City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. A very uh momentous evening for us this evening. It's my pleasure to call to order the Newark City Council meeting for January 22. I've asked Bill Fitz, his grandchildren, if they would come up and lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Please stand.

Yeah. Anytime you're ready. I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [laughter]

Wow, that was awesome. Who doesn't love the enthusiasm of children reciting the pledge of the week? [laughter] [applause] And these will be memories that mom and dad will be able to show them 20, 30 years from now. Oh, remember when the mayor asked you, and by the way, he was a great mayor. [laughter]

Probably mayor Uh it's a very special occasion. It's not often we have some real heavy weights here in the audience tonight and I certainly will introduce them at the moment uh when when they come forward. But I want to do something a little bit out of the ordinary. Uh we have the opportunity as a city council to recognize Debbie Rodriguez who served as the uh executive of Viola Blight for many years, worked for Viola BLE for 37 38 years. I heard differencing different dates on that. But we recognized her at a retirement party for her just recently and the council were there. the council issued her accommodation and I felt, you know, her contributions and her family's contributions to the city of Newark and those that are in need of services, whether it be food, clothing, or just simply someone to talk to uh about issues that they're struggling with. It started with her mother, Viola BL. I didn't get a chance to know Viola Ble, but if Debbie is any indication of what Violet was like in terms of her service to our community, uh you know, we we continue to applaud her and her effort. So, in that same vein, uh Debbie took the helm and and and took charge of Viola Ble and uh I wanted to take a moment to recognize her at a council meeting. And so, I'm going to ask Debbie to come on up if she would please.

[clears throat] [applause]

Now Debbie spoke at length at her retirement party. I know. So Debbie's told me just mayor, how much time do I have? Do I have a few minutes? I said yes, you can take a few minutes. So, um, this is the same proclamation that we issued to Debbie, and I think it's important to read it because nobody really has the, uh, full understanding of the magnitude of her and her service to our community. So, please bear with me as I and the council commend Debbie Rodriguez. Whereas Debbie Rodriguez was hired in 1989 as a volunteer coordinator for the Viola BLE Community Service Center in Newark, a nonprofit non sectarian organization organized to support and advocate social and human services. Whereas Debbie Rodriguez after holding several other positions with the Violet BL Center was named the executive director in 2008. Whereas during Debbie Rodrigz's tenure, the Viola BLE Center grew from serving, listen to this folks, 4 to 500 people a year to serving over 20,000 folks in 2025, including both individuals, numerous families with children. Whereas Debbie Rodriguez's leadership, the number of supporters and financial donors has grown from a handful of individuals to hundreds of individuals and corporate donors and supporters providing critical financial support to the center. Whereas Debbie Rodriguez was personally involved in numerous programs and activities that supported the cent's uh clients, such as the holiday adopt a family program for families with children and the fireworks fundraiser. She also participated in numerous community events and activities advocating and promoting the work of the viol center. Whereas Debbie Rodriguez is retiring after 37 years of dedicated service. Therefore, I Michael Hannon on behalf of my colleagues on this council

because we don't do these things independently. We do them as a as a group was honored to recognize Debbie Rodriguez for her tireless dedication and caring compassion heart. compassionate heart that has made a significant difference in the lives of thousands of people that she has served during her many years at the Viola BL center continuing the legacy of her late mother Viola BL and wish her a very happy and welldeserved retirement. So on behalf of the city council I want to message to you formally in your residents and colleagues in the city of Newark and certain to say a few words.

Yeah. Well, I'm really very honored to have this award. Um, yes, I worked hard and but I also enjoyed every minute of it. I love to help people. I grew up with it. It was just natural for me. I didn't know that we were doing anything special. But I want to I want to comment on the city of Newark. I'm so fortunate to be a native of Newark and live here because this town is really something. Um, I can't go to the store without running into two or three friends or know the plumber down the street or whoever I might be needing for some kind of assistance. They're all there and I've made so many friends. I don't know if everybody has that in other towns. They they might, but I would [snorts] like to think Newark's unique and we're a tight-knit um group here um family here and I'm just really glad that I was born here and live here and I'm proud to be a native. The the last part about my mother, I mean, it's already been said, but I want to thank the city because once a year they do have a volunteer dinner where they recognize volunteers that have done good works in the community, which I hope I still get invited to, [laughter] but but they have a special award, the Viola BLE Award, and that always means so much to me. I don't care how many times I go, I get choked up every time I go because the wonderful things that they say, you know, about my mother and her deeds and then an honore gets picked or chosen to win that award. And I'm not sure where the plaque is, but I know there is a plaque somewhere that they add a name to. And I think Dave was one of our winners one year. So, [snorts] we've had a lot of really wonderful volunteers and they've helped us. The city has supported us from day one. There's a lot

of things we would have never accomplished without their help, you know, with providing financial um food. The officers provide turkeys and I can just go on and on. This whole community has pulled together to make the Viola's BLE Center what it is today. Want to thank my board of directors, couple of my volunteers, my daughter and friends for being here. And this is really such an honor and I'm not going anywhere so you'll see me around and who knows I might even volunteer at the Viola Bice Center. [laughter] Thank you. Thank you. [applause] It wasn't a phrase that was adopted by me. But when we talk about the Newark Way and you start looking at people in our community that exemplify what the New York Way looks like, Debbie Rodriguez, File of Ble, those would certainly be two members of the community that would be listed uh under that heading. So, uh we congratulate them. Boy, we have some real heavy hitters here tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to introduce our former mayor of 33 years, Mr. David Smith. Mr. Smith, please come forward. [applause] [applause] And of course, not to ever be outdone, but a man that surpassed Mayor Smith significantly in terms of his years of service to the newer community, Mayor Al Negi. 42 YEARS [applause]

[applause]

YOU GENTLEMEN CAN HAVE A SEAT BECAUSE YOU KNOW ME. I'm going to talk for just a moment. It's it's so funny to see Mayor Ngi here and to be able to celebrate Bill Fitz because for those of you that have been around a while, you've heard me describe that, you know, I applied to the planning commission once and was not appointed by Mayor Negi. I I'll continue [laughter] I'm going to continue to remind you of that, by the way. Uh, but Bill was walking in with me tonight and he said, "You know, Mayor, you know, you continued to tell that story, but truth be told, I called Mayor Ngi uh after your second interview." And I said, "Look, he's going to continue to come back. [laughter] He's going to continue to apply. So, you can either appoint him now or suffer through multiple interviews with this man." And so I was fortunate to get mayor mayor Naggi's appointment the second time around and had the opportunity to serve with Bill Fitz and uh really a true leader in our community. And when you think of leadership, I mean Bill took me under his wing as a new planning commissioner. I mean, I knew planning. I understood government and things of that nature. But that was in a big city like San Jose where it's really more about the politics than it is about what's really in the best interest of our community moving forward. Because your idea in San Jose may be not something that I want to support or because you're not willing to support my idea here. You know, we have a conflict. That doesn't happen here in Newark. The Newark way is we debate, we discuss, and at the end of the day, we celebrate. And that's what Newark is all about. But Bill took me under his wing and said, "Uh, you know, let watch what I do, learn what I do, uh follow my lead, and and you'll do fine." And under your leadership, Bill, I was able to hopefully uh reach those those attributes and be successful on the planning commission. Bill said, "Hey,

you might want to run for city council." I think that was Bill's way. That might have been Bill's way of getting me off the commission. I don't know, Bill. Uh but uh [laughter] what a great leader and a great family man. And uh Bill, why don't you come on up and stand next to me as I read this proclamation and uh present it to you. And I know my former colleagues on the mayor city uh former mayors are going to want to make comment. whereas Commissioner Fitz has provided dedicated service to the city of Newark by serving on the Newark Planning Commission since January 23rd, 1986. Now, I'm not going to ask anybody in the room that wasn't even born yet [laughter] to stand. Okay. And the longest serving planning commissioner in Newark history. I don't know if that is ever going to be surpassed, Bill. Whereas during Commissioner Fitz's tenure on the planning commission, the city of Newark has grown from a small town of approximately 37,000 people to Silicon Valley community of over 47,000 people. Whereas Commissioner Fitz has advanced the fiscal health and integrity of the city of Newark through the through his involvement in the review and approval of area 3 and area 4 specific plan, the Bayside Newark transit oriented uh development specific plan, the 2013 Newark general plan, the New Park play specific plan. What have you been done about New Park lately, Bill? [laughter]

I can walk there with my wife. Sorry. Sorry. We go to Jacks, Costco, [laughter] and a number of hotels and countless businesses and industries that provide property and sales tax revenue to the city of Newark. Whereas the as a member of the planning commission, Commissioner Fitz is especially proud of the projects uh such as the Pacific Research Center. For those of you that have been around for a while, that was going to be Microsoft, if I recall correctly, Sun Micros.

Sun Microsystem. And of course they decided not to move in there and became the very successful Pacific Research Center. So thank you for that development of the Russian school site that has approve improved our community. You remember those community meetings on that, don't you, Bill? I do.

I do too as well. Whereas Commissioner Fitz is a is proud of the overall body of work during his tenure and the positive collaborative uh experience with staff and the New York City Council that has fortified the development goals of our community. Whereas through his participation as a member of the planning commission in the development review process, Commissioner Fitz has demonstrated integrity and a sincere concern for the quality of life in the city of Newark. Whereas in addition to his work on the planning commission, Commissioner Fitz is also a member of Toast Masters, the former Newark JC's and an announcer if you haven't heard Bill at the Newark Days parade. Now, therefore, I'm Michael Hannon. On behalf of my New York City Council, uh wish to commend uh Bill Fitz for his service for outstanding outstanding uh honorable service to the Newark community. Thank you, Bill, for your service. [applause] Let's get a photo. [applause]

That way we get the book ends. Uh [laughter] he does this all the time. Colleagues, why don't you come down and join me for a photo with uh Commissioner Fitz? Maybe stand between the mayors. Okay, folks. My three mayors right here. [laughter] I think you're good. I think you're good there. Yeah. Don't be jealous.

There's going to be more. [laughter]

All right. One, two, three. Love it. One more. One, two, three. Perfect. Good. I'm going to have our mayors say a few words. I'll start with Mayor Smith. Good.

I'll stay up here, I guess. Bill, [laughter] it's [clears throat] it's a great thing to be here and I I'm could give a couple of hours of speech if you like, but but I don't. And I I'm I'm just trying to think about what things I should say and I know that you were um coming on board you and boy you never guessed being sis you know city for 40 years and I never guessed and he never guessed. He's been over 40 years. And and [clears throat] it's just like we we grabbed each other and we had each other and we had fun with each other. And I think that's the most important. And you got your wife here and uh grandkids and daughter and son-in-law and and boy everything is really really great. So I hope you know I [clears throat] didn't know but how long do you plan on staying on board?

[laughter] I have two years left on my term. Okay. [laughter] Okay. Two years left on your term

and you might apply for another term. Do you think he should do so? [laughter] Yeah. I I think you should do so. and I I'll let Mayor Negi get up here, but um all the best to you and your family AND [applause] BILL, I'd also like to congrat congratulate you on your 40 years of uh service on the planning commission. You know, Newark today is, I think, reflective of the many good decisions that you've made over those 40 years. And I know that it doesn't come as uh uh easily to do that and the time that you have to put into it, the commitment you have to put into it. But you also have to thank your wife Barbara and your daughter Jennifer for standing by you all that time and allowing you, if I will, to uh uh to to do the job that you've done on this planning commission. You know, there's a lot more to Bill than just the planning commission, though. Bill is a uh committed volunteer in the community of Newark. And you know, in Newark, we really do like our volunteers. And you know, Bill uh has has spent many many years in volunteer capacity on many different levels. And it's kind of reflective of uh build the uh the last line in the JC creed which says that service to humanity is the best work of life and I think that your service to your community to humanity it really epitomizes that. So again thank you for all your service to us and to the community of Newark.

Thank you. [applause] Okay, Mary, come with us. Every single day is my friend. I don't know how long Bill's going to chitchat.

But before Bill does talk, I want to take one moment, Bill, if I may, to introduce colleagues on the planning commission. Lori Bogusich. Lori, please stand and be recognized. [applause] The current chair of the planning commissioner, Mr. John Becker, please stand AND BE RECOGNIZED. [applause] AND I I'M NOT SURE if Mr. Dylan is here. Jolly Dylan, my pleas, Mr. [applause] Thank you. Thank you for your service to our community. Mr. Fitz, you have the microphone, my friend. Well, thank you so much. My pleasure, my friend.

Good. Well, appreciate it. Thank you all for coming out. It's so great that I was I been on the planning mission for 40 years and there's only been three mayors that I've served with and I want to thank Dave Smith first of all for having appointed me for the first time. That was great and it uh we've had a real good run. We were in the JC's before. We did a lot of community service. We're friends uh theater tickets with the Civic Light Opera and wonderful time. and Al Negi, he's the other one that appointed me for a few more years. Just following the tradition. We were all JC's together. It was just wonderful. I'd like to also thank Mike Cannon. He's appointed me. Uh so it's three mayors. We got the all three gray mayors. [laughter] And I'd also like to thank my wife Barbara. She is the one. [applause] I mean, anyone that knows uh about city government and planning commissions and councils, you a lot of time away, a lot of lot of evenings, late evenings, and sometimes uh uh I'm not even there when I'm there because you're working on things. And so, it's just been and it's so great to see you out and my daughter and my grandchildren and my son-in-law over there, SRRI, he packed. He was a [applause] He he works at the Livermore lab now and he served on the bicycle pedestrian committee in the city of Newark. Helped uh do that and there's still more work to be done over there I believe. So I just don't want to talk too long but everyone that's here is just great friend of mine, fellow toastmaster Ed Moore, Reverend Ed Moore, just a wonderful community service person. [applause] He married my daughter. He married my daughter. That was so [laughter]

her husband didn't like that. But and Joe Joe Ramos is also a fellow toast man. He comes from Hayward and he served on the Hayward city council. He's been a Toastmaster friend of mine for a long time. But I just wanted to I feel blessed that this city is different from any other city that you might want to know. And some how I know that. Well, from time to time we do attend these planning conferences for the League of California cities all over the state of California. I love going to those things and you sit there and you just sit across the table from some of these other planning commission. I'd like to this is a test that I'd say. Well, how how you guys doing the planning commission? How long do your meetings go? Well, after midnight. They're after midnight. We have foreign policy and things like that. [laughter] And we sit here. I mean, one of the things we do, and that we've trained, I think probably Dave Smith started it all. He says there's no I in the word team. And what we do is we do our homework before our meetings. We do the research and talk with the staff to find out what's going on, have our discussions, and then make a decision. And it's, as you say, it's a celebration. And we're and sometimes it take a little longer than that, but it's they're brief to the point, and it's very professional. And I don't think you see that too many jurisdiction. And by doing that with the strong leaderships of mayors, we get the best staff. The staff comes here from all parts of the country. Berkeley, Medel Park, all places. And uh we're just blessed to have the best of the best here and they like that working environment. So as I will wrap this up, I thank you all for coming. It's been a wonderful ride and I've got two more years left on my term and I'll talk with the mayor about applying [laughter] later. That'll do it. Thank you so much. [cheering] [applause]

[applause]

[applause] [laughter] Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to introduce a new employee. Then we're going to take a few minute break. But uh because again, we talk about celebrations and one of the celebrations we do here in the city of Newark is we introduce new employees. Uh so I'd like to ask Sarah Lou to come up here. [applause]

[applause]

Sarah was telling me as I was walking in uh to city hall tonight, 40 years on the planning commission. That's nothing. [laughter] I'm going to put in at least 40 years working here in the city of Newark. So, we're appreciative of that. No, Sarah Lou graduated from San Jose State University and spent four and a half years working at an architectural firm where she specialized in office and laboratory projects. In October 2025, she joined the city of Newark as a permit technician driven by her dedication to public service. I'd love to hear that about public servants. She enjoys collaborating across departments to streamline processes and contribute to efficient community focused outcomes. Outside of work, Sarah loves cooking and baking, especially trying new recipes and sharing them. The sharing part, you heard that word, right? sharing them with friends, families, city mayors, city council, and others. [laughter] I think I read that correctly. She also enjoys spending time outdoors, whether hiking, scenic trails, camping on weekends, or exploring new places. She is thrilled and honored to join the city of Newark and looks forward to learning, growing, and contributing alongside the team. Let's welcome Sarah to the team. [applause] All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take a 5minut

And that that's one of the reasons I'm really proud of the city of New York. We take the time to do that. So ladies and gentlemen, we're going to go back to the agenda. We're under public comment. This is an opportunity for anybody in the audience to speak on an item that is not on the agenda. Okay? Is there anybody that would like to speak to an item that's not on the agenda tonight? Okay, we'll move on. The next item is our consent calendar. U, these are typically considered routine items. You know, the council members, staff, the public may pull any item off the consent calendar if they so wish to do so. Um, I'm going to go ahead and read the consent calendar. That way, if you want to pull something, you'll know which item to identify. So the consent calendar consists of the following and and please uh bear with me. There are eight items. One is the approval of the January 8, 2026 city council meeting minutes. Two is wave further reading and adopt an ordinance amending section 1718030 of the Newark Municipal Code and adding chapter 1727 to the New York Municipal Code to update the Newark's affordable housing program and affordable housing requirements. Three, wave further reading and adopt an ordinance adding chapter 5.45 45 of the New Municipal Code and adding chapter 5.50 to the Newark Municipal Code to establish rent review and residential landlord and tenant relations requirements. Four, adopt a resolution approving the acceptance was acceptance of state general fund grant funds for Jerry Raber Ash Street Park updated playground and park furnishings CIP number 1407, approving the project information form and appointing the city manager or his designate to execute the documents as necessary to effectuate u utilization of the grant. Five, approve the project specifications and adopt a resolution accepting the bid and awarding a construction contract Villa Lobos and Associates Inc.

incorporated for the 2026 curb, gutter, sidewalk replacement project, CIP number CIPA 10007, FY2026, and the 2026 citywide accessible ramps project CIP number CIPA 10001 for fiscal year 2026 for a combined not to exceed project authorization and determine the projects to be categorized exempt from SQA pursuant to SQA guidelines section 15301. Six, approval of audit demands. Seven, approve a resolution amending the 2024 2026 banual budget and capital improvement plan to increase funding for the silicon silicon Silman Aquatic Center CIP number 1291 and Silman activity center CIP number 1375 roof replacement projects. And finally, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a second amendment to the contractual services agreement with CSW Strouer Stro Engineering Group to increase the amount not to exceed amount by 198,435 for a new contract total of 1,212,932 for the Oldtown Streetscape improvement project. Mr. Bonun, are there any items that you would like to pull from the agenda?

