City Council - Regular Meeting

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon. All right. Good afternoon. Welcome. I would like to. Good afternoon. Welcome. San Jose City Council for the afternoon of June 23rd, 2026. I want to remind those joining remotely that the Zoom link is available on the agenda for today's city council meeting. If you are participating online and wish to speak, please use the Zoom application and select the raise hand feature. Speakers will be called in order. When it is your turn, the city clerk will enable you to speak and a notification will appear on your screen letting you know that you may unmute and provide your comments. Tony, would you please call the roll?

Comey? Campos. Present. Turdios. Here. Cohen. Here. Ortiz. Mulcahy. Here. Dwan. Here. Candelas. Here. Casey. Here. Foley.

Here.

Mahan. Here. Yavacorm.

Great. Thanks. And I apologize for wearing the mask. I've been a little under the weather and want to try to not spread it to anyone else. We are going to do our Pledge of Allegiance. So if you're able, please stand and join us for the pledge.

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.

Thank you. Today's invocation will be provided by Drew Lloyd, Board President of the Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee, known as BayMEC, and Councilmember Mulcahy will tell us more.

Thank you, Mayor. It is my honor to introduce Drew Lloyd, President of BAMEC, California's oldest nonpartisan LGBTQ plus political action committee. Founded in 1984 by San Jose State alumna Wigsey Silvestine and former San Jose City Council member and Santa Clara County supervisor Ken Yeager, Baymec has spent more than four decades advancing equality, civic engagement, and LGBTQ plus representation through our region. A longtime advocate for human rights and community engagement, Drew has dedicated much of his career to strengthening participation and representation across Santa Clara, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and Monterey counties. Professionally, Drew serves as managing director of Verdict Group, a San Jose-based trial consulting and litigation communications firm, and is also a small business owner in the hospitality space with Bitterbuck a new craft cocktail bar opening soon at Fountain Alley in downtown San Jose. Drew and his husband, Frank, are proud residents of District 6, residing in the Rose Garden neighborhood and are active supporters of the community they call home. As we celebrate Pride Month and recommit ourselves to building a more inclusive, equitable, and welcoming community for all, we're grateful to have Drew with us today. And before Drew begins, a shameless plug, I'd also like to note that the 42nd Annual Baymec Brunch will take place on Sunday, October 18th from 10 to 1 at the Signia by Hilton in downtown San Jose. We encourage everyone to save the date and join Baymec for one of the region's premier LGBTQ plus community events. Please join me in welcoming Drew Lloyd.

Thank you, Council Member Mulcahy. Good afternoon, and thank you, Mayor Mann, Vice Mayor Foley, council members, city staff, and members of our community. June is a month of celebration, but it's also a month of reflection. Pride began not as a party, but it's a declaration, a declaration that every person deserves dignity. that every person deserves visibility, and that freedom means little unless it belongs to all of us equally. Pride reminds us that democracy is not self-executing. It is not automatic. It is built day by day by people willing to participate, to serve, to speak up, and sometimes to stand up for one another even when it's difficult. And that is why local government matters so deeply. Because democracy does not only live in Washington, D.C., it lives here in chambers like this one, in city parks and libraries, in public schools, in neighborhood meetings, in the decisions made every day that determine whether people feel safe, seen, and welcome in the communities they call home. for LGBTQ plus people, those decisions have never been abstract. There is not a day that I wake up without feeling grateful to call California home. Grateful to live in the Bay Area where diversity is not merely tolerated, but it's celebrated. Grateful to live in Santa Clara County where innovation and inclusion have helped shape generations of progress. and grateful to live in the city of San Jose, a city that's long demonstrated that our differences are not weaknesses to be feared, but strengths to be embraced. As someone who has spent much of his life advocating for equality and civic engagement, I never take that for granted. There was a time not that long ago when many people could lose jobs, housing, family relationships, and personal safety simply for being honest about who they were. And yet generation after generation continued to rise. They organized. They marched. They voted. They ran for public office. They built community. And that... They believed this country and cities like San Jose could continue moving forward closer to its highest ideals. That work continues today. Because pride is both a celebration of progress and a reminder of responsibility. A responsibility to protect democracy. A responsibility to reject hatred and division. A responsibility to ensure that every young person growing up in our community knows they are worthy exactly as they are. And in a time when so much of the world feels polarized, fearful, and uncertain, diversity remains one of our greatest strengths. Not despite our differences, but because of them. Different backgrounds, different faiths, different identities, different experiences, all contributing to the shared story of this city, this county, this state, and this nation. That is the promise of democracy at its best. Not that we all agree, but that we all belong. Today, during Pride Month, may we remember that freedom is not merely the absence of oppression. Freedom is the presence of opportunity, the presence of dignity, the presence of representation, the presence of hope. And may we continue building communities where people are not forced to hide in order to feel safe. Where public service is rooted in compassion. And where future generations inherit a society more just, more inclusive, and more courageous than the one we ourselves inherited. May this council continue to work with wisdom, integrity, humility, and humanity. And may every resident of San Jose, regardless of race, religion, background, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, or economic circumstance, know that they belong in this community, in this democracy, and in the shared future we together are building. Thank you.

