City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to go ahead and

Recording in progress. I'm going to go and call the Newark City Council meeting to order for March the 12th. Ask you to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance 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. The proclamation we are going to issue is to the American Red Cross for the month 2026. Is anybody here from the American Red Cross?

YES, SIR. [applause] [applause]

DID YOU GIVE BLOOD TODAY? I DID I DID NOT GIVE BLOOD TODAY. OKAY. Come on over here, my friend. Let me have a show of folks in the audience who all has given blood to the American Red Cross? Thank you very much. Every donation saves lives, and it's such an easy gift to give. And at the end of the gift giving process, you have a selection of Chips Ahoy, crackers, juices, water, orange juice. I mean, and you can have as much as you want. So, you can take a, you know, eat a package there, eat a package on the way home, you know, it's it's all it's all good. And I've given for years. I gave back when I was in college, when, you know, we college kids were so easy. They'd just pull in. All the college kids were out there to to give blood, and uh it really is the gift of life. It takes half hour? Very quick. Yeah, about 25 minutes. Yeah. I'm Irish. I can generally get my blood in about 5 to 6 minutes. You know, something that we Irish do that kind of liquefies it a little bit better. But, I'm really proud to recognize the American Red Cross, not only for what they do in terms of collecting blood and donating blood and plasma to those that are in need, but anytime we have a disaster, right, anywhere in the United States, the American Red Cross is there to help folks. So, we really appreciate them for their many, many years of service, not just to our community, but to the nation. Whereas March is American Red Cross Month, when we honor our neighbors who make it a humanitarian mission possible in Newark. Every day, their acts of kindness change lives, bringing relief, comfort, and hope when help cannot wait. The compassionate spirit runs deep in our community, just as it has for 145

years. Whereas today, volunteers collect blood and plasma from donors and supports light and the support lights the way during emergencies, whether it's delivering shelter, food, comfort after disasters, providing safe, life-saving blood supply for patients facing conditions like cancer treatments, childhood complications, traumatic injuries, assisting military members, veterans, and their families with 24/7 global support, or empowering individuals with skills like first aid and CPR that saves lives. Whereas with 2,223 volunteers just in Alameda County, the American Red Cross assisted or responded to 141 disasters, assisting 7 286 families. And through their Sound the Alarm program, the American Red Cross installed 1,104 smoke alarms, making 100 homes safer. Whereas the American Alameda County residents donated 33,104 units of life-saving blood, hosted 1,165 blood drives, trained 18,914 citizens to first aid, CPR, AED, and aquatics, and provided 323 case services to military members and their families, and provided humanitarian both locally and internationally. Whereas these collaboration efforts are a powerful reminder that the strength of our community lies in our shared commitment to one another. As we thank Red Cross this month, let us celebrate our local heroes and resolve to continue lifting each other up so that no one faces an emergency alone. Therefore, I, Michael Hannon, on behalf of my Newark City Council, recognize

this as American Red Cross Month 2026 in Newark, and urge all citizens to reach out and support this humanitarian mission. How many of you are going to donate blood in the next 90 days? I was hoping to see all the hands raised, but that's okay. You know, but thank you, and I award this to you and give you the opportunity to say a few words, my friend. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Great catch. I'll take that. [laughter]

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and City Council. My name is Ian Servin. I've been a Red Cross volunteer since 2017 in three different states. It is a great honor to be here today and to accept this proclamation. Each March, like you've just heard, we celebrate the people who make our mission possible. My fellow volunteers, folks just like yourselves who've donated blood, community partners, supporters, everyone involved is an everyday hero, and you help deliver comfort, care, and hope to individuals and families on some of their toughest days. This tradition with the Red Cross began almost 80 years ago, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the first National Red Cross Month proclamation. Every US president since has continued this recognition of humanitarian service and volunteerism across the country. The Red Cross is not only supported by volunteers and contributors, but also by generous financial contributors and blood donors. About 90% of our workforce is made up of volunteers. Neighbors helping neighbors, folks who are always eager to welcome new volunteers in, and people who want to make a difference. When emergencies strike and help can't wait, Red Crossers step forward to provide immediate safety, shelter, and emotional support and recovery assistance. And this isn't just limited to large-scale disasters. In fact, Red Cross volunteers respond to an emergency every 8 minutes. Most of these are home fires. At the same time, large-scale disasters are increasing in frequency and complexity, including extreme storms, wildfires, and floods. Our volunteers play a critical role in these responses to deliver relief and comfort at a scale very few other organizations can. So, with that, on behalf of the American Red Cross, thank you again for this proclamation and for your continued

support. We are so grateful for our partnership with the city of Newark, and we work together to build safer, better prepared [snorts] communities. Thank you. [applause] [applause]

One more piece of trivia regarding donated blood. For those of you that are O negative, which I am, we O negative are so generous, we can give our blood to anybody. Anybody can get O negative, but you know what? We can only get blood from O negative. So, that's just kind of the unselfishness that we O negative people continue to provide to our friends and neighbors. So, thank you to the American Red Cross. Your efforts are greatly appreciated. The next commendation is one that I'm really, really proud of. Um it's it's always an honor to recognize youth in our community, and this was really an incredible opportunity that we have to share with you tonight. I would like to ask the following people to come up and join me. Brandon Yu Egda, the senior lifeguard, uh Yesenia Sandoval, James Isaac Taylor, and Shauna McEvoy. If you could all come up AND JOIN ME.

[applause] [applause]

THIS CITY COUNCIL IS GOING TO COMMEND these four individuals for the following. [snorts]

Uh the city of Newark is committed to ensuring the safety, well-being, and quality of life of all of our residents and visitors. Whereas the dedicated staff members of the Newark uh City of Newark consistently demonstrate professionalism, preparedness, and a steadfast commitment to public service. Whereas on a recent occasion at the George M. Silliman Activity and Family Aquatic Center, staff members observed a woman in distress in the swimming [clears throat] pool and immediately recognized the seriousness of the situation. Whereas drawing upon their training, vigilance, and sound judgment, staff responded swiftly, implementing established safety protocols, rendering assistance, and ensuring that emergency preparedness and procedures were properly followed. Whereas their prompt and decisive actions were instrumental in safeguarding the individual's well-being, and exemplified the highest standards of public service. Whereas the incident reflects the value of ongoing training, teamwork, and preparedness, as well as the dedication of city employees to act with courage and competence in immediate emergency situations. Now, therefore, I Michael Hannon, on behalf of my Newark City Council, proudly recognize Brandon Yu uh Yu Egda, senior lifeguard, Yesenia Sandoval, senior customer service representative, James Isaac Taylor, lifeguard, and Shauna McEvoy, lifeguard, for their exemplary response, professionalism, and commitment to protecting the health and safety of our community. Their actions serve serves as a model of excellence and embody the spirit of service that strengthens and protects the City of Newark. We are so proud of these individuals, and it is with great honor that I present each one of them with a commendation.

[applause]

All right. Good evening, Mayor Hannon, members of the council, City Manager Benoun, Assistant City Manager Havorka, and our Newark community. It's with great honor and gratitude that we stand before you today to receive this commendation. My name is Brandon Yu Egda, and I'm a senior lifeguard with the Recreation and Community Services Department. While this is our daily job and what we are trained for, we would like to thank the council and everyone on the city's executive team for inviting us to be here tonight and recognizing the hard work we do. We'd like to also give a special shout-out to Recreation Supervisor Kevin DeFranco and Recreation Coordinator Ryan Storms for always supporting our team and providing us with the tools and training to be successful in what we do. Without that, we would not be where we are today without their support. For those of you who don't know, we have a pivotal role in keeping our community safe. The definition of lifeguard is simple. It is to guard and protect lives. We are first responders, and we have the duty to act when you when needed and when situations arise, not just outside the water, but out but inside, too. This is achieved by us going through regular in-service training sessions for our staff, as well as certifying certifying our staff through American Red Cross in lifeguarding, CPR, first aid, AED, water safety instructor, and Title 22, which is advanced first aid for public safety personnel. We also educate our community through water safety topics, through American Red Cross swim lessons, and water safety presentations. With every person that walks through our doors, we want them to know that our community can feel safe and welcome, and we are always dedicated to serving our community. On behalf of my team, we are so proud of the amount of hours of hard training our team has put in, and situations like this are a second nature for us now. While we hope emergencies don't happen, every second counts when one does happen, and they can happen to anyone and everyone at any time when you least expect it, and it's again our job to act at once. Once again, we are super grateful to be here this evening, and we know we have our community's continued support. THANK YOU.

[applause]

I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY OF YOU'VE BEEN OVER TO THE SILLIMAN CENTER, as I've taken my grandkids over there, and I know a number of us take our children and grandchildren over there. But if you're over there on a Saturday when there's hundreds of people in those pools, and to watch the professionalism and the focus of the lifeguards as I've had the opportunity to do, uh these are true professionals who are really learning at a young age [sighs]

what professionalism is all about, what customer service is all about, and more importantly, how can I give back to my community as they do week in and week out. So, I just want you to know how proud we are of your efforts, and know that the job that you do every day, though you may not save lives every day, there's always that potential, and the fact that you're ready to jump in there and help somebody, that's what uh Newark's all about, and we appreciate you for all the work that you do. So, thank you. [applause]

1 2 3 and And then look at the other Can we Bobby and the other [laughter] lifeguards that are here? Oh, yeah. Other lifeguards? Yes. You're going to have to squeeze. We'll squeeze. Take a knee. All right. Okay. 1 2 3 1 2 3. Okay, I did just want to hold it. Ew. Amazing. Thank you, YOU ARE

[applause] [cheering] [applause]

CONGRATULATIONS AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HUH? I'm okay. We'll stand here. Yes. We're going to stand here. I was going to have us go down there while he does the recognition of the employees, but I figured that's a 20-minute stand. We're going to just go and stand here. We'll just go and stand here. Otherwise, they're going to be standing here for 20 minutes. All right. All right. David, we'll we'll go down there. Yeah. That's okay. Come on, guys. All right. To the first slide. Okay. All right.