Not this evening, your honor. Is there anybody in the public that would like to pull any one of those items from the agenda for discussion, comment? Colleagues, any items you would like pulled from the agenda on the consent calendar? I just I just I just have a question. If I could just get a little bit more information about the Oldtown uh streetscape improvement project and what was this the need for an additional 200,000? Just more of an explanation if I could please. Yeah, why don't we go ahead and do that, city manager? We'll take comments now and then we'll adopt the entire consent calendar, assuming that that's the pleasure of the council. Okay. So, we're not pulling this item for separate independent consideration, just a simple clarifying question. Yeah, it is a clarifying question.

Okay. Uh, our public works director, our city engineer, I'll let you two flip for it. Looks like it'll be our city engineer, Mr. Mickey Sabotto, if you could give a brief overview of the scope of services that are being provided under this $200,000 or so amendment, please. So what I understand then you know Mickey sitting in the back row thought you know this is just simply an item where I just got to sit here wait then I'm going to be out of here. No one's going to call my item. Welcome Mickey. Nice to see you. [laughter] I used to play the same game in San Jose. You know just keep your head down and hope. [laughter] Good evening honorable mayor. Uh council members. I'd be glad to answer this question. So high level uh the summary of the proposed uh amendment. This is a second amendment to our engineering consultant. It's highlighted in the staff report. Um there are a handful of items that are uh new and addition to their original contract. Those additional items include um coordinating with the California Public Utilities Commission. You may recall we have a quiet zone project uh for I believe it's eight different railroad locations. One of them is actually at the Thornon. So rather than having a separate quiet zone project and the Thornton quiet zone, we decided to take it from the quiet zone and incorporate it as part of this consultant contract. So that's one of the uh changes uh cultural resources support. This project is going through extensive uh NEPA uh national environmental policy act review uh as part of the federal requirements for this project and there are some uh very stringent and uh laborious uh reviews required for this. You don't think so but there are some historic buildings and other things that are required um for this project. There are additional traffic studies that are needed. That's the third uh streetscape design phase modifications. These are um minor changes that happened over the past uh year or two. And then a lot of value engineering. We had some initial cost

estimates that came in last year which were above our our budgeted uh amount. And we instructed the consultant to take, you know, sharpen that pencil all the way down to the eraser to uh get that price down. And that was additional uh effort on this project.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Uh uh any other items? Anybody want pulled or discussed? [clears throat] Seeing none, can I get a motion to accept the consent calendar by council member Kanchio? I'll second by vice sorry council grenal. Please vote. And that passes unanimously. 50.

Ordinance of the city council of the city of Newark amending section 1718030 of the New York municipal code and adding chapter 1727 to the New York Municipal Code to update the New York affordable housing program and affordable housing requirements. Ordinance of the city council of the city of Newark adding chapter 5.45 the New York Municipal Code and adding chapter 5.50 to the New York Municipal Code to establish rent review and residential landlord and tender relations requirements.

Thank you, city attorney. The next item, ladies and gentlemen, is our public hearings. The first public hearing is a hearing to consider an ordinance of the city council of the city of Newark amending title 17 of the New York municipal code to amend chapter 17.26 26 and 1726040. Accessory dwelling units generally affecting development standards for the construction of accessory dwelling units normally known as ADUs and junior accessory dwelling units normally known as JDU and to amend chapter 1745 and 1745010 residential uses generally affecting the use classification for accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units. Mr. Boon.

Yes. Good evening, your honor, and members of the council. Uh, this is a public hearing to consider staff's recommendation to make certain text amendments to the city's zoning code. Uh, this would accomplish two primary objectives. First, uh, this would update our ADU ordinance so that it complies with state law. And second, it would provide some incentives for redevelopment of ADUs in order to implement the housing element uh, which was approved back in 2023. For tonight's presentation, we have associate uh, planner, Mr. Joseph Balotbot will provide the presentation to the council. Mr. Balotbot. [clears throat]

Thank you. Uh thank you honorable mayor and city council members. Uh my name is Joseph Blatbad. I'm the associate planner for the community development department. And the item you'll be hearing tonight is a public hearing to consider a zoning text amendment to the accessory dwelling unit ordinance. [clears throat] For tonight's agenda, I will start off with introductions, then provide an overview of this item, explain what accessory dwelling units are and junior accessory dwelling units, discuss the progression of accessory dwelling its in California and in Newark, provide a highlevel overview of the proposed zoning text amendment, briefly summarize the California Environmental Quality Act exemption, provide staff recommendations, and finally going over any questions you may have. So joining me this evening we have the community development director Steven Turner, the deputy community devel director Arriiano and the housing policy program manager Michael Colum. We did team up with urban planning partners uh as our consultant and we have Curtis Banks as the associate principal who is here with us with us this evening. We also have um Hannah Chan Smite, the associate planner, but she is not here with us. Before we get to the next slides, just a quick note on a few acronyms that I'll be using throughout my presentation. I'll use NMC, which stands for Newark Municipal Code, ADU, which stands for accessory dwelling unit, JDU, which stands for Junior Accessory Dwelling Unit, and SQUA, which stands for Calvert Environmental Quality Act. The proposed zoning tax amendment would amend the city's current ADU and JDU regulations outlined in NMC section 17.26.040 and the current use classification outlined in NMC section 17.45.010.

The last time we did an amendment was back in February 2021. So what's the purpose? Why are we doing this? Well, for starters, it's to bring the city's ADU and JD regulations into compliance with the recent changes in state law. It's also to update the city's use classification description for ADUs and JDUs to be consistent with how the state describes them. Furthermore, it's to provide incentives for the development of ADUs, to implement the housing element, and to provide more homes to more people. And lastly, our current ADU code can be complicated and difficult to understand at times. So, we taken the effort to simplify the zoning code text so that Newark residents can understand what it takes to build an ADU on their property. Next, I'll be explaining what ADUs are. An ADU is an additional residential unit that is accessory to a primary dwelling and [clears throat] has complete independent living facilities such as a kitchen, a bathroom, and a place to sleep. ADUs can come in a variety of forms such as a detached ADU which is separate detach unit from the main residence. An attached ADU which is a unit that is physically attached to the main residence and a conversion ADU which is a interior conversion of an area within the main residence and in some cases an existing accessory structure such as a detached garage or shed. Typical conversion ADUs include converting a garage into a living unit. Out of those types of ADUs, a detach ADU is the most common request we get in the city. A JDU is very similar to an ADU. The difference is that a JDU is a smaller residential unit that is 500 ft or less and contained entirely within a single family dwelling.

So, ADUs have been California's housing success story since major state legislation took effect in 2016. A series of gradual reforms year after year have kept a momentum growing from 8,758 ADUs permitted in 2018 and 28,547 in 2022. In fact, the California Department of Housing and Community Development, known as HCD, just reported that over 30,200 ADUs were permitted statewide in 2024, a record high. Part of why ADUs have been so successful is that they are significantly cheaper to build than any other housing types, which is particularly important in our current economy. A UC Berkeley study found that the average cost to build an ADU was $150,000 compared to $480,000 for a subsidized unit in a multif family building. It's no surprise that we've seen the number of ADU applications and permits continue to increase. ADUs offer an affordable and more accessible housing option in more expensive areas serving an important need for people. Newwork is part of that ADU success story. Newark homeowners have shown an increased appetite for ADUs in recent years. 2023, the city issued building permits for nine ADUs. 2024, 29 ADUs. And as of November 2025, 36 ADUs. ADUs play an essential part of Newark's housing supply that four people, and homeowners clearly see their value. The city's housing element highlights ADUs as a part of the city's strategy to meet the six cycle regional housing needs allocation allocation uh known as RENA of 1,874 units. ADUs are counted towards Reena. The housing element describes ADUs as an important source of affordable housing

that is valuable in helping the city meets its housing goals. Adus provide housing opportunities to moderate and lower income households and provide benefits to homeowners such as extra income or opportunities for multigenerational or extended family households. The housing element outlines policies and programs related to ADUs that include see on the screen policy H2.2, program H2.2 and program H3.5. Program H2.2 2 aims to help own homeowners build ADUs faster and cheaper. Its primary quantified objectives see 160 ADUs constructed during the housing element cycle of 2023 to 2031. So far 40 ADUs have been constructed in Newark since 2023. This is a good thing as we are doing a good job in permitting ADUs. Another quantified objective is to further increase the production of ADUs is updating the ADU ordinance and creating incentives for which we are working on now. Other objectives that we are current uh we already accomplish are coordinating with Alama County to launch and promote the Alama County ADU Resource Center to make it easier for homeowners to build an ADU on their property. Some helpful resources includes an ADU calculator that provides an assessment of estimated costs and fees to build an ADU. The other is to create and maintain a pre-approved ADU program. And that program helps streamline the permitting process for detach ADUs by providing ready-made preapproved plans for homeowners to use to accelerate housing development. As of now, the city has not yet adopted any pre-approved plans, but we are currently accepting application for consideration. Program H3.5, among other quantified objectives, includes removing parking requirements for ADUs.

Staff anticipates that ADU production in Newark will continue to grow once the ADU ordinance is passed or say is updated and incentives are fully implemented. Now, I'll go I'll be going over the proposed ADU zoning tax amendment. As mentioned, the proposed zone tax amendment is designed to bring the city's ADU and JD regulations into compliance with state law and implement the city's housing element. The proposed amendment would repeal and replace the city's current ADU and JD regulations. Additionally, the proposed amendment would amend the current use classification for ADUs to update description of ADUs and to include the description of JDUs. As we developed the draft ADU ordinance, we used the HCD ADU handbook as a guide to ensure compliance with the applicable ADU requirements. We also conducted outreach with planning staff from other jurisdictions such as Redwood City, Berkeley, and Walnut Creek to learn about their incentive programs for ADUs. We also considered the concerns regarding privacy impacts, scale, and compatibility of ADUs with neighborhood character. and we created incentives that encourage AU development. The incentives exceed the minimum state requirements which makes it more attractive to build an ADU in Newark. The next set of slides provide a highle overview of the proposed changes to the draft ADU ordinance. Please note that I won't be going over all the changes in the staff report. However, if there are changes that you want to discuss, uh please just let me know. So, I'll begin with going over the changes we made for compliance with state law. So for the public watching this presentation, uh this and the next couple of slides are set up by having the state law information on the left side and the proposed amendment information on the right. So the first change is the use

classification for ADUs. State law provides a definition for an ADU and JDU. And what the proposed amendment does is revise the use classification for ADUs to be consistent with the state's ADU definition and to include a definition of the JDU. For this change, state law allows the creation of state exempt ADUs, which are a conversion ADU, a detach ADU, and a JDU. These type of ADUs follow a set of specific standards to qualify as a stateex exempt ADU. On a single family or multifamily lot, multiple stateex exempt ADUs can be allowed. They are not subject to planning commission city council approval and no additional local or state standards such as lot coverage, front setbacks, and design standards may be applied to stateex exempt ADUs. For the proposed amendment, we simply incorporated the stateex exempt ADU requirements. The stateex exempt ADU requirements is broken up between single family lots, proposed multifamily lots, and existing multifamily lots. So to explain that in detail, for a lot with a single family dwelling, the following types of ADUs are allowed. You can have one conversion ADU, one JDU, and one detach ADU for a total of three ADUs on the property. Again, these types of ADUs must follow set a specific standards to qualify as a stateex exempt ADU, such as the detach ADU. The specific standards include being up to 800 square ft, meeting the 4ft side and rear setbacks, and meeting the applicable height limits. For a lot with a proposed multifamily dwelling, in other words, a new multifamily project, you're allowed two detach ADUs.

For a lot with an existing multifamily dwelling, you're allowed conversion ADUs and detach ADUs. The total number of conversion ADUs is based off a formula, which is up to 25% of the number of existing units on the multifamily dwelling, but no less than one conversion ADU. For example, an existing 12un apartment complex could have three conversion ADUs. As for the detach ADUs, you can have up to eight detach ADUs, but not to exceed the number of existing units on the lot. These detach ADUs can be laid out in many ways. Someone could could propose eight individual standalone ADUs as you see on the screen or have four separate buildings with two ADUs stacked on top of each other. So, that's what stateex exempt ADUs are. Now, you may be asking, well, what's a non-stateexate exempt ADU? A non-state exempt ADU is basically either an attached ADU, regardless of the size, and a detach ADU that's greater than 800 square ft. So, I'll pause here for now. I know that was a lot of information, especially about stateex exempt ADUs. Uh, if there's any questions, more than happy to answer. Otherwise, I'll move on to the next change.

Yes. Thank you for the presentation up to this point. It's been informative. Um you mentioned early in the presentation that the um that the changes would affect the parking requirements. Is that up up to what's required by the state or are we adding additional uh exemptions to parking requirements um as a part of our code? Well, the state requires uh parking, but you can be waved from parking requirements if you meet um certain qualifications like within a half mile of a of a bus stop. Uh we do have our housing element and one of the programs specifies reducing or eliminating parking requirements for ADUs. And for us, since we have a certified housing element, um we would have to implement those programs. Um, parking is something I will explain um as I go through my presentation. But yeah, thank you.

Can I ask a additional question on that issue on that subject matter? I want to use the example that you have right there on the detached ADUs and and certainly correct my understanding if I'm incorrect. So, I have a 12-unit multifamily dwelling and I have uh uncovered parking for those tenants living in that building. As the owner of that building, I can in essence take away that uncovered parking lot and put in from your diagram eight detached ADUs in the parking lot. basically taking away parking uh availability for my existing 12 unit tenants.

That is true. One of the bills that have passed uh I can't recall the exact number of the bill. I'll tell you ST1211. There you go. Um yes, if uh it's used um for building the ADUs, then you have the right to do so. if that includes eliminating parking for the main dwelling, then you you can do so.

So, that was really more of a comment than a question, and I apologize for [laughter] that. I'll get to my other comments later. Let me ask a clarifying question, though. Um, [clears throat] we have a in our housing element, 1875 units that we need to build between now and 30 2031. And you mentioned the ADUs, and I think our target goal is 160. If we don't hit that target goal of the 160, which I think we're certainly well on our way to doing that, uh, as long as we meet the 1875 number, we're good. Or do we have to hit both those numbers?

Right. I my understand I believe we have to reach um both those numbers as our goal if there's issues in in accomplishing the 160 ADUs. I believe and I could defer to our housing um um programs policy manager um that the state could work with us in trying to achieve those goals but I believe if we make you know progress especially sufficient progress in this you know uh maybe the state you know would work with us. So if if we hit 1,900 units, so we surpass our housing animal limit number, but we only do 120 ADUs, the state could still be somewhat concerned about the lack of ADUs. That's a great question. Um, I wouldn't know if there would be a major concern if we don't reach the number of ADUs that's expected. Um I could defer to their housing u policy manager later on um after I present. Right. Um but

thank you. Any other questions or comments up to this point? Okay, please continue.