Thank you, Drew. We appreciate you being here and helping us start our meeting with those inspiring reflections. We're going to move on to our ceremonial items. Councilor Kamei, if you would join me at the podium, we will recognize and proclaim June 24th as Dia de San Juan.

Thank you so much, Mayor Mahan. I'm going to have some very special people come join me here today on this very special day of Dia de San Juan. Hi, my name is Rosemary Kamei. I'm the District 1 Councilmember and I represent West San Jose. Today we gather to celebrate Dia de San Juan and to honor the rich heritage, traditions, and cultural contributions of Puerto Rico. This occasion provides an opportunity not only to celebrate Puerto Rican culture, but also to recognize the lasting impact that Puerto Rican residents, organizations, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, and community advocates have made in San Jose throughout the region. Dia de San Juan is more than a tradition. It is a moment of renewal. It is a celebration rooted in water, faith, and hope where families and communities come together each year to reflect on the past and welcome what lies ahead. It reminds us that culture is something we don't just remember. We live it, we pass it on, and we carry it forward. For me, the day is especially meaningful. As someone who is also Puerto Rican, it connects me to my roots in a very personal way. The rhythms, the language, the family gatherings, the pride where we come from. It is a reminder that no matter where life takes us, our culture stays with us and continues to shape who we are. On this very special day, I would like to recognize a very special person. Tony Estramera for his dedication to keeping that culture visible and thriving, creating spaces where heritage is not only preserved, but celebrated and shared with pride. Through his leadership and commitment to service, Tony has played an important role in ensuring that Puerto Rican traditions, history, and achievements continue to be recognized and celebrated by future generations. Tony was the first Puerto Rican, when I came to San Jose, that I connected when I started my career in public service. He has done tremendous work in regards to environmental preservation, community service, and mentorship, serving the community on the valley water for over 30 years. What stands out most about Tony is his commitment to people, especially family. Thank you for always supporting our community, Tony. AND I SHARE THIS PROCLAMATION WITH YOU FOR YOUR MANY YEARS OF SERVICE. SO THANK YOU SO MUCH. THANK YOU. I'M GOING TO HAVE TONY SAY A FEW WORDS AND THEN I'LL HAVE THE MAYOR PRESENT THE PROCLAMATION.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. JUST QUITE A SURPRISE FOR ME. BUT JUST TO TAKE A MINUTE TO THANK MAYOR AND COUNCIL, COUNCIL MEMBERS, YOU KNOW, SAN JOSE has been very good to me. I came here in 1966. as a high school dropout. And because of the people that I met here, I was able to give back. And every day, I'm committed to doing just that. Thank you.