[gasps]

Good evening, Your Honor, members of the council, members of the public who are watching this meeting this evening. My name is David Benoun. I'm the city manager for the City of Newark, and it's my honor and pleasure to share with the public, and of course the council, all of the awards and recognitions that city staff received this past year. Uh every year our city staff is considered for various awards that are issued by government agencies, regional agencies, um as well as professional organizations. And for the past few years, we've really been stacking up a considerable amount of uh of awards, and we thought we would take a few minutes just to share with the community our success uh this past year. And hopefully this turns into an annual presentation where the start of every year we recognize all the city employees for their contributions and their awards and success. So, I'm just going to go by department. I'm going to start with our Alameda County Fire Department. Uh our own Alameda County Fire Chief, Willie McDonald, received an award from the Scouting America Golden Gate Area Council, the Good Scout Award. And this is a really is a high-profile award. It involves a big dinner with a lot of dignitaries, and he was acknowledged for his public service, his dedication to youth in the community. It honors his leadership, integrity, and contributions to the county. If you go to these types of awards, there really are big names who receive those awards. So, it was a a tremendous award that and honor that he received. Um we'll also go over to our Community Development Department. So, I would ask that members of the Community Development Department to come on up. Mr. Turner, Ms. Lopez,

[applause]

MS. SWAY. I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE ASKED YOU TO BRING THE AWARDS cuz and the timing is a little apropos. We have the Oscars Sunday night. So, I am not as funny as the host. He's a Conan this year? I'm not sure. So, this department received two awards. By the way, this is our Community Development Director, Mr. Steven Turner, Senior Planner, Carmelissa Lopez, and Deputy Director of Economic Development, Ms. Angela Sway. This department received two awards. I'll start off with the first one. Last year the American Planning Association for Northern California recognized our department for their considerable work on the Old Town Specific Plan. This was an award of merit. This really was a long and and lengthy process and involved a lot of community engagement. And this specific plan will help guide the development there in Old Town and hopefully spur to revitalization in that area. We want to see a a vibrant walkable district and future economic sustainability. So, absolutely awesome award. Congratulations. Well received. Well earned. The next award from this department is innovative program. We started a what we call PPRR, Plan, Prepare, Respond, and Recover Initiative. We received an award from the California Association for Local Economic Development, otherwise known as CALED. Also an award of merit for that initiative. This initiative something the city started a few years ago and enhanced the citywide preparedness, response capabilities, and recovery strategies for our local businesses and residents. This team went out into the community, met with local businesses, and set up the really life-saving training. And that was very well received by the community, and the honor of course is is well earned. So, if you could please give a round of applause FOR THIS DEPARTMENT. [applause]

[applause] AND NEXT WE TURN OVER TO THE Finance Department. So, um [laughter] [gasps]

Finance Department, come on up, Ms. Lee. Our Finance Department is aptly led by [applause] our Finance Director, Um our Finance Department received not one, not two, but three awards in 2025. And I will discuss each one in turn. The first one is was issued by the California Society of Municipal Finance Officers. Um this is for the Budget Excellence Award. Each year this organization scores municipal budgets, and the statewide average is 82, a score out of 100, and ours was 90. So, exceeding statewide average. We were commended for clear presentation of financial history, goals, and long-term planning. And this obviously this this award reflects the city's commitment to responsible financial stewardship. So, congratulations on this one. The second award for this department is GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. Um the Government Finance Officers Association reviews budgets and looks at 14 particular criteria, and this is a national award, and they felt that our budget met all those criteria and was deserving of this distinguished budget award. The third one is also issued from GFOA. This is Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting, our ACFR for 23-24 received this award. It acknowledges the Finance Department's leadership in producing transparent, accurate, and high-quality financial reporting. And again, it's a reflection of strong fiscal accountability and public trust. So, congratulations to OUR FINANCE TEAM.

[applause] [applause] NOT TO OUTDO, BUT OUR IT Department did not receive two or three awards. They actually received five awards. So far, representatives from the IT Department can please come up. NICE TIE, KRISHNAN. [applause] [applause] THIS IS OUR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, MR. Ed Miranda, Analyst Sheena Raj, and Senior Analyst Krishnan Krishnan Narayan. I got it right. [laughter]

Uh first award is the 2025 MISAC Excellence Award. MISAC, Municipal Information Systems Association of California. Uh this is the first time that the City of Newark received this award. It reflects the city's rapid progress in strengthening digital infrastructure, security standards, and resident-focused technology services. Uh the second award, the 2025 Digital Surveys Excuse me, Digital Cities Survey. We received seventh place. This is a national award for our category of cities up to 75,000 in population. Uh our City of Newark IT Department finished seventh out of the nation. Pretty remarkable. But what's even more remarkable is for the past three consecutive years we appeared in the top 10, which is just outstanding. Uh this reflects the city's leadership in in building secure, modern, and accessible digital services for residents. The third award issued by the Public Technology Institute. It's for IT Governance for small jurisdictions. Our IT Department received this award as well. And this is modernization of our telephone system. If the council may recall in the past year or two we reduced our telephone costs by over 50% and improved reliability at the same time. And the Public Technology Institute recognized us for that award. For that work. Also the fourth award also issued from Public Technology Institute. That's the Government IT Collaboration Award. With an a very ambitious and aggressive 100-day business schedule, 100 business day schedule, we were able to complete a project that involves security for our employees, involved a lot of cross-department collaboration, and they were able to um implement these security initiatives across our seven facilities in a single platform. It was a big achievement in a very short time period. And last but not least, we have a personal award. All the awards that I've described with the

exception of the Boy Scouts were for our departments, for the work that we do as a team. But we do have another individual award, and that is the Public Technology Institute Leadership Award to the city's first ever IT Director, MR. ED MIRANDA. [applause]

MR. MIRANDA'S BEEN WITH US FOR ABOUT FOUR YEARS, I want to say. And he's really city's as the city's first ever IT Director, he's really transformed our IT Department and put his mark on our organization. He brought on incredibly competent staff and made significant strides in cybersecurity as well as our platforms so we can work more efficiently. And all that work was clearly shown in issuing this award, more than justified. We're very appreciative of the work that you do. Clearly well deserved. So, if we could give a nice round of applause FOR IT DEPARTMENT. [applause]

[applause] AND NOW WE TURN TO OUR Police Department. And we're going to start off with Ms. Laura De Silva. Could you please come up along WITH THE CHIEF? [applause]

WHY DO WE INVITE ALL OF OUR POLICE DEPARTMENT? I'M SORRY, come on up. So, we are joined by of course our Police Chief, Jonathan Arguello, Police Officer Capu, Officer Torres, as well as the recipient of the Property and Evidence Let's see, Techn- Property Officer of the Year. Property Officer of the Year. There it is. So, Laura De Silva in December was recognized by the California Association for Property and Evidence, the NorCal Chapter. And this is a very big award. There's a luncheon involved, and the Chief sent me the invitation. There were five nominees from other jurisdictions throughout the Bay Area, one of whom was our neighbors on the other side of 880. Very very just incredibly stiff competition. And I thought it was, you know, it could have been anybody's to win. And she was recognized for all all the improvements we have in our property division of course, but largely as a result of moving our property unit from the old antiquated old facility over to our new Civic Center. To move an evidence facility is not an easy task. It is like the the shows where they have the chain of evidence and it's a big deal and etc. etc. Uh the chief's been with us for 30 years and this is the second time we've ever moved an evidence facility. Uh it really is a Herculean effort and that organization recognized you for your tremendous work and on behalf of the city of Newark I sincerely thank you for everything THAT YOU DO.

[applause]

AND THREE OFFICERS IN 2025 were recognized for what we call 10851 CVC investigations awards. Uh this is issued by uh the state of California Highway Patrol. We have two of them here with us this evening. Uh Officer Sean Torres as well as Officer Carlos Torres, no relationship in case you're wondering. Uh they were recognized first tier award for stolen vehicles and beside me here is Officer Carlos Torres. Sean Torres isn't going to be with here this evening. Um to receive this award you have to investigate 12 stolen vehicles within a 12-month period and have to make three arrests. And uh he did that in 2025. Um Officer John Capu over here to my left, you're right. Uh Officer Capu received tier two and tier three awards. Uh which means uh in the past he just received you it was 5 years of service I believe. That's 5 years service award with the city of Newark. Uh so that essentially means that during this 5 years with the city of Newark he's investigated 36 stolen vehicles uh and that has led to at least nine arrests in a such a short period of time. So thank you for all the work that you do. THAT'S THAT'S AWESOME.

[applause]

THANK YOU. OH.

