City Council - Regular Meeting

Morning, everyone. Welcome. I'd like to call to order this study session for the twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven budget as the morning of May 7. Tony, would you please call the roll?

Kemi? Here. Campos? Tordios?

Here.

Cohen? Ortiz?

Present.

Mulcahy?

Here.

Dwan? Candelas?

Here.

Casey? Here. Foley? Here. Mahan?

Here.

You have a quorum.

Great. Thank you. Well, good morning. Welcome back, everyone. We are jumping right back in today with transportation and aviation services. And unless our assistant state manager has anything to add, we're gonna get to it. I'm good to go? He's good. Alright. John, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, mayor and council. John Ristow, director of transportation, and we're here for the CSA for transportation services. And with me today is Mookie Patel, the director of the airport Manuel Pineda, our deputy city manager and the esteemed Jim Shannon, our budget director, will help us through this. So let me get started. The Transportation Aviation Services, core services, you can see them on the screen.

We are an important element of all of the city services that both of our departments conduct. Most importantly, airport operations and the safety for the airport is Mookie's top priority as well as ours in terms of all the surface transportation safety. We do a lot of other things in this CSA, pavement services, parking, traffic maintenance, planning and safety and operations, among many others. Just another example of all the different programs that are within our departments, I'm not going go through every one of them. We mentioned them before, safety being the most important for both the airport and transportation surface safety.

All of this activity does take a lot of work. There's a number of employees in every one of these sections that rely on the funding that we're asking for today in the budget to actually maintain those facilities in good operating condition, and to actually improve the outcome of everything. Going into some of the dashboards, I'm gonna let Mookie jump in on the first part about the airport.

Thank you. For passenger satisfaction, I think our scores remain very, very high. I think we're also ranked always as well with Jill competing with the airport as the number one perception of city services. I'm always very proud of the airport. Cleanliness is something that we always strive to improve. And that's a little bit of a challenge with us. I'd like to be in the 80% score range. We've just got aging facilities. And so with that, we are looking at an asset preservation plan that will improve those scores over the next few years with modernization and improvements. And then, of course, the annual passengers, that's been a bit of an economic challenge for us, but we continue to work, we can talk more about that.

Thank you, Mookie. And then for transportation department, many of these don't move around very much, especially the resident rating of traffic conditions. They're pretty static through the years, but at least gives you an idea of where some of the sentiment of the population is with regard to the service transportation system. Some of the other ones that we have a little bit more control over is bike network completion, and we are on track. It's a small amount of increment every year as we try to attain that very large bicycle network.

Every year, we complete more of that with our paving program and other safety projects. Our average pavement condition, the most important of trying to keep our major asset in good condition, we were able to improve it greatly over the last ten years and get it to 73, 74 with a lot of the funding support from council and voters. We're trying to maintain that 73 now number going forward as Measure T is gonna run out after this year, but we're looking at other ways to actually maintain that. Just a real quick shot of the budget summary. Both departments have, for a large budget, not much of an increase showing for either of the departments, and a small increase in FTE positions.

I'm not going to go through every one of these slides, but I just want to highlight what's, again, most important for both departments, for the transportation department. It really is a safe transportation system, and everything we do, from maintenance all the way through our transportation safety and system improvements throughout this is actually for our system safety for all users, so that's very important to us. And then for the airport.

Sorry. Obviously, efficiency is something that we work with with our FAA partners. Our weather is phenomenal, so our we're always ranked I think this year, were ranked sixth in the world for on

time

performance. Restoring flights and recovery of the passenger demand is something that we focus through customer experience and innovation and trying to stay top of mind with our residents. It is a bit of a challenge with the business travel dropping off at SJC. And then continue as to look at the safety components of the facility, plumbing, utilities, power outages, all of those things are resonating with the team as we work on the asset plan.

Thank you, Mookie. And then on to some of the proposals in the budget that we're considering. The largest one, at least, that's on the screen there is the next year of, we did receive a fairly large grant from the US Forest Service. We're implementing that grant. These are the amount of funds that we will be implementing this year, which includes staffing and actual planting of trees, so we're going continue to do that.

Some of the other important ones are staffing for the automated speed enforcement, airport facilities and landscaping, real estate development, and then back to our downtown parking rates and hours, we're going to be increasing some of the effort on parking meter enforcement and scaling up our parking rates and timeframes downtown. And as a summary, it's our important again, most important for our surface transportation program is our transportation safety effort and safety goals that we're trying to achieve. We have put quite a bit of work into that, and we'll continue to do so. Trying to both plan and deliver our rail transportation system, which is mostly done by other agencies, but we're coordinating with those agencies, whether it be VTA and the BART project or other transportation improvements that are regional and will help the city. We are always after grants for transportation projects, and we've been fairly successful for that, but that could be a continued area of concern.

And growing airport passenger transport is an important one, providing excellent customer service, which the airport already does very well, and continue investing in the airport in infrastructure to enhance safety and efficiency. That is our last slide, and we're available for questions.

Alright. Thank you for the overview. Colleagues, let's turn now to questions. I'm happy to kick off or, actually, I see vice mayor's got her hand up. Go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you. Thank you for the presentation. It it it's I know that we're seeing decreased air transport to air traffic time or traffic. Mookie and you and I have had this conversation about increasing the demand on our airport. So what do you see what's your vision or what's your idea on how we can boost travelers coming in and out of the airport, or more importantly, who are coming in and out of the airport that would attract travelers?

It is a bit of a seesaw, as you just said at the your last few words. Is it is it the airlines being here that create the demand, or is it the basis of the community and the economic factors in our community that create the demand for the service? We look at it the second part first is there's been a shift in business travel. I think when there's an economic cycle like even the one we're in right now with fuel prices doubling, jet fuel prices doubling, airlines will make contraction decisions to where they have the most amount of flights and the most amount of staff to reduce outlying cities from having to duplicate services to the same city. So we haven't seen any cutbacks in the last few months of maybe a nonstop to a specific destination.

But the Mayor's March budget message that addressed need for creating some kind of a larger group than just our staff doing the leg work, getting more data, developing some kind of a plan where there's speakers that are speaking on behalf of their companies is something that we're going to try and target. But right now, our load factors, I think Mark, my air service development manager is in the audience if he has specific questions. But our air service development sorry, our number of seats in the market has been trimmed to a point now that it's meeting the demand. And my job is to obviously to operate a million square feet of space and the 16,000 pieces of assets that we need replacing and upgrading and to run an efficient facility. We don't create the demand for the consumer.

That is economics. I'll continue to work with Eric to see what we can do about growth in housing and affordability and then working with Jen to see what corporate businesses are relocating and opportunities to promote those ideas. But we do often get inquiries as SFO continues to see challenges with their growth. I think there's always an interest from international carriers interested in serving The Peninsula and The Valley as one major MSA if you want to look at it that way. So I think we wanna stay close to our partners at SFO too in the future. Did that answer your question?

It it it does. Flying in and out of San Jose Airport could not be easier. My my daughter came in last week from New York, and she had the choice of flying direct to San Francisco or flying into San Francisco, San Jose and changing planes in Dallas, which she chose because she wanted to make it very convenient for her mother and father to pick her up at the airport. But also getting through, TSA when she left San Jose took her two seconds. She was so thrilled that it was so seamless and easy for her.

That's why people fly in and out of San Jose because it's easier to do. So so there's that's that's, not business travel. Those are people coming home or vacation travelers. So any anything we can do, and and, I'm a fan of the nonstop. So I, unfortunately, make the other decision and drive someplace else so I can go nonstop.

But you and I have talked about that, and I I hope one day we'll be able to fly nonstop from San Jose, and, council member Monkehi probably hopes this too, from San Jose to New York and the East Coast in in general. So, I know, I I think you're doing a fabulous job over there. We just need to get people out and flying, and, of course, the cost of fuel affects the cost of tickets, and we may see vacation travel change. Okay. John, I have a couple questions for you regarding, you know, Vision Zero is really important to me.

And we've had our number, too many fatalities on our streets this year. The trend is actually up from last year, and that's not the direction we wanna be. We wanna go in the other direction. We wanna go down. I noticed in the budget, there's, allocation for a staff person to handle the quick build. How will that have you hired that? Is are you getting ready to hire that person, or is that person ready to come online once we approve the budget? And then how will that really create quick build will we really have quick building going on when you request it in one day and it's completed within the year?