So as far as uh setbacks are concerned, we meet the requirements of state law. The proposed amendment puts the setback development standards into clear and simple language as you see on the screen. Next, I'll be discussing ADU incentives in the next set of slides. Again, the AD incentives follow state law, but they do go above and beyond to what the state requires. For these slides, they are set up by having the state law information on the left side, the proposed amendment information in the middle, and the ADU incentive information in the on the right side. As you see on the screen, state law is complicated when outlining height requirements for ADUs. For example, state law allows a detach ADU to be 18 ft in height if it's within a half mile of a major transit stop. On top of that, you can have an additional 2 ft in height to allow the roof pitch to be in line with the main residence. Just saying all that is just a mouthful. It's a lot to do. uh homeowners will have to provide the distance of the major transit stop and the measurements of the route pitch and then staff will have to verify that information to make sure it complies. So instead of doing all that, the proposed amendment does is simplify and streamlines the height requirements. So for a conversion ADU, it just can't be taller than the existing structure. For an attached ADU, you can follow the same height limits as the primary residence, but it just can't be more than two stories. And for a detach ADU, it can't be taller than 20 ft. The proposed amendment makes it easier to follow the height requirements. The incentive allows detach ADUs to be up to 20 ft high, thus allowing design flexibility for two-story ADU designs. For size, one critique of ADUs have been that they are small and aren't suitable

for families. As a result, staff is recommending increasing the maximum size of ADUs to 1,000 square ft for attached ADUs. 1,200 ft for detached ADUs, and the size for conversion ADUs will follow state law of not being subject to any size limitations. The proposed amendment is consistent with the ADU size allowance in the cities within the tri city area and as an incentive increasing the size limitation would allow for a larger ADU to be built to accommodate a larger family household. Also, this could increase the housing stock and the potential for additional owner income. If the city council doesn't support the size recommendation for a detach ADU, then an alternative option could be based off the lot size, which is consistent with our current maximum sizes. The alternative option can be read written as this. For lots uh less than 10,000 square ft, the maximum size for a detach ADU can be a,000 square ft. And for lots 10,000 square ft or greater, the maximum size for a detach ADU can be uh 1,200 square ft. To also help with increasing size limitations, the proposed amendment would eliminate lot coverage requirements for ADUs greater than 800 square ft. In practice, meeting the lot coverage requirements can be a lot as we would need square footage information for all the buildings on the property. This could potentially hold up the permit as there could be multiple rounds of review or changes to the ADU size to meet law coverage requirements. Removing the lot coverage requirements allows the homeowners to make use of this extra incentive for size. To close out the conversation of size, there are impact fees that the state requires. That's based off the size of the ADU. The state says the impact fees

are required if an ADU is 750 ft or more. In addition to the impact fee requirement, the state also has a requirement that cities must allow an ADU of at least 800 square ft. But homeowners may propose an ADU smaller than that if they like. Knowing that there's two state requirements, it seems that they don't talk to each other. So, what we did is we had the requirements talk to each other. The proposed amendment increases the threshold size to exempt projects that are 800 square ft or less from impact fees. By doing that, there's just one number to follow. This is considered an incentive as it allows an ADU to be built without the additional expense. Now for the design requirements, the proposed amendments include objective design standards for ADUs except for stateex exempt ADUs. This would eliminate discretionary review and streamline approvals for ADUs. The proposed objective design standards ensures predictable outcomes by using clear measurable rules instead of subjective judgments. The standards address privacy privacy concerns, lighting concerns, and maintaining neighborhood compatibility as an incentive. The objective design standards allows for a quicker review process for parking. The proposed amendment eliminates the parking requirements for ADUs. This would implement programs H2.2 and H3.5 from the housing element. If for some reason the homeowner chooses to include parking for the ADU, then our amendment outlines the option to provide a parking space. Removing parking simplifies the ADU parking standards, reduce construction cost, and minimize the amount of space needed to construct an ADU. And finally, the last incentive, which is about the permitted location for a JDU. In some cases, there are properties

in the city that are considered non-conforming with regards to allowing a single family residential use. The proposed amendment allows a JDU to be on a lot less that has a an existing and proposed single family dwelling regardless of the zoning district. Allowing this promotes AD production to be easily constructed. So, that was a lot. Uh this and the next slide is just a recap of the incentives. So in total we have seven incentives and those are for height, size, other development standards such as removing the law coverage requirements. Uh we have an incentive for impact fees design uh which is creating objective design standards and then parking and lastly the permitted location for a JDU. As for SQUA, the proposed amendment is exempt from SQUA as it may not have a significant effect on the environment. So, the proposed zoning tax amendment was considered by the planning commission on December 9th of last year. The plan commission shared their support for the amendment and voted unanimously to recommend city council approval. With that said, staff recommends that the city council adopt the draft ordinance of the city council of the city of Newark amending title 17 title 17 zoning of the Newark municipal code to amend chapter 17.26 section 17.26.040 ADUs generally affecting development standards for the reconstruction of ADUs and JDUs and to amend chapter 17.45 section 17.45.010 010 residential uses generally affecting the use classification for ADUs and JDUs.

So that is the end of my presentation. Happy to answer any more questions. Thank you. I appreciate your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing. So I'm going to go ahead and open up the public hearing at this point. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to speak to this item? [clears throat] I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and I'm going to come back to my colleagues and I'll start to my right. Questions and comments. Council member Canio. [cough and clears throat]

Yes. Thank you for your presentation. I did have a question. Um, is it correct to assume that an ADU does not convert a single family dwelling into a multifamily home? So if it's a conversion ADU on a single family dwelling, then the single family dwelling still has to be maintained, but they just have that added residential unit, which is that ADU. Multifamily dwelling units. They're still treated as multifamily uh complex. So like an apartment complex, but they could still have those additional ADUs, you know, to be rented out.

Okay. I'm trying to understand and thank you um for explaining that. I'm trying to understand whether the ADUs would have a separate mailbox and sewage system um as well as a water line or how would that work?

Yeah. So there's um utilities that have to um you know connect to the ADUs. So what that means is there's certain um building code requirements they would have to fulfill. uh for the mailboxes um typically they work with the USPS, the United States uh postal service um to just you know confirm that they could you know get mail delivered to their properties and if there's certain design of how they want the mailboxes they'll just work with USPS. Okay, one last question um is regarding parking. In the event that a neighbor is putting up an ADU or something and another neighbor decided that they objected to that, is there any recourse that the neighbor would be able to have? Would there still be a notice requirement and any objections that could be made or would that be gone if we

Go ahead. Yeah. Um, so for building permits, the reviews are what we call as ministerial. So they're just subject to a building permit review. There is no noticing requirements for building permits. Um, if there are concerns, you know, about that from a neighbor and neighbor, um, and they reach out to us, of course, we'll have that conversation with them and we'll see if there's any resolution that they can seek. Um, I would see I would like to think that this could this may be a civil matter that you know just has to be worked on with uh the neighbor and the property owner.

Okay. I apologize. I actually do have one more question. Is it also correct to assume then that a conversion ADU cannot be made on top of a garage if the original home was a one-story single family home? So, if it's a conversion ADU that's going to be built in new uh space, so new walls are going to be put up, exterior walls, then that wouldn't be considered a conversion ADU. That would be considered an attach ADU. Conversion ADUs is conversion of existing space inside the home itself. They can do an addition, but they're only allowed a certain amount, which is 150 square feet. But for that 150 square ft addition, it's only meant for egressorous and ingress purpose. Um not to just get a you know bigger bedroom size. Um so they just have to they still have to qualify for um the requirements of that but that's what conversion ads are.

Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. Vice Mayor Jorgens. Yeah. I just want to thank you for the presentation. I'm really impressed. are some I think thoughtful and creative policies to put forward some uh really good stuff for New York. So, thank you for the presentation. Thank you.

Um so, I have two quick questions. If we could go back to slide 20, please. Couple of clicks there. Almost there. You got it. Okay. So I'm just a I just want a little bit clarification on this because it says right at the attached under the state law it says that shall not shall not require local agency to allow over two stories. So the state law says no local agencies to allow two stories but then for the initiative it says here somewhere and also design flexibility for twotory ADUs. Do you see maybe I maybe I'm a little confused on this but it says the state law says no two stories but then we design flexibility for two stories. Is that possible or?

Yeah. So, what the state law says is basically you can't go past a second story. You can still do two stories total. You just can't go over it. Okay. So, we're looking at two stories. So, none of the three stories plus the balcony top floor. Okay. That was my question on that. Perfect. And then kind of tying up to what she said a little bit, the difference between because we, you know, we've talked about putting in a second story into our house to make it bigger because you can't buy a new house. So, you got to build. So, you go up higher. Um, since it doesn't have its own bathroom, it's not going to be rented out. That would be just an attachment to the house, right? This is not an ADU type of thing. So, what would be on paper the difference between expanding the second story versus adding an attached ADU?

Yeah. Um, you know what? I'm just going to click back to this slide. There you go. Yeah. So, uh, the difference between, you know, attach ADU versus just a typical addition, an attach ADU, it's, uh, its own, uh, residential unit that has to have kitchen, bathroom, and a place to sleep. Usually, um, just a typical addition. It's just expanding a bedroom, adding a bathroom. But if it doesn't qualify and including those type of uh, facilities, then it's not going to be considered an ADU. Got it. Thank you, Council Gall.

Yes. Um, just just one question which might lead to some follow-up question. Sorry. Um, and by the way, I I want to share my colleagues comments. I really appreciate your very clear presentation. So, thank you so much. Um, so, um, there there's a flexibility to allow up to 20 ft, right? Um, now 20 trying to get a two twotory unit into 20 ft means you don't have any kind of um peaked roof. you don't have a roof, you don't have a roof line that matches the the surrounding area. So, is there any is there any allowance for um staff to allow um higher than 20 ft in order to have the architecture fit into the neighborhood um in the neighborhood better? And what I'm getting at is if you allow only 20 ft, you're going to have flat topped um buildings in neighborhoods that are that all have a peaked roof of some sort or another. So, is there any design flexibility in that regard? Um, because I I'd hate to box people into building ugly units, frankly.

Right. So, for design, this is where we have to f uh be uh very cautious in what's the limitations and how far we can go with comments on design. So, typically uh you know, as I mentioned, 800 foot ADUs or less. uh it's ministerial where we can't really say much on designs. We could try to work with the homeowners that are architect uh to see if they could have neighborhood compatibility with designs, but um you know it would be very you know um tough. But if there are ADUs that go past 800 ft um then we can require design and we do have objective design standards. So for attach adus, we want the materials, we want the roof pitch to be very consistent with how the main house is designed.

Okay. So my next follow question as I guessed we would be is um so are we required to make that that additional 2 feet requirement? Could could we could we in instead recommend um only the state required 18 ft in that in that circumstance? If we uh follow the 18 feet height limit, then there is that additional two feet that they can go up to uh match the main house roof pitch. So 18 + 2 is 20 ft. So that's why we went into just allowing 20 ft height in total,

right? But that would be that would be to allow it to match the existing pitch, which is kind of my goal here. So, um, they wouldn't be able to build a flat top 20 20 foot building, they'd be limited to 18 feet to and if they were going to if they weren't going to use that extra two feet to to make a make a pit pinch happen. Correct. Right. If they're following state law,

but the state doesn't require us to allow that 20 that that extra 2 ft. Um, that's that's something staff's recommending, but it's not required by the state. Is that what I understand? Well, it is required by the state if they want to be consistent with the uh main home. Uh, and what the city is just um recommending is instead of um I'm just going to go to that slide and then I'll continue. So yeah, uh for detach ADUs, I mean it they could get the additional two feet to match the main home uh roof pitch, but uh again with our height limitations. Uh and this is just for detach ADUs that I'm referring to, you can go up to 20 ft tall. Uh you know, if it's attach um if it's an attached ADU, then you could follow the main house uh height limitations. So it's very common. We have a residential single family zoning district. The max height for the main house is 30 feet. So they could be well over 20 feet if they like.

Understood. I was I was really referring to detached adus and obviously a unit that's built into existing structure is different. Um yeah, I think I understand, but I am I am concerned and opposed to allowing that additional height if it's going to lead to more flat top buildings. So um and it sounds like the state doesn't require us to do that. So that that that's that's a comment, not a question. So um uh with that I don't have any further questions. Mr. Mayor, thank you. Council member Gundal, could you um turn to the one page where you had the option of a th00and square feet or less and 1,000 square feet or more as an alternative? This one here. Um my first question on ADU incentives and I know what you're trying to do. you're trying to in from my perspective kind of simplify it, you know, for for folks that want to build ADUs and uh J AUS. Uh are we given any kind of credit by the state when we come up with incentives? I mean, otherwise we could say here's state law, here's our new zoning that allows these and we're going to comply strictly with state law, but we've gone above and beyond that by providing incentives. Are we given any kind of credit for coming up with innovative incentives for for property owners?

Yeah, for uh the incentives I mean it's it's stated in our housing element of the as our one of the programs uh to to incentivize ADUs. So um after once this uh the ordinance has been uh adopted, we will have to submit uh a copy of the ordinance to HCD for review. Um I understand. So in our housing element, we were encouraged to provide incentives and this is our way of demonstrating that we've done that and when we I sounds like what you're saying when we submit these are the incentives that we've created we'll hopefully get the blessing of HCD that you did good. Okay.

Uh sure. Council Gdell, I I I just have another comment which um the um I I am concerned about the elimination of the parking requirements even more than the state requires. Um however, I also feel like we need we're not going to reopen the housing element. So, we have to follow that um we have to follow that um that that policy. But but I but I am concerned about it. Um, so I just wanted to I just want to state I'm not I'm not going to vote against it, but um I am concerned that we're that we are going beyond even beyond the state's fairly ownorous requirements already um in that regard. But we I we also need to we also need to follow the housing element that that was approved by previous council. So um I just wanted to make that comment.

Good comment. Um and I support that comment. It it troubles me. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, I support ADUs and Jedus. We need as a city to come up with some affordable housing options for our residents. And these are viewed as affordable housing options. And we live in an community where we have a lot of residents that are older individuals uh who may want family members to live on their property to provide them with some kind of assistance as they get older. And I've heard from a lot of seniors what they're in essence doing in some cases is they're letting their younger family members, children, raising kids to move into the main house and the seniors are now moving into the ADUs because they don't need as much of a space. So I I certainly appreciate certainly keeping the family unit together on the same property to provide you know assistance uh to see you know elderly parents etc. But what troubles me uh in the same vein is basically the state is saying to the entire state of California these are these are the guidelines to which you need to comply. So they take away the uniqueness of our community or any community in terms of what those impacts might be on our community. And as council member Grenal mentioned, they basically said if if if parking poses an issue, that's unfortunate. We want the ADUs built. We want the J AUS built. And if it creates a parking impact, which in many cases these will, that's unfortunate. And um I mean, I used the one example of the multifamily building where what was perceived to be uncovered parking for tenants can be just taken away and ADUs can be built on that property. So, I'm concerned about that. I'm also concerned about what I really believe is a fundamentally unfair situation wherein if I, as a property owner 10 years ago decided, you know what, I want to build

an ADU. So, I'm going to go down to the city, submit plans, have plan review, I'm going to uh pay impact fees and and do all the right things to get this ADU permitted at a great cost to me. They did that. Now we have a situation where I've built an unpermitted ADU on my property. Have been illegal for years. Had allowed people to live in unsafe conditions because nobody ever inspected the electrical. Nobody ever inspected the plumbing. We don't know if it meets fire code standards. So I have people living and paying good rent to live in an illegal unit. Now those folks can come down to city hall and say, "You know what? I want you city to now [clears throat] permit my illegal ADU into a legal ADU." Now, recognizing they still need to get all those permits, but they're not paying any impact fees. So, it's certainly a lot less expensive to that citizen that decided to simply ignore the law, create an unsafe condition, and uh has benefited from that. Is there anything I said in that comment that was not truthful? You pretty much covered everything.

Great. Um, my only question, other question would be as we eliminate the impact fees, did we do any kind of a financial analysis, Mr. Manon, as to how much money the city would could be losing as a result of eliminating the impact fees? Any kind of analysis that was done on that or your thoughts? Uh, I don't think we did any calculated any financial numbers with respect to that assessment. Wouldn't it be hard to [clears throat] do that calculation? We do do know the number of ADUs that and applications received within the past year and um which of those would qualify for exemption under the fee schedule. Uh we can certainly do that calculation I would imagine.

Yeah. If uh from the last year um I believe it was about 40 or so ADU applications were received and if they recall seeing about two of them that required impact fees. Um I think there were Yeah, just two two impact fees that were charged.

Okay. I think you did a great job on your presentation and very thorough. Um, again, I I'll my last comment is I understand what the state's trying to do, but you're really putting your hands into local zoning laws and local zoning and uh they're not going to suffer the consequence and the impact that it creates on our community. We're going to get the phone calls. city manager is going to get the phone call about you allowed my neighbor to build an ADU in the front yard eliminating the front setback area because that could that could happen. Somebody could build an ADU in a front setback area. Yes, that is correct. Um

so I've eliminated a front setback in some cases and uh so city why did you let this happen? And it's, you know, it's so cowardly for us to say, well, you know, it's not us, it's a state. But we we we can't do that. You know, we have to say, you know, these these are the laws that have been adopted and um you know, we're trying to create additional housing units for residents and um we will learn to live with those consequences. So, I just wish the state and I and I recognize um there's thousands of these things going up to the state to the governor every year for a signature. I just wish they would do a in my opinion a better job of reaching out to the local communities and getting feedback from us in terms of what are some of the impacts that this might create on your community, what are some of your concerns and then take those seriously. Remember all those folks up at the state level, senators and assembly member at one point in time most of them served in local government. So, they understand impacts on local governments and I just wish they would take into consideration some of these impacts and uh but um you know we're the ones that are going to implement it and we're the ones that are going to have to live with it. So, I support ADUs and the JADUs. I just wish there was more of a honest conversation between ourselves and the state on this issue. Any last comments? Council Gindle. just um when it's when it's time to make a motion, I'd like to I'd like to move that we that we move forward with this without the additional two feet as the incentive if if that whether whether that could be made part of the motion or whether I make the motion. That's up to you, Mr. Mayor.

Okay. So, we have a motion by council member Grenal to accept staff's recommendation with the uh suggestion that we remove that twoft allowance as described in this uh on this slide.

I'll say that I I would rather see a recommendation a motion moved with staff's recommendation as presented. Um so, if we're going to move forward, I would prefer to vote on that amendment um separately and then we can vote on the whole. What would you suggest? Should we take Mr. Grindal made a motion? Um, I think we should see if there's a second on that motion. Let's vote on that motion and then if that doesn't pass for any reason, then come back to uh C Vice Mayor Jorgan's suggestion. Uh, I just want to make sure that everybody understands uh your recommendation. Right now, what you're suggesting, if I understand correctly, is simply comply with what the state law currently outlines here. Am I correct in that assessment? Yes, that's correct.

Okay. So, we have a motion from Council Member Grenal. Is there a second?

I'll second it. Thank you, Council Member Little. Let's go ahead and vote on that motion. [clears throat] And that passes four eyes and one no. Council Kanchachio voting no.

Ordinance of the city council of the city of New York amending title 17 zoning of the New York municipal code to amend chapter 17.26 section 1726040 accessory dwelling units generally affecting development standards for the construction of accessory dwelling units and junior access accessory dwelling units and to amend chapter 17.45 section 17.45.10 residential uses generally affecting the use classification for accessory dwelling units and junior accessor accessory dwelling units. One one last clarifying question, Mr. Benoon. Uh, this ordinance goes into effect 30 days 30 days after the second reading, your honor. And the second reading would be scheduled for next month. Correct, your honor. February 12th, I believe. Thank you. I just

I have just a quick question. Would we be could we amend it or change it to that? We can we put it in our own law here locally that no units be built in the front? No. No. So, it's a that So, it's a no. No. Okay. Right. state state law exempts local preferences. Um any other comments on that before we move on? Okay. Uh other business. Um we're going to now do the presentation of the 2025 community survey results. City manager Bon.