[laughter] [laughter]

THE WHITE TESLA. [laughter] [laughter] [gasps] And last but not least Oh, I'm sorry. There's the photographs of the officers in case you want to know what Officer Sean Torres looks like. He's one of the ones in the middle. Uh and last but not least our recreation and community services department. If you wouldn't mind COMING [applause] ON UP. [applause]

WE ARE JOINED BY INTERIM RECREATION director Roy Gonzalez as well as three supervisors Michelle Galvez, Mr. Kevin DeFranco and Ms. Jessenia Timani. Um the California Parks and Recreation Society issued a marketing and commendation award of excellence in 2025. Um it's it's it's amazing, very innovative. Uh staff puts uh spent a lot of time putting together a coloring and comic book series. And so those are those um photographs of those comic books and coloring series are up on the screen. Uh three of those six are actually uh real city employees. [laughter]

So uh the bottom two on the right and then the top right. Uh I believe that's Officer Pacheco. I don't know who the the the bottom two are. That's Dan Nancy. Dan Nancy? Okay, Nancy and Cerello on the right. And Josue. Yeah, in the middle. Yeah. So um very innovative, something different. Uh it made Newark really stand out. Uh unfortunately the the the lead person, the architect of these drawings, um Ms. Katie Forte is actually at a California Parks and Recreation conference so she can't be with here with us here this evening. Uh but it's an incredible award and thank you everybody for your WORK ON THIS. [applause]

OKAY. UH THAT CONCLUDES MY REPORT this evening and thank you for the support. Public service uh is a hard job. People do it because um not for all the accolades that they're going to receive uh from either their employer, from their boss, or for the residents. They do it because they love the community to which they serve and they want to help the public. Uh if you've ever tried to navigate government services at a state or federal level, good luck. But if you're here in Newark and you're trying to access city services, we're here to help you. And all of our employees recognize the value of service and they're always willing to step up and help others figure out where they need to be, where they want to be uh because that's the way we do things here in our city. So thank you to all the employees. Thank you, Mr. Benoun, for recognizing these employees. I look forward to this presentation every year. The next item on the agenda is the Ohlone College Newark Campus Residential Projects Overview. Mr. Benoun. Yes, good evening, Your Honor and members of the council. Uh tonight we have a presentation from Ohlone College with respect to two residential projects. Uh the first one is is housing uh situated on Um it's approximately 500 beds and would serve uh primarily students at Ohlone College as well as I believe uh some faculty members. Um entitlements with respect to that project would be issued

by the state of California because um although they are homes in residential nature of course, uh they're fulfilling the uh purpose and mission of Ohlone College as as such the permits would be issued by the state. Uh the second project that they'll be briefly presenting on this evening is a market rate housing project um also on the Newark campus here in the city of Newark. Uh this is something that um we've yet to hold any community meetings on. We typically run through a community development process. Um so it's not ripe for council consideration in terms of a public hearing this evening. Uh we would envision uh coming back at a future meeting, potentially work session this summer and full project entitlements would come as early as fall uh if not then then winter. Um an application requires of course a public hearing in order for entitlements to be issued and there's certain due process considerations. Uh before we invite the representative from Ohlone College to come up and speak, and we thought it'd be appropriate for the city attorney to briefly provide some parameters of what the discussion can be with respect to the second project this evening. Counselor. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. As the city manager mentioned, one of these two projects will um you know, if the applicant decides to uh at a future date come for the council for consideration, um the applicant has a right to um propose uh you know, any project and has a right to due process and consideration of that project. And that uh what that entails is that um the uh while this presentation is informational, the council should not uh form any conclusions as to how it would uh act on any future project in that regard. Um that should occur only after a public hearing occurs in the future. So um the recommendation tonight is that uh the council accept the information and certainly ask clarifying questions um as uh deemed appropriate by the council. Thank you. And with that in mind we'll

begin the presentation with the president of Ohlone College, Mr. Charles Sasaki. Mr. Sasaki, you have the floor, sir. Good evening. [applause]

Wow, I got applause. Mayor Hannon, uh City Manager Benoun, and City Council, it's a pleasure to be here tonight. My name is Charles Sasaki. I'm the proud college president and district superintendent of Ohlone College. Um upon becoming president in 2023, I set as one of my four priorities the expansion of services to all three cities in our district. Um our college for too long had been a college known for services only to one. Um and so a priority for me from the very beginning of my term 3 years ago uh was to do some thinking about ways that we could really invigorate and capture um the energy that happens in the city of Newark at our Newark Center of the college. Um some of the things we've done in that time, we've shifted most of our large events to the Newark Center, uh building viability, energy, some um energy just happenings um on our campus. We have a I established [laughter] an office, our executive cabinet makes regular appearances and uh maintains a presence at the Newark Center as well. Uh we've launched new academic programs, particularly proud um of a robust English as a second language program um both credit and non-credit, which is a particular service to a part of Newark that we had not fully reached. Um and now we're serving as the home for Promotoras, um an organization which the city is well aware of um and we're very pleased to be um partners in it with a city and with a really viable and vigorous nonprofit. So our work to build energy and vibrancy um continues and I'm excited to share just a quick um update for you this evening of uh Ohlone College's student housing project which as city attorney and city manager both mentioned is one of two projects. So I'll be focusing actually on the college's project which is the student housing project. Um we know that housing um everybody knows in the Bay Area, our region challenged uh deeply, deeply challenged by housing. Um our students certainly impacted by that even more than uh working adults in many cases. Um it impacts our recruitment, it impacts

our retention, it impacts their wellness, it impacts their financial security. So, our work to build affordability and convenience for our students is essential. Um at the same time, we are also deeply, deeply concerned about our most at-risk students. We have many students that have housing insecurities. Um the vast majority of our students cycle through housing insecurity at some point during their two to three years with the college. Um so, as I mentioned before, you will be hearing about two projects. Um the first project is our student housing project, and we will be talking also about a separate development on surplus land for which the college has no use and upon which we are premising our future financial security from lease payments back to the institution. Some [snorts] quick facts about our student housing project. It is a 500 student housing 500 person housing complex of 163 shared units. It is on our Newark Center in the back on the north corner. And it will allow students to have uh direct access to courses that are next door. Um so, we're not planning to expand the the college facilities at this time. It's uh it's an expansion of the housing complex that's attached. Um we believe that this will not only provide housing security for our students, convenient opportunities to um to get an education and reside nearby. It builds economic viability for that portion of Newark, and then also um allows the college to expand our academic programs by building a larger student population. Um we have a lot of operational elements to still work out. As it's currently conceived, it's uh primarily for full-time students. Um the units range from uh studios to four-bedroom. Um the range [clears throat] of residence life properties look different from when I went to college, where it was just everybody in the long hallway with twin beds and, you know, paired up. Um it's a

range of residential types that we um have done several surveys with students to find out their preferences for private, shared, um cost-effective, um you know, all these different things that they're they're looking towards. Uh so, we have a combination of traditional dormitory-style rooms, um as well as apartments with full kitchens. [snorts]

We do intend to be good neighbors. The state of California um encourages public colleges to aspire to lead certification, and you may know that our Newark Center was the first higher education facility in the state of in the country um that attained lead platinum status. So, that was a very early commitment that the institution made um that has been very challenging to continue to manage, uh but something that we are very proud of and something that we will aspire towards again for sustainability. [gasps and snorts]

Um we do also plan to focus our subsidized housing for students, but do think that there's a possibility as well of sectioning off areas uh for our college employees as well, which would allow us to provide um as you know, right? It impacts your employee retention and recruitment um when folks have to pay um exorbitant rent. So, that's also a possibility, but students are primary preference. Um so, our work, student-centered, sustainably designed, community-focused, really excited about continuing to build our community with Newark um to truly be of service to all three cities in our district. And at this time, I'd like to call on Vice President of Administrative Services, Rena Finch. Thank you. Uh good evening. It's great to be here with you. Uh as President Sasaki mentioned, I'm Rena Finch, uh Vice President of Administrative Services. I started with the college just uh in December of 2004. And I came uh from the State Chancellor's Office for Community Colleges, where I had overseen all financial and compliance reporting for the state, uh over 13 billion in annual allocations for all of our community college system, and all of our capital outlay bond-funded state bond-funded programs uh for all of the construction on our community college campuses statewide, including uh a new program that we had just started at the state for student housing. Uh it started out as a grant-funded program uh to uh do where Ohlone actually benefited from. We got a planning grant at Ohlone to start this thinking about this project. And then that statewide program shifted to uh lease revenue uh bond funding source, and Ohlone went a different way. So, I'm going to share

just a little bit Um we've been in Newark for over 60 years. And uh I want to say that we've seen an increase just recently in high school students from Newark really in enjoying and taking advantage of Ohlone College being right here. We've seen over 381 of your Newark Memorial High School students enrolled at our college. Uh we have a career center that is uh on the Newark Center campus, and that's been very helpful for folks to connect their education to their ultimate life goals and make those connections. Our Newark Center opened in January 2008. We have 81 acres there, which is more than we can use. Uh again, we're the first lead platinum college. Uh President Sasaki said in the you know, in the United States, it's on the planet. Let's be honest here. So, we're setting you know, a cosmic a cosmic goal. We have great programs around sustainability. We've got biotechnology, environmental studies, uh physical therapist assistant program, registered nursing, and a respiratory therapist program that are all centered at our Newark Center.