The good news is that person already works for us, and we're just making that a permanent position. So that person is doing that work that we're monitoring both the preconditions of those roadways and then the post after being built, we're then monitoring and reporting that. Best example is in your district, which Hillsdale, we did a quick build a number of years ago, which was pretty significant change to that roadway. We had done pre monitoring of what the volumes, crashes, usage of all the different kinds of vehicles and bicyclists. And then we've done two years, and you've seen those results.

We're actually pretty pleased with that. Speeds are down. Crashes are down. Usage of multimodal is up. So that's the kind of thing that this person is doing and is gonna continue to do.

That's great. The the quick build program is really important to in the case of Hillsdale, we removed a lane in either direction. We put up bike lanes and slowed down traffic tremendously, and the statistics bear that out after a couple of years

Two years, starting a yes. It takes a while till people get used to it.

Right. Well, yeah. People are still complaining about it, but that's okay. If I'm saving one life, I'm happy with that trade off of I'll take the complaints anytime. The other thing, that I've been very involved in is the automated speed cameras that we work to have that legislation passed and included in the pilot program. And then we had the grant from the federal government, which was put on pause. And now I see we're going to install them. Can you tell us when the automatic automated speed cameras will be installed and operational?

Yeah. Thank you. The unfortunately, that federal grant does not look like it's going to be approved by the Department of Transportation, Federal Department of Transportation, so we've decided to move on, and we are wrapping up the contract with the vendor for the cameras right now. We should be still on track for deployment and implementation this fall, so it all still looks good. I think what's really helpful for us is that same vendor was this same company that actually installed and is implementing both San Francisco and Oakland.

A lot of lessons learned by them and us that we were able to avoid that. And in the interim, while we were waiting to decide on the federal grant, we've actually been doing concurrent work to get work performed for identification of the exact locations for those cameras and working through all the details of customer service with the vendor. So we're looking pretty good and still on track for September.

For September. Okay. And '33, we're gonna be installing the full Yes. '33?

Yep.

You you might, if you could, John, remind my colleagues of where the funds go that we collect for those fines.

Yeah. Thanks. It's a really good and an important thing is that the statute that allows us to do this does require that net proceeds, the proceeds can pay for the operation of this system, the vendor and our staff to support it, but any net proceeds must be returned to those corridors for traffic safety improvements. So should we have those kind of net proceeds, it's all going to be plowed back into the system to make it safer. So that's all really good news.

Great. And just to remind the public, if they get one of these citations, it's not a ticket, it's a citation, it will not show up on your license.

That's different. Yeah, it works more like a parking ticket than Yeah, yeah.

It's different than the red light cameras.

And Vice Mayor, if I could just add, Jim Shannon, city's budget director. I want to give DOT some kudos for the creative strategy here because not only are we going to make sure that we install those cameras because of the evaluation of the citation revenue, we're able to make sure that the staffing costs that were previously in the general fund, now that we have some good data on how that's going to look, we can move that into the traffic capital program offset by those citation revenues, generating about $570,000 worth of savings in the general fund. I just wanted to point that out.

Wonderful. I'm so glad we're looking at it that way and that we're finally able to install these cameras and and and with the net result of slowing people down and saving people's lives. Thank thank you for that. I see my time is up.

Well, thanks, vice mayor. Great questions. Those were all all on my list. Appreciate it. Let's go to council member Condellis.

Thank you, mayor. Vice mayor, I I I appreciate your your your questions. My my questions are on the similar path path line of the vision zero and or deployment of bike lanes in our city and and specifically, I know we have a a metric for transportation mode usage based on based on percentage of trips that that are made on a on a on a weekday average And so the breakdown from fiscal year twenty three to '24 to fiscal year twenty four, twenty five is, I mean, it didn't really move much whether we're trying to get folks to, you know, use other modes outside of, you know, single occupancy vehicle. But I guess a more specific question that I would have is, you know, obviously we have our downtown that has, you know, protected bike lanes with, concrete barriers that are are being put up now. You know, as you go into the periphery in other districts, how are we how are we actually measuring and or, you know, as we're expanding the bike network, how are we actually tracking the usage and or seeing before and after numbers specific to corridors that we implement these the the this bike network in?

I'm I'm I'm curious about that.

Thank you for the that question. And, yeah, while we don't do the same level of analysis on those quick build projects, those large quick build projects, we do do regular evaluation and counts of our system, including bike lanes. Not every street every year, but we do do that. The way we're we make decisions on what type of bike lane facility, it's in our bike plan that comes to council roughly every five years. It identifies those types of roads and the level of protection that that road really needs to have to encourage bicyclists.

So those roadways that are generally higher speed, higher volume, we want to provide more protection to them, which would be class four, which is a protected bike lane. We're getting there either through our pavement program or dedicated specific projects through grants to get there. That's you don't see a lot. That's why you saw that little tick up. We were a little below, but we're ticking up as as we can.

Grant, that makes sense. And, you know, the the reason for my questioning is, I mean, for example, Silver Creek Valley Road is something we talked about yesterday. And it's a steep hill and the density around Silver Creek Valley Road isn't conducive to a lot of folks taking their bike from their residence in my district to wherever they have to go. And so, you know, as we're talking about redesigning that roadway, you know, my question is how are how are we balancing, you know, the deployment of the bike lanes and and and or if we are enhancing the bike lanes or the lanes, the the road design to put protected bike lanes or or ballards that we can see the actual usage that we're, oh, you know, this has actually worked. When I'm out there talking to residents, I can say, well, we saw an x percentage increase in in bicycle usage instead of, you know, getting yelled at and saying, well, you just made the the the roads narrower and, you know, you just, you know, made it more difficult.

Does that make sense?

So yes. Yes. And Silver Creek Valley Road is a tough one just because it is in some hilly areas of the city. That's a tough one for bicyclists, but it also goes through other areas that need to have that kind of bike lane protection. And again, we don't monitor every year, every road, but we can certainly get some numbers on usage for that.

What's important is actually to continue to connect all those bike lanes so that someone that is intending to use them makes sure that they get a safe route the whole way. So I think that's something yet we can still be reporting on to you and those kind of things. So as we move through areas like that, they don't get all done at once because they're different segments to get done. It's important to us to start to connect those things up.

Yeah. And measuring is what

what I'm getting to. Yep.

Just measuring. That's that's that's my quote. Real quick, I'll pivot to the the the Olive program and and and the the expected revenue that we were supposed to be generating from an increase enforcement, to the tune of I wanna say it was about $55,000 according to the NBA, last year, NBA number four. A question for for John. Is are we are we going above that? Are we is the revenue that we're generating from this increased enforcement, hitting that target? Are we falling below? Is it are we falling above?

Are you referring to specifically the ALU program? Because that wasn't intended to be a revenue No. Because that was really an enforcement

I guess it was the oversized vehicle registration pilot

Sure. Yep.

Yeah. That.

Yes, all as we pivoted the last couple of years, either into more increased enforcement a la Olive or the enhancements that we provided Olive, which is another team that went out to enforce RVs parked for longer periods of time that weren't in big encampments. And then we also started our registered vehicle compliance team about a year ago or so, and that team has actually now been through the city about one time, one and a half times, gone through the entire city. So our citations overall on an annual basis, all parking citations are up about 20%. We're tracking that right now. Revenue is up similarly about 20%.

We're issuing lots of more citations on all program areas, not just unregistered vehicles, but in all areas, because we've focused on some more enhanced enforcement of all of those areas, whether it be lived in or just unregistered vehicles.

So

Yeah. Thank you.

It's up about 20%.

Okay. It is. So it's it thank is you. Because I mean, part of the and pardon me. Wasn't the olive oil. It was the parking in in in enforcement enhancements that we made last year as part of the budget. And so the net target was about $55,000

Yeah, we're probably above that. But I'll let maybe is that something? I think I think that answered it, but if Jim has anything else to add to it, I don't know.

Yeah. Think well, we'll look and and see also how the citation revenue is is is tracking. We'll clarify that if we need to later on in this session.

Okay. Alright. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. No. And that's that's the the the reason why I asked that question is, you know, I I I've I I have a an area that that is a high concentration of oversized vehicles or vehicles that are just people go and dump their cars and have, their their registration clearly expired. And so the frustration is while those cars aren't abandoned, they are, they are used to store. And and so so when our our, parking our meter mates have come, but they go around and they they

Parking compliance officers.