Yes. Good evening, your honor and members of the council. Uh item F1 is a presentation from the city's consultant that reviews the 2025 community survey results. To provide some brief background, back in 2023, the city retained a consultant to conduct a statistically valid survey to assess the community's overall satisfaction level with our services. Uh the city scored favorably uh at that time. I am more than pleased to report that not only has the city maintained favorable ratings with our community, but in fact, for the most part, the scores have actually increased. Before the consultant presents on this item, we'll turn it over to our strategic initiatives manager, Miss Roya Gonzalez, who has some preliminary comments. Miss Gonzalez, the floor is yours. Thank you. Good evening, your honor. Members of the city council. I'm pleased to be here this evening to introduce the our community survey consultant, Ryan Murray, director of community research at ETC Institute, and provide some background on the tonight's presentation. As city manager Benoon mentioned, this is the city's second bianual community survey. In 2023, the city partnered with ETC Institute, a leader in market research and local governments to conduct its first statistically valid community survey. That effort established a baseline of data on resident satisfaction with city services, public safety, and overall quality of life. And again, as city manager Benu noted, the 2023 results show that residents generally evaluated many aspects of Newark positively. The survey also allowed the city to benchmark its performance against state and national averages and identify priority areas for focus. To continue measuring performance over time and monitor changes in resident perceptions, the city again partnered with ETC Institute to conduct the second statistically valid community survey in the fall of 2025.

The survey was designed to track changes from the 2023 baseline, identify emerging community needs, and continue benchmarking New York's performance against other jurisdictions. During tonight's presentation, Mr. summary will walk through the survey meth methodology, the results, trends, and opportunities. Before I hand it over, I want to briefly mention as city manager Benoon mentioned just a moment ago that the findings were very positive. The community satisfaction increased in 57 of the 66 areas that were surveyed in 2023. And when benchmarked against other jurisdictions, Newark scored higher in 37 of the 45 areas. City staff have already began reviewing and analyzing the data to identify opportunities and actions to continue to improve community satisfaction. And with that, Ryan Murray from ETC Institute will present an overview of the survey results and provide guidance on how they should be interpreted. Thank you.

Thanks.

All righty. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you members of council for having me this evening. It's a pleasure to be back for a second time. It's very great to be here. It's good to see a couple of you again and a couple new faces. So, congratulations on your uh elections. Um I can move this a little bit here. I'm going to move a couple of things around. Excuse me. All righty. Uh I'm going to continue to elaborate on the good news. Uh before I get into that, just a little bit about our firm. Um I'm Ryan Murray, the director of community research at ETC Institute. I've been with ETC Institute for almost half of its existence. Uh my mom used to drive me there in high school to make phone calls when we actually administered these surveys over the phone. Uh the owner is my mentor. Uh it's been a it's been a great uh place for myself and my family. But we've been around for over 40 years. We're based in Tha Kansas. Uh the current owner's mother Elaine Taam or Dr. Ela Titham founded the company in her garage uh with a little bit of a loan from a friend. And so we've grown and grown and grown and now we're here in Newark, California in 2025 conducting a second survey for your community and I'm really pleased to be here. And for the new council members, really the objective of this whole thing is to help you all make better decisions. And we know staff is really leveraging the results based on some of the improvements that we've seen. And I'm going to highlight this idea that I have not had as much uh good times presenting these results over the last couple of years primarily because most folks are continuing to see dips in their overall satisfaction, specifically perceptions as it relates to value for taxes and quality of our elected officials, which I happen to be an alderman in my own community serving my second term. So, it's a it's a great thing. I appreciate all of your public service. And none of these results could be possible without both your work as well as your staff's work, which is just phenomenal. And we're going to see a lot of the the fruits of that labor here in just a moment. Before we get too much into the good stuff, I want to take a moment uh to to kind of just go through this idea that when you have me here to present these results, I'm able to give you my two cents and really look through

that lens from the dis also from the consultants point of view. But this is really an objective assessment. We want to get out there and unbiasedly ask respondents in the community how they feel about the services that are being provided. It's a snapshot in time. It was taken during the fall of last year before November. I think it was September, October, uh, last year. And so, it's kind of this moment in time, these perceptions that respondents have. And the reason that I like to frame it like that is if you've got any major issues such as maybe a strike in your trash services, we're going to see that in the survey results, if it pops up in that given time. Uh, one of my clients, Austin Water, right before we mailed the survey, water main break, and there was a boil effect for a good portion of the community. we could see on the GIS mapping there was a failure of that service and a real hit on perceptions and so I like to kind of forefront let you all know that's kind of how we view the results but it's a great thing to continue to maintain that connection with the community to get that feedback loop working and to really get in kind of a in a rhythm of taking in this data making sure you're kind of keeping your finger on the pulse of the community focusing on trends is great it's great when they're positive we want to look at those other ones as well that maybe have dipped in just a couple of areas to make sure that are staying up with with some of those areas, but also making sure that we're continuing the momentum in some of the positive areas that we've made increases in. [snorts] So, with that, we want to track your performance over time. We want to track it against benchmarking. We've got a California average as well as a national average that we'll see. And like prior surveys, it's administered to a random sample. So, I take your GIS shape files. I purchase every single residential address from a list brokerage firm that touches your city's limits. And from that, I'll select a random sample to be selected. And so each and every single residential address within the city's limits has an equal opportunity of being selected. Now once we mail those surveys, theoretically random sampling tells you that you're going to get back uh the census population basically as it exists in the community. That's science. We know in social sciences that doesn't hold true. And so ETC Institute has to

get out there and we have to continue to follow up with respondents via mail uh via text, via postcard, via email, as well as some social media ads that are meant to be targeted to the respondents that we've ad that we've sent those mailers to in their address. The thing about the online survey is that it it maybe appears open or maybe is open uh for anybody, but we're always tracking and monitoring the respondents home address that's verified at the end of that online survey. And so out of the 422 completed surveys that we received, all 422 of those surveys were verified to a randomly selected address. And that's actually an increase in the total number of surveys from 2023. And we'll look at that in just a couple of slides. The methodology suggests that um [clears throat] there's going to be a margin of error to the results and that's based on the total number of completed surveys within the community. Uh in 2025, we had a margin of error of about 4.7%. I might round that in my head to about 5% uh in some slides, but 4.7 is going to be throughout the presentation noted. The reason why that's important is because any results or any trends in your results that exceed that margin of error are telling us that there's a true and actual difference in the perceptions of respondents in those question areas. So, if we see a a response that the combined satisfaction rating goes from 50 to 55%, that's a significant change, meaning there's actually true differences in the perceptions of respondents. A 50 to a 52% change means that there's some change in the community, but you could be chocked up to sampling error, meaning, you know, we we mailed randomly. We maybe hit one household one year and one household another year. And so that's how the margin of error plays on the results there. In terms of the representation in the results, I despise showing your map sometimes because there's so much industrial area to the south. There's estuaries and things like that. So, it looks like we didn't survey areas. So we include the streets there to make it look a little bit better for us hopefully, but we had really good geographic distribution across the community. One of the other things that we're always monitoring are all the demographic questions in the survey itself. And so those surveys need to

come back not only with a good geographic distribution, but with a great distribution that matches or very closely aligns within our margin of error, the Census Bureau statistics that we're able to align to. And that's usually going to be race and eth ethnicity, age, education levels, sometimes income is included as well. And some of the things that we learned uh from this particular survey is that we had more surveys. So from 405 to 422 response rates are dropping nationally. So this is kind of bucking a national trend that we've been seeing. Something that we don't really take a different approach when we conduct a survey in a community. We've been doing this for long enough. We'll look at patterns and we'll continue to take those patterns. This year for some reason we had about 20 more people complete the survey than we did last time. In addition, 83% of respondents indicate that the community is a excellent or good place to live, which is up six and a half percentage points from 2023, and that is a significant difference. A few of the other things about the survey uh that you'll see here is that you're well above national and regional averages when rating the city as a place to live. Compared to 2023 and 2025, we saw increases in many key areas. there was only really one place uh as a place to work in terms of perceptions that we saw a small decrease in overall satisfaction. This is kind of a suburban community. We see that in our outlying suburban communities in most major metropolitan areas. We're not rating our communities as a you know a positive place to work sometimes because a lot of us may not work in our cities that we're living in. uh Placer uh data can really help us out with that and I'm some cities have that data and we can really see where those cell phones are going to really make a mark on whether or not we know you know are people coming into the city to work or going out. And then one of the things that we designed into the survey instrument itself are opportunities for improvement. The opportunities for improvement are based on our important satisfaction analysis. We try to ek out those every time we do one of these surveys. It's predicated on the idea that below average satisfaction and above average

importance are the areas that we want to focus on. And I'll get more detailed into that in just a little bit. But those first few items on the screen there are pretty common areas. Maintenance of streets, sidewalks, and infrastructure. I know your water uh district here recently has had a lot of construction projects across town. Unfortunately, I don't believe that most folks are going to associate construction with the water district and give you a pass on the survey, but we still perform pretty well there. uh ensuring the community is prepared for emergencies, overall flow of traffic, which is extremely common, and then quality of parks and recreation facilities kind of with the efforts to ensure our communities prepared for emergencies are positive areas with high levels of satisfaction as well as high levels of emphasis. And so, you're one of those communities where I think I went over this last time where public safety is really keen here. You know, folks really love public safety. They're supportive of public safety. And so, we see a lot of high satisfaction as well as high importance given to that particular area. When we go into some of our perceptions, what I really want to focus on are some of our shifts from 2023. As I mentioned, I have not been able to have these types of conversations with folks. The one that I really want to point out here is the overall value received for your city tax dollars and fees over the last couple of years. It's it's been a common tone uh to really suggest that the dollar is not going maybe as far as it has gone. And the city of Newark has really set this perception that the dollar is going much further maybe than it has been in the past. We know those ratings are typically pretty low. 41% might not be a overwhelming majority, but a good proportion of our respondents are seeing the perceptions there and providing valuable ratings. We also see overall feeling of safety in the city, quality of life up towards the top and overall quality of services provided by the city and your overall perception ratings are remaining extremely strong. We talk about overall quality of services. We can see that we're equitably providing services throughout the community. The dot map in the prior slide uh basically tells us how many surveys we have in each one of those census block groups that we're using to create a mean and then we shade those census block groups

based on that mean. Blue areas are areas of satisfaction. Yellow is going to be neutral. Anything in orange or red is going to be where folks are generally shaded to a dissatisfied response. In terms of your overall ratings, am I going backwards here? All right. Uh overall ratings of the city of Newark. Uh we see that there's these are our major categories of city services. We see a lot of those dark blue bars exceeding the the light blue. But I really wanted to call out with those yellow arrows the five areas or or five of our areas that are higher opportunities for improvement saw significant increases in overall satisfaction. Overall quity quality of city parks and recreation facilities remain strong. But we see a lot of those areas that were key determining factors in overall perception ratings actually see massive increases in overall satisfaction which we can then kind of give credit to some of our perceptions from. When we talk about trends, we're talking again about some of the results that we've seen, but I really want to break it down. I know uh Roya went through some of that. But when we talk about the overall proportion of the items, there were 66 areas comparable between the two surveys on a five-point satisfaction scale. You were comparable or excuse me, you increased in overall satisfaction in 86% of those areas. 61% of the areas were actually significant increases. And so you increased significantly in 40 of the 66 areas that were assessed, which is really really extremely uncommon. We're going to see on this next slide that we're not only exceeding the margin of error in many key areas, but it's by a large margin. Access to financial and budget information, while not overly flashy, some way we've actually [clears throat] increased overall satisfaction. Enforcement of exterior maintenance or code enforcement is a really difficult item. Effectiveness of city communication with the public, which is likely one of the reasons why our ratings remained and continued to upkeep or go strong. We'll see some communication scores towards the end. Uh but when a community is really effectively telling their own story, they can really begin to push

perceptions based on the narrative that they're providing. We also see overall flow of traffic on streets, enforcement of cleanup, and as a place where I feel welcome. So there's a lot of quality ratings that are significantly higher in this year. There are a couple of decreases and I would be remiss as a researcher to not highlight some of those. accessibility of streets, overall quality of solid waste services, mentioning that a little bit earlier in the presentation, and ease of travel by automobile on city streets, and a couple of those items, we can see some direct attribut, you know, some some items that took place last fall that we could probably directly attribute to some of that. The big thing that I really want to harp on here is that this type of success has been extremely uncommon. uh to come up here and only have a few decreases and across 66 different items is really a testament to the way that the results were likely incorporated in decision-making over the last couple of years. It's really a testament to everybody's hard work here. We talk about benchmarking. This is one of the other areas where the city really seems to excel. We have a national survey and a California survey that we conduct every two years. And Newark rated above the California average in 36 of the 45 areas and above the national average in 37 of the 45 areas. I could have shown all of these tables. I wanted to show the one with our overall quality of city services and the four items that are determined to be higher opportunities for improvement. The fifth item is that development services item. It just isn't a benchmark item that we have on our survey quite yet, but you can see how far and away the community is performing against those national and regional averages. Look at fire, police, those are 30 points or 20 points, excuse me, above some of those averages for fire, 30 points for police services. And then quality of customer service you receive from city employees, still significantly above those national and regional averages. And as I mentioned last time, that can be a really difficult position for city employees to be put in. Effectiveness of communication with the public is really high and so is your lowest one. Overall maintenance of city streets and sidewalks and infrastructure. That's a really

difficult item. It's a highriced item for most communities and we're performing right along the US average and above the California average by a significant difference. Here's some of the highlights from those national benchmarking mark uh items. Enforcement of mowing and cutting, enforcement of cleanup of trash and debris. So kind of codes enforcement items is where we seem to lag behind the most. adequacy of city street lighting is also up there. But on the left, we're seeing a lot of positive items and a lot of items that are related to our public services and public safety specifically. We see efforts to prevent crime, enforcement of local traffic laws. And then we also see some of those core services as a place to live, uh overall quality of police services and effectiveness of city communication with the public. When we talk about California specific ratings, we see a few more significantly lower items, but they're right along the lines of what we've just saw. And some of the other areas is how quickly our police are responding to emergencies is 33% above the California average, which is just a a really large margin for that particular item. We also see efforts to prevent crime in this particular area and effectiveness of communication. Again, we talk about opportunities I mentioned earlier and we've seen some of the satisfaction scores for our major categories of city services. And when we rate or create the important satisfaction analysis, it's meant to derive priorities. And so that's a design feature within the survey. [snorts] Even if 100% of respondents have been satisfied with all of the satisfaction items that we rated, we still would have asked folks to kind of um we would have made them force rank each item. And so that's what we've done here. below average satisfaction and above average importance or where most of our items are in the higher opportunities for improvement are going to live. We see overall quality of city police services right up there towards the top. And so that's one of those areas where we continue to see that as a high priority item, but not because satisfaction is low, but rather satisfaction is very high for that particular item. It's the number uh two

most satisfied item [clears throat] out of the 12 items on the list. I like to rank these a little bit differently uh than in your report. uh in the report they're breaking they're broken down into three categories. High, medium, and low. Basically, uh for the presentation, I like to suggest that the areas towards the bottom of the list are areas that you don't take your eye off of. Those are your kind of um those are in your pocket. Those are areas that you can continue to emphasize that we should continue to maintain current levels of service. As we get into codes enforcement, we see a couple of areas where trends have maybe decreased slightly or we've had some differences against national and regional benchmarks. So, we should begin to look at that item. And that's why I've highlighted it yellow. Even though the important satisfaction analysis in your reporting is going to highlight that as kind of a lower priority, it's an area that you should really be thinking about making some maybe changes in or maybe some investments too. As we get into that lighter red and then the darker red, those are the items that are going to have the biggest draw on overall satisfaction and specifically those perception related questions as it relates to the communities, a place to live, place to work, place to raise a family and things like that. Maintenance of city straits, sidewalks and infrastructure. Again, big ticket item. It's going to be a difficult item to constantly be battling, but high performing communities, that's the item we really want to see at the top of this list. We don't want to see police. We don't want to see city trees. We don't want to see solid waste or fire at the top of this list. And when we see streets, sidewalks, and infrastructure, we know that communities are working on that item. And it's just going to be one of those difficult items for most residents. Based on the construction alone, it can be a really difficult item. So, perceptions are strong with that specific item. But looking at some of these maps, we could begin to pinpoint where some of our higher opportunities for improvement might have higher pinch points or higher levels of dissatisfaction. Please keep in mind those larger areas, that larger area of orange, very few uh surveys taken in that particular area. It dominates this particular map because of [clears throat] how large that particular area is, but it's not a huge

swath of the community. And then we see up north by those larger interchanges, 880 up there in 84 where we have a larger level of dissatisfaction. Moving into the city's efforts to ensure we're prepared for emergencies, we see one area of dissatisfaction, but primarily we see a lot of generalized satisfaction, that soft yellow to indicate more neutral ratings. And again, thinking about those dots that were in each one of those areas, we're splitting up 422 surveys across your city. And so these are maps to take with a grain of salt, but they can really help city staff begin to pinpoint specific areas of the community to maybe provide just a little bit more focus on potentially flow of traffic on city streets. It seems to be a problem uh not for most people, but it's something that we did indicate that we'd like to see maybe a little bit of improvement in. Mostly satisfaction with a little bit of yellow. And then we talk about overall quality of parks and recreation facilities where we've performed very well. It's just a really important item to respondents there. One of the last ones is the quality of city planning, building and development services, which can just be an extremely difficult item. Uh the ADU conversation I think really gave us a good example of how convoluted and difficult that can be for the average resident to understand. It can be a really difficult item for folks to rate. And so this is one of those items that we don't have benchmarking for, but we have been asking the question. uh and typically we hear a lot more from this when we do like developer surveys or business surveys is where we hear uh most of the better feedback on this particular item. We talk about additional findings. One of the things I also wanted to mention today was communication and community engagement. I wanted to highlight this particular section because I think that it's one of the areas that's going to continue to push your success moving forward. And I've highlighted many of these areas with green arrows. And the primary reason for that is that they're almost all significant changes in overall satisfaction. Uh opportunity to engage or provide input made by elected officials. Those are areas that we're not seeing positive remarks in. I was in a community that performed pretty well a

few weeks ago at the beginning of the year. That was one area where they didn't perform very well still. And so it seemed like there was some issue in the community with that particular item. In Newark, we're not seeing a lot of that. We're seeing availability content of your newsletter really high ratings there at 67 and 56% and we're just seeing a lot of positive activity there. And one of the other things that likely leads to some of your success is that the most used sources of information are also the most preferred. And so we ask respondents how do they get information about the city of Newark? And we ask which of those items are most preferred and we see the website, social media and Newark news at the top. We hear about it for word of mouth and things like that towards the bottom, but primarily the city of Newark are managing those stories, managing the narrative and and I think sometimes that sounds nefarious, but when you're able to tell your own story, you're able to highlight the nuances or the details that the average person might not otherwise understand. One of the other findings in the report that I did not present in the slides tonight is only about one in three respondents indicated that they've ever watched or attended a meeting. you know, we had a a great uh attendance to start and then everybody kind of filters out and we know at etc institute most folks when they attend a meeting it's it's really for a recognition or maybe to have their voice heard for a specific issue. So not everybody's coming to these meetings but it appears based on this slide and this slide that the city is very well communicating with the community throughout the city which is really great to see. In summary, uh positive perceptions remain extremely s strong. Overall satisfaction with core city services, city services that do drag down or keep up overall perceptions were really significantly increased from 2023. Between 2020 and 2023, most of our communities saw significant decreases in overall satisfaction. And that's really a trend from 2020 on. Um, I've done three surveys for communities 2020,

2022, 2024, and I've seen continued positive decreases where where instead of just looking at one year's significant decrease, we're going back to 2020 and 2024 and saying, well, maybe it wasn't significant in the middle year, but because of those two years, now it's become a significant decrease over the past two surveys. And we're just probably not likely to see that if you conduct a third survey, and we definitely didn't see it in our second one. Critical city services saw meaningful gains and benchmarking continues to confirm that you're doing really good work here. Opportunities exist, but they are common for high performers and we'll see that throughout the important satisfaction analysis. Overall, the trajectory is really strong for the community here and we'll likely use you for a few examples uh moving forward with other clients. So, with that, my contact information. I'll take any questions that I can answer tonight and if I can't, I'll get a response back to staff probably next week. Thank you for very clearly. I'm gonna ask

okay if there's anybody in the audience they would like to comment on the survey before I turn it over to my colleagues. All right, we'll start this time on the left side of the room. Comments, questions. Council member Little.