[snorts]

Uh we have ideas about how we're expanding. It includes the student housing and the market-rate housing that you'll hear a little bit about, but also you know, in the future, we think because we'll have all those people in that vibrancy there, we're probably going to add more programs and we'll consider what else we need to do to expand our offerings and our footprint on that on those acres. Uh so, this is a visual if you were a bird looking you know, down on the campus. The top right, you see it looks kind of like a little spaceship. Uh that's the existing campus. And then the more vibrantly colored uh gold and green, those are Ohlone colors. Uh that is our student housing footprint. And then the sort of orange and blue, the more muted colors, that's what we're envisioning as the market-rate housing project. So, you can see it really it really fills up that space and brings a lot of folks there. Uh we got into this because we really our board really wanted us to be providing a good, safe, and uh uh local housing option for our students, employees. We have we know that our students have housing insecurity concerns, and we think having this housing here is going to really and help with our recruitment both locally and also from out of state and internationally. So, we've set this up as a public-private partnership. So, the spiderweb of relationships you see here has Ohlone College at the top. We have a single relationship with our nonprofit partner. Uh that's CFP3, and with them we'll have a ground lease and a coordination agreement. And then that nonprofit partner will be hiring and working with the developer, uh the property manager who will do the day-to-day operations in the student housing facility, and also the nonprofit

partner also goes out and gets all the financing and runs the bond for us. So, that actually protects us a little bit. We have a little less risk, but we still have a lot of say in how everything happens. So, the the project itself, the site plan again is up at the top right, and we've got a nice little visual of our courtyard. I have a few more pictures we can click through kind of quickly toward the end, but I I want to point you to our table that really shows how our apartments are broken out and the anticipated rental rates. So, this will be a below-market rental rate for the students that want to rent by the bed. That'll be the bulk of the of the beds. We'll have 432 beds spread out across those different unit types between a studio up to a four-bedroom. And then on the side that will house student families and or employees of Ohlone College, we have studios and two bedrooms. Those will be rented out as either furnished or unfurnished as just a unit, more apartment-style like you're like you're used to. And I want to point out these rents, they are below market, and they're also all-inclusive on the student side, completely furnished, and all-inclusive of all utilities including Wi-Fi. So, when you start adding that all up, it's really very good value, very appealing to our students. Uh we have done numerous student surveys. This is the result here of the most recent demand study that we concluded just last December. Uh this shows you that between the student demand and the employee demand at the planned rental rate, we have three times the amount of demand that we do beds. And when we increase our rent just to kind of test the sensitivity, we also have double the demand as we do have beds. So, we do think this is going to

be a very popular choice for our students and our some of our employees as well. Our timeline, our next steps in April, our board of trustees will be voting to approve that ground lease and coordination agreement I mentioned earlier. And then we're moving forward with a financial closing in May, ground breaking in May, and then at the very bottom of the list, we intend for students to be moving in in early to mid-August of 2028. And so with that, I'm going to show you just some pictures of the design and you'll you'll have a copy of these slides you can pour over these to your at your at your leisure as well. But this this picture shows that bifurcation of where we're going to be having the student on one side rented by the bed and then a little separation for those employees, older adults, possibly some students with families on the apartment side so they have a little more privacy. The first floor layout, we have not just not just bedrooms, but there's also lounges and study rooms, other amenities that will be you know throughout the the floor plan the floor plans. The second and fourth floor plan, this is a four story building by the way. And just some renderings of how welcoming we think this will be. With a lovely courtyard, places to lock up your bike, a beautiful courtyard to play play games, play chess out on those tables. I guess we're going to have bean bags in the courtyard. We'll see how that works out. And then with that, I want to turn it over to our partners who we're working with to develop the market rate housing portion. Thank you. Did you just send me the dance things on this? Yeah. Hm?

I can see you Thank you very much. Excellent. Thank you President Sasaki and Vice President Finch for your your presentation and they've been excellent partners to work with so far. Good evening Mayor Hannan and members of the City Council. My name is Todd Chambers. I work with the Lewis Group of Companies. Um I'd like to start by acknowledging some of your key city staff who we've been working with. Obviously, Director Turner and Carmalissa Lopez have been essential to our efforts. Deputy Director Art Turriano, your housing policies and program manager Michael Coolum and senior civil engineer Vibha Deshmukh have been very helpful for our efforts so far. I'm excited to be here this evening to present to you um the market rate housing project associated with the Ohlone College campus. And um this would be an expansion of Lewis's Excuse me. Didn't mean to do that. Let's go back. An expansion of Lewis's um rental community brand and we're working on five similar projects here in Northern California. We just opened one recently in the city of Dixon, which is some of the product that we're proposing on the Ohlone College campus duplexes. And so uh we're excited to be here. I thought I'd just give you a little bit of a summary of what we're up to, an introduction to our company and a little bit of background about the project, our vision and then next steps. And so, Lewis Group of Companies was founded in 1955 by Ralph and Goldie Lewis. They were the the the patriarchs of the company. It's now run by the second and third generation family members. It's privately owned and managed. We're located in California and Nevada. We have our headquarters in Upland, California and Southern California I office in our Northern California in Sacramento. We have offices in Reno and Las Vegas as well.

Since Lewis's inception, we developed numerous master plan communities. We do a lot of retail as you can see on this slide, you know, 24 million square feet of retail, typically grocery anchored centers, but we also do work with right now we're working on two Costcos. So, our retail group is very busy and 13,000 rental units that we own and operate as a company. Um So, as you can see, our portfolio our rental portfolio is is considerable and we have about 2,000 units that were in in the the pipeline right now including including this opportunity. I'd like to note that our property management team are all employees of the company. There's about 800 employees at the the Lewis Group of Companies. I think that's a unique situation. We don't contract out our management services. People are employees and we have staff that are on on site typically full-time 24/7. Let's see here. So, I wanted to give you a little bit of background about what where we are and then in 2010 the city adopted the Newark Areas 3 and 4 Specific Plan. We are in Area 3, Subarea F as you can see on the exhibit. Subarea F is just to the left of Subarea A is where the college campus is. In 2022, Ohlone College updated its facilities master plan, which includes some language here out of the master plan, the potential for a market rate housing project contemplated by a private developer on leased district land on the east side of the reserved area. And on this map, you can see that's kind of the purple under Lot C is is the area that they had reserved and and where we're focusing our attention. In

February of 2023, Ohlone College solicited proposals from developers to construct a market rate rental community on the Newark campus and in April of 2023, Lewis was awarded the opportunity. We competitively bid. And we were successful at at winning that bid. And in June of 2023, the housing state housing and community development department designated the property as surplus land as was mentioned previously, exempt from the state's affordable housing requirements. In October of 2023, we submitted our pre-application, our very first application with the city. And we've been working with city staff ever since and we've had several applications that have gone forward. We've had lots of meetings and we've had site visits. In fact, we were able to steal away Art and Carmalissa in Southern California for a few hours while they were there on a conference, a planning conference to come tour some of our one of our communities there that's the same product that we're proposing here so we could give them a a feel of how it looks, lives and feels. And the quality that that Lewis brings to to our projects. In December of 2025, just recently, we received our formal planning application was deemed complete by the city. And so now we're working through the consistency review process and and the start of the the sequel process, the California Environmental Quality Act component of the the city planning process. So, this exhibit shows generally our development boundary. And when it first started, we were focused more on the I'll say the the right side of the screen and you could see the squiggly line is uh improvements that the Alameda County Flood Control District did to widen that channel that was a linear channel at the time. They moved a lot of dirt out of there and made a lot of improvements, but they also squeezed down the development area that we had anticipated. So, we worked with the college to expand around the corner to parallel the railroad tracks

and we think that makes a better kind of circular component along with their student housing project. So, this is the site plan for our proposed project, which we call Harvest at Newark. And the black lines that are in the upper left hand corner represent that's the student housing line work for their project. And um we we are proposing to include 274 units in our project. 116 would be what we call backyard duplexes. They're duplexes that have a small outdoor living area. And 108 three story townhomes. So, some of the key features of our project um we have a hierarchy of streets that we build into our community. We make them walkable. They're designed to more embrace and enhance the college's sustainability features as they talked about with their lead certification and trail enhancement and expansion on the college campus, interpretive signage, drought tolerant landscaping and some other things that we're looking into that we can um complement the sustainability component of the college. So, this is an illustrative plan that shows how we would connect This is an older version of student housing project that's on this exhibit. So, I apologize for that, but it gives you a sense of what we're trying to do as it relates to connecting to the trail system. You can see we have that little circle number five is an example of a node where we would connect to a gate that would come out into the trail system and we'd like to produce those types of connectivity points at various locations. And we're looking we would access mainly through the college campus itself out to Cherry Street. We're proposing an alternative access out to Mowry Avenue. We have some work to do with the city on that. Some of the property is owned by the city, so

we and the potentially the Union Sanitary District, so we'd have to work through how they might work and how that would work with your Silliman Activity Center. Um we'll see if we can come to an arrangement. Um we think it makes sense from a police and fire standpoint and a safety standpoint to have that additional access, but uh we have some work to do to complete that effort. Um I wanted to just give you a brief overview of of the homes that we propose. So, these are the duplex um the duplex homes. As you can see, they have direct access as garages, and in the lower left-hand corner of this exhibit is um an example of the outdoor living space. These are photos from our project in Dixon that we just opened, so they're recent, and this is exactly what the product looks like that we're posing from the duplex perspective. Um it's, you know, in a in an atypical apartment community, you're going to get maybe 70 square feet of a balcony or a courtyard, and these are a minimum of 145 square feet of outdoor living space. So, we feel that um it's it's a nice amenity for our residents. Uh this is an example of our three-story townhome product that's in Southern California. Um if you can see how um it fronts onto uh sidewalks, um how how the you access garages, um how it looks from the street, and in the upper right-hand corner is a an example of a courtyard feature um between the buildings. And we Lewis does a very good job of uh quality of landscaping, attention to detail. Um so, we think it um what we would bring to Newark would be an excellent addition to your housing product. Um wanted to show you some examples of our um our community clubhouse. And so, we have a uh um we do a uh kind of a a very nice fitness center, um community building. Uh that lower left-hand corner is more of a game room type of scenario.