Thank you. The parking compliance officers go around and mark the tire. You know, they they the the owner of that vehicle just moves it a few feet, and and it's hard to to know whether, you know it clears the bar for us to say, oh, no, it's not abandoned, but it doesn't clear the the mark for folks to, you know, get that that that car to park in the driveway or park in front of the home or or wherever. And so I I hear a lot of the frustration from our residents, and and I I I just I'm I'm hoping that we, you know, we're essentially essentially chasing folks from one side of the street to the other.

Yes. And I think that that's a frustration among every council district and us. But we do need to follow the law, the motor vehicle code, when it comes to those kinds of either a citation or a tow, so we try to do that. I think the good news is when the council allowed us to build these new programs that are higher enforcement levels, especially the unregistered vehicles, we're at about 21, 2,200 tows already in this one year, just on that one program, and similar amount of citations just in that program. So those frustrations hopefully, are being abated a bit by a really good program that's addressing those kind of vehicles that have been nuisance.

It does not get all of them, but I think it's been a good program to do that. We're gonna just continue, and that's a proactive patrol that goes through every city street where, like I said, we're about halfway through the second round of that, and we're we're still actively sighting and towing vehicles that are unregistered.

No. Thank you, John. I I appreciate that. And, you know, I I had a couple other questions, but for I'll I'll leave it leave it for now. And I just wanted to thank you. And I have nothing for the airport. Sorry, Mookie. I love SAC.

Alright. Council member, if if I could just jump in just to get some more information for you. So when we're tracking it from the general fund overall forecast perspective, for overall citation revenues, I think we're estimating $13,500,000 Last year, we received about $11,600,000 So that whole category is, yeah, up, you know, 16% or so from what we're tracking.

Thank you, Jim.

Great. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, council member. Let's go now to council member Mulcahy.

Thank you, mayor. So vice mayor Foley, just to your point about air service, I think it was day one that Mookie and I met, we started talking about this issue and where, you know I could be helpful where this city could be helpful and I think we were both buoyed by the mayor's March budget message speaking to this issue and something we've been working on is and we're close, a task force that would be looking you know exactly at this working with regional partners, the airlines themselves, regional employers, because yes it's business travel, but we also have thousands and thousands of employees who live in this community who also fly out of this community, and so making that connection between both the business traveler and them in their leisure travel, think is critically important. So you'll be hearing more about that moving forward. I think the other thing I just want to acknowledge Mookie and his team have been really creative around thinking about growth of the airport infrastructure. There are some opportunities on airport campus for, you know, increased economic impact like a hotel site, like increased activity on the West side of the airport.

And so I'm excited to continue to work with Mookie and his creative team, both real estate and and, you know, Mark here who's trying to drag as many airlines here to San Jose and flights as possible. So I don't know, Mookie, if you wanna sort of highlight any of that or add any color. I'm gonna move on to John.

Yeah. I think thank you for the one on one to to discuss after the March budget message about how we could actually execute some of that. I think I'm looking forward to engaging with you to see what kind of outreach we can do. And and then also the the remaining council members that do have local business contacts with large leaders. But as I informed the mayor during one of the one on ones was that, we do have a major employer here in the South Sound.

It has 34,000 employees. And he mentioned to me that we would love to support nonstops in New York. And that's the engagement we need to encourage these airlines because by themselves, the metrics don't seem to work. But we also live in an environment where we have two other major commercial airports that take our feed or what we call our catchment area. And so that leakage is a big concern.

And so we're right sized right now, council member, as you mentioned. And and But we're we're comfortable with the finances of the airport, but we are bolstering up development of real estate on Coleman and Heading, doing the orange lot for for hangar development. We're looking to do some creative things with our advertising program generates almost $6,000,000 $6,700,000 a year in ad revenue and then also looking at lounge expansions. Because we've seen a major shift in what used to be called, you know, first class and coach and now it's called premium and basic economy. And the segmentation of all of that, if you've watched the news about United looking at first class premium and first class basic, they're segmenting the population down to where their buying power is and pushing that buying power.

So we also need to have facilities that represent what the customers want, which is better hold room seating, better experiences. We're going through a whole retail redevelopment program, and lounges is a part of that huge development. So we're are we're already in the phase of discovery and looking to write an RFP to to redevelop all of that infrastructure.

Well, you weren't here the other day, but we had a we had Matt Lush from the public works department here. I made a snarky remark about our bathrooms, but I know it's not a snarky remark to you because you're super focused on that part of the experience. So keep going on that. Thanks, Mookie. John, I'm maybe to pick up on something that the can council member Candelas was talking about on the quick builds.

I'm curious, are we staffed and budgeted for maintaining our quick build systems throughout the city? One of the complaints that we get and hear about, I do it myself, about the pylons and paint we have around this city, which are well intended, but oftentimes plowed over and takes a while to be replaced. Can you comment on what our budget allows for that, and are we prepared?

Yes. So what when we actually design those projects, we actually do it in mind of with our maintenance people in mind to do those. But, yes, you're right. Some of those plastic bollards or even the paint does either wear or they get run over. So what we do have a regular replacement timeframe for those, but it happens sooner than that.

So we actually rely on some of the public to tell us that some of that has happened, where we need to go out and replace it. But yes, it's, to answer your question, we consider it in our design, work through it when we actually build a project. There's an estimate of what the maintenance costs would be ongoing, and then we take care of it in there. I think that our toughest issue right now is street sweeping through those areas. Sometimes with our equipment, it there's can be a problems, but sometimes we do have some areas that we need to improve on that. But otherwise, we do have regular replacement of those kind of bowels and things.

That thank you. I just let's we could take it offline, but I think it would be really important if we're depending on others to report. Let's make sure that it's super obvious whether it's 311. I don't remember seeing, you know, bike in

There probably isn't one on three one report,

but let's make sure we keep that in mind because it's probably a top 10 complaint that we hear, especially from our bike and pedestrian community. I know this is not gonna be a surprise to you that I'm raising it, but it was a huge surprise to me when I got a briefing on the budget mess on the budget proposals, and one being Willow Glen Street parking. There's probably nobody in this building who has spent more time in Willow Glen than me, and the fact that I wasn't part of that conversation to kind of put that out there, it's like, I'll use a baseball analogy, somebody throwing that sort of, you know, curveball low and outside. I'm the catcher, and I don't know about it. I'm gonna miff.

Right? So it was very surprising. And I remember the conversation about us contemplating that we would not even be having this conversation if I hadn't fought for parking tips, which I've been doing for Willow Glen for twenty five years. We finally got them, and then surprise, we're gonna make people pay for parking. So I just want to make sure that my request is that we consider a return to source.

A return to source of some percentage of the revenue generated by what are most likely gonna be customers of Lincoln Avenue getting hit, or, God forbid, an employee's parking for more than our time limit and not paying the meter. So I think it would be helpful that, like, you know, I'm not a a semi permanent guy. If we're gonna do signage, as the budget message points out, it should feel like we've now invested in this program. We're gonna need to go talk to the Willow Glen Business Association who now knows about it, cause I had to go tell them that this was in the budget and it wasn't something I proposed. But I'm willing to help defend why this is a good reason, you know, for Willow Glen to sort of join the ranks of other communities that have paid parking.

I get it. And thinking about doing them in my own private parking lots. But I just don't appreciate this being kind of thrown out there in a situation like it was. So I want to work with the department to come up with a game plan where we're, if we're gonna do this, that we reinvest into the community to make this successful. And the thing that's plaguing, and I would imagine this is happening in other parts of our community right now, are delivery services, for example.

Double parked, you know, you illegal U turns, taken up parking for, you know, until they get the next order. We're having a real problem. I know we have it in downtown, we have it at the Alameda, we have it on Lincoln Avenue. I'm sure others have it. So some consideration for how this is paid parking is being monitored might be able to allow us to be helpful in freeing up parking from those that are taking advantage of it.

Yeah. Thank you, council member. And and we actually really appreciate your support all the way through when we started with the Lincoln Avenue paving project, which, you know, it's really to you, both our walkthrough of that to get all the details right, and your ideas, and we completely supported that, that putting actually in the parking spaces, parking tips, those designated spots. Apologize for the proposal, but it is a proposal, so we can talk more about that and how we would, if we want to move that forward and what timeframe. So yes, all those things are important, and as we did the walk through of Lincoln, you pointed out all those areas of either double parking or usage in areas that are not intended for that.