Yeah. Um, so one of my biggest things I've always kept an eye out for is communication from the city to regular folks. And so I'm really happy to see the good news in there. But one of the main things I hear about all the time is what's going on? I don't know what's going on. And one of the biggest avenues we have is one we have one social media page run by somebody called what's happening in Newark and that's really I think 7,500 people are on it and it's it's it's really popular. What are you seeing in other cities that is making a big change very positive really helping. I mean just being really successful and reaching people. We're doing a lot but I'm still hearing people say I didn't know that was going on. I had no idea that was going on. Yeah.

What what what are cities doing in other cities that is successful? Yeah, that's a great point. I think that [clears throat] some cities have focused and narrowed down their social media reach um where maybe they had like a police and a public works and a parks one. I found a couple of my communities have really consolidated that into kind of a primary source and they think what or the idea has been uh with a couple of my higher performers is that now that they're not trying to follow all these different things, they're more so seeing our individual page and we're pushing everything from that individual page. The other thing that a a community back in the Kansas City metro area is doing is, and this also sounds nefarious, but they're embedding people onto Next Door. Uh there are city liaison is what they call them. And so Next Door can be a rather cranky place if you're ever on it. Um the city liaison [clears throat] are there to to not counteract that, but to provide information when crankiness kind of arises. And so, hey, I don't like what the city's doing, or I didn't like that accessory dwelling unit that went in my neighbor's front yard. Well, you know, on January 22nd, we had a really great presentation at city hall about that. Here's a link to it here. And so, there's some opportunities to kind of engage community members using other community members, but you then have to find those champions. So I think that's kind of a difficult thing for large cities, but Newark does seem to kind of be in that sweet spot where you could begin to maybe find some neighborhood groups on next door and begin to, you know, lies with a resident in the community to keep them very close to bring them to these meetings to really keep them in the loop and then they can disperse that information when they hear those things popping up.

What is it called again? Um like a community liaison. Yeah. Yeah. It's a fancy word the city of Leama came up with, but I think you could do community partner I think would be just fine. Great question though. Council Grendall. Yes. I just have one one really comment for you and then a comment for the for the city manager. Um my comment for you is that your presentation was excellent, very well very well explained and very much appreciate the the effort. Um, and the question for the city managers, uh, is there I I find this information to be very useful. I I'm wondering whether staff is considering is planning to make this a a bianual process or is that inappropriate to ask at this point?

No, we are planning on doing this every two years. That's correct. Thank you. Thank you. Before I turn to this side of the aisle, uh, city manager, I'm happy to go back to Ryan's community and survey his community. Oh, please don't. to see how his community compares to our community. [laughter] No thank you, mayor. No thank you, mayor. And then stand in front of him as an alderman and and and be able to give a presentation. Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. You should have my bad time that I've been having [laughter] over the last couple of years. I think Council Kachio,

thank you so much uh for your presentation. Um, I also wanted to I also wanted to um just also note that safety within our city is really important. So, I really appreciate um that you did point out that it did go up to 66%. And I think that's really important for people to stay in our community to feel safe as well as um definitely the quality of life.

Mhm. because we are a really close small community and so to have that quality of life to have multi-generations continue to stay here as you heard earlier even today some people are like wow you know I live here I was born here I'm raising my family here you saw grandkids even come this morning or this afternoon for the pledge of allegiance so I really do appreciate your presentation [clears throat] thank you so much council Vice Mayor Jorgens I'm curious about and thank you for the presentation. I I appreciate it. You know, looking at the numbers appreciated a little bit more than two years ago and of course the presentation. So I'm glad to seereas numbers going in that direction. Um I do have a question about um

you know one of the things that we were really looking at is you know a place that you know we can make some you know real efforts you know moving forward was overall maintenance of city streets, sidewalks and infrastructure. Did is there any reason or did we separate out in any way kind of streets versus sidewalks? Because in my head those are two pretty separate things. You know, sidewalk maintenance might be hey there's some sticks or you know some water puddling or some mud stuff that wouldn't be an issue on the road. Um with the road obviously we've had you know some uh bigger capital projects by some other agent by another agency um you know which might

pull in there. So, I'm just curious about the the line between kind of sidewalks versus streets because I we've got those together, but to me and at least in my head, they're kind of they're separate.

Exactly. And one of the things that we're trying to strategically do with the over major categories of city services is generalize, give us an idea of where the topic areas should exist. And staff was really adamant about bolstering that particular area of the survey. And we did have a number of [clears throat] areas actually increase maintenance of street signs and traffic signals. And we also asked about the condition of sidewalks in the city hovered at 41%, it was 42% a couple of years ago. Uh so a.9% uh decrease in that particular area. Flow of traffic uh actually increased significantly at about 4.2% so just not quite to the 4.7. Uh but we also asked about maintenance of medians, accessibility, storm water maintenance system, and street signs and traffic signals. And so we did eek out a little bit more out of that.

Right. I I think uh so I guess from hearing what you said, I think sidewalks should be a focus. And I also saw that street lights were um you know, another area that we could uh kind of improve at. And maybe that's a two birds, one stone kind of situation where if we can get these areas a little better lit, you know, they'll seem a little better maintained. Yeah. You know, in terms of our kind of what I think is a generally high level of maintenance. Um so I think you know maybe that's an area that we can really um focus on going forward. Um the other question is um kind of one of the other general categories was overall quality of city planning building and development services. Yeah very obviously that's a it's weighty

right. So when we're asking about that are we how are we asking about it in a way where the respondents where we have can have confidence that respondents understood the questions they were being asked. I think respondents want to provide an opinion. Uh, and I think that when I looked at that question and we had discussions with staff on that specific question, only 9% of people chose the opt out, the don't know response. So, there was an opt out on that.

Yeah. So, there's always a don't know. And sometimes when I go to those questions and I'm like, do folks really understand? Um, and I have a pretty good idea just as much as you probably do. It's a really complicated topic. Anything that goes on in your community that feels development related that feels like you're bringing in more big box stores versus homegrown stores or whatever might perturb or upset some group in the community could be associated with development. And it's a very difficult item uh to kind of get across. And so to to the other council member's point, we could begin to try to communicate on it, but what do you do? you know, do you do you give them all the zoning and code ordinances and and tell them, hey, study up and then we'll, you know, get some more information to you. Um, or or how do you really tone it down for the layman to really let them understand we're doing their best,

you know, and it's a challenging item to survey as well as to communicate. So, I appreciate the work that you've done to, you know, give that information to us as clear as um seems possible. So, really do appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you for your presentation. Yeah, thank you.

I support my colleagues comments regarding the presentation was outstanding. was outstanding two years ago as well. So, I'm certainly pleased to see the not only the increase in the participation, but also the increase in the uh positive views of our community and our city services. I'll direct my comments to the city manager. Um, city manager, as we as we reviewed these 422 uh surveys, I would imagine there's comments made by residents in the survey, which I'm imagine staff has taken note of those. Will you be coming back in the future to say here are some of the themes we heard specifically from residents in these neighborhoods and these are our these will be our plans to try to address some of those issues. What are your thoughts on that?

Uh certainly would be happy to do that. I think that's a question for the consultant Miss Gonzalez uh is to what extent can we glean meaningful information from those responses that would further inform us as to what actions that we can take. uh oftentimes in those types of responses there may or not be specific in in what they're trying to get at. That's been my understanding. Yeah, Mr. Murray.

Yeah, and that's a great point. We were really thoughtful again in the way that we presented an open-ended comment this time. Uh following our community investments question, which was question 21, we asked respondents, you know, how supportive are you of these different areas that we know we need to invest in? A lot of it's capital improvement type stuff such as, you know, upgrading street medians, improving traffic flow to reduce congestion. In 23, uh, after we asked folks to force rank which of those items are actually most important, we asked, are there any other community investment areas not listed that you'd be supportive of? And so this year, we took an approach to really kind of focus in. And some of the reason for that is if you give folks kind of, hey, are there any additional suggestions, we can get a lot of different things. And so we'll take another look at that for staff and we can do some more theme kind of thematic elements and maybe we'll look at some of those census block groups or maybe kind of quadrant your community in a way. And maybe we could talk with Roya about how we could strategically do that for you.

For example, you you you showed the north that that corner here, the 880 area. So, there may be something common in that area that we might be able to address. Exactly. Just in that area that might change that overall rating and perception in that area as well. Great point. Um, one of the comments that I've heard from the community, uh, Mr. Benoon and I've certainly have experienced as well is the ease of travel. Yeah.

You know, we're only 14.2 two square miles yet it can take a long time to get from here to there. Have we done an analysis as to the time of travel from one area to the the another area during a certain part of the day and and noting the time that it takes to get from here to there and whether or not there are some things that we can do as a city to significantly reduce those time times of travel. Thoughts on that? Uh I'm unaware of any such study that we have, any information um that we have within our possession that would speak to that. Uh but I'd be happy to speak with city staff and see what information we can gather and provide that information to the council.

Great. And yeah, it's not something I I want you to put on your top list of priorities, but I've heard from the community time to travel from here to there, especially dropping kids off at school and dropping kids off at other schools, you know, can take a significant amount of time. So, it would be interesting to kind of gauge that and then see uh as we look at that, are there opportunities for improvement in terms of those times traveled? Uh my I'm going to leave my last comments, Mr. Manoon, to you and the city staff. What an outstanding survey. Wow. I mean, if I could stand up and just applaud city staff, Yes. I I would absolutely do that. I mean, we've seen so many significant improvements in this city and we're such a small city in terms of the quality of service that we provide to our community. And and you talk about communication. I mean, just the most recent example is the newsletter that we now send out to our community, which is so much more information and so much uh uh so much news that the folks can uh certainly say we're we're doing our best to provide that information back to the community. But just real kudos to you, Mr. Bon, and all the city staff that uh they're the direct result as to why these numbers are going up. We'll do what we can in terms of establishing policy and direction and things of that nature, but we're not [clears throat] the ones out there delivering the day-to-day service. Um, our police department outstanding. I I shared that today at a at a county meeting when I talked about our survey and I said, "How many cities and I did it was a rhetorical question. How many cities would like to have street condition as their number one issue and not have it be public safety as it is in many of our communities here in the Bay Area?" Of course,

uh it's not and uh I imagine a number of my colleagues uh from other cities would love to switch that because we're working on that. I can improve the roads,

but if they have a poor perception of public safety, fire safety services, there's not much you can do. I can hire more police officers. I can hire more firefighters, but at the end of the day, if that perception is there because of high crime and this and that, that perception is going to stay there for a while. And so we're very fortunate to have uh outstanding police, outstanding fire, outstanding parks, outstanding communication with our residents. So real credit to you, Mr. Benoon, and your leadership uh in this community for providing such outstanding service to our community. This is not an action item. I did like uh Council Member Grenal's comment and I saw the city manager shaking his head that we will return. Uh it's our responsibility to touch base with our community on a periodic basis. How are we doing? They are our customers. It's called customer service. Public service for a reason. We're here to serve. And if the if the community does not feel we're doing a good enough job, then there's opportunities for us to take that information, work on it, and improve. And uh at this point in time, I'm just going to add, by the way, 5% to all those numbers you just gave me.

I'm going to factor in that plus to be the plus sign, of course. and and not the minus side. So, it actually was even better than I thought it was. So, I'm going to add that to all of our survey results. But again, thank you for your appreciation. Thank you so much, Mayor. I think we'll probably see you in again two two years. Uh it's the thoroughess of your report and the details [clears throat] of your report that minimize the questions here. Uh self-explanatory. So, thank you. I appreciate it so much. And your thoughts were just great. I'm [clears throat] Are you not going to Sacramento soon? [laughter] That was fantastic. and and really just as a as an elected official myself just really touching. That was really great. Thank you, mayor. I really appreciate that. Good luck in your community as well. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you, everybody. Have a great meeting.

All right. I'm going to add, what have you done for me lately? All right. Well, mayor, thank you for the, if I may, just thank you and the council for your kind comments in regards to city staff and I think the consultant as well. He's been a pleasure to work with. Uh we will upload uh portions of this meeting to our internet so that staff is aware of uh council's positive comments uh and to the hard work that they've done as well as um snippets from the consultants presentation so that staff is aware of the overall satisfaction rate of our community.

Good. And I think uh vice council member Little's comments were really on point. You you can't rest on your laurels. you got to continue to be out there as we all are out there communicating to our community and where there is the misnomer that you know I didn't hear about that don't know about that you know we have a responsibility to make sure we get that message out there and as I look at some of the comments on on social media I will weigh in as others have weighed in periodically to just kind of you know lay lay lay a perspective that maybe folks don't know about but again sometimes it gets just lost in the dialogue you know and uh I think the more often we point folks to the city's website and the city's uh public um media pages is where they're really going to find out what's going on and I've seen again significant improvement in those areas. So, thank you for that. The next item is economic development update andformational memo. I'll turn it over to city manager Manoon.

Uh your honor, that is item F2. Sorry, did I pass one already? Item F2. Yes. Sorry, Jim. I was going to come back to you last, Jim. [laughter] Um, so the next item is the um consider a resolution adopting an update to the January 2010 climate action plan initiative framework. And I'll turn it over to Mr. Benoon.

Yes. Good evening, your honor and members of the council. Item F2 is a recommendation to adopt the final version of the climate action new work plan update. This plan outlines strategies for the city to implement in order to meet certain targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions uh by spe uh specified dates. If the council may recall, in October uh staff presented to the council recommended strategies that the city should take to meet these targets. Uh the council provided feedback and now we are at a point uh to adopt the final plan. If the council approves the plan, then we will put it on the website and attach a spreadsheet that shows our progress on meeting our targets so that the public is aware of our efforts. The presentation tonight will be delivered by our environmental services uh manager, Mr. Jim Scanland. Uh before I pass it over to Mr. Scandlin, I would be remiss if I fail to acknowledge Mr. Scanland for his incredible service to our community. Uh Mr. Scanland uh is retiring at the end of March and this is likely his last presentation to the New York City Council. Um just wanted to briefly highlight Mr. Scanland's tremendous career. Uh 29 years of distinguished public service uh that culminated with four years here with the city of Newark as the city's first ever environmental services manager. Uh in that four-year period, Mr. Scanland spearheaded the development of our sea level rise resiliency plan, led the implementation of SB 1383, which is uh a heavy lift, and he took the lead on our climate action Newark update. And that's of course in addition to all of his day-to-day storm water permit tracking requirements and all that stuff that he has to work with. Uh Mr. Scan, it's just been a sheer pleasure working with you the past four years. uh all of these initiatives that I just explained to the council and the public, that's um all all your just tremendous work. Uh you've definitely left your mark on the organization as the city's first ever environmental services manager. It's been a true pleasure working with you and we wish you nothing but the best for

your retirement, sir. So, it's been an absolute pleasure and thank you. Uh with that in mind, I'm going to go ahead and pass it over to Mr. Scanland.