Councillor Cohen, if you would join me here at the podium, we will recognize the 2026 Climate Smart Champion Award recipients.

We'll invite our guests on down as well.

Give the people who are being recognized a moment to come down. Well, here we are at our last ceremonial item of the fiscal year. It's my pleasure once again to sponsor Climate Smart Champions ceremony today, recognizing champions from the city who are fighting for our environment and our climate. We're joined down here, in addition to our awardees, we're joined by our city manager, Jennifer McGuire, energy director, Lori Mitchell, Ryan Smith from the Department of Transportation and other members of the department and some leadership staff. We're recognizing 2026 climate champions in seven categories today, mobility, energy, water conservation, youth, equity, business, and our champion of the year. We began this celebration, this recognition back in 2019, and this is the seventh time annually that we've been giving out these awards. selected by our climate smart department. This is about taking local action to make lasting impact on our community. Our local leaders have the greatest opportunity to impact the climate trajectory where we are closest to our built environment and local infrastructure, and ultimately our community's decisions. The Climate Smart champions we're recognizing today embody the city's Climate Smart San Jose initiative to reduce air pollution, save water, and improve quality of life while meeting greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. The champions we are honoring today have demonstrated a commitment and passion to protecting the environment and they're great role models for all of us to emulate. They have also been advocates within their own spheres of influence to encourage urgent environmental actions because we can no longer wait. The climate science is clear and the imperative to act is now. What we also know to be true is that climate action can also provide an improved quality of life and greater levels of affordability for our community. So let me just mention the awardees, and as we do so, the mayor will hand the plaques to the winners. Our mobility champion, and for many it will be no surprise, we've selected Jordan Moldau. He joins us regularly to advocate for alternative mobility. Our energy champion, Made Simple Heating and Air. Water conservation champion, Sixty Soma Phi owner, California LLC. And our youth champion who is unable to be with us today is Kanika Rawat. Our equity champion, Climate Resilient Communities. Our business champion is Cisco. And our climate champion of the year is, we're recognizing John Brazil. Very sadly, we lost John last week. He had battled cancer valiantly. The city team and community mourns his loss but also lifts up his memory and important contributions to San Jose as a climate champion and champion for San Joseans. His legacy and leadership and vision for San Jose that opens its arms to bicycles and the joy associated with sustainable mobility will persist. So Ryan Smith from the Department of Transportation, there you are Ryan, will come up and say a few remarks. In addition, his wife Libby is here to accept the Climate Smart Champions Award.

Thank you, Council Member. I'd like to say a few words on behalf of our department in gratitude for John, based on the thoughts and feelings that many who knew him shared over the last week. John Brazil was truly a champion for people and for sustainability. Long before the city adopted our many goals to make San Jose safer, more sustainable, and more people-focused, John advocated passionately and tirelessly to promote these values and to stress their significance to our colleagues in leadership. Much of the work that we do now, the goals we share, and the ease with which our department now works among ourselves and with others to achieve these goals, has been made possible through John's dedication and numerous contributions. Prior to John's service with the city, dedicating space in our streets for people walking and biking was at times an impossible task. Thanks to John's passion, this has now become a key part of the work of our department. Getting us to this point took years of John's thoughtfulness, empathy, and patience. John focused deeply on engaging our community in creative ways, with particular attention paid to the most vulnerable and structurally disadvantaged. By passing two bicycle master plans through city council, co-champing Walk Safe San Jose, and helping to build a wealth of knowledge across our department, John united us around the notion that our streets can be better for everyone. John had an incredibly large, warm, and open heart. He had the ability to make us all feel special and did so with the utmost sincerity. When asked, John would say that the best thing about working for the city was the people he worked with every day. He was a mentor and friend to many. He will always be remembered, honored, and loved. Thank you.