So all of that is important to us as well. I think some of that can be addressed with the next steps of this whole thing, but we actually really appreciate your leadership and the ideas of actually getting the parking tips out there. So it's a good first step with that. So thank you for that.

Thanks, John. Thanks, mayor.

Thanks, council member. Let's go now to council member Kameh.

Thank you. I, appreciate my colleagues' questions. I I had similar questions, as well. I wanna ask you, Mookie, in terms of because of what's happening in in our world, you know, we know that business travel has shifted, and there's not as much as there used to be. I'm a little bit concerned that, you know, here we're coming on to our summer travel, and, you know, I I know that the cost of airline tickets has just gone tremendous because of the cost of jet fuel.

I'm just wondering, you know, in terms of in your budgetary forecast, do you think that that's, oh, not gonna be a problem? Is it just a temporary thing? Because I think that I have seen even for, you know, just local auto travel, I mean, just people driving around are trying to drive less because the cost of just gas is, you know, expensive. And so I'm just wondering, you know, what are you seeing?

Thank you for that question, council member Khomeini. I I wanna be a I feel like I wanted to be an economist. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I one this morning was the comparison of those that live on the higher end of the pay grade are filling up their gas tanks very frequently. But those that have lower economic thresholds or even credit card lower credit credit thresholds are are fractionally filling up their own gas tanks as they can afford it. So we see that throughout our economy.

I I think it's gonna take about two years for the global supply of oil to get back to a reasonable rate. The West Coast jet fuel prices are well over $11.50 a gallon for for our to fly an aircraft. And so I don't see us coming out of this in a positive growth, being very conservative until about 2028. But I think that we've hit bottom at 10,000,000 annual passengers, which is what we're forecasting for this coming year.

Okay.

I think that could stay in place for the next two years. Now that Spirit has gone out of business, that allows some absorption for some of the other carriers to find some opportunities. But as this administration has sort of made it well known, there may be additional mergers and acquisitions going out. And you see that in the newspaper with comments. So we're kind of holding our breath because when that happens, there's no need for extra ticket counters and no need for extra office space.

And we're obviously a landlord for our facility and recovering those costs. And if we don't, that falls back on the remaining carriers too. So airfare isn't always a direct indicator of the local market's operating cost, but floating close to almost being $20 now for every outbound passenger gives us pause for some concern as we also carry a billion dollars of outstanding debt. So we work with our carriers. We explain all of that cost to them multiple times a year.

They're very confident and they're comfortable with the $20 In fact, we've just sent out what we call an MII, a majority and interest ballot to the airlines to approve an additional $4,500,000,000 I'm sorry, dollars 4,500,000 of spend in our next year's budget to replace elevators, escalators, things like that. And they're very comfortable with those kinds of expenditures. So I think there's a national issue and there's a local issue. I think locally we work very hard to work with our partner carriers. But the national issue and the supply and demand, the ability to raise airfare, yeah, going to Vegas is well over $300 now where you could have

Yeah.

Bought it much cheaper in the past.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for all you do. And I'm really delighted that you're thinking about facilities because I think that those who do have money expect different types of amenities and facilities, and I think that the airlines are targeting that. So thank you. John, I wanted to ask you about the key budget actions that are in the book, and on page seven sixty five, there was an ad of three parking traffic control officers. So before I get all excited, does that mean that you're going to have more parking enforcement officers? It's on page three I mean, seven sixty five.

Yes. But it's really associated with the speed enforcement, the cat speed camera program. Those officers have to review all those citations, and we expect thousands of them. So while their parking compliance officers are not going to be deployed to the field right away until we get a handle on how many of those citations we're going be getting. So it is the answer is yes, but not necessarily in field right now.

Oh, okay. Well, I I was hoping that, you know, our numbers were gonna go up, and, I don't know about anybody else or my colleagues here, but I think that for a city of our size, it's shameful that we only have 50. San Francisco has a four four hundred, and, you know, if you go up there, you know that you're gonna pay that $50 for parking because you don't wanna be out there and get a ticket, so, which is much more costly. So I think that maybe this is not the year to do it, but I want to sort of set the stage for consideration of increasing another 10, you know, which would give everybody one more for your area. And, and so, you know, as we look forward, I think we need that.

I don't know. You know, I'm glad that council member condelos has only one spot that is a problem. I have a lot of bad actors and I just want to recognize your staff because, you know, they've been working, very, collaboratively with my d one office. I have so many who are not just RVs, but trucks as well as, big rigs and all kinds of of of, big vehicles that, and I know you know that very well, John. But I I I wanna say that, you know, 50 is not enough.

And you would think that there would be sort of a balance in terms of revenue generation by having these parking compliance officers out there. So maybe not this year, but I think that I'd like to plant the seed for considerations in the future because that is just such a huge I mean, I have so many areas where it's a constant thing, a constant thing. And my residents are not shy about sending it to me, sending it to your staff. And I think that we need to of know, sort of up like the ante a little bit and say, okay, we're going to invest to be able to address some of these especially hot spot areas. And so, I appreciate, the Olive program.

I also appreciate the OSEP program because we're looking for ways to address the issue. But, you know, one year doesn't, you know, give us as much information as we'd like. So, I just want to support, your department in in looking at that in the future because I think that it might be something that is worth investing in. So thank you so much for your work, and and really thank you to the staff who really hear my complaints, hear my residents' complaints, and and really, it's it's a constant, constant thing. I also want to mention that I agree with council member Mulcahy and his, thought about, you know, what are we doing about some of the trucks who they're right in the middle of the street.

They could care less. They'll be there for a while. And, you know, those Amazon trucks, they don't seem to care. So I think that, we ought to figure out what to do about that as well. So thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Ortiz.

Thank you, vice mayor. I wanna thank the Department of Transportation for their diligent work, making our streets safer. I also wanna thank the airport department as well. Appreciate your your leadership, Mookie. I'm a major proponent of making sure that we are making our streets safer.

Of course, also a supporter of vision sorry. Vision Zero, traffic safety infrastructure, and strategies that help our residents get to and from their destination in a safe manner. Unfortunately, District 5 continues to be a section of the city that struggles with traffic collisions and even traffic fatalities. White Road has had multiple car accidents just this past month, some resulting in death. And it seems like over at least the last three years, three and a half I've been in office, Department of Transportation has been talking about redesigning and developing White Road, Jackson Avenue, and King Road.

However, now that I'm three and a half years in, I haven't seen any shovels hit the ground. So I would just like to see what's the department's plan on making sure that this these projects get done in the next decade?

Thank you, council member. And, yes, we're very concerned about some tragic fatalities that happened on White Road recently, and it was a really, really terrible thing that happened over there. To answer your question about those three projects, you're right. Those are all some of our key projects that are really important to our overall traffic safety because those are really high level traffic and volume and speed issues that we've got on all three of those roadways. We're in various stages of planning and design of those corridors, and I think you've seen some of the plans.

Our biggest problem is actually trying to find the full funding to do all those projects. Probably the one that's furthest along is King Road. We were able to secure some funding from the state that was associated with a housing development over on the BART project, land VTA. But the other projects don't have funding for them yet. We're gonna continue to look for that funding, either through state, maybe not federal for a while, but state or local funds that can do that. Each one of them has pretty significant cost. King Road could be in the $15,000,000 range, and I think we've got about eight. So we may have to do that one in phases if we can, but really the answer to the question is trying to get the funding to actually build all those projects.

Okay. So are you working on all of them at the same time? Are you prioritizing one? Are we gonna make sure that this the second part of my question, how are we gonna make sure this gets done in the next decade and just not something that the next council member is gonna be talking about when they

get safety? Try to prioritize all of those top safety projects. There's another round of funding that's gonna come through MTC VTA for these kind of projects. The grant's gonna be on the street, or the request for grant application's gonna be on the street late this summer. Those are all at the top of our list to see if we can make those rise up to the top, get funding. The federal government isn't issuing as many of those kinds of grants for these kind of projects as they used to, so that's a little bit more restricted. But, yes, each one of those is since we're moving into a a planning and design of each one, they raise at the top trying to get those things done.