Thank you, Mr. Benoon and uh it's been a pleasure working with you as well and um with all the city staff really um I've been uh was it 29 years in the public sector but also another uh six years as as a contractor in the public sector as well and uh these four years have been a highlight of my career. So um mayor you've been great to work with all this the city council and our previous city council has been great and all the staff has been great. Thank you very much. Um, and uh, so again, Jim Scanlin, uh, I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to present the final climate action plan update for your consideration for adoption. Um, we also have Hannah Kornfeld, our project manager from Ascent Environmental with us online this evening. Uh, Hannah is in uh, Burlington, Vermont. Um, but [snorts] she is here to answer any questions, any follow-up you might have for her. And I'd also like to start off by thanking Hannah and her team for all the work they've done on this. They've been great. So, okay. So, the city has a long history of being proactive in addressing the threat of climate change. In 2007, Mayor David Smith signed the US mayor's climate protection agreement, thereby committing the city to take action for climate protection. The city adopted a climate action plan or CAP in January 2010. The CAP set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from activities within the city to 1990 levels by 2020, an approximately 15% reduction. The city did meet that reduction target. Due to the increased awareness of potential impacts of climate change, the state has adopted a very aggressive greenhouse gas reduction target of 85% below 1990 levels by 2045. In December 2023, this council approved

contracting with the scent environmental to assist with a comprehensive update to the city's 2010 climate action plan. We refer to the update as climate action Newark or CAN. So, climate action Newark is a comprehensive update to the city's 2010 climate action plan. It aligns with the state's greenhouse gas reduction targets, addresses both climate mitigation and adaptation. It will build upon the city's initiatives such as an urban forest management plan and active transportation plan. It will engage the community and provide implementation direction to staff. This is the project schedule. Um we started as uh we mentioned in December 2023 with contracting with the scent. Uh we first developed a uh greenhouse gas emissions inventory and forecast and targets. We've held several public meetings um and we brought the uh draft strategies here to the council previously for your consideration. So community engagement was essential in to develop the CAN. In September 24, the city hosted a community workshop that discussed both climate action Newark and the city's sea level rise adaptation strategy at the Newark Library. We launched a project website in February 2025 with opportunities for engagement and education through an interactive map activity, discussion boards, and a survey. In April 2025, the city staff host hosted a second community workshop for CAN and but with both in-person participation and online. These workshops helped inform the development of strategies and actions and allowed city staff to better understand residents priorities. I'll now discuss the proposed climate action mitigation.

We conducted emissions inventory for 2022 and projected future emissions based on anticipated population land use and employment changes. Based on these projections, we calculated the reduction of the city would need to align with the targets the state has adopted. Through our community engagement process, we've identified strategies and actions to meet these targets. So, this chart depicts Newark's future emissions accounting for the impacts of regulations and legislation as well as the strategies proposed for CAN. The light blue area depicts reductions due to federal and state regulations like building energy efficiency standards, fuel efficiency standards, electric vehicle sales requirements, and renewable and zerocarbon electricity requirements. The area between the light blue and the gray depicts reductions due to CAN implementation. The red line is the target. Newark would meet its 2035 reduction target but fall just shy of the 2045 emissions reduction target through the implementation of CAN strategies. So based on the greenhouse gas emissions forecast and input from the community the city identified opportunities for emissions reductions. We have identified six focus areas. Energ energy transition and efficiency, sustainable on and off-road transportation and land use, responsible use of resources, nature-based solutions and urban greening, community capacity and resilience, and municipal operations. Within each focus area, we have identified strategies and actions. Strategies establish short term short and long-term initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Each strategy is actions with specific goals to provide co- benefits. Each action

identifies responsible city departments and partner agencies to ensure implementation and public transparency. Out of all the identified strategies, those responsible for the largest emissions reductions are the energy one electrify and decarbonize the city's building stock. Energy 2 expand clean energy generation and use. Transportation four, accelerate widespread use of zero emission vehicles and responsible use two promote responsible waste management. These four strategies make up 91% of the total emissions reductions. [snorts] So the draft cam was released for public comment. public comment. The public comment period was from September 8th until October 20, 2025. We've received seven letters from residents, local organ or organizations, and partner agencies, and most of the comments were very supportive. Themes of the comments received included uh requesting additional focus on urban forest and tree canopy. Uh the city's response to sea level rise concerns and the implementation of CAN making sure that the CAN will actually be implemented and how will be uh clear to the residents that is being implemented. [cough] Comprehensive response to all comments are attached to the staff report. revisions made to clarify language and add community partners interested in assisting a city with CAN implementation. Uh in response to the comments, we also developed a summary of the CAN. Uh some people said that the CAN is fairly technical and long and hard for most people to read. So we did develop a summary that we will include on the website once the CAN is adopted. And we've also uh developed a uh five-year implementation plan with each of the strategies when it's going to be accomplished, what the potential cost is

going to be for those various activities as well. So, as I said, we have prepared a five-year implementation plan that serves as a city work plan for the serves as a work plan for the city, helping inform staff and budget expenditures. It incorporates the implementing departments, community partners, and key performance indicators. It identifies external costs, potential funding sources, and timelines. And it's also accompanied by a key performance indicator tracker. [snorts]

So these are the implementation actions for 2026. They include develop an urban forest management plan which we approved starting last at the last meeting.

Um adopt the city of Newark active transportation plan and review related parking regulations. Complete the sea level rise adaptation strategy. Update zoning ordin the zoning ordinance to include transportation demand management standards for development projects. Develop an education and outreach program that will help spread awareness and support the implementation of CAN. Staff recommendation. The staff recommends the city council by resolution adopt the city of Newark climate action Newark as an update to the city's 2010 climate action plan. Uh and with that I'll thank you and I'll take any questions.

Thank you Jim. I appreciate that. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to comment on the presentation? I'll come back to the council and I'll start on the right hand side. Comments. Council member Canio. Yes. Thank you for your presentation and also thank you for your dedication to Newark and I do hope that you have a happy retirement as well. Thank you. Um for your future regarding climate action, I'm really glad that you did point out that we've been doing this since 2007 until now and so I really appreciate you overseeing and managing this area. Thank you. Oh, thank you, Vice Mayor Jorgens.

Yes, I uh want to thank you for the presentation. I know while the presentation was brief, there's a lot of work that goes in behind it and uh that's produced uh what in my opinion is a very impressive document. Uh so do want to thank you for all your work on this. Yeah. Thanks, Council Member Little. Note, I appreciate everything. Congratulations on your retirement. Um if you could just give me a couple of sentences real quick. Um I did see in there that you had the sea level rise adaption plan. Could you let me know some details of what New York's planning to do for about sea level rise adaption?

Yeah, so we um we've developed a couple modeling studies so far. So we did a study of the flood the flood modeling and then we looked at um the uh what kind of impacts the flooding may have under various scenarios. Um we're in the we've had one stakeholder meeting. We're going to have another stakeholder meeting on February 5th. Um and we're going to present what our strategies are moving forward. Just kind of general conceptual strategies. Um the area of the city that's the northwest corner of the city is the area that has the most potential impact of flooding. So we're going to focus uh some of the proposed strategies, mitigation strategies up in that area. So, we're going to be working with city of Fremont and related to this uh the city's required to develop this, um an RSAP, a regional shoreline adaptation plan. And the idea is to work together with Fremont and the city of Newark on what they call the Maui uh operational landscape unit which is essentially from Dumbartan Bridge down to Maui Slooh and uh put together uh uh a mitigation plan for potential sea level rise and um we need to submit that to uh BCDC.

Yeah. And and Jim is following up on the council member's question. the more uh information we get out to those possibly impacted communities so that they at least hear what we're proposing and our plan certainly the better for the community. Thoughts on on having one of these presentations actually out in that neighborhood or so that folks that live there who feel they may be impacted have the ability to come to their neighborhood and hear directly. Yes, we can do that. Good. Just a thought. Yeah. Council Gindall,

I'm going to echo the other council members. I want to thank you for this incredible effort and for the the your whole career. Wishing you the best in retirement. Thank you. The [clears throat] um and I also just I want to say that that the regional adaptation strategy in terms of sea level rise is I'm so glad we're working in that direction. This is obviously an issue that is that is global or at least regional in how we deal with it and that it should be addressed that that way in terms of how we adapt to it. So um that was just a comment but um wanted to thank you for all the all your efforts and this excellent work and um so thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. I was so excited when you came on board because I recognized in listening to our community, the environment, uh our climate action plan, greenhouse gases, these are all important issues and we have a responsibility as a governmental agency to get this information out to the community as to we understand what the issues are. we have a plan to address them and uh we want to get that information out to you because the more informed our citizens are the more they'll feel that we got our eye on the ball and uh I think you've done an outstanding job and when Mr. Mr. Manoon told me you were leaving. I I thought I thought you had signed a five 10 year contract with us. I must have misunderstood that at the time, but uh you you've been outstanding. You've been a great resource for me and other council members uh on a variety of committees that we work on, whether [clears throat] it be stop waste and these other committees in terms of being a resource and and hearing what we're hearing from uh other agencies in terms of best practices, things of that nature. I also want to recognize, Mr. Benoon, this is really just kind of a a footprint at this point. You know, climate action plans, things of that are going to be evolving. They're going to evolve. What we know today, we know today. What we don't know tomorrow, we won't know. And so, this is really an opportunity to say, here's where we are today. We expect and anticipate there's going to be some changes and modifications on this plan as we move forward. here's our best plan for the next five years, recognizing that that's going to change during that five years. Things are going to come up and make things that are maybe four years down the road more of a priority today. So, it's it's kind of a living document. That's the way I view it. And, uh,

I think whomever that person is, uh, Mr. Scamman to come in and and and take on this responsibility has big shoes to fill. And I know that, you know, that, and the city manager certainly knows that. So, uh, I've always been real proud of people that have served in public service for as many years as you have. It's, uh, it's a difficult job, uh, especially in the area of environment. And, uh, you've done nothing but, uh, demonstrate professionalism, leadership, and just a real understanding as to what are important issues in our community. And you've been responsive to those uh, to those demands and and ideas. So, thank you for your service to the community. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

This is a uh action item. It's not an action item. It is an action item. Yes, it is an action item. I need a motion and a second. I would like to move the item. I'd like to second it. Okay. Motion made by the vice mayor Jorgan, seconded by uh Council Member Little. Please vote. And your last vote at any city council meeting was unanimous. 5-0. Congratulations. Welld deserved. CONGRATULATIONS. [applause] WHEN IS Jim's last day, Mr. Benoon? Just out of curiosity. Sorry. When is Mr. Scan's last day? Uh, last day in the office is the tail end of February. Okay. February 26th.

26th. [laughter] Chief, a public servant specifically knowing the retirement. [laughter] Well, he will be here that evening. He does have a few items on the consent calendar that night. Oh, maybe we'll pull a few of those, Mr. Scanland. [laughter] We're gonna have to.

All right. Um, the next item is the economic development update andformational report. Uh, Mr. Benoon. Yes. Good evening, your honor, members of the council. Uh, item F3 is our annual presentation to the New York City Council from our economic development department that provides updates on industrial, hotel, retail, and small business sectors in Newark. Staff will also present on the business related initiatives and economic development programs that are occurring throughout our town. The presentation will be given by the deputy economic development director, Miss Angela Sway. And Miss Sway, you have the floor. Great.

Thank you so much, Mr. Bernoon. Uh good evening, honorable mayor and city council, Angela Sway, deputy economic development director. Thank you for this opportunity uh to tonight to provide an update on the city's economic development efforts and initiatives. This is an overview of what I'll be covering in my presentation this evening. Uh the health of Newark works business ecosystems which will be market updates uh economic development efforts of 2025 celebrating Newark's milestones and achievements and then looking forward towards our 2026 um economic development work plan. So, I'd like to preface uh that for real estate data that we use for this presentation and and typically in our reports, uh we use CoStar and CoStar is a commercial real estate database um platform. Co-Star is an industry standard and widely used by commercial real estate professionals. So, I'm going to jump right in with industrial and just give you uh an update here and just some highlights. Uh so the prologologist central avenue um industrial building project uh was approved in July by your council. Um and staff from multiple divisions are working closely with the prologologist team as they've indicated their strong interest in moving the project forward. Next I am extremely pleased to share that Quant Computer has leased the former Metaf Food facility um at the Morton Center. And so that facility, if you recall, had been vacant for about four years. It is 226,000 square feet. Um, and now uh we it's fantastic to have an advanced manufacturer uh quantum computer to grow their presence in Newark. Also hot off the press, there's an LOI, which is uh letter of intent uh to lease 100,000 square ft of warehouse space

also at the Morton Center. uh and another LOI for 150,000 square feet on Central Avenue. So, all very exciting that these uh spaces are being uh leased now. And then uh the last item is we are wrapping up the industrial land study and we plan to present the findings and draft report uh to city council as a study session in the coming months. Next, we have the biomed um and biotech sector. Uh biomed and biotech are growing hubs here um in Newark. The Bay Area continues to be an ideal location for companies uh with access to highly educated workforce. Uh the jobs data here that I've included come from the Biocom California 2025 life science economic impact report and bio uh biocom is the life science trade association for California. Uh Newwork is has approximately 30 biomed and biorelated companies tripling our count over the past two decades. And the photos shown here are a vector labs uh in the top right hand corner uh Pacific Research Center which is home to a large number of our bioreed companies and Adam in the bottom left uh corner. And actually, I'd like to give a shout out to Adam uh that they've been selected to receive a 2026 East Bay Innovation Award um in the life sciences category. So, hooray. Next, we have advanced manufacturing life sciences. Um so, Southern Cal um southern Alama County is a significant hub um for the advanced manufacturing. Uh that would include computer and electronic products, biomed devices, clean techch and electric vehicles, all of which we have here in Newark. Uh based on a recent CBRE annual report, uh CBRE is a commercial um brokerage firm.

Uh Newark and Fremont combined accounted for 85% of the advanced manufacturing leases in Silicon Valley in 2025. And that is very significant. Um and we're proud to be a part of that uh growth. And then New Work has more than 70 companies involved in the wide range of advanced manufacturing uh life science, biotech, medtech companies that provide almost 8,000 jobs to the region. And the photos uh included here are Verdigy in the top right hand corner uh Lucid and Allene. our hotel market. Uh, Newark has 11 hotel properties that provide 1,745 rooms. Uh, so as of November 2025, the Newark work Fremont trade area and we are combined um with Fremont because of our um uh we're considered a relatively small market. U these numbers are for the combined submarket of Newark and Fremont. 12-month occupancy is at a little over 64%. 12 month average daily rate, the ADR, is $120 and the 12-month revenue per available room, RevPAR, is $77. So, year-over-year, our 12-month occupancy um for the market has increased by 7%. 12-month ADR has declined by.9% and 12-month revar has uh declined by.3%. Um but anecdotally we've heard from our newer hotels that they're slowly recovering from the pandemic with business travel doing very well uh during the midweek. And then we do anticipate upticks in the occupancy for the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks and the uh FIFA World Cup this spring. Then Measure LL is projected to generate approximately $2 million for the

calendar year of 2025. If you recall, measure LL was approved by our voters in 2024, went into effect at the beginning of 2025. So that is a substantial gain for the city. Uh and then in in regards to promoting our hotels and tourism, uh we've updated the city's hotel page to feature all of the new work properties and convened our first hotel round table to engage with the hotel years, um which I'll go into more detail a little bit later in the presentation. Next is our retail. So, uh, per Co-Star, um, quarter 4, 2025, uh, New Works retail market has a vacancy rate of, um, 6%. Which includes New Park Mall reporting at a 10% vacancy. A healthy range for retail vacancy in California is between the 5 and 8% range. Anything lower than 5% means spaces can command higher rates. Now, understandably, if you walk through the mall, um it does appear that the vacancy rate is a little higher than 10%. Um so, the mall is listed at about 1.3 million square ft. So, if we recalculate the mall um at a 60% vacancy and then we bring the numbers back together, it brings us closer to about a 23% uh vacancy rate overall for the city uh citywide. However, if we were to remove the mall's square footage in its entirety and then calculate that, uh, it would bring Newark's retail vacancy rate down to 3.5 citywide. And then, so you'll see that's kind of reflected in the average market rents, um, for Newark and our neighbors. Uh, we do high u command the higher um, rent per square foot per month. uh again at a 3% vacancy rate if you're extracting the mall. Um the rest of the city, our uh shopping centers, our

neighborhood centers do very well in terms of having very um low vacancy for the inline stores. Next, this is a chart of Newark's top 25 sales tax producers um as of Q3 and 2025 in alpha order. And so this information is typically two months um two quarters and a rears. Um but the top 25 doesn't change too much. Um and as you can see, Newark is fortunate to have a diversified mix um that includes both business to consumer businesses but also businessto business sales. Now I get to dive into the actions we took in 2025. Uh but of course this is always um collaborative effort with other team sta uh other city staff. Um and I would like to recognize our core ED team here tonight, our management analysts uh Nostaline and Morgan Peterson who are essential to um our economic development work. So, our business outreach and engagement, we love celebrating our new businesses. Um, and we appreciate it when city council is able to join us at grand opening events and ribbon cutting events. Um, and sometimes they sing. [laughter]

Oh, I didn't Wait, I stop there. I I didn't know this. They sing. They sing. They sing [laughter] for the Chavez Market grand opening. Mariachi. I see Mariachi. All right. All right.