[clears throat]

This is an example of our pool and spa deck. Uh so, we try to do a little bit more resort-style living is the way we like to do it. We put a lot of emphasis on again landscaping, seating areas. These are um what I'm calling grilling and gathering, but outdoor living spaces within the community. So, places where people can actually gather. And so, people aren't just living in their units. People in our communities get out and and um they meet their neighbors and they and they they do gather and talk, and we like to have a lot of sitting areas to promote that. Um our residents typically have dogs or maybe kids. And so, we we typically provide a pretty robust um dog park and uh washing station for our our residents and play areas. These are examples of those. Uh walkability is a big component. Um you know, we'd like to be [snorts] able to to have uh our project connect with um um with the college and be able to walk to the Silliman Center. Um there's not a lot of retail to walk to in the area, but at least there's there's those types of um opportunities for for folks to use. And just a summary of key project components, um you know, we opted to uh process our application through the city for our entitlements, um not work through the college. Um we we'd like to get the city's support for what we're doing. We're going to be here for a long time if if uh if we're successful. And so, we we want to make sure that you all are um um supportive of what we're doing. Uh obviously, it directly supports the college's financial stability, and that's why we're here, part of why they they initiated this process is so that the rent that we would pay the college for leasing the land over time would help them be successful financially. Um our company has a proven history of of delivering quality communities. I think if you toured any one of our communities and talked to our residents, you would you would find that. Um our again, our property management team is um award-winning, and um uh I think if you talk to our property managers, you would get a sense of the

quality that they bring to residents there. Uh we conduct substantial market research, and we looked at what was um lacking here in the city, and so we feel that this is a niche that's not that's a product that you don't have. We do a lot of focus groups with our renters to establish what works in communities and what does not work, and we that's an ongoing continually continuous process so that we can continue to improve. Um we believe this complements the college's student housing initiative and um helping to create a functioning campus on site. And so, um we're very excited about the opportunity. I really appreciate you listening tonight and your consideration. Um we would uh we'd love to be a member of your wonderful community. It's um it's very it's clear by what went on earlier tonight with the presentations that um Newark is a um in a big area, but a small town. So, thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for the presentation. I know my colleagues may have some just clarifying questions on on the projects. What I'd like to do, colleagues, is uh first of all, is there anybody in the public that would like to comment on either one of the projects that you saw an overview for? We're not going to take any action tonight. This is just really a good neighbor policy where one of our real excellent uh neighbors in our community is bringing something forward conceptually for us to take a look at. Uh so, we're not going to be making any decisions tonight, certainly on the market rate housing. Uh but are there any questions from the audience on any one of these products? Colleagues, what I'd like to do is break it into two segments. Uh I'd like to break it into the um student housing first. Any clarifying questions on the student housing first, and then we'll come back to the market rate housing. So, I'll look to my right, um Vice uh Mayor Jorgens. Yeah, I just have a question. It seems like a lot of the students that would be in student housing would be class at the Newark campus. I'm curious about uh especially public transit to uh 3 AC

Transit. You know, is that going to be easy for students to figure out? Is that going to be, you know, a challenge? You know, how are students getting from here to there, I guess, is my question. Is that uh something that, you know, has been worked out? Uh ongoing conversations with AC Transit, for sure. We do not have single bus service between our two largest campuses currently. Um it is an ongoing concern for us. The college does subsidize, both through student fees as well as our general budget, um a shuttle service that runs between the Warm Springs BART station and our two facilities, instructional facilities in Fremont and Newark. It costs us a ton, um but it is a part of our commitment to making sure that students can access services in both places. All right. Well, you know, I I do appreciate that there's thought being put into that, and um Lennar has been a great partner for the City of Newark for a long time, and seems like that's continuing, so I appreciate the presentation. And anything we can do to uh help with that advocacy, cuz I I agree with the Vice Mayor in terms of providing public transportation between the two campuses, I think would be uh extremely important. Council member uh Del Cantancio.

[clears throat]

Yes, thank you for the presentation. I really enjoyed the visuals as well as the maps, because college is very important, and I'm really glad um that you're also promoting educational excellence and ambitions. I did have two questions, though. Um one of them is really centered on who's the intended uh or the intended recipient of the housing? Is it going to be primarily the first-year students? I know it's a two-year program, but a lot of people might take it part-time. So, those are the kinds of questions that are operational that we will need to dig through. There will be a prioritization process that we'll put into place, and full-time students should probably receive some priority. At the same time, the project is designed for affordability, so that may necessitate us prioritizing part-time students. So, I think the part-time full-time might not be our primary consideration. It might be about need. Um and that is probably the way that we're going to prioritize student access. Okay. Um my other question was regarding uh I noticed that you were mentioning there could be international students as well. Um because it would be a Newark with the Newark residents who want to go into this type of housing, would they have any priority? For Newark students?

For new For Newark students who want to stay in Newark and maybe go to a junior college, would they be able to have this [clears throat] housing as well? figure that out. It's definitely a possibility. Okay. It's a good idea. We hadn't thought of that. Thank you. It's your city. [laughter] Thank you. Council member Little. Thank you. [snorts]

It's not working. So, President Sakaki, you know I'm a huge fan of what you do. You know, I love everything that you and NS. I'm also a community college professor myself, so I'm very excited to see this happening. A lot of great [snorts] changes in community colleges. It's not just two years anymore. I'm really proud of the changes that that the California Community College is doing. I'm part of it myself, so I'm a little biased. So, thank you for that. Quick question. So, um we are going to have I heard you say apartments with food. Are we going to put in a food plan or a cafe or something else? Cuz now that we're offering residency, that's something that's actually important. Yeah, so the student side of the facility has um a very loud large. [laughter] They're going to be loud. They're they're probably going to be loud.

There's a There's a lounge that will be loud and large on the first floor that also has a very large grab-and-go style station. So, uh we have uh we'll you it won't be just like a vending machine where you can get a candy bar. It's really like full meals will be available in sort of a grab-and-go style. Uh so, that's what we're starting out with, but we want to see how that goes and potentially expand that to have more more options. Every one of those units has um at least a small kitchenette, and then on some of the floors, there are actually larger communal kitchens uh with multiple ovens and a more a larger cooking space that students can use as well. That's really smart. That's a really really smart way to do that. Are you guys going to be bringing in a food provider such as Air Mark or Sedexo or working that way or is it going to stay completely It was just a curiosity question. So, that will be managed by our property manager, but we'll have a say in who we choose. We've already looked at some sample type vendors who would be providing that grab and go option. We've also talked about I you might know that we have Newark Days on our campus on Friday evenings where we'll have a bunch of food trucks and activities. Uh so that's we think when we have students there, that's probably going to expand. We might see more of that kind of food truck excitement going on as well. Okay. And one last question on slide 27, there was a big area I know. On slide 27 maybe. Well, there was a big area Here we go. There is a big open area right there I see. I see we have like an L or J going on. What sports What are the plans? I know with there's not today, not tomorrow, but are there any plans for that or are we going to leave it as is? Well, we're we are thinking about the possibility of expanding with more academic offerings which might need more buildings, but it's also a lovely open space, too. So, that's something that we'll be working out through over the next like 2 to 5 years to really think

how we want to use that space. Okay. One last question, sorry. So, all the sides are they going to have high walls along the way or is it going to be pretty open? Cuz I remember when you mentioned some openings in and out, are those going to be like some 3 4 ft tall fences, like small fences or are we talking a good two-story tall walls? I think that's for the around the Lewis uh piece.

looking at all the way down like are we I know you mentioned you mentioned right here where the pink buildings are. Yeah. Or salmon colored, excuse me, salmon colored buildings. Yeah. Yeah, is that going to be walled Is it going to be walled all the way around or are they going to be more of just like low fences? No, it would probably be walled around is the way we would do it. 6 ft high. It's a gated community, so it would have that and then we'd have accesses from that would be pedestrian gates through to the campus. Okay. Thank you. And while we stay on this, I just want to clarify if I may, the student housing is in the upper right-hand corner on this map, is it not? Upper left. Upper left. Okay. And so the all this over on the right-hand side, that was all the market rate housing. That's what I thought. Any other questions Vice Councilmember?

No. Thank you. Councilmember Green Doll. I'd like to echo my [clears throat] fellow councilmembers' comments about the ongoing positive relationship the campus had the college has with it with our community and it's something we really welcome seeing expanded even greater even further. Um So, limiting my comments here to to the student housing. Um So, I have a question about Well, first of all, you talked about potentially families, but I didn't see anything like a tot lot or or park areas. Um Is that something that's going to be kind of envisioned as a part of that or or or not? So, not a tot lot per se, but you see the the bifurcation. If you look at the courtyard Mhm. Uh we're going to be doing some amount of fencing and landscaping so that the courtyard that's on the apartment side is a little more private and protected so that there is area for children, uh but we don't have a specific like playground or park built in. Okay. Um the um the amenities that are located that are going to be located here, are they going to be open to the public or is this going to be sort of gated off from the public? I'm thinking in terms of other students who wanted to go sit in the garden or study or something like that. Is Is it going to be sort of part of an open campus or is there going to be Is this project going to be kind of gated off? Um I would say it's primarily for the students, right? So, it's not It's not like we're going to be inviting the public in, but there's not prohibition for other students and friends and, you know, to have have folks over and and hang out. It's just not going to be promoted for the general public. We have a lot of other space if you just look over right over at our current building, there's courtyards there in and out [clears throat] and there's a lot of

public space there as well that's open to students and the public. So, you envision it in a in a similar structure. Correct.

Yeah. Thank you. Um the um I'm I'm concerned about I want to make sure that this isn't walled off that particularly in the case of trails and access points here. I think there there are opportunities for people to take walks and go on runs and so on and so forth. So, I am I am concerned that we don't end up having either disconnected trails that don't quite connect or or gates that that are, you know, you you see a you see a great connection that you can get places and but it's blocked off. So, um Just Can you address that Can you address that concern at all? Uh sure. Well, everything as far as our learning center and the student housing is there's not a gate there. It's going to be very open so that all the pathways and trails are are all connected. And then as Todd Chambers from Lewis was just explaining they have a little more privacy you know, to cuz they'll have a lot of families there and uh so they've got a little more privacy with that gate but or with the walls but a lot of gates that will connect at the appropriate points. I think it's going to have a really nice flow. Great. Thank you. Um the um Just wanted And lastly, just point out that we do have retail locations in in Newark that are relatively close to to this walking distance if you if you're a good walker. Um And And you carefully cross the giant roadways that we have. Um but um And but it would but I but I think as you as some of my other colleagues indicated, seeing some sort of public transit um that that connects this area to the retail opportunities that we have and hopefully by hopefully [clears throat] by this time the mall will be reinvigorated and we'll start seeing more activities there. So, um I'm I'm glad to I'm glad to see that

you're got that you're got got your eye on that and we'd like to love to see it even could envision if if one can dream about um a Waymo type uh system in this area where you have automated vehicles um tak- taking students back and forth to the great things we have in Newark. So, and of course you're you're walking distance from our fantastic world-renowned um Silliman Center. So, um so I'd love I'd love to make sure this is woven into the fabric of our great community. So, thank you.