Okay. I mean, is there any I know you're you're saying try, you're saying prioritize, but, okay, King. When when can we get King done? What what is your expectation?

Yeah. I think that's one that we wanna complete the rest of that funding. That's probably the furthest along. I can't give you a date because I've gotta get the funding before we can actually schedule something. So within

the next couple of years

a ways along. Yeah. It takes a while to get that any of those kind of funds that actually receive the grant, then

How much are these grants that you're applying for at the state level? So we're at

8,000 we need. So the fund that I was just referring to that's gonna be coming through MTC and VTA this year, I think is $85,000,000 for the whole Bay Area. So we're gonna be going after our share of that. It's not gonna fund everything because we're competing against every other city and county. So

Well, would just like to say that, especially King Road, that passes through District 457, And 8. And so this is not just my district office who's advocating for it. It's multiple council offices and and constituents. And White Road as well, it goes through 45, And 8 as well, just not not 7. I'm hoping that, you know, every every month, it seems like we're having another fatality in my district.

I know that you guys take this very seriously as you as you said, but I would hope that four years from now, we're not looking at us another list of individuals who've lost our lives and saying, oh, well, it's our hope in the next four years to to get some of these things done. Alright. Another one. The In Move In Miento project. You know, it's a transportation I know you know what this means, but for the record, it's a transportation plan for the East Side Alamok and San Antonio corridors.

You know, I see infrastructure that's quite innovative, such as roundabouts and other speed deterrents being installed in other districts, but not on the District 5 sides. Specifically on San Antonio, the en movemento strategy resulted in roundabouts on the San Antonio District 3 Side. But that not just quick build, but cement roundabouts. District 5 just has plastic pylons, plastic sticks. Could you talk me through why the District 3 Side had well thought out roundabouts and cement, and and District 5 doesn't have any of that?

So EnMu Vimiento was the the name of our transportation plan for a segment of

Correct.

East Side that's just around 101, Julian, Santa Clara, etcetera. So we design and do those kind of plans and then come up with projects that fit that context and try to address those

So the roundabouts didn't fit my district?

Well, sometimes no. So it depends on the type of roadway we're talking about, what we're trying to accomplish. Some of the ones like San Antonio is a in some parts fairly narrow. Traffic circles are something that we could look for, but a big roundabout is a little bit tougher to put into some of those areas.

Okay. Well, it just it seems like nothing. No. I don't see any infrastructure on my side of of the the and move and move the Menthol project other than, you know, plastic sticks that are on the sides of the road, not even in the middle. And so I just I understand that things don't fit or they may not fit, you know, the the area, but those types of excuses have been used to prevent East San Jose from getting infrastructure historically, you know. And so I just I want the department to start thinking about and acknowledging, hey, you know, if we're doing a transportation plan for East San Jose, why are we continuing not to put the most strong infrastructure in District 5?

Council member, I really do believe that we do that in every district, and you'll

Does my district cover roundabout?

As, you know, as I just we talked about the those main streets of White and Jackson and King are really important, and actually, those are gonna be pretty significant projects when we find the funding.

Ten or fifteen years when they're done.

Yeah. We are trying our best to provide funding for those, and it's a difficult competitive program among all the Bay Area cities and in some cases everywhere in The US. So we are actually quite successful at getting grants, and I and I'm proud of our effort to do that in those kind of projects, and we've been able to do that in other areas and in your district too.

Okay. Another thing I I my light's not blinking yet. Another thing I I think council member Candelas touched on this. I know that council member Camilla also touched on this, and I've mentioned it anytime this department's reviewed. Our current approach to abandoned vehicles in District 5, almost certain probably District 7 and parts of District 3, are not working. They're they're failing our our our residents. Each neighborhood in my district probably has 10 abandoned cars, 10 lived in vehicles at a minimum. That's not an an exaggeration. I get, images from my constituents. I get text messages.

I drive around and see them. When I reach out to DOT, I feel like there's always a quick answer to why we can't tow them or why we can't approach them in a timely manner. In fact, it's taken my office months to get cars towed. It's even cars with broken windows towed. And I know that we talked about police overtime, I think, at the last the last council meeting or maybe the previous one.

One thing that the police does do is when I need an abandoned vehicle addressed, I call my captain, he gets that done. For some reason, he doesn't seem to have roadblocks or barriers to reaching out to tow truck companies. And so I just I I wanna I just wanna ask this department, you know, what what sort of strategies are we going to be implementing to actually meet the needs of our our constituents as it relates to abandoned vehicles in our neighborhoods?

Thank you, council member. Yes. As we we we have deployed a number of programs to actually address that. One of them is, basically, is a reporting service through three eleven for abandoned vehicles. That report does need to include photographs and location of that vehicle to meet the criteria that we're trying to do to abate that vehicle.

Flat tires, broken windows, inoperable, that sort of thing. So those are the abandoned vehicles that meet that criteria. And those referring to the other ones, the unregistered vehicle program is actually a proactive patrol that we go through the entire city, and we're on our second round of that. We've towed over 2,000 vehicles for that program and cited the same amount. So we're actually out there doing that on a proactive basis and a reactive basis with regard to the reporting that comes through.

What we don't do now, we decided to end that service, is the extended parking stay for just somebody parking their vehicle. We were doing that for a number of years, and it was very inefficient. We were getting reports for parked vehicles that didn't meet that criteria of condition, and we would go and tag those vehicles, and then they would move. So we were less than 1% of those vehicles being towed. We do not do that service anymore. We're actually added that those patrols into these other areas to be much more effective in terms of addressing those abandoned vehicles.

We could get in the future. I know my time's up. Get a breakdown of, you know, what what vehicles are being towed from what district because my constituents feel like they're being abandoned.

We can we can give you that.

And if I can jump in, council member, I I do need to say for the record, in the way we implement these programs, it is done fairly and equitably across all council districts. I certainly get across this dais, abandoned vehicles, oversized vehicles has been a point of frustration. It is one of the, you know, highest complaints that we receive on three one one and the data, but we do it in a way where we focus on the problem. And we don't look, you know, district by district to see, well, we're gonna help this district and not a other district. We really look at the problem. And I get that the

I appreciate that, Leland. But when you in my district, when you live in my district, when you look outside of your houses, that's not the lived experience of my residents. But I I understand the intent of the administration.

We'll provide that breakdown by district, by citation, by program,

by area. So we can provide that. I I think what we could do just on vehicle concerns in general, one of the things that John and his team are working on is an info memo for the full council on kind of the shift from Olive over to OSEP and what the data and what that story is really telling us around lived in and oversized vehicles, which is a very good story and something that from a policy perspective, this council's made a lot of progress on, and the Department of Transportation has done an amazing job on. I think expanding that to just talk about vehicle concerns, the registration, and abandoned vehicles, and share that data, John, would be worthwhile.

Thank you. We will do that.

Okay. Great. Let's turn now to council member Tordillos, and then unless there are pressing questions, I do wanna move us to our next city service area. Council member?

Thank you, mayor. I'll try to keep it brief. Thank you, John and Mookie, for, the great presentation. Wanna up level some of the comments from my colleagues. You know, agree with vice mayor Foley important to keep the, intensity up on Vision 0.

It's been great to see the hardscaping of our downtown bike lanes and the expansion out into some of our more residential areas. And while we certainly do see still see some complaints from neighbors who don't understand, you know, the need, I've noticed an uptick in people at some of our more suburban neighborhood associations who actually speak favorably about these bike lanes as they're getting installed so glad to see that we're continuing. Also supportive of council member can make his comments about trying to find the money to invest more in parking enforcement officers and trying to see you know how much additional cost recovery we could get to, you know, provide that expansion of service in a fiscally responsible way. Then also very much agree with council member Mulcahy's comments around evaluating return to source. We certainly hear from some of the residents and businesses in Japantown who don't feel like they've necessarily seen a benefit to Japantown from the expansion of paid permitted park or meter parking there.

So I think finding ways to have some sort of return to source there to show the benefit of opting into some of these parking management programs would be very helpful for some of these business corridors. I have one quick question here. It was about some language in the March budget message. Not necessarily a direct budget angle since it was direction to align within existing resources, But it was looking at enhancing parking enforcement immediately adjacent to no encampment zones, which I know has been a persistent area of confusion for our residents, given that no encampment zones don't cover lived in vehicles. They don't necessarily result in any increase in parking enforcement for abandoned vehicles. So I was wondering if you could just speak briefly to the strategy of improving the parking enforcement near and ease ease.