All right. I guess that's it. Thank you so much. Please give one more round of applause to all our Climate Award champions.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

All right, we are now moving on to orders of the day. Today's council meeting will be adjourned in memory of Chris Berticelli, who passed away on February 25th, 2026. A lifelong San Jose resident and co-owner of Berticelli's La Villa Delicatessen, Chris was a beloved member of the Willow Glen community, known for his generosity, warmth, and deep commitment to giving back. He touched many lives through his support of local schools, youth sports and community causes and leaves behind a lasting legacy felt across San Jose. Council Member Mulcahy, would you please tell us more?

Thank you, Mayor. And I just want to acknowledge the fabulous slideshow that is going to be playing while I speak both to introduce this adjournment and also on behalf of the family. Today we adjourn in memory of Chris Berticelli, a lifelong San Jose booster whose passing in February leaves a hole in the heart of our city and especially in the Willow Glen neighborhood where he reigned supreme. There are certain people who become part of a neighborhood's identity and Chris was the prime example of that. A son, brother, husband, and father. He was just 47. For generations, families have walked into La Villa and felt like they belonged. The food is exceptional. The specialty items are world-renowned. Though what keeps people coming back is the vibe. The wait in line, seeing an old friend, trying something new, experiencing the holiday rush for Ravs. And our council will have a chance to experience some of that goodness today as the La Villa Ferry has dropped off some Chris combos and raves in the back room for afternoon snacking, just like Chris would have had it. Chris and the Berticelli family have given our community that gift, and Chris mastered being at its center. He had a knack for turning customers into friends and friends into family. He knew people's names, their stories, their kids' teams, and somehow always had time for one more conversation. Like many San Jose families, mine has its own La Villa traditions. When friends come to town, you take them to La Villa, before a game, after a celebration, or when you just want something that felt familiar, comfortable. You found yourself standing in line on Lincoln Avenue, and chances are Chris was there, with a smart aleck comment, smiling from behind the counter, or smirking, as some would say, talking about the Niners or Sharks chances, showing off the latest hats or t-shirts, always making the Lovilla visit a little brighter. Through La Villa's support of local schools, youth sports, charities, and neighborhood events, Chris and his family have invested in Willow Glen the same way Chris put his all into the family business, wholeheartedly. He showed up, gave back, and supported the people around him because he loved this city. The Chris Combo may be his namesake, but his real legacy is the community he helped build around it. The outpouring of support and social media tributes in the days and weeks since his passing have been the stuff of legends. The celebration of life at St. Francis Cabrini was perhaps the largest funeral gathering I've seen. Chris will be deeply missed, fondly remembered, and forever woven into the story of Willow Glen and San Jose. Now, if you're here today in support of Chris, and I know I've seen quite a few, if you're able, if you could please just stand up. If you're here for Chris, just please stand up. While the family doesn't intend to speak today, I wanted us to rise and show strength and unity on this day to honor Chris. Members of his family are here today, Chris's wife, Janelle, sister trisha hollywood and her husband mike and his aunt and uncle shelly and salvator cosentino jr and i want to give a special shout out to chris's children and his rock star parents patty and dave who are not here today so on behalf of mayor mahan my city council colleagues and a grateful city we extend our deepest consult condolences to the berticelli family the extended La Villa community, and everyone whose lives were touched by Chris. Thank you all so much for attending today.

Thank you, Council Member, for that beautiful remembrance. And our hearts just go out to you. Chris's loss is a huge one for our whole community, but I can only imagine what you're going through. You'll be in our thoughts and prayers. We're so, so sorry. We are... I'm going to move on to our next item, which is the closed session report.

Yes, I have one item to report out. The Mayor and City Council voted to direct the City Attorney to support the litigation filed by the California Attorney General and the County of Santa Clara opposing the construction of an ICE detention facility in the Gilroy area by contributing to and signing on to amicus briefs in the litigation, which are expected to be filed in the coming weeks.

Thank you, Susanna. All right, next is the consent calendar. Are there any items that council would like to pull from consent? I'm aware of one. Councilor Casey, you'd like to pull item 2.21? Please, yes, thank you. Okay. Why don't we go ahead and take that up first, and I'll go to you.