Yeah, we've actually we sit and look at all the restaurants and grocery stores within walking distance and we're planning to have some type of walkway. We want to do a path straight from student housing over to Silliman and make it, you know, make some kind of really good connection that way. So, we're still working on that as well.

That's That's heartening to hear. Thank you. Just a couple comments. Um We have hired a new communications manager here in the city of Newark who's done some fabulous work when it comes to identifying all the various restaurants we have in our community and things of that nature. A lot of that information is on our city of Newark website. I would certainly encourage you to promote that to your students on the campus so that they have a one-click option to see, you know, some of the amenities that are throughout the city of Newark. Um I do really see the Newark Looney campus as really being kind of a community educational facility and I'm certainly hopeful that as we see now students living on the property and homes being built on the property that we look at opportunities when the school hosts various art events or uh theater events or guest speakers, things of that nature, that we look at opportunities to open up those to the broader community cuz I know many of our residents would certainly like to be able to participate in those educational opportunities. And then lastly, I I saw that the groundbreaking is scheduled for May of 2026. We would certainly hope that the council is invited to the groundbreaking opportunity to share in your celebration. Those are our questions. Any follow-up questions on the Okay, those are our questions regarding the student housing. Thank you very much. Excited about that. Now, the market rate housing, I'm going to go to my left to see if there's questions on my left on the market rate housing. Councilmember Green Doll. Yes, um similar similar question to what I talked about in terms of connectivity. Um And in fact this this slide is excellent for that. Can you Can you describe a little bit about how um these trails might interface um whether which which portion of them is is going to be inside [clears throat] the gates of your community and which of

this community and which and which would might be available to the general public. Right. Good. Thank you for the question, Councilmember. It's um the the trails that you see outside of the color are some of those exist today. So, you're able to walk from the college campus um along the It's a It's a large detention pond for their water detention. Mhm. [clears throat]

Um but it looks more like a real pond. It's gotten If you've been out there, cattails, a lot of wildlife. Um it's quite nice. And so, we would like to and what we've talked with the college about is enhancing those trails for everybody on the college campus, not just for our residents, but we'd like to be able to have our residents access it. We think it's a great walking opportunity and um just to be able to utilize the space. Great. Um and similarly are any of the amenities that you're planning are they all going to be only for your your residents or um for example, is there a possibility of a of a playground or something that could be utilized jointly by your residents and the student housing? If they if if they go to the the uh the route of having children on site. Uh I would I would say that um the amenities inside of our community are for our residents. You know, it's a private gated um community. It's not intended to be open to the public. It wouldn't be open to whether it was here or somewhere else in the city. It would be a similar situation. Um so, I'm certain that we could talk with uh our owners about the opportunity to somehow you know, allow some access, but um we we need to be careful about competing with the the student housing project, but I suspect there may be some um students and or faculty that might want to live in our our community as well. Great. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you.

Great questions on the right hand side. Uh Council Vice Mayor Jorgens. Uh yeah, you've indicated that many of those units will be rental units. Is that correct? They all are rental, yes.

And so, I guess my question's on the other projects that you've shown us in you know, that your company has uh brought to other communities, were those rental units or for sale? They're 100% rental and like I said, the company has been in business a long time. Um they own and operate over 13,000 units in California and Nevada. Um to my knowledge, I think they've sold off maybe a hundred um over that time frame. So, we're we're not in the business um of building a project and then moving on. Um we typically stay in communities for a very long time. We don't have anything in the East Bay area, so we'd very much like to be here and uh this is a great opportunity for us, but um for example, I do quite a bit of work in the city of Vacaville. Uh we own a a retail center there that's been there for many years and an apartment community we're doing some master plan um communities. I just got another uh we we just got another approval for um a duplex community in that city. So, we're partners with them and we'd like to be partners here as well. That's terrific. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Todd.

Council member Contancio, do you have any questions? Yes. [cough] Thank you for the presentation.

Welcome. I did have a question regarding um the parking. I noticed that these are townhome duplexes, but I also note that there could be a lot of visitors that might want to be in and out of that community. How do you usually address the parking? That's a great question, Council member. So, parking is very important to Lewis. The last thing that we want is for residents or guests to come home and not have a place to park. So, each unit has a like I said, a direct access garage. Um most of the units are two-car garages. In some cases, the smaller units will have So, our units range from 1,250 to 1,850 square feet. So, they live more like a single-family home than they do an apartment. Um if you have a single-car garage, you have a parking space that's partially covered right next to your unit. Um and then we provide substantially more guest parking than what the city's requirements are. Thank you. You're welcome. Just a clarifying question. I think Todd, you mentioned there were 274 units of if I recall correctly. Could you break down the number of duplexes and townhouses again? I got that wrong. I want to make sure I get it right. I don't have it on the top of my head, but um I believe we have 108 of the units um are the three-story townhomes and 100 and uh 16. No, that's not right math. 108 and 166 are the backyard duplexes.

didn't work either. Yeah. Uh cuz I thought, "Huh, 274, that didn't work somehow." So, thank you. Yeah. Um I think you you've uh have a beautiful product. So, I want to commend you on that. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I do want to emphasize that this council over the last number of years has really focused on affordability. And I know that the college is looking at this as an opportunity for um addressing some revenue issues that they're dealing with and have dealt with over the last number of years. And though the council's not making a decision today, and I certainly would certainly encourage you and the college to maybe sit down and seriously consider some affordability component to the apartment complex. That would be my request. Okay. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you for the presentation. We look forward to the groundbreaking. Yes.

I just have one I said one quick question. So, I'm noticing right right in the connection, it's going to be easier for me to point it out. That's fine. Um with my answer. [laughter] Right there. Yeah, that little piece a walking area or is that just a passage through area? It looks Are Are you looking at the the the the little square that's right there? yeah. It looks like a passage area. a little pickleball court. No, don't worry about that. [laughter]

That little piece of property is owned by the Alameda County Water District and they have a water well that's on that property. And it's a desalinization well. It's not um potable water, but uh but they own that piece of property on the campus. And so, they have easements that allow access to that parcel through the college campus. And we've had many conversations with the water district about accommodating um their need for access. They really support what we're doing, especially if we can get the access to Mowry, it will provide them a much easier path to get to their property. But we worked with them on "What can we do next to your site? What's the least impactive?" They were worried about maybe things like noise from their pump or something like that. So, we tried to set our buildings back a little bit from it. They're allowing us to put parking and landscaping in front of their um property uh because they if they have an easement there. This is like the little mountain area, right?

No, this is just this is flat. It's next to the mountain here. It's a little Okay. So, it's So, Okay, got it. Okay, perfect. That was I think that's a good passageway if somebody wants to like walk in the middle and then pass through. fenced off completely on all four sides with a chain-link fence. So, uh no, unfortunately, we can't, but uh Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you very much for the presentation.

Mr. Sasaki and uh Vice uh Thanks. uh President Finch, thank you for the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, the next portion of our um agenda is the public comment section. This is an opportunity for the public to comment on any item that is not on the agenda this evening. Is there anybody that would like to speak to the council on an item not on the agenda? Seeing none, I'll move on to the consent calendar. Uh these are generally considered fairly routine items. Um they're generally approved by one motion of the council. We don't typically have separate discussion on these items because they're considered routine. Is there any Mr. Benud, did you want to pull any item from the consent calendar? Not this evening, Your Honor. Uh colleagues, anybody want to pull an item from the consent calendar? No. Uh anybody [clears throat] in the public that would like to pull an item from the consent calendar? Seeing none, the consent calendar consists of the following: one, approval of the audited demands; two, approval of the February 26, 20 26 City Council minutes for the closed session, special meeting and regular meeting; three, adopt a resolution rejecting all bids for CIP project number 1289, air handler two at Silliman Aquatic Center; four, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a three-year renewal of the Esri Small Government Enterprise Agreement, SGEA, and approving a budget amendment for fiscal year 25-26; five, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to approve uh a purchase order with Government Connection Inc. in the amount not to exceed $470,000 and amend the 2024-2026 biennial budget and capital improvement plan for fiscal year 25-26 and 26-27 to fund the purchase of replacement computers; six, adopt a resolution approving plans and specifications and awarding a construction contract to Adams Pool Solutions to replaster the Lazy River Pool at the Silliman Aquatic Center in the amount of $209,245

and an additional 25% construction contingency; seven, adopt a resolution authorizing acceptance of the 25-26 first five Alameda County Measure C early care and education emergency grant and amending the 2024-2026 biennial budget; eight, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a second amendment on the contractual services agreement with Four Leaf Inc. for additional building inspection services, plan review, field inspection, and miscellaneous support services and amending the 2024-2026 biennial budget and capital improvement plan. Again, anybody in the audience like to speak to any of these items? No, I'll look for a motion and a second, please. So moved. By Council member Contancio. Second. By the Vice Mayor. Please vote. And that passes unanimously. Ladies and gentlemen, we have no public hearings or other business. City Manager, announcements? Yes, good evening, Your Honor, members of the council. We have four announcements for your information this evening. Uh the first one is Newark Gardens one wait is now open for applic- Uh as a friendly reminder, Newark Gardens one is a 150-home senior community on the corner of Cedar and Newark Boulevards. Uh to qualify, applicants must be 62 years of age uh at the time of the application, 18 uh years of old or 18 years of old and have a disability. Um rent is approximately 30% of the household income. The maximum yearly income is 55,950 for one person household or 63,950 for a two-person uh household. The deadline to apply is March 18th at 5:00 p.m. And applications are available on both the city's website as well as uh SAHA Homes website. Uh the [snorts] next announcement is our Alameda County Fire Department is

collaborating with the Newark Middle School uh PTA for a fundraiser on Saturday, March 21st from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. Again, this is at the middle school on Lafayette Avenue. [laughter]