Thank you, council member. So we are we are trying to do the the whole program of homeless and unhoused folks and and all collaboratively and actually comprehensively through the whole city. So what we're trying to do is support that effort. Where it gets a little tougher in no encampment return zones is that we would be involved in where there's a street that we can actually enforce a vehicle on. We still have to follow the state motor vehicle code when it comes to vehicles parked on streets, but that's really what this is talking about, is making sure that we're covering those kind of areas that the no encampment zone overlaps.

It doesn't really apply to a street because people can park their vehicles on a public street as long as done legally and registered properly.

Thank you. And then my only other comment here, I know there was a discussion about double parking, about delivery vehicles, you know, posing a challenge here. I know a couple years back, we had the smart grant that we had the first phase of that looked at curb management, and just wanted to encourage, I know we're, you know, not seeing a lot of grant money flow out of the federal government these days for the stage two of that grant program, but it would encourage us to work with IGR kind of at the state level as some of these things develop. I know there's a bill, s b twelve ninety two, around enhanced curb management that would allow for camera based enforcement of things like double parking, delivery vehicles blocking our streets. And I noticed that just recently it was amended in the Senate to limit the bill to only a few cities in Southern California.

So as some of these opportunities are moving forward at the state level, good to keep close with our folks in IGR to make sure that we're also eligible to benefit from some of these changes in law at the state level.

Yeah. Thank you. We're we are just about wrapping up our first phase of that, learned a lot, and then applying for the second phase. So thank you for that kind of support.

Great. Thanks, council member. Well, we covered a lot of ground there. Appreciate my colleagues' questions and comments and the focus on pedestrian and traffic, safety, parking enforcement, and, airline service at the airport as we try to rebound from, the pandemic and some of the reduction in business travel. John Muckey, thank you for answering all of our questions. We don't have any other hands, so I think we're gonna now take just a moment to transition to environmental and utility services, our next CSA. We'll turn it over to Jeff Provenzano when he and the team are ready. Thanks everybody.

Alright.

Alright. Jeff, are you and the team ready?

I think we are. Yes.

Alright. Let's jump in.

Alright. Thank you. Good afternoon good morning, mayor and council. Jeff Provenzano, director of the environmental services department. With me is Lori Mitchell, director of the energy department, and John Ristow, Director of Transportation.

This item before you today is the Environmental and Utility Services City Service Area. Within this CSA, we have several core services. Those include within the environmental services department, portable water delivery, recycled water management, recycling and garbage services, storm water management, utility regulatory advocacy and compliance and wastewater management. On the energy side within the CSA, we have providing clean energy to the community, energy customer support and energy community programming. And of course on the transportation side are critical services of sanitary sewer maintenance and storm sewer maintenance.

Within those core services, we have many different programs. A few of them are listed here before you. I'll go briefly through these. Of course, we have operations and maintenance of our drinking water systems and recycled water systems. We have commercial and residential solid waste collection services, storm water policy and compliance, our operations and maintenance of our wastewater treatment plant, the laboratory that collects and analyzes samples from our sanitary sewer system and wastewater treatment plant, regulatory compliance for all the utilities and purified water.

And on the energy side, a few listed here are renewable and greenhouse gas free energy supplies, conventional energy supplies, regulatory compliance for energy, energy risk management, local energy programs, marketing and public affairs. And of course, our Climate Smart San Jose program. And on the transportation side, again, our sewer operations and maintenance as well as storm water operations and maintenance systems and street sweeping. Here are a few dashboards that you may be familiar with. I'll quickly go through them starting at the top left.

Wastewater discharge, we have a cap of 120,000,000 gallons a day. Max discharge during summertime flows to the bay. What this graph represents is that we are below and continue to be below that 120,000,000 gallon a day cap. Moving from left to right, recycled water demand. You'll see there that the estimate for this year is a little bit lower than the target.

The reason for that is primarily driven by lower water sales. We saw as we went through the last summer unseasonably cold weather during the summertime followed by a couple early winter, late fall rainstorms that dropped water usage down. We see this trend on the potable water side and we see it across the county. So this was expected. As we move forward, we're projecting that water recycle water usage will remain flat.

We did see some heat waves in the February and March timeframe. Water usage is up ticking across all water types. And we will continue to track that going forward. Next slide over is the utility assets, operational assets, All are tracking really well, 100% or in the upper 90s. The ones that are not 100% have active capital improvement projects in place to rehabilitate and replace those assets.

On bottom left side, sanitary sewer overflows. We are at right at the cap or estimated to be at the cap of 1.9 SSOs per thousand miles. San Jose clean energy power mix moving along here, a slight decrease anticipated in our carbon free mixture of clean energy, but otherwise remaining relatively flat. And landfill waste diversion, bringing your attention to the columns on the left, that dark blue column, that is our overall, the state goal is 50% diversion from our landfills and we're well above that into the low 60s. Quick snapshot of the numbers across the CSA.

Changes is relatively flat from the proposed to the forecast. The increase in forecast over adopted is primarily driven by base increases related to wholesale water purchases, wholesale rates are going up and a few other costs that are coming into the utility outside of our control. Other than that, the proposed includes the few proposals that we are recommending to council this year, but overall positions are remaining flat between the forecast and proposed as well as our budget. Priorities on service delivery. A lot of words here, I'll be brief.

Of course, we're always focused on building, operating, maintaining our wastewater, drinking water, recycled water systems, both for reliability and to ensure public health and safety. We're also very focused on environmental protection. A lot of the work that we do is around environmental protection, keeping pollutants, trash, contaminants out of our water systems. This is both through both in our creeks and in the South Bay, is in this regards collection treatment and management of our wastewater and stormwater runoff. We also have extensive programs in collecting, processing, recycling, composting, and disposing of our solid waste to maximize diversion from our landfills and protect public health, safety,

and the

environment. And we are of course focused on reducing our environmental footprint through energy efficiency, waste reduction and environmentally preferred purchases. And we will continue as we go forward to provide residents and businesses with renewable energy options at competitive rates. These are a few of the budget proposals that you will see in the packet. One is, you may be familiar with a cost of service study for our sewer rates.

Another is ongoing work of cleaning PFAS from some of our fire stations and fire training facility. The third one is adding a full time position to our solid waste enforcement program. The next is a enhanced street sweeping pilot. This is a pilot in conjunction with the department of transportation and ESD on our storm water side, trying to achieve two goals at the same time. The next is a strategic load management staffing plan and energy hedging program review.

Looking ahead, of course, what we do all the time and we will continue to do is focusing on delivering exceptional and reliable utility services to residents and businesses in the most cost effective manner that we can. And of course compliance, all of our utilities are driven by compliance and updated regulations for all the utilities, but especially the sanitary and storm collection systems, potable and recycled water energy, and at the regional wastewater facility. We have three items listed here. These are a bigger cost items that are related to updated regulations. You may be familiar with our storm water permit, and we'll continue to work across departments to address trash and illicit discharges into our receiving waters.

We have been to council a couple of times in the past year, year and a half on nutrient reduction strategies, amount of nitrogen that's going into the Lower South Bay. And we have a plan in place for that. And we'll require reducing the amount of ammonia discharges and upgrades to our wastewater treatment plant to achieve that. And there's an acronym here, acronym that PCIA, where it'll be, I'll look to Lori to explain what a PCIA is, We'll increase substantially in 2026, which will have some significant financial impacts on the San Jose Clean Energy, and we're available to answer any questions there. And with that, I'll conclude the presentation, and we are available for questions.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Let's turn now to colleagues and we'll start with council member Campos.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you to the team for the presentation. I have more kudos and questions because I really just want to commend the enhanced street sweeping pilot partnership between DOT and ESD. It really embodies the one team approach that we always hear our city manager reflect. And I think that that's exactly the kind of thinking that is going to help us meet the needs of our residents in stronger ways.

I was recently hearing from residents in D2 about cars that are preventing the street sweeping from actually working. And given the previous conversation about what we're doing to make sure that we are being responsive to those concerns from our residents and also the double benefit of making sure that we are prioritizing the areas that are blighted, that are then further hurting our waterways and systems. So I I just really wanna give kudos to the team for the work on that. Thank you.