Thank you, Mayor. I had a number of small businesses, ground floor retail businesses, reach out and express their concern over the lack of public engagement on this item. So it's my hope that we might be able to defer this item until we come back in August and give them an opportunity to engage with the city. I understand the city did make an attempt to reach out, but somewhere along the line the ball got dropped. So it's my desire and hope that my colleagues will support deferring this item until August.

Thanks, Councilmember. You can, why don't we go to public comment and then we can you can make that motion if you'd like vice mayor did you want to chime in i'm sorry i'd like to make a motion to defer okay you made the motion to defer so we're going to take this item separately for a vote why don't we go to public comment and we'll come back for council discussion and questions for staff so tony this would be specifically questions on item 2.21 and then we'll come back to the council and take action on this item

I have about 16 cards for in-person speakers. I have one hand up as a reminder to the person online. It is for only item 2.21, not the entire consent calendar. Before I call your name, I want to remind speakers that they must comply with the city's code of conduct for public meetings. They must direct comments to the body, limit remarks to the agenda item, and observe the time limit, which is one minute. Conduct that materially disrupts the meeting or interferes with others' ability to participate may result in muting or removal as authorized by law. When I call your name, go ahead and come down. You don't have to speak in the order that you're called. First person on the microphone starts speaking. Other people line up behind them. Gumby. Adolfo Gomez. I think it says Cash. Saul Palamara and David Feria, come on down.

Hello again. Gumby, now small business owner in downtown San Jose. Appreciate you pulling or talking about pulling this off of the consent calendar. And of course my concerns as a small business owner is the lack of outreach. If you're talking about a 1.1 million raise or whatever it is, this is essentially a tax on the small businesses, the residents, and the employees and the visitors that are coming in. which I think would be too much of a cost to bear. The memo that compares us to, say, Sacramento or Los Angeles or San Francisco, not fair. We're fighting against Valleyfair, Santana Row, which has lower rates. We're fighting against Campbell and Los Gatos and Sunnyville, which just had a nice article in the Merck, which have zero parking for their downtown. To see how this reconciles with the growing downtown, with everything that we have coming up, with the great momentum we built up on 2026, which is, let's face it, once in a generation that comes along, what happens in 2027, the outreach, the considerations, and how we work with our downtown business.

Thank you. That's your time. Next speaker. Thank you.

Hi, Mayor, Council Members. Thank you, Council Casey, to mention that. But as small business owners in downtown, we struggle already with the recovery pattern we are on. Adding this increase in parking without community involvement and business outreach, I think, is not right. So I'm asking to the fore, decide them until we can talk more about it. We're trying to make our city and our downtown better, and I don't think this will be a way to, you know, trying to increase more business coming in instead that people will go to other areas where they will find easy to park and not to pay that much. Thanks.

Thank you. Next speaker. Also, Joe, come on down, and Alex.

Hello distinguished council members, Mr. Mayor, thanks for the chance to speak on this and thank you for getting this item out so we can talk about it. I think it's important that you guys understand how much this will impact all of our downtown's workers and the visitors that we work so hard to attract into downtown. I think if I asked you to raise your hand, if you say you support small business, every one of you will do that, right? And I know that you want to make the efforts that match with what we're doing to make downtown attractive and compelling and vibrant. And this is something that will literally kill the momentum we worked so hard for in the last 10 years. So thanks so much for considering it and please try and get more information from as many of us as you can. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Thank you for having me. I just wanted to kind of mirror some of the comments that are already made coming from the staffing side of things. keeping talent and keeping employees happy is something that we've struggled for. And so I think it's important to think about that as well. You know, there's unintended consequences that will come with that. And so I hope you guys really consider that. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker. Also, Brian, come on down. And I can't read this name, but it starts with an L. Go ahead.