Uh this is a color run and pancake brunch and the fees are listed there on the screen and more information is available on the website listed there on the screen. Our Alameda County firefighters will be cooking brunch for all the participants. [snorts] And the third announcement is we have a recreation fair a hiring fair, excuse me, on Thursday, March 19th from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. located over at our Silliman Activity Center on Mowry Avenue. No experience is required. This is a great opportunity for first-time job seekers. Uh positions offer paid training, flexible schedules, and starting pay at 16 excuse me, $18 per hour. And last but not least, uh two weeks from tonight, uh we will have a somewhat lengthy City Council meeting uh as the council will be rolling up sleeves uh and addressing the 2026 through 2028 biennial budget and capital improvement plan. Uh asking council members to please plan and prepare for a lengthy presentation from city staff on these two serious items um and encourage the public to join us and participate as the council begins the process developing the next um budget. So, that concludes our presentations this evening. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And um City Manager Banunu uh last the um 6th council meeting, we're anticipating a start time of at 5:30. Is that correct? Uh yes, that's correct. The meeting may start at 5:30. I just want to make sure the public's aware of that so if they can plan accordingly. Okay. The next item, folks, is our City Council Matters. Item number one is to adopt a resolution approving the appointment of Rick Ariano, Sandra Ariano, and Olga Borjon to the Senior Advisory Committee for a two-year term. Uh first of all, I want to thank Rick, Sandra, and Olga for their continued support of the Senior Advisory Committee.

Um they're very thoughtful. Their comments are on point on the needs of our senior community and I would certainly uh welcome their continuation on this board. Comments from anybody in the public? Comments from my council colleagues? If not, I'll take a motion to approve their uh reappointment. Yeah, these are folks who contribute a lot to our community outside of their work on the Senior Advisory Committee and obviously bring a lot to the Senior Advisory Committee as well. So, I'll make the motion. Motion by Vice Mayor Jorgenson, second by uh Councilmember Del Contancio. Please vote. And I did vote yes. I did vote yes. I don't want this to get back to Rick Ariano [laughter]

that the mayor was reluctant. So, that passes with five eyes. Ladies and gentlemen, I I do want to encourage you to consider those that are 55 years and older to consider serving on the Senior Advisory Committee. Uh we do have one opening now. Um we have a lot of folks in our community that want to uh be engaged, want to participate. This is certainly a great opportunity for them to do that. So, please get the word out that there's an opening on this committee and I would certainly welcome those applicants. The next item is to a adopt resolution appro appointment of Daniel Cardenas, Vinod Kumar, and Michael Marzano to the Measure G G L L Oversight Committee for a four-year term ending in the public. Would like to comment on this item? Mr. Menon, any comments on this item? Colleagues, any comments on this item? I have a comment. Yes, uh Councilmember Little. I'm a huge fan of these three people, so I'm so glad to see that you guys are reappointing them. Special I mean, they're super involved in the community doing really good stuff. So, thank you again for considering them for the uh reappointment. And you'd like to make that motion? Yes, I I would very much like to make that motion. Thank you. Megan, a second? Second. By Councilmember Contancio. Please vote. I just want you to see I did vote yes. See?

[clears throat] And that passes unanimously. Thank you very much for again, I'll echo my thank you for their support. We do not succeed and survive as a city without these volunteers, whether they be on these various committees or any other opportunities that we have around our city um organization, which brings me to our next item, ladies and gentlemen. So, I have completed all the interviews for the Public Art Committee uh folks that are interested. Much to my amazement, we had well over 25 applications. I want I think it was 27 applications. 27 applications and I interviewed the I interviewed all of those that came in for interviews. And I'll be honest with you, we have some really

[snorts]

um very excited and very interested uh residents that want to be parts of this part of this Arts Committee. So, I'm going to ask for your uh approval tonight to increase the number of art committee members from what we had approved, five, and a Newark Memorial High School student and two alternates to I want to change that to a total of nine with no alternates. And we only received I only did one interview of a Newark Memorial High School student, unfortunately. Um and we had originally designed that person would be a non-voting member. Well, one, I want to change it from a non-voting member to a voting member. But I also want to increase the um uh student young person participation, not just simply to be Newark Memorial High School students, but any high school student in the city and also include a Loany college students as well because one of the applicants I received just graduated from Newark Memorial High School last year. And so, she did she wouldn't have qualified under the Newark Memorial High School slot. So, I'm going to have to try to fit her in somewhere else um if I can. So, I'd like to maybe have us consider uh expanding that Newark Memorial High School student to be any high school student in the city of Newark and or any student at Loany College uh if that would meet with your approval. Questions? Any questions on that? Any questions from the public on that? Questions, yes, Vice Mayor? Just a logistical question of where where are we thinking this committee's going to meet and where are we going to be able to have nine chair nine I guess it would need to be 10 chairs. Um so, just thinking about the logistics, how are we going to manage that? Sure. City Manager, would you like to comment? Well, uh it would be a stretch to fit all nine here at the dais. Uh if we wanted to uh advertise it and air it and stream it, um we could potentially work and have

um some of the committee members sit there as well as uh at staff table. Alternatively, we could host it at another site. Uh we won't be able to stream it, but we could host it in one of our many community meeting rooms. Um and that would be that would be easy for us to do. And it's not uncommon for us to have the city liaison committee meeting here with um I I'm sorry. Let me say this Let me change this. The Newark School Board meets here and one of their members is a student member who sits where staff sits. Correct. So, there there are times when on a larger committee setting, you have folks sitting on the sides. So, that wouldn't be unprecedented. And I'd rather have them if I'm honest, I'd rather have them here so they can be televised or YouTube that I you know, so I think we can work logistically we can work that out. And I think um Mr. Menon, who's going to take the lead once we make the By the way, colleagues, I will bring back next meeting those folks that I'm recommending for the um for the committee. And I will be honest with you, these are nine outstanding individuals. They're nine individuals that represent the entire community. Um so, um they bring a skill set. Many of them are in the art community. Some are not in the art community. But you need to hear from the entire community. So, um I think we're going to be excited about these folks and there's still a lot of folks that will not be selected that will be um you know, kind of on the bench, you know, so if folks decide to step down, move, whatever the case may be, we'll have a real strong folk you know, group to draw from Your Honor. Yes, ma'am.

I did have a question.

Yes. Regarding and I think this is a great idea to expand it. However, I am just wondering about the one student or the student who would be either from one of the two high schools or Loany, would that still be a limited term because these are students. So, I'd assume they would still take a limited term. Well, I think are these going to Help me, Mr. Menon. These are going to typically be one-year terms that would need to be renewed or they would be uh two-year terms or four-year terms? What are we looking at in terms of the terms for the committee members at this point? They were going to be four-year terms uh starting off staggered. So, some would have two-year appointments and some would have four. Okay. So, Councilmember, thoughts on on the term for the student? One year, two year? For a student, I would assume it would be one year. And encourage more students. Okay.

Okay. Previous Sorry to interrupt. Previous direction from the council was for one-year terms. Okay. And they can always if they're a junior, for example, the high school serving during their junior year, they can always ask to be reappointed for their senior year.

Correct, Mayor. Okay, good. So, on on the the school member, I have no issue with bringing in other high high schools. I think, you know, that makes the most sense. I think with the Ohlone college student, I think we kind of run into issues because in theory that person could, you know, because they were you know, they are over 18, they could be a full member. It also brings, I think, issues of okay, you've got a Newark resident, you know, who's going to Ohlone, that makes sense to fill in that spot. But, if you've got a Newark resident going to San Jose State or Cal State Hayward, um you know, they wouldn't be eligible. So, I think there cre- creates some weird eligibility things there. Um that I think is cleaner if we just say it's a high school student. Okay. Other thoughts? Yes, Council Member Grindall. Yes, I I I agree with Matthew's last point. Um that that would be the best um situation. I did want to clarify that you also you're saying that a high school student that is that is going to a high school high school student who's a Newark resident who's going to a a different high school, maybe even outside of our community, yes, would be eligible.

But, they would still be a um Newark resident. Newark resident, yes. Are you okay with that? Uh yes, and I think given that, we should still have the high school student be a non-voting member.