It was fabulous. It was fabulous. Um although some of the businesses uh don't hold formal celebrations, we still make the effort to deliver welcome certificates and congratulatory certificates if they're celebrating an anniversary. Um so you'll see here in 2025 17 certificates were presented. Um and it's always heartwarming to go back to those b businesses and see that they've had the have the certificate on display. And then moving on into in terms of our business retention and attraction efforts, we regularly visit our local businesses large and small uh as a business retention tool. It's our way of checking in with them um with the business owners and the leadership team to understand how things are going, if there are challenges that we can assist with, and to learn if they're looking to expand and grow. And of course, if they are, we want to be sure that they stay here in the city. As I mentioned earlier, we hosted a hotel round table in partnership with the Newark Chamber and Newark PD. And it was a great opportunity to engage with the hotel years to hear that how they're doing if they're experiencing any challenges um obviously to share public safety information um and to discuss ways to capture the tourism for um from the Super Bowl and the FIFA sporting events coming. We also collaborate with other city staff to hold pre-application meetings um for potential new businesses or existing businesses [sighs] when they're looking to do major uh tenant improvement projects or construction projects. And these meetings are extremely beneficial in getting everyone on the same page and ensuring a more efficient and timely uh permitting process. Other business attraction actions uh including um include I attending ICS retail conferences in partnership with city council members uh at which we meet

with retailers, brokers and developers to generate interest in Newark and to attract quality retail and entertainment uses to the city. Uh, also I serve in a leadership capacity for ICSC Northern California and I've spoken on a number of panels which further elevates Newark's presence and brand awareness within the retail sector. The city was a bronze sponsor for the startup world cup eastbay regionals. Uh, the startup world cup is a VC competition and as a sponsor we had a booth and connected with entrepreneurs and startups. We published the city's first how to start a business in Newark guide and the guide is available in hard copy and online and now available in English and in Spanish. Also, we launched the shop newwork campaign in conjunction with the state of the city address. We also published the first flavors of Newark restaurant guide and we're actually on our um second edition since we have new restaurants. Um and the roulette wheel app that helps you decide where to eat. So, I hope you've all tried it. If not, go online and try it now. Um, for tomorrow, [laughter] uh, we hosted the Small Business Saturday event in partnership with the Newark Chamber and Newark Library. And we received really positive feedback from the participating businesses. Um, happy that we were helping to promote them, but we also received positive uh, feedback from the residents who were happy that the city was making an effort to support our local businesses. Then focusing on workforce development, the silly u the city celebrated its third manufacturing week that included arranging for employees uh from local companies to speak at Newark Memorial High School. And it was such a win-winwin um with our local talented um employees excited to share their experiences with students. The students really engaged and interested and then

teachers thankful uh for securing guest speakers. We also held our quarterly HR meetups which bring together HR professionals from newer companies to discuss a v a variety of um topics. And then in addition to the city's ongoing PPRR program, we held a series of business workshops and trainings in collaboration with the Eastpace Small Business Development Center, Bank, and New York PD. And so it was fraud prevention, uh, restaurant program, uh, and financial resilience. And then to raise Newark's brand awareness, uh, we strategically chose to sponsor a number of events to highlight our importance in the region and to showcase local companies, um, such as Triple Ring and Aspire Bakeries at the recent, uh, Alama County Mayor's Conference. And then our work also includes engaging with the community to be that bridge to the local businesses. And we have participated alongside with other city staff at various community community events throughout the year. And then here are more examples of our outreach and engagement efforts. I'd like to take a moment um to recognize Steven Cassidy who was appointed as the chamber CEO. uh he was a pleasure to work with and we are deeply saddened um by his recent p passing. Um as part of our work we did uh we continue to support the chamber of commerce and we were involved with the recruiting and onboarding of uh the new CEO uh Steven Cassidy um and then we continue to manage that contract um with the chamber. I mentioned the HR meetups and the roundt convening um with our hotel group. Um I'll me I'll talk a little bit more about the business buzz and then we continue to support the Oldtown Business Association and be that liaison um to

the businesses for with the upcoming streetscape project. And here I want to highlight the Newark Business Buzz as an effective tool in sharing news with our businesses and sharing news about businesses to all readers. We have over 1,700 subscribers and anyone is welcome to sign up to receive the newsletter and stay informed. Um, we initially published the newsletter on a quarterly basis, but it was so wellreceived and we have so much information to share uh that we now publish it monthly. And here we have Newark mentioned in news articles as well as Newark businesses being mentioned in Newwork um in news articles. So, our growing advanced manufacturing center sector was highlighted in a couple of news articles. Um, the East Bay EDA website as well as a KQED um article. Pyreams was featured in the Tri City Voice. Lucid had worldwide coverage uh of its breaking the Guinness World Record and then Pink Lab was featured for its women empowerment uh focus. And now um celebrating New Works milestones and achievements. Just going to start off here um just with some demographics and statistics about our community. Um population still a little over 47,000. Median age 37. Um number of households over 15,000. The average household income uh is 277,000. Bachelor degree or higher um almost 50% of our residents highly educated. To date, Newark has over 1,600 businesses ranging from um small home base um also to our larger corporations. And that information is based on our business license database. Newwork's top three largest industry employers are transportation and warehousing,

manufacturing, and professional scientific technical services. U our unemployment rate stays fairly steady and we are below the Alama County um average. [clears throat]

And here's some fun stats. Uh, niche.com releases annual rankings um and Newark does very well as you can see, especially um as one of the best suburbs for young professionals in California. Uh, based on our population size, niche.com categorizes us as a suburb. Uh, I believe populations of over a 100,000 um are considered cities. So, we'll always be known as a suburb um based on niche.com survey. And then I mentioned the city's ongoing PPRR program earlier and that is the plan, prepare, response and recovery program. Um a big shout out to Richard Martinez, the city's emergency response coordinator who partners with us to continue providing these important trainings to our local businesses and to their employees. And to date we have 97 businesses that have successfully completed the program and that um includes three modules um and the training of over 360 individuals now better equipped to respond in emergency situations. And many of these employees do live in the area. So we know that u they are learning to keep their business safe as well as their homes safe. and the program won an award of merit from the California Association of Local Economic Developers. Khaled, now uh looking forward at our work program for 2026. Similar to this presentation, the economic development impact report uh summarizes the division's work and accomplishments. Uh we are looking to finalize the industrial land studies. Um and as I mentioned uh we will bring those findings and the uh draft report back to city council uh as a study session in the coming months. We're looking to launch the business recognition program

and this right now is meant to be um an application process and we're still um kind of building that out and then working with the city's communications and public engagement manager to develop branding for economic development marketing pieces. Next, we have optimizing um economic development's uh social media presence. then launching a formal mayor and city manager business site visitation program where we you know uh draw out a schedule and then we are going to businesses on a regular basis. Uh again with the intent to kind of find out how they're doing u and then just make sure that um things are going well and that we keep them here. Uh continue to build on the success of the shop newer campaign uh campaign and then capitalizing on the upcoming sports tourism. So this can include partnering with other city departments on special events um and community groups and perhaps um you know a watch party for the community. A very important project um on our work program is the upcoming ULI tap and that's the urban land institute technical assistance panel. Um this study um will be focusing on the new park mall and the Ballentine commercial corridor area. And the purpose of the study is to get a fresh perspective and new ideas on how to reimagine the area to optimize uh the area's strengths based on current market conditions. U the TAP will be hosted here um on February 25th and 26th. It's a two-day exercise. Um on the 26th we will come to city council and the findings uh will be presented. And finally, here's a recap of some of the successful programs uh and initiatives that we've had in 2025 and that we look forward to continuing in 2026.

And with that, I'm happy to answer your questions. Thank you. No, thank you. Uh, remind me, Mr. Mun, how many people work in the economic development department? Must be 20, 30, 40 people. How many people are working in that department? It's two and a third, sir. Two and a [laughter] third. Two and one/3. Wow. Small but mighty. Small. Well, that's the Newark. Small but mighty. Thank you. What an outstanding report. Folks, is there anybody in the audience that would like to comment on this presentation? Seeing none, I'll start to my left. Uh, Council Member Little,

I just want to say I love what you do. I love your department. I love everything. I'm so big on businesses. Both my parents own small businesses. My dad owned a small brokerage firm. My mother had a staffing company. I grew up with small businesses. And I I can't even tell you guys, you guys are on fire. I'm so happy. You guys do great stuff. Um, I read your business buzz every single time. It is fantastic. I feel we need to start working with Colleen on social media and get poor people signed up on it cuz there's so much information in that small but mighty newsletter. Um so I just think if we can get more people to sign up for it cuz it's amazing. You guys are doing awesome. You're on fire. It's awesome. Um quick question. So how many new jobs are we forecasting with that Questa computer coming in? Uh what we've heard so far that they will be it will be in phases. Um I think at full buildout with all their lines going um they're anticipating up to 800.

Oh yes. Awesome. Um so one thing I would also like to and this may just be a personal thing for me is more communication on open houses and and ribbon cutings. I would love to go to some of them. Uh when I used to live in the San Ramon the other area they had really good Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce was on it. Always did ribbon cutings and I think I would really like to be more participant personally with me. So if you could make sure to get me information I'd like to have that. Oh, of course. Yes.

Um, the last but not least, the elephant in the room, the bowling alley. What is the update? Because I was thinking, I'd love to do it at the mall. I'd love to do it at Mi PBLO. You're the person to ask about this. A lot of people join my campaign. We're asking, we want a bowling alley. Bowling alley. I've done the research myself. We have 350,000 people between both alleys in Hayward and Milpas. Do we do we have any visions, any ideas, any update?

Oh, it's a great idea. Uh in fact at the last last year at ICSC which is the retail conference we did um have a actually a very good meeting with one of the larger bowling entertainment um concepts. Uh again they are still kind of floating around in the area. Um just you know to let you know that most retailers don't see city boundaries. They see us as um trade areas. So they are kind of just looking in the general area. you know, we pitched, you know, locations, the the mall, the Macy's, um, parcel in particular, but there are also other areas in the city. Um, and again, it's part of our followup to kind of keep at them. Yeah. And to tell them and show them that there is kind of that desire to have them here.

Yeah. I really appreciate that because the bowling alley, it's it's such an opportunity to make so much money for our city. We could be bringing in a lot of revenue. I think it'd be really good. Um, you know, just keep it going down the lane. We'll see what happens. Thank you. But [laughter] I'm bumped. [gasps and sighs] Uh, just a couple comments on Council Member Little's. Uh, I also support obviously a bowling alley, but I think it has to unfortunately be in conjunction with some other activity, whether it be restaurant use, other gaming uses. It has to be kind of a combination of of recreational uses. And and I love also the various newsletters that you send out. Are those available? Uh, are they bilingual? Are they available in multiple languages?

No, not at this point. But we can look into getting um it translated.

Yeah, I'm always a big believer because as you mentioned, Oldtown for example, I want to make sure that that portion of our community, the business owners in that community where English may not be one of their primary languages that we do our best to try to get that information out in in the language that best fit. So, something to think about. Okay, Council Gindall. Thank you very much for the um for the excellent presentation and for all the extraordinary work that your two and a third employees are are accomplishing. Um I um I did have a I have a question. The um the the new the new tenants in Morton uh Questa was one, but is the other the other a manufacturing location or a distribution?

Uh oh, we don't know yet for that. Yes. So, Quanta Computers um took the Meta food facility site and that is advanced manufacturing. However, uh when I was speaking to the brokers, there is actually high interest from other advanced manufacturers. Um um I think they're just getting on that kind of wave that's coming in. Um anything related with AI,

of course, and I'm glad to hear that. So, um it's it's important that it's important that we make things here in Newark and not just move things around. So, [laughter] um, so I and so, so congratulations on on helping Questa to make to make their to to land here. So, appreciate that. Um, the, um, you know, the the mall area that and that's the whole area. That's the Macy's parcel, that's the that's the Brookfield owned parcel, that's the the um Newark Plaza. That that that whole area is is in crisis. Um, and we have to we have to acknowledge that there's a serious problem there and we're we're addressing that and with the with the with the um TAP panel to to help address it. But um and um I'm going to but I I just want to be clear that that that at least I view this as a very serious crisis to for our community. the the loss in the loss in revenue and employment for our community because of these derelict owners because they have not been working hard to bring to bring jobs in into our area um is is is very problematic and I think we have to be um prepared and as we're going into a you know as we're going into the tap panel um and going into a budget cycle I think we have to be prepared to think outside of the box to think about things like um a fee fee on vacancy that when when the property owners are not um adequately marketing their locations a fee on and then also considering something like a a retail incubator process where the city would actually lease or buy properties and then do an incubator process. So I think we in terms of implementing what the tap comes up with in that area, um I think we have to I I I think that we need to be thinking really outside of the box and

be on the cutting edge of doing this of of doing something to attract businesses like a bowling alley um and and and other dynamic uses. Um, I know I know you're doing what you can, but we we as the council have to give you the tools that that it takes in terms of the staffing that you need and the and the legislation that you need to be able to to be able to make a difference here because it it is it is really a crisis and it's and it's it's a bit frankly it's an embarrassment in the time that the mall has been floundering. others other other locations like conquered veranda have started from a plan to to to um to being completed and sales tax rolling into that community. Um and the difference between here and there is our market is better but their their property owner was actually playing and actually part of the part of the situation. So we need to find a way to make move that. So I I just wanted to say that we and I think I think we'll be talking more at the tap about that. But it's very important to me to see to see that we are thinking outside of the box and in terms of implementing what what the experts tell us to do. So so um in addition to in addition to that I um I just want to say I really appreciate all the efforts you're doing. I appreciate that I've had the opportunity to go with you on to retail to retail attraction conferences and um I hope to be able to continue to do that. I hope I hope some of the colleagues will will join me in that as well. So that that's that's all the comments I have at this point. Thank you.

Thank you,

Council Member Grenal. I absolutely agree with you. Uh the mall is in crisis. Uh I've talked to the mall owners on a couple of occasions. Uh, I've certainly have encouraged them because they don't have a vision for what they want to do there. You know, I've asked them, you know, quite frankly, it's time for you to consider selling the mall. And I know if I didn't mention it previously, they used to own Southland Mall and they sold Southland Mall. I know we've heard that there's interest in uh folks to buy New Park Mall. Hopefully that happens sooner than later. Um because uh your statistic that indicated that if you subtract New Park Mall from our retail vacancy were at 3.5%. Think of how that really will impact other retail owners and folks that want to come and open up retail businesses here in Newark. Uh that's going to create that uh economic incentive for folks to want to do that. Um, but when they drive by, as the council member mentioned, and they see a vacant mall as they come into our city, they may already draw conclusions based on the retail market here that is really not uh um substantiated by the data that you've provided. So to council member Gindoll's comments, anything we the council can do, uh fees, whatever the ca to motivate um vacant commercial property owners to incentivize them to to become more active u because they are part of our community. I'm not going to say say that they're not. They're part of the community, but they're inactivity uh does hurt our community. And I mean I I was still here. you were here when we came up with the new park mall vision. U and it was I was so excited about it and to see that that just simply fell by the wayside. Um and I've told the Brookfield property will come with another vision. You know, we're open for business here

in Newark. It there's no business that we're not going to be willing to sit down and have a conversation with if they want to do business in Newark. uh we will tailor it to meet um you know zoning requirements or whatever the case may be, but we're open for business and we want businesses to come here and uh so maybe between now and when we do the tap maybe they'll sell the mall and that would be just great news um for the community because obviously anybody that buys that property will come in with a vision and we don't have that currently. We'll have it hopefully down the road. Council member Cansio.

Yes. Thank you so much for your thorough presentation. In thinking about jobs in Newark, especially biomed and biotech, it's really important that we continue to help our community also understand that we're not just a small town, but we're a small town with great minds and innovative or innovative technology. Um, and so I'm really glad that people were also able to go to Newark Memorial High School as guest speakers, especially for the community youth um, to see and to aspire to continue on with the legacy to continue with Newark. You know, I also wanted to thank you for always putting a positive spin on things. Um, and thinking actually a little bit about uh although our 49ers got eliminated uh [laughter] in the division round divisional round of the playoffs last week, I do want to say there is a silver lining that you did mention uh for Newark, which is that we can expect and hope for an uptick regarding uh the reservations at the hotels um regardless of who's in the Super Bowl because it's at the Levi Stadium which is close by and so I'm always in support uh of money coming into Newark and so thank you so much as well for promoting to everyone in the community to continue to shop Newark. Thank you.

Thank you Council Member Jorgens or Vice Mayor Jorgens. Yes. Uh it's terrific presentation. Very well done. Thank you. Thank you.

Really impressed with the uh presentation. But what what I love about the presentation is that you go above and beyond. Your leadership on ICSC simply says, you know, I work for the city of New York, but I have a greater role and responsibility in terms of leadership in these other areas and other capacities. So, thank you for that because your being a member of that uh organization highlights, you know, the the real quality of work that we do in the city of Newark and uh my only goal is that you do not be submitting resumes to other cities and this and that. I mean, we're really pleased to have you. When I think of two and oneird employees and Nas, thank you Nas for what you do. Morgan, thank you for what you do. Um I've been out with you folks. Um, we the council support you and as the uh council member Little mentioned, anytime there's uh [clears throat] ribbon cutings, certificates of appreciation, whatever they are, uh certainly let the council know, uh we're happy to be there with you side by side.

Thank you.

As you as you reach out to businesses on a periodic basis, uh are you reaching out to owners of vacant retail properties? And one of always comes to mind other than the mall is the Mi PBLO. U do we reach out to those owners to try to sit down with them and get an understanding as to what's your vision because your vacancy at this location is of no benefit to our community and you and I would tell them you have a responsibility to this community as a property owner to do what you can to bring business and jobs to our community and you're failing in that regard. So tell me what is your goal and your plan for not you them their their property. Do you have those conversations with these vacant retail property owners that have allowed their businesses or properties to be vacant for for no particular reason?

We do reach out on a regular basis um and in fact um I also ask um broker colleagues to reach out uh because sometimes they're a little bit more open to just working with brokers or their brokers working with brokers. Uh but in some instances there is some traction. Uh for example, you know, I've established a really good relationship with the owners of the former Orley site and so we are trying to help them u get that retented. Uh the former MBO site is a little bit more challenging. Um my understanding is you you know uh who the the family that owns it the responsibility of managing it has kind of moved around. Um, and so it's just kind of trying to hit a moving target. But again, I do enlist the assistance of the brokers that I know to reach out and try to get a feel for um, what these property owners are thinking.

And again, I think anything we can do to help you in that regard, whether it be sit down with those owners and talk to them about the importance of really participating and helping us develop that, we're happy to participate in that area. Uh my last question is uh if if you can provide an update on the Macy's property. I know that we had some interest in that property. It's been sold. Uh can you give the council an update as to where that development opportunity lies?