Oh, hi. My name is David Faria. I've been a San Jose resident since 2011. I'm a small business owner. I'm an alum for San Jose State and chair of the Sofa District Committee. I wanted to speak on this proposal because I believe it rests on two faulty assumptions. The first is a zero-sum assumption that an additional $1.2 million can be pulled out of the local economy without consequences. But that money has to come from somewhere, and it ultimately comes from the pockets of working people and customers who are already stretched thin by high rent, high utilities, high gas prices, high grocery prices, and broader pressures of the Trump disaster era. The second is a positive assumption that people have deep enough pockets that it won't affect behavior. But the Silicon Valley does not mean everyone who lives here, works here, and parks down here is wealthy. Many of the people supporting our business is operating on tight budgets. As a small business owner, I can tell you these costs matter. They shape whether people come downtown, whether they stay, whether they spend. If we want a stronger downtown, we should be reducing friction, not adding to it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

So whenever I go downtown, I always have to get parking.

I'm just not going to go downtown.

I'd rather, you know, I'd rather just go home, not spend eight bucks to get a beer. Spend four bucks for a beer, two bucks for a tip, $8 for parking, I'm just not gonna go downtown. I'd rather just go home, go anywhere else, go to Sunnyvale, and just not downtown. So I'm just not gonna give my money downtown anymore. I think it's gonna cost us a lot more money than we're gonna get back with the parking, so.

Thank you. Next speaker, Kyle Miller, come on down, and Nate LeBlanc.

How's it going, Council? I'm an employee of two different businesses downtown. I pay about $400 in parking a month, which is... three times the amount I pay for my PG&E bill, and two times the amount I pay for my phone bill for three months of service. I don't have healthcare, I work here, and I feel like I shouldn't have to pay to work here, even though I'm fine with paying what I pay now, but raising it would essentially eliminate my ability to work downtown, and I'd probably have to find a job somewhere else, so I appreciate it if you guys consider not raising the prices.

Thank you, next speaker.

So like Drew said as he was opening this meeting, you know, in San Jose we care about being a part of this community regardless of your economic status. I'm lucky enough to work at, I work cash only and working at it as a neighborhood bartender right in downtown. I really am lucky to live my life in and among my community. I'm also lucky enough to live in District 3, Anthony, what's good? So because of that I have a pretty short walk to work. And my team, my regulars, come in from all over. We have a lot of people. We are a big service industry bar. We have a lot of people that come in after their shifts downtown to spend their time at the space we build. My afternoon and evening bartenders are now going to be spending hundreds of dollars a month more. Your servers, when you're going out to eat, are now going to be topping up their meters during the middle of Friday and Saturday night rushes because they're now paying after 6 o'clock. Public transit isn't good enough at 3 a.m. when bartenders get off work. How is this industry?

Thank you. That's your time. Roy Thompson, come on down. And George Calhoun.