Thanks for the great comment. We'll go to councilor Candelas.

Thank you, mayor. Jeff, I I I too want to just give you all kudos and not just for the treatment plants amazing annual breakfast that you guys, put on, which to my colleagues. I I was just talking to councilor Mookaye about it. It's, it's it's a top notch, breakfast and gives the firefighters their run for their money according to councilor Mookaye. But no. But but my my my questions essentially is or my question is is is around the the nonprofit coordination. And and are you all what? Did did they take your line? Anyway, sorry.

You'll get invited to the branch.

Oh, okay. You you the invite will be in the mail. But so but I I divvy it. So the nonprofit cleanup coordination dollars. You know, I am a huge proponent of leveraging, you know, the volunteer base that we have and enthusiasm around leveraging, you know, folks who wanna get in get their hands dirty, roll up their sleeves, if you will.

The the I have a problem, a creek area that has a lot of trash, and it's gotten better over the years, but I I'm curious as to how I can include or we can include Thompson Creek as one of those waterways because I I you know, it's Los Gatos, Coyote Creek, you know, some of the other riparian waterways, but curious to what the thoughts are of how we can loop, you know, other areas and as we start making tangible progress on some of these areas that have historically been bad, how do we, you know, spread the the love and the the work? I'm I'm all into seeing how we can leverage these critical partners and and curious what staff's response to that is.

Sure. Yeah. Thank you for the question, council member. Right now, for for these nonprofits and the work going toward the money going towards them, they're really focused on San Jose properties. Specifically, I think you mentioned Thompson Creek, which is which is an important waterway for us.

Large portions of that is owned or managed by Valley Water. So if we want to look at improvements there, we can work with your office offline. We always have different partnerships and collaborations going with Valley Water. We'd really be looking for them to kind of be the lead there on funding access, right of way access. We can whether we can do some work in collaboration with them, but there there may be there are good opportunities there. Again, we do partner with them quite frequently, and we can engage with them and see if there's any any way to leverage these groups or or add more funding to these groups to do work on Valley Waters properties.

Got it. And and so if if we come up with, like, I guess, agreement, if you will, or I mean, not all portions of Coyote Creek or or maybe all the portions of Coyote Creek or Los Gatos or Guadalupe are owned by the cities. Is that what you're telling me, Jeff?

That's correct. We do own a good portion of lands in and around the creeks, the city of San Jose. But there's a lot of private property owners. The county owns a lot, Caltrans, Valley Water.

Correct.

So there's a large mixture of property owners, and for right now, yeah, these nonprofits, we have them focused on San Jose properties to kinda remove trash and litter from those areas.

Got it. And that that was my my point. That while yeah. Yes. You know, not all creeks and waterways belong to a single entity. They belong to multiple. I just like to see some of the the efforts also also considering this is this is general fund contribution go to other areas that are willing and have needs and are and and can do the work to get that that that organizational okay from our partner agencies who it may belong to, to leverage that power and that strength of our volunteers who wanna help out and and wanna be able to, you know, roll up their sleeves. So I would just encourage the administration to to think about that, and, would hope that that in the next fiscal year, we can do that. Thank you.

Next council member. I second the point about the annual pancake breakfast. It's a great time. You gotta check it out sometime, vice mayor.

In Jeff's defense, I would just wanted to say before Jeff gets yelled at, I I believe you might wanna say you it was just the tea pack members who were invited.

Oh, sure did. Didn't get an

invite either. There also wasn't any bacon left because Manuel had eaten at all. So you didn't miss much.

Yeah. I'm actually still looking for more bacon.

Glad we got that on the record. Alright, Councilor Kameh.

I'm jealous. I think you're to have to invite everybody because you know, this just can't be. But anyway, I I want to say that you guys just do an absolutely excellent job of all of the briefings, and I take everyone. Even though, you know, I may be familiar with the topic, I certainly get so much out of it, and all my questions get answered. So I just want to say thank you to you and to your staff because it really makes a difference when you understand complex information, and you always do a great job.

So thank you for that. I had a question under the budget actions for this year, and I saw that there was an increase of 7% proposed and 4% proposed for the trash and the junk pickup. The fees, yes. The single family and for multi family households for cost recovery. And I'm just wondering, the junk pickup and household hazardous waste, are we expanding that? Or are we what exactly it going to be the same? And just wondering about that.

The what we're seeing in both of those programs is increased usage by residents. Okay. And that comes with a little bit more cost there. The junk pickup is that's part of our contract with the haulers. So a little bit more money to fund the increased services there. And same thing with the county's household hazardous waste program. We have more residents dropping off those contaminants, which is good. That comes with a little bit more dollar amount.

Okay. And then I was just curious in terms of junk pickup and household hazardous waste sort of program and dumpster days. Is that totally separate, or is that kind of like that when when we have dumpster days, there are areas where people do not call to get their junk pickup done. You know, we have areas that people put it in the corner and it accumulates in the corner. And so we have started to do some dumpster days because they don't know to call to be able to get it picked up.

A lot of it in in areas where there are a lot of apartment, there's a lot of turnover. And so I'm just wondering, this junk pickup has nothing to do with the dumpster days that are done by Beautify.

That's a great question. There is a manager's budget addendum that should be coming out, if it's not out already, on free junk pickup and illegal dumping and how free junk pickup intersects with Beautify San Jose and their efforts there. So there's some information in there a high level. Yeah, dumpster days are very popular, and we're looking at multiple ways to connect both of those programs together and streamline services, definitely making sure that we're not duplicating anything. So there is information at MBA that you may find useful. And the dumpster days are very popular, and we're looking at doing more of those going forward.

Yeah. I think that it's important from an educational point of view where, especially in multifamily housing, where a tenant maybe they don't know that they can call and say, hey, you know, I have this mattress or I have this, dresser or whatever it is, right, to be able to pick up during the days of, the, regular garbage pickup. And so I'm just I was just wondering how that's going to be reconciled because sometimes it's just a matter of knowing Mhmm. Really. And so instead of having, you know, a corner that is always full of junk and where someone has to complain about it, that there would be a little bit more, you know, educational information, to be able to let people know that, hey.

You know, we have this great service that the city provides as opposed to, you know, the dumpster days which can be okay but you know, if you have dumpster days once a month every single month and people think that they could just put their stuff in the corner, It's it's unsightly. I mean, it really is just not the way to go, I think. So I'll look forward to that MBA, and, hopefully, we can kind of find ways to to reconcile that. Thank you.

Thanks, council member. Council member Duan?

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for doing your job of keeping our environment clean and safe and, you know, from solid waste to water treatments. I know that the old fire training center had a lot of PFAS, which is like forever chemicals, which is cancer causing liver and thyroid problems, and immune system deficiency, and so on. How do we, how we decrease that amount? And why are we costing us, I think is like $350,000 to investigate where the property was been purchased by Google?

Thank you for the question, council member. With regards to transfer of ownership, I believe the city of San Jose retained the responsibility of environmental remediation that went along with the the transfer of that property, the sale of that property. For the training facility, for that one specifically, we're still in the process of the environmental remediation. We're removing all the PFAS out of the groundwater there. We're projecting it'll take another couple years to kind of you suck all the bad stuff out of the ground, the groundwater and let clean clean water move back in. So it takes a little bit of time for all that to kind of move through the soil. That work is underway right now, and and it should be done in the next couple years.

Thank you. And then right in the corner of Alma And 10th Street, the EPA site, do we have any influence to to help them move a lot quicker? It's been thirty eight years, I believe, that site. That could be a real asset to, you know, the San Jose State, the Shark Eyes, the Barracuda, you know, and the Giants and so on in the History Park to to have that land available to become a, you know, a mixed use with retail and restaurants and so on. When can we help the EPA or do we have any influence?

Yeah. Thank you for the question, council member. Don't have a direct response right now. We'll have to look into it and get back to you. It is a Superfund site that's being it's on the EPA's list and the Department of Toxic Substance Control. So it's there. I think believe there's funding to do something. We'll just have to find the timeline and see if we can help expedite it. But we'll look into it and and get back to you.

Thank you. And the last question I have for you is that, obviously there's chemical or particles that are being released into our waterways. Now some company, they'll they'll pay a higher fine because of part per millions and so on. I think it's it's prudent that we reduce that amount of contamination or that goes into our waterways versus defined, right? How do we go about to make sure that any new company have these pre filter or post filter before that water go into the creek or the the river?