Non-voting member? For two reasons. One, I don't think there's going to be that many, you know, highly contentious votes where it would matter. Um but, I also think having, you know, a student member with a defined role um I I think is important that it's not like they're not being asked to do more than what we should be asking them to do. I always worry about how engaged you're going to be when you know that you really don't have a voting voice on the committee. Do you think that raises any issues? I think if we look at the closest example to that that we have in Newark, which is the student member on the school board, the student member has a long history of going back, you know, many many students of being highly engaged and, you know, sometimes being one of the more engaged people up on the dais. Um so, I think given our one example that we've got, you know, if I think let's try to My thought would be let's try to stick to that model cuz we've seen it work over at Newark Unified. And in and in that model, I'll certainly stand corrected, Mr. Banuelos, in that model, I believe the student board member does vote other than on personnel issues. Correct. I believe the Well, the student does vote. Whether or not it actually counts as towards the official tally is another question, but there is

it does count cuz I hear the the board director The student board member, my understanding at least is the student board member votes, but it doesn't um For for example, if a vote was three to three with the student board member, obviously that wouldn't pass. But, like if a member wasn't there and there wasn't three votes from the elected board members, then that item also would pass. And Council Member Grindall, you may you know more about this than I do, so. Um yes, and you're correct. That's So, they they vote, but they but when when it comes down to it, if there's if there's actually a contest contested, it doesn't count. So, I I think it would be good to make sure that at every vote, you know, we can we can set it up where they have a green or red button that they can press to express a preference,

Okay. but it wouldn't count towards the tally. All right. I have no I have no objection to that.

Your Honor. Yes, Council Member I also, though, I and just thinking out loud, um because there could be some issues regarding high school versus college student and Ohlone student versus San Jose or something, um could we extend it to say high school or college student? Would that resolve our issue and it still be a one-year term? That way we still encourage people who are students uh to not necessarily be committed to a full four years, but rather still have them engaged in our community. Cuz it would be nice to get a larger pool of students that want to participate. We actually had, I believe, uh the city clerk will correct me. I think we had like three or four students that actually applied, but I think only one that came in for interview. Yeah, well, I I mean, my worry would just be if you had a college student that, you know, maybe they were technically a Newark resident, but they were going to school elsewhere and, you know, how trying to judge their ability to participate with the committee, I think would be tough, whereas a student who's you know, a high school student, we I think we have we're better able to set our expectations for how that's going to be. Council Member Little. What if we were to do Ohlone college in Newark campus student? Well, that that goes back to my first point of I I think if we're trying to define the college student very narrowly, then it's um it gets messy of you know, why does a student going to Ohlone get to apply for this? A student, you know, in the same circumstances maybe going to Chabot or Cal State East Bay or uh San Jose State not like it's Who Who lives in Newark?

Who lives in Newark in the same circumstances, same basically the same educational circumstance. To me, that's not not as good as having kind of a clean definition. Okay, I I've heard enough conversation. What I'm going to do then is I'll bring back the nine folks that I'm going to recommend that we approve for the committee. Um I'm going to go and keep it the same the way that it is currently with the Newark Memorial High School student being a non-voting member. And again, we have an opportunity to review this uh in the future. Um you know, if we see, you know, certain situations arise where we can tweak it uh as necessary.

And I I do think you said Newark Memorial student. I think Newark High School students, um cuz if they're going to school in a different city or they're going to a private school, um I I think that to me at least Um absolutely.

Okay. So, we'll expand it to include, in essence, any Newark resident that's going to high school. Okay. I think the concern here is if you have a a student member who's not voting out of a nine-member body, you would then have eight voting members. And should there be some sort of contested art project, you would not have a majority. So, what I'll do If the vote were to be four to four, That's why we typically I think I think the vice mayor's correct. Let's hope we never get to a I would certainly hope so, but, you know, art art, yeah. So, so if we were to go with the the nine voting members and then the one student member to make a total of 10. That would be an option or alternatively, seven members plus the one student

to go with the nine and with the one making it 10. And I mean, you've seen the applications and the interviews, so you have a sense of who the applicants are. I know with the senior citizens advisory committee, we just as a vote of the council kind of amended that to make it, you know, work a little bit better. And if we need to do that with the art committee in the future, we We can do that. Great. So, I think it's what works this year. It's going to be hard enough to get something started. Let's uh get something going with, you know, what seems like it's going to work this year and amend from there. Okay. Any other comments? This is not We don't We don't Do we need to vote on this? No, I think it's fair to say that we understand collectively the council's direction on this, so we would bring back at a future council meeting revised ordinances. Um I think the council would be free to make the nomination, the mayor can make the nomination as to the proposed composition and nominees for the that committee. Council could, of course, vote on it at that time, but those appointments wouldn't take effect until after those ordinances are adopted. Uh we would have to do a second reading and then 30-wait 30 days thereafter. Uh so, it may be a little bit of a timing issue, but we can work on that and plan for that. And And when would you anticipate uh that you'd be able to bring back those ordinance changes? Cuz I I do want this committee as these folks are excited to begin meeting sooner than later kind of thing. What do you think? Do you think 30, 60 days kind of thing or what? Yeah, we can bring the ordinances in April, that shouldn't be a problem. Uh if Mayor, if you'd like to bring this item forward in terms of the nominations and the names at the next meeting, that's easy to do. If you want to wait for April to do it in one fell swoop, that's also an option. Whatever your pleasure is. Okay. Thank you. Anything else? All right. Council comments. I'm going to start to my right, Council Member Contancio. Yes. Thank you, Your Honor. Um let's see. Thank you to all the 1,200 attendees at my first annual Lunar New Year celebration. It was really an incredible turnout. And I even caught the lucky lettuce core

from the lion dance, which means that we do get good luck for 1 year, um which is really super because right before that happened, they told me, "If you drop this, then your city will be doomed for 1 year." [laughter]

And so, I also want to say thank you to Senator Dr. Wahab and the Assessor's Office and Library for partnering with me um and my colleagues for attending as well. I was also able to attend uh the yo-yo event, and I'm sure that Council Member Little will speak more about that. I represented Newark um as a judge the district qualifiers for speech and debate. For the students who win that will go on to the national championship. And I also wanted to state that the lake event of stalking the lake was successful as well, and I plan to attend the middle school branch with the pancake and the color run. Thank you. Did you see how delicious those pancakes looked sitting there on the screen? It's like, "Holy mackerel." Vice Mayor Jorgenson. Yeah, so we talked about some school construction today, you know, housing on school We know school construction, so um thought it would be fun to talk about the first school that was constructed in the city in Newark, um which actually predates the town was uh formed in 1876. And uh the school actually um the farmers and ranchers that were in the area came together in April of 1866, almost 160 years ago to the date, they came together and successfully raised $750 for a school building, which was located at the corner of Cedar and Newark Boulevard. If we can get some of those capital costs, $750 for a whole building, that'd be great.

[laughter] Um the building would then operate as a school and as an essential community meeting place until 1945 when it closed to make way for newer and more modern school buildings. So it was the original Lincoln School in Newark. It's too bad we didn't preserve the building somehow, you know? It was preserved until through the 1980s and then a lot of uh you know kind of consolidation of sites within Newark Unified at that time. Yeah. You know, it wasn't able to be preserved past that. There is still some My understanding is there's NUSD still has some of the things from the building.

Excellent. Councilmember Little. I have I have nothing to add, but we did have the yo-yo day. It was a lot of fun. You guys came out. You guys got to meet some of the individuals. Were Was it more than you expected it to be? Absolutely. It was it was pretty wild. So he got to work with some of the people that were there. So it was really nice. It was a lot of fun. She's minimizing her comments. I've never thrown a yo-yo with somebody where the yo-yo's not actually attached to a string. It's rolling back and forth on a string and he we flipped it up in the air and you catch that yo-yo on the way down on the same string. So and and the event was attended by you know kids as young as five or six and as old as you know older and uh it's amazing. I didn't realize that there really is a real community event surrounding yo-yo and yo-yo activities and just the hand-eye coordination that you need. It was really a well-attended event and the wind in Newark was really no factor. Yeah, it was really good. We have had requests. Some kids came up to me and said if I could put together a juggling workshop for the summer or fall. So we'll have some kids can learn how to juggle. Maybe we can do it at the Siliman Center. Maybe we could do it somewhere, but I think it'd be fun to do a It's just an idea. Just putting together a juggling workshop. You start off with tissue paper and that's how you get started.

axes and things of that nature. No, we don't go to that yet.

Okay. Councilmember Grindall. Yes, thank you. First of all, I wanted to compliment Councilmember Contenzio about the Lunar New Year's event. It was very well designed and appreciate Dr. Wahab's contribution as well, but just really wanted to compliment compliment you on that very nice event. Um On March 23rd, I'm going to have a town hall meeting. I'll have pizza and cookies. It'll be at the library. So March 23rd, 6:30 p.m. Just people can just drop by and talk to me about anything they want. Um The the city manager already mentioned the family day at the park, but I wanted to sort of highlight that the Optimist Club has the has the great honor to be sponsoring the the the egg hunt part of this event and it's it's something a long-standing tradition and something the club is very proud of. And in addition, very excited to have the the Newark Educational Foundation sponsoring the spring showcase. Um And which is a highlighting the great work that's happening in our school districts in our school district. And so just wanted to just wanted to call that out in addition to just the date that city manager provided. So very excited about that event. And um thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Couple other announcements. At the same event, the Newark Rotary will be hosting the egg coloring contest. Always a very well-attended. I love the Optimist event. I actually loved it more a few years ago when they there really were no constraints. All the kids were outside the barrier. All of a sudden the the whistle went off and then then you saw just this mass of humanity running and get those eggs. It was such I mean if you ever saw that on videotape, it was it was hilarious.

[gasps]

They've now become a little bit more safety conscious and so it's it's a little bit different, but the kids have a great time at this event. Um St. Patrick's Day is coming up. Um you know, please have a little bit of corned beef and cabbage, not really an Irish dish, more more of a lamb stew. I really encourage more of the lamb stew. Um April 18th is the state of the city address. Um It's really an opportunity for me and my colleagues to highlight really the great things we've done this last year and some of the things we're going to be doing moving forward. So again, as the mayor, it's it's not me alone. I do what I do in partnership and collaboration with my colleagues. I want to thank Councilmember Contenzio and Councilmember Little for the events that you held. They were very well-attended and they were very just great for the community to be able to participate. With that being said, if there's no further comments, this meeting is closed.