I'd like to present to the council just some math about how this new, this rate on parking meters would affect just an average citizen. I was born and raised in San Jose for exercise and joy climbing at the studio in downtown San Jose. I will present some information about the current rate of parking and how in relation to my gym membership and in relation to my income. With the current schedule, I climb from 4 to 8 p.m. three times a week. Currently, the meters are charging from 4 to 6 p.m. That's two hours a day at $2 per hour. That's $4 per day. I climb three times a week. That's $12 per week. That comes up to $36 per month. $36 per month is 32% of my gym membership and 1.5% of my monthly income. With the new meter prices, I would be paying $196 a month for parking. That is 175% of my gym membership. That is almost two times my gym membership, and it would come out to 8% of my monthly income. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker. Josh and Jason, come on down. Go ahead.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. My name is Nate LeBlanc. I'm the Economic Development Director at the San Jose Downtown Association. I want to thank you all today for hearing this item out. What we're asking for today is a deferral, just some more time for there to be more outreach to be done to research alternatives and also to run this item through the downtown parking. parking board, which is something that we feel was skipped in this process. I think as you're hearing from these impassioned remarks today that we just need more time to put more effort into this. It's probably inevitable that some new revenue needs to be raised, but I think if we work together, we can figure out a way to do it without negatively impacting our service industry and our visitors to downtown. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, City Council. My name is Roy. I work at a cocktail bar downtown called Haberdasher. Me and my colleagues are in the business of making downtown an inviting and welcoming place for visitors and residents to come. make memories, connect with each other, and boost the local economy. And this acts directly against those goals, which is also against the best interest of the city and its inhabitants. My coworkers who come from out of town to work not only for their own livelihood, but also for a love and passion for creating a culture of hospitality downtown, are already burdened with finding and paying for parking as things stand. They don't deserve to have more of their hard-earned money deducted simply for showing up and doing our city a service. That goes without saying how this is going to affect our guests and people who come to spend time and money downtown. Raising parking prices will add yet another reason to deter potential and even regular visitors to our community, and is the last thing San Jose needs right now. So I ask that you spare the local economy, make San Jose a place people want to visit and live in, and do not raise prices or extend paid parking. Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Mayor Mahan, council members, thank you for your time, and thank you, Council Member Casey, for pulling this item off the consent calendar. My name is George Alou. I'm one of the owners of MO Hospitality. We own and operate five bars and restaurants here in the downtown core, have been doing so for the last 14 years, and currently employ 200 people here in the downtown core. Speaking today in representation of them, we understand the city is facing real budget pressures. We also understand that downtown has parking garages, 90-minute free parking, and employee parking programs. Those programs are helpful, and we appreciate them. Unfortunately, they do not eliminate the impact of this proposal. Extending paid meter hours until 9 p.m. and raising key downtown meters to $4 an hour affects the exact hours when restaurants, bars, cafes, venues, and events are working to bring people back to downtown. For guests, 90 minutes does not always cover dinner, drinks, shows, or a full downtown experience. For employees, it does not cover a normal shift by far. If downtown is being asked to absorb this burden, council should discuss why, whether the revenue comes back to downtown, and what alternatives were considered. This is not a routine consent item, so we're grateful it's... Thank you. That's your time.

Next speaker. Kenton, come on down. Before you speak, we generally ask that the audience not applaud because we have a lot of cards to get through. We want to make sure that the people who are waiting at the end don't have to wait extra time while we wait for people to settle down. If you want to agree, jazz hands, thumbs up, rah, rah, rah. You can show your support visually.

Go ahead. I'm sorry. My clapping cost you 20 or 30 seconds of time. So thank you for giving me your time. But I am actually a visitor here, and I'm here for an itemized agenda item. that I should come up later, but I just want to support your pauper residents. I see that these people probably are not making ends meet, and it's so sad that Californians just keep being taxed to death. Truly, it's a little bit shameful, and it reflects on maybe why you want to do ranked voting. Now I kind of get it, and also there are so much security here. Not a very friendly place. So honestly, if it's not because I'm here to fight for unalienable rights as an American, I probably wouldn't be in your city because you're so unfriendly. And it took me 20 minutes just to park for one minute. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, Kenton and Marley, come on down.

Thanks for the time. My name is Jason Greer. I'm a longtime restaurant manager in the area from Willow Glen to Japantown to downtown San Jose. I'm representing the back of the house staff for all our cooks, dishwashers, and everyone. If we go to $4 an hour, we're going to be taking 20% of the income on a regular basis pre-tax from all our employees in the back of the house. And they're just a part because they're losing 20% of their income. Most of the employees are not making over $20 an hour. If they are, it's very minimal, and that's pre-tax. Taking $4 is taking a huge portion of their pay, and it's inappropriate. Thanks.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, thank you so much for listening to us. I own a new bar in downtown San Jose on Almond Inn. It's close to Press Room, Luxury Lounge. Anyway, I have been noticing a lot of traffic from Valleyfair and Santana Row to our area. So I just think that's kind of a new thing for downtown, and I don't think this is going to work for them.