Another great question. We have a green storm water infrastructure program. It's part of our storm water permit. So new developments have to put in the green storm water infrastructure. And that is like a bio filter that will remove all those pollutants before the clean water then goes into our storm water system.

Well, thank you very much and continue with the, you know, the good jobs that you guys doing, and I yield my time.

Next council member. I don't see any other hands. I I might just ask quickly since we have a little bit of time. I'm I'm really interested in the work we've done over the last couple of years to transform our relationship with PG and E and ensure that we are connecting customers faster and really as as one more integrated service delivery team figuring out how to be more responsive, more efficient and be an easier place to invest. And I'm just curious if we can share a little bit about maybe just where we are and what we can look forward to in this coming fiscal year in terms of that partnership.

I know it's a little bit broad, but Manuel, if you could just share what this budget I I know there's an investment specifically in a new a new strategic load management position. But but maybe just more broadly how this partnership is going because we've we've had our concerns, and we've we've done a lot to hold the our utility accountable, but also be a better partner.

Thank you, mayor. Manuel Pineda, deputy city manager. Yeah. Over the last year, we have done a a

lot

of work as part of our partnership agreement, which was signed last June. And the key things that are happening is that we're being able to track all the schedule for the large projects, including the agreement, meet on a regular basis with PG and E. Also able to track some of the large projects, infrastructure projects that are gonna be being built within the city. So it allows us to kind of get a comprehensive picture of everything that's happening in the city. In addition to that, I think a side effect of the partnership is that it has gone beyond just the specific projects that are within the agreement, but we've been able to resolve also some hot button issues that the city had for city facilities and city projects and some interconnection issues to allow city priorities to move forward.

As we go forward to next year, you know, fiscal year, one of the key things is we wanna make sure that we are still tracking on the agreement. We're looking at adding additional development projects within the city, up to six, I believe, that could be added to the 13 that are currently there. And one key item that we explored with PG and E and started a conversation with is currently the agreement is for projects that are 20 megawatts or larger. We're looking at modifying the agreement to include projects that are five megawatts to 20 megawatts as well, which would also create additional opportunities, especially as it relates to facilitating industrial manufacturing projects and other economic development opportunities. So that's a conversation we're gonna start and would be a a significant change and benefit to the city.

That's great. And then are we currently tracking speed of interconnection from a logical point, like when a request is made to when someone's actually connected. And obviously, are different categories. Very large load, the more medium sized, which we maybe previously would have thought of as large prior to this AI revolution. But then I'm also interested in small businesses and new residential. I didn't see it in the top level dashboard, but I'm just curious if we feel that we're trending in a positive direction.

Yeah. I would say we we are in a positive direction. I you know, the, there's a lot of, requests for PG and E to be in projects to be in San Jose, which is a benefit. But what comes with that is that there are some delays for future interconnect projects for those who have come in later in the process. We are having conversation with them about their modeling and can we make modifications to facilitate more opportunities in San Jose?

I think the big step for us will be to add those projects that are five to 20 megawatts. That's gonna give us a lot of flexibility. And then we just internal to the city, we did talk also about the possibility of adding some, high density residential projects as well. It'd be difficult for us to track individual residential projects, but some of the larger projects as we try to facilitate housing, they'll be next step on the conversation with PG and E.

Got it. I mean, they they probably have better data on this than we do, but I'd be interested to know over time if the way we're working together and the way they're staffing the demand in San Jose is leading to tighter turnaround times on connection. We know that's been a persistent pain point, whether it's large load, employers, or it's residential, or it's even smaller projects. So I just I just throw that out there. If you feel free if you wanna

chime will say that at this point, we are seeing faster times for large load projects. We you know, based know, and we do get involved not just in the large load projects, but all kinds of projects across the board. We're not seeing those yet for smaller load projects, and that's why we wanna work on that change.

Yeah. I'd love to get to that. I know we all at times get questions and and sometimes complaints about how long people are waiting, but I think there's a lot of progress that's been made. I I don't mean be negative about it. I just would like to be able to measure it and understand how much we've shortened those windows over time.

And then maybe my last topic, which Laurie, I think is is probably for you is I was looking at that chart and our numbers around renewable and GHG free energy overall for the city. It seems to me that part of the way we unlock the next growth in in those metrics is by incentivizing storage and I know we're doing long term power purchase agreements that are at scale. It also seems and you should feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this but that there's a lot of opportunity at the local level related to home batteries. And then I think we're we're pretty close as we've talked about before. In fact, we know other countries are are even ahead of us on vehicle to grid connections and being able to incentivize EV owners, of which I think nearly half of all vehicles sold in our county now are EVs, to plug in at night and actually provide some power back to the grid when demand is peaking.

I'm just curious how you're thinking about that if there are opportunities in the coming year to further incentivize the deployment of of those solutions or or if you're thinking about it differently.

Yeah. No. I I couldn't agree more. I think those are really important technologies for our community. So we currently have a battery incentive program for our customers, focused particularly on those customers that have installed solar, but they do not have a battery to soak up some of that midday energy that we're seeing.

And we do expect to scale what you will see in the budget, excuse me, as an additional position focused on demand side management. So just as you're saying, to get more opportunity out of the existing grid and infrastructure and make sure that we're utilizing those batteries, the electric vehicles, as well as the heat pump technologies that our customers have installed that can provide some grid benefits. So we see a lot of opportunity there. Our customers are certainly embracing those programs and we will look to continue to expand those to the the extent that we can this year.

Yeah. That's great. And then maybe just as a follow-up, if you have if you know off the cuff, is the two questions, I guess. One is is the home battery incentive fully tapped out each year? Do we have room? Is there is there is marketing do we need more marketing, or is it fully utilized? And then have we thought about designing? I know this would be innovative, and maybe maybe state law would get in the way. Maybe we're not ready for this. But incentivizing EV owners who have that vehicle to grid technology, I know it's still not widespread. But to be in a position to incentivize them to plug in and actually get an incentive, get paid to power the grid during those critical moments? Is that something we can do locally at this time?

Yeah. That's a that's a great question. Not quite yet, but I think we're close to that. And so we are working with a number of pretty innovative companies out there that are doing a lot of this virtual power plants, things like that, that are taking advantage of the vehicles as well as the batteries. For your first question on our battery program, we're not tapped out there.

We are looking to do some advanced marketing and actually even using some AI tools to help us do that in a more cost effective way. So we're excited for that this year to push out that information. And then, thing I'm really excited about this year is our DC fast charging pilot will go forward. That's a contract that we just signed, and those five sites will go into construction later this year and be operating in '27. So those are fast charging sites, mostly located on the East side of the city where we don't see a lot of fast charging that hopefully will really help that side of the city use electric vehicles and feel confident that they have a place to charge those vehicles.

And then with that, it provides some unique opportunities. We will control the retail pricing for those DC fast chargers, which unlocks a lot of opportunities. Particularly, we're working on some rates that would provide our low income customers, potentially also our employees with a lower rate in that ten to 2PM timeframe. When we know we need, you know, there's a lot of solar on the grid and we need to soak that up and more people charging would be great. So we're we're excited to pilot some of those projects in the coming year.

That's really exciting. Okay. And I promise last question on this and then we'll we'll wrap. The batteries on homes today, do you know roughly so for the thousands of San Jose households who have solar but have not installed a battery, there's a a still, I think, pretty significant federal and or state incentive, plus I think the city has an incentive. So these batteries have really come down in cost just on the market, plus there are the incentives. What's roughly the payback for somebody if they put a battery at home at this point?

Yeah. That that's a great question. You're right. We're seeing a a lot of great pricing out there for customers and and stacking these incentives. And so, you know, it varies depending on your you know, the size of the battery you install, but we're seeing some sometimes as as quickly as two to three years and, you know, sometimes five to six, you know, just depending on what you've installed.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. That's great to know. Cool. Okay. I think it's exciting. There's a lot of lot of innovation and and opportunity there. Well, thank you. Thank you, Laurie. Thank you all. I don't see any other hands from colleagues. So I think we're gonna transition to public comment if we have any. Tony? You have no cards? Okay. Alright. Well, thanks to everyone who's here. Thank you city staff. With that, we're adjourned.