Sure. So the property um was sold. Macy's sold the property at the end of 2024. Um and since then we've been working very staff has worked very closely with the new u owners. It is Charles company based out of Southern California. They are a successful developer. Uh they have turned around a number of junior box kind of um sites in Southern California. I think one successful one um recently was in uh Long Beach. It was a Sears that they purchased uh and they were able to reten it with a sports basement. And so we've been working closely with them. I think at this point if you recall the Macy's has three levels. uh they are trying to tricate the property to bring in either three or more uh tenants. Uh so again we have met with them at ICC conferences. I continue to reach out to them um in regards to their plans or their teniting plans. Uh so there has been some traction uh with a possible ground floor tenant. Um so we're still working through that. Don't I don't want to jeopardize kind of any deals that are in the works, but um this ownership has been very um excited to be here in Newark. Um and they've been working closely with staff.

Good. Keep up the good work. And uh again, Mr. Bon, uh you've you've demonstrated time and time again, you bring outstanding staff to the city organization, folks that we're really proud to work with. And uh you you hear from my colleagues, you have the support of this council. So, uh continue to do the good work that you do. And if there's things that we can do to assist you, certainly let us know. I actually have one more question for you if that's okay. Um, so you know, I work in the restaurant industry. I work a lot with hotels and stuff and I bump into people all the time. Oh, we're looking for a new restaurant. We're looking for a new site. If I get their contact information, do you want me to email you and then you reach out to her? Okay. So, do you want me to do an email introduction between you and me or just send the information and then the who, what, where, what would you like?

No preference for my end. Whatever your pleasure is. Okay. Thank you. I think the more information you send to the city manager in terms of the contact, how you made contact with them, who they are, I think any and all that that information is going to be important for them to know so that uh it helps Angela when you reach out to them to kind of understand, you know, where where are they at, what's their mindset uh as as we look to work with them. That warm handshake is always appreciated. Thank you. Uh folks, this was just anformational item. Um we look forward to the annual reports in this regard and I think as uh Miss mentioned you'll be coming back with more of a comprehensive focus on the industrial lands from what I understand. Correct. Perfect.

The next item is the acceptance of the annual comprehensive financial report ACFR for the period ending June 30, 2025. Mr. Bonu.

Yes. Good evening your honor, members of the council. Item F4 um is the approval of the annual comprehensive financial report, otherwise known as ACER for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 2025. Uh this item is typically reviewed by the city council on the consent calendar. However, given the fact that this is positive news and we still have a relatively new council, we thought it would be appropriate and beneficial to give a presentation on the non-consent calendar. To provide some uh brief background and context, the act provides an independent audited snapshot of the city's financial condition. It also plays an important role in maintaining the city's double A plus credit rating, the second highest credit rating on the municipal rating scale. Most importantly, it demonstrates to our community that the city is committed to fiscal transparency and sound budget and reserves planning. Tonight's presentation includes a highle overview of the city's fund balance of approximately 27.9 million, showing how reserves are structured and confirming that general fund reserves meet council adopted policy targets. Uh, finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the leadership from the city council and our conservative approach to budgeting and fiscal planning from our finance staff. This has undoubtedly positioned the city to secure financial success well into the future, and I sincerely thank everyone for their diligent efforts. Additionally, uh I'm just going to take a quick victory lap for our staff. Um they won't brag so much uh about their work, but I will. Um for several years, uh the city has received the government finance officers association, GFOA, uh their certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting. Uh this is the highest form of recognition in the field of government accounting. The city has received this award for at least the past 10 years. uh the act for that we are presenting for tonight which is fiscal year 2025 uh once the council approves it we will submit it to GFOA for their review and consideration and hopefully uh no

pressure uh but we will u receive the award later this year potentially no pressure again uh with that in mind I'll pass it over to senior accountant Michelle Villainova she has a relatively brief staff report this evening

thank you good evening your honor members of the council my name is Michelle Villanoeva senior accountant Tonight I am presenting the audited annual comprehensive financial report also referred to as ACER for the fiscal year ending June 30th 2025 for clarification of the city's fiscal year. It runs from July 1st through June 30th each year. The acter is a set of financial statements comprising of all financial activity of the city and provides information on the city's year end financial condition and operational results for fiscal year 2025. Here is the agenda for tonight's presentation in which I will explain the fiscal year 2025 audited results. Explain why the ACA results matter. I will let you know the fiscal year 2025 financial results and fund balance. Talk about the C certificate of achievement and give the staff recommendation. The audited results. Following the close of each fiscal year, the s the city's external auditors, LSL, conduct an audit of the city's financial records. The objective of the financial reporting is accountability and transparency. The goal of the goal of the audit is to provide users with a reasonable assurance from an independent source that the information presented in the ACTER is reliable and free from material misstatements. LSL has issued an unmodified clean audit opinion whereas a modified opinion indicates significant errors. This unmodified opinion indicates that the financial statements represent

fairly in all material aspects the financial position of the city in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States and is in compliance with the pronouncements issued by the government accounting standards board. Why ACT for results matter? It confirms trust in the numbers. The independent audit helps to ensure the financial statements have been reviewed and conform with government accounting standards. It informs budget sustainability by determining um the ACT helps determine budget sustainability by providing detailed information on the government's financial health. It reinforces the reserve policy by allowing us to maintain and report on financial reserves in accordance with the city's reserve policy. It supports capital and debt decisions by strengthening the credit profile and helps to support cash versus debt strategies. And it sets a framework for future decisions where financial results can be used to review financial trends which help with future budget planning. We began fiscal year 2025 with a fund balance of 182.5 million. Total governmental fund revenues were 114.7 million. expenditures were 89.7 million and other financing source added point4 million. This resulted in an increase of 25.4 million to the fund balance closing the fiscal year with a total fund balance of 279 207.9 million.

So this slide shows the composition of the city's fund balance which make up the 207.9 million as shown on the previous slide. The fund balance is categorized as non-spendable, restricted, committed, assigned and unassigned. The restricted fund balance of 112 million largely consists of impact fees which is approximately 7878 million, the PAR section 115 pension trust and various gas tax and street construction funds. The assigned fund balance of 47.4 4 million includes measure GG equipment replacement and the maintenance reserve and the assign unassigned fund balance totals approximately 43.8 million although 12.2 million is designated as emergency reserves and 11.5 million as fiscal and certainty reserves. The amounts in the reserves meet the targets specified in the council approved fund balance and reserve policy. These reserves position the city to respond to economic uncertainty, emergencies, and future fiscal challenges while supporting long-term financial stability. The city received a certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting for its ACER for the fiscal year ending 2024 from the government finance officers association. This prestigious award recognizes the city's commitment to transparency, accountability, and highquality financial reporting. It confirms that the acter complies with rigorous standards including generally

accepted accounting principles and legal requirements. This award enhances the city's credit profile as bond rating agencies and financial institutions view it as evidence of sound physical management resulting in better better borrowing terms, lower interest rates, and taxpayer savings. To qualify, a government must produce a well organized, compliant, and easily readable report. As the highest honor in government accounting, the certificate is valid for one year. Staff is confident the fiscal year 2025 ACER will again meet these standards, further reinforcing Newark's reputation for financial excellence. Staff recommends the city council receive and file the fiscal year 2025 annual [clears throat] comprehensive financial report. And this concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much, Michelle. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to speak to this item? Miss Lee is not going to run up to the podium with like all these certificates in hand. you know, she's looking for bigger office space, you know, to put all these awards that she continues to receive year after year after year. It's like I don't want anyone to think that this is not an important item. It is because you hit the nail on the head. The interest rates that we receive for either refinancing or new uh debt is is a cost savings to our community because we've demonstrated that we manage our finances. if you don't have a double A rating or something of that nature, you're going to pay more, which then takes away your ability to provide services in other areas. So, you know, we selfishly hang on to this double A rating and uh I would anticipate uh under your leadership, Mr. Benoon and Miss Lee, your leadership with this department that we will continue to achieve um this this rating. I'll start down to my left if there's any comments. Mr. Gallal. Council member Gandalf.

Yes, Miss [clears throat] Voeva, thank you very much for the presentation. It was was excellent and informative. Um I my only my only comment is to the is to the city manager and um the I I think having this on on an open agenda is is something that we should be doing. I think it's worth highlighting. Um and um so that's that's just that's one council member's opinion. So, and so thank you for bringing this forward in open session. Thank you, Council Little.

It's just awesome. Thank you so much. I love numbers completely. So, I appreciate the work you guys do and it's it's a really big deal because I think one big part of it is just keeping the emergency reserve because someone when something happens, it's good to have something back up. So, thank you so much, Dan. This any comments? Vice Mayor Jorgens? Yeah, I want to thank you for the presentation. Always good to hear good news and like to echo my colleagueu's comment that I I would like to continue to see this on uh the uh regular agenda calendar. Yes. Yes. Council member Contagio,

thank you for your presentation. It's also really a great idea not only to have it continued to be on on calendar but also to have open communication regarding the money from the different measures um that the voters also pass. I appreciate that you also included the interest rates and accountability for the accounting. So, thank you. Thank you. And I share my colleagues comments. Uh Mr. M. I think anytime we can bring good news to the community, we we should highlight it and uh and uh this is good news. So, thank you for the hard work that you folks do in the finance department. You're you're greatly appreciated and I know you work hard to continue the um these achievements and we we see the effort. So, thank you.

Thank you so much. It is. an action item. So, I need a motion and a second. I would like to motion second. Okay. Mo motion made by Council Member Little, seconded by Council Canio. Please vote. And that passes unanimously. Great. Thank you. We are now at city manager updates. Mr. Benoon.

Yes. Good evening, your honor, members of the council. Two updates for you this evening. Uh the first is that next week uh the city of Newark will be hosting our Newark Resource Center ribbon cutting event. If you go to the next slide, please. Uh this is on Thursday, January 29th from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. over at Ash Street Park. Uh this is a free event. It's open to the public. Uh we are celebrating the completion of construction of the new uh Newark Resource Center. Uh and this is a new community hub designed to connect residents with essential services and local organizations. If you could go to the next slide, please. Um, we do have some limited parking. Uh, the public is invited to park alongside Enterprise Drive, uh, at the, uh, newly redone parking lot at the Newark Senior Center. Uh, and as well as third and final at the service center over on Filbert Street. So that again, that is on Thursday, January 29th from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Uh we anticipate uh ceremonial ribbon cutting uh led by Mayor Hannon and Assembly Member Lee, Senator Wahab, and Supervisor Marquez will also be in attendance uh that afternoon. And the second announcement, the first edition of the new bi-weekly newsletter is going out tomorrow, Friday, January 23rd. Um, this is a bi-weekly newsletter that will help us stay connected with our community and the community can learn all about what is happening in the city of Newark and what we have to offer. Uh, the public is encouraged and invited to sign up. Uh, the website is listed there at the bottom. And at this point, uh, despite the fact we do not have our first edition out yet, we already have 200 plus subscribers. So, thank you, Miss Latir, for your efforts. That concludes city manager updates this evening. Thank you, your honor. I love the uh communication efforts that are going on in the city. Um and the more communication we do and provide to our community is certainly ideal. So let's go to council comments. I'll start to my right. Council

Katansio.

Yes. Thank you. Yesterday I did attend the AVA meeting uh where I am the Newark representative. I wanted to let the community know that we did recently expand services of Ava to Stockton and Lanthrop and so therefore now Ava does have over 2 million um people that they serve. Additionally, uh I would like to have a save the date announcement. Again, I'm going to be announcing a free event that will take place for Lunar New Year that I'm partnering with Senator Aisha Wahhab and Assessor Fong Law. I've also heard from Assembly Member Alex Lee that he will be in attendance as well. It's from 12:00 to 3:00 September 28 at the Newark Library and there will be a line dance and performances, cultural stations, and activities for families. Thank you,

council member. Did you did you say September 28th? Oh, I'm sorry. Did I I apologize. I meant to say February 28th because September already happened, so it's gonna [laughter] it's going to be in our near future. Thank you. Thank you for that. Uh, Vice Mayor Jorgens.

Yeah, thank you. Um, so some more Newark history to celebrate, you know, our 150th uh year since the founding of our town. So, there's a couple of stories about where the name Newark came from. So one possibility is it came from guy by the name of Jay Bar Robertson who oversaw an unsuccessful attempt in the 1870s to develop the area. He was from Scotland named it Newark after Newark Castle in Scotland. The other story comes from uh the 1875 efforts uh to uh build a town here by EB Parin. Um he would have named it after his New Jersey uh roots, the city there. So it's unclear. So name Newark came from one of those. But there were some other ideas floated around. Um, one of those, uh, in 1872, uh, what as referred to by J. Ross Brown, who was trying to develop it at the time, as either Crawvo or Caribou, um, in the 1950s when there was attempts to incorporate uh, Washington Township altogether. Um, some of the proposed names for that larger city that Newark would have been a part of included Garden City, uh, Zenith, Dumbartan, and Peralta. You know, personally, I'm really glad we stuck with Newark.

Um, yeah, I want you on my trivia team, by the way. Um, so I want to let you guys know everything is moving forward with the Tri-Citting Veterans Mixer. After you guys go to the Newark Research Center event from 3:00 to 5:00, you just hop over to the O Sullivans. We're going to be celebrating the Tri City uh veterans mixer. The goal is to connect all the veterans in the area. We definitely want to connect the Vietnam veterans, the Korean veterans, but also Gulf and Afghan and Iraq. No one's ever done anything for them. So, the goal is to kind of connect them, get them to all meet and stuff like that. The VA will be there and also the VSO will be there. Uh, and also it is confirmed the third annual Mission Peak Yo-Yo Day. I'm hosting it again this year. Um, we are going to be having it the like I mentioned to you, the spin doctors will be coming out. It's going to be uh on February 28th. So, first you go to the Lunar New Year with Julie, then you come over to the First Presbyterian Church with your yo-yos and come learn how to yo-yo. So, that's moving forward. And the third event I'm working on for the third month of the year is the Tri City Teenage Career Fair. I am super excited to tell you guys about this. I partnered with Aloney College and it's for all teenagers. It is for young individuals. In the morning, we're going to have resume writing, how to do a job interview, how not to take your cell phone to the job. Don't be take your mom to the job interview. I know it's happened before. Um especially with Wreck, I can tell you they probably have stories. Um and so, uh and then in the afternoon, we're going to have a job fair for people. So, if you know of any businesses that are looking for entry level employees, minimum effort employees, we're definitely going to be working with teenage teenagers and putting it together. This is being put together by Aloney College, myself and the Tri City Career Center located at Aloney College in Newark. That's all I'm working on for now.

And I appreciate those initiatives. Uh just two suggestions on the uh fair for the for the young folks is uh I would certainly encourage you if you hadn't thought about it already is maybe to u attend one of the Newark Unified School District meetings

and advise the board that this is something that would certainly be of benefit to the students uh here in the New York area. And I know they send out, I believe, a weekly newsletter to parents uh in the district if I'm not mistaken. And if they if they send out some type of a newsletter, you might want to prepare a paragraph uh in that newsletter and ask that be incorporated um so that information gets out even to the broader community and certainly wouldn't hesitate, as you know, to have a portion of that in Espanol as well. The more we reach out to the community, the better. Council Grenal.

Yes. I believe it's an [clears throat] e newsletter now, Mr. Mayor. So, okay, that's easier. Um the um uh I'm going to be holding a town hall meeting on next Monday, January 26, 6:30 p.m. Um tamali's and talk. So people can stop by, have some tamali and um and um talk about whatever whatever is important, how we can make Newark better. So that that's what I have going on. Where's it going to be at? Um thank you, council member. Um it's at the library. Love 6:30. [laughter]

There will be a various types of tamales. There'll be tortilla factory tamales in [laughter] fact because they're excellent. Shop Newark. Ladies and gentlemen, I had the opportunity to participate in point in time count this morning. Uh was up at 4:30 this morning. And uh there's a number of folks Mr. Bon I want to thank. First of all, I want to thank folks from the recreation department that were out there at that same hour to do that count. And uh you know, as you come across homeless in the community, you know, these are still citizens and you know, of our community and uh they were all very respectful. Um Barry Tammani deserves a great deal of credit for the work he does in the community to help those that are homeless to receive services and know that uh the community uh cares about them and uh a lot of decent people out there that are struggling with a variety of issues. I talked to folks that clearly had some mental health issues and drug addictions and things of that nature and I know that they struggle every day and uh and they all indicated to me that they're, you know, they're working, you know, to to get better and uh so let's as we in this community see folks that we know may be homeless or are homeless and I know that they do create some impacts on the quality of our community and our police department does a great job of reaching out and see what services we can provide to minimize and mitigate those impacts. But again, these are human beings. Um they deserve um whatever love and support we can provide to them to know that they're valued in this community. So big thanks to Barry Tammani and his organization

for the work that they do. Also, God, I hate to say this, our neighboring city is celebrating their 70th birthday tomorrow uh from 5:00. It'll be at the event center in Fremont. Uh I'm going to attend. Certainly, you're we're all encouraged to attend. May and maybe just we sit in the back of the room and say, you know what, thank God. Thank God we made the decisions that we made. [laughter] I say that all we made it.

I say that with all due respect to my friends in Fremont. Uh it's a good community. We have a good relationship with uh both Fremont and Union City because we recognize as the tri city area in the south county area. we don't always get the recognition from the county that I think we believe we deserve in that capacity. So, uh I'll be attending that event. Certainly, if you're in available, I certainly want to encourage you to attend that event as well. And um with that being said, again, big thanks to Bill Fitz for his service to our community. 40 years. He comes up in two more years. We'll see. We'll see. You know, Negi's at 42 and a half, I think. You know, he's prideful of that. Uh we'll see if Bill gets that appointment uh in two years. But uh big thanks to Bill, big thanks to Debbie um Rodriguez, and big thanks to the community for being patient tonight. We had a long agenda, Mr. Benoon. We're hoping to get back to some sense of kind of the normal city council meetings here in Newark in the near future, and uh I will put that responsibility on your shoulders. So with that being said, have a nice evening. We are adjourned. You know, in 1956