public comment first.

Great, thank you. Just as we come back, I want to offer a couple of high-level comments and then turn to colleagues. First of all, Eric Bonney, thank you for all the research you and your team have done and the presentation today. I also want to thank my council colleagues, council members, Campos, Tordillos, Cohen, and Ortiz, who co-authored the memo that we brought forward to rules to initiate this latest round of work. I would argue that The work we're doing, and it takes many different forms, there are so many facets to our work related to making it easier, faster, more cost-effective to b

Thank you, Mayor. First, I just want to thank Housing Director Eric Sullivan and the entire Housing Department for continuing to work with our office and council to identify new pathways to develop affordable housing. I support the frameworks being proposed today. We know the traditional financing model alone is not producing housing at the scale or speed that we need. So being creative, finding creative ways to leverage existing tools and move more projects across the finish line is essential. These frameworks give us greater flexibility to support mixed income projects and potentially expand

I know we're, my understanding is we may get an update in December in regards to this, the council. Correct. So is there anything you could share about particularly around the developing the financing plan or coordinating with other jurisdictions that may be interested in participating?

That's great. Glad to hear that you personally have experience doing these type of projects. I know that we have the right person for the job here, Eric, so I want to thank you for your leadership. That being said, so December is when we have an update. How far away do we feel we are from actually having something like a tangible project we can work on?

great thanks council member i also i just want to echo your comments i meant in my opening comments to also thank kwaskar and the and the team we've had uh really productive conversations over the last year or so now about the working families housing initiative i know it's something we continue to explore which is in parallel to your point being explored with count with the county as well which would need to play a key role in this so we're continuing to have those conversations in parallel it's maybe less baked than something like gap financing that we've been doing for decades at the city b

Thanks, Councilmember. Let me go now to Councilmember Tordillos.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Eric, Bono, the entire team from housing for all of the work that's gone into fleshing out these recommendations. I think that as we continue to grapple with both the gap between housing demand and housing production, you know, the limited number of or amount of public subsidy that's available for affordable projects, and also trying to find ways to advance those projects that are kind of sitting right at the bubble of financial feasibility and get more shovels in the ground. I think that there's a lot of promise with these recommendations, and that they'll adv

Sounds good. I'm glad to hear that we'll have the flexibility to really be open-minded about combining these different tools. I'm glad you spoke a little bit more about the property tax angle here. That was going to be my final comment, is I think that given the benefits of keeping these properties on the tax rolls, I think there's also an opportunity moving forward to be really intentional about geographically where we aim to leverage some of these tools. I know that coming up later this fall, we have the study session on enhanced infrastructure financing districts. We'll discuss this more th

Thank you Thanks councilmember return now to counselor compass I

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to Eric for this report and all of the staff who worked on this. I have one question, and I want to echo Councilmember Ortiz's remarks about making sure that we are being inclusive in how we're developing housing. So what is the city's strategy for ELI and VLI housing?

Thank you for that response. And I appreciate all the work that our housing department has done so far. There are two concerns that I want to share, which I hope will inform the work going forward. And the first is around AMIs, which continue to increase. And we know that extremely low income no longer means chronically unhoused or people who need significant assistance. The area median income for a family of four is over $200,000. That means an extremely low-income family of four makes nearly $62,000 per year. And these are working people, right? These are people who clean our buildings, our

Thanks, Councilmember. Any other comments or reactions, colleagues? I appreciate those points, and I do think the data should guide us. I think, to Eric's point, one thing we do have to keep in mind as we do our best to expand the very low-income supply of new housing is the number of projects we have that are imbalanced. And now, to your point, Eric, requiring additional dollars that are taken away from new units because they are not feasible they are in disrepair they are not meeting their obligations and so we do need enough of an income mix in each given project for it to actually exist an

Okay, that was item 8.1. Rhonda, item 8.3 is a reminder for those following along. Council deferred item 8.2. So on item 8.3, this is the exclusive negotiation agreement and right of entry with LH Housing and or Property Works LLC for the development of affordable housing at 71 Vista, Montana. Eric, back to you.

Great. Thank you very much. Tony, do we have a public comment?

Great. Thank you. All right. Colleagues? I know this is District 4, but do we have a motion or comment? Okay, motion from the Vice Mayor, second from Council Member Kamei. Thank you. I don't see any other hands. Toni, let's vote.

Great. Thank you, Tony. Thank you, colleagues. We're on to open forum, which is an opportunity for members of the public who have comments on city business that was not on today's agenda to speak. So, Tony, I'll turn it back to you.

Great. You all can come down in any order. Whoever's first may just begin. You'll have one minute.

We will follow up. Stephen, would you mind connecting? Yeah. Yes, thank you. Right there, yeah. Thank you, Lee.

Thank you. Maybe Steven over there could get your contact info. We can find a way to follow up.

Not at all. You can submit letters to the clerk or our offices. You can email any of our offices. Our contact information is all on the city website.