Thank you, next speaker. Mike and Sean, come on down. Those are the last in-person speakers, and then I'll move over to the Zoom speakers. Go ahead.

Good afternoon, councils. My name is Kenton. I just became a new business owner about six and a half months ago. We already know that parking is an issue. I know that there's constraints and everything, but I'm looking out really for not just the staff, but also the service industry in general. The more that we tax our service people just to work, just to come downtown, just to find parking, just taking it out of their income, just on top of the bills, on top of the bills, I don't think it is fair, not only just for them, but also to our visitors that want to see downtown. We've done so much work already just to visit San Jose already. Why do we need to tax them more on parking just so that they can come visit us? So please take into consideration, let's just reconsider this topic so that we can make this city even more vibrant than it is right now. I know we're on this momentum of everything being successful right now, but what happens after World Cup? So just please consider that for our service members' sakes and also the community's sake as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. My name is Marlee. I live 2.6 miles away. It took me 57 minutes to get here via public transit. I would just like to point out that despite there being thousands of studies on the impact of parking increase on the environment and on the economics of a city, There is one singular study in 2025 on the fairness of the individuals. This study explored a 0.25% increase, and that showed significant impact on the individuals. And I believe that there should be taken more consideration in this regard. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, council members, mayor. Great to see you guys. My name is Mike Lee. I'm not only a board member, business owner, and commercial broker in downtown San Jose. The impact on the work that I've done with clients, bringing them to downtown San Jose and creating more revenue for those people, this is going to generally impact their employees, their people. I work with some of our largest occupiers here in downtown San Jose. I'm going to keep saying downtown San Jose. Just so you understand the importance of what's going on here and a lot of guys know me you see me We work together. We've you know been on boards together. We've done a lot of impact together So I think this is incredibly important to help not only increase the future of business owners downtown San Jose but as well as you know Make it easy for hiring employees people to stay in downtown. I've lived here my whole life I went to San Jose State went to Valley Christian High School and So I've seen the impact that, you know, all of you guys have had in the city, and we want to continue to get to grow, and this is something that will impact that. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Next speaker. After this speaker, I'll go to Joseph online, followed by Amber. Go ahead.

It's notable that you didn't yell at and gabble down business. It took at least 20 speakers getting a round of applause before Tony admonished us. When labor advocates on a variety of issues show up for events inside and outside this building, if this is passed, we will be priced out of our First Amendment rights because so many people park on the streets right in front of here and on the streets around here. So we won't be able to show up for these events. We won't be able to afford them. And I just think that it's ridiculous. And these are events that you guys show up to. Maybe not you, but you show up to all the time. You show up sometimes. But you show up, and it's like, we won't be able to be here. We won't be able to afford the parking. There's many people that park on the streets here so that they can go to these events. And maybe an event starts here, a march starts here, and ends there, or whatever. But people park on these streets. You will price us out of our First Amendment rights.

Jessie in person, followed by Joseph online, and then Amber.

Good afternoon council members. My name is Jesse and I live right here on Santa Clara Street. I'm here to urge you to vote against doubling the parking rate to $4 and extending the hours to 9 p.m. San Jose is barely starting to come back. Doubling these rates hurts the exact people who make our downtown thrive, our local businesses, their workers, and our visitors. I have a close friend who owns a bar down the street here on Santa Clara Street. These changes directly discourage people from supporting small businesses like his. This also deeply impacts the families who are just barely getting by. Many of us only have one parking spot per household. When our guests, family, or workers come over, they rely on the street parking, forcing them to pay double and keep feeding a meter. Late into the night is a little unfair and a burden. We wanna support downtown, but making it more expensive for locals and working people is not the answer. Please let us keep our downtown accessible. Thank you.

Joseph, followed by Amber.

Downtown San Francisco and Oakland meters end at 6 p.m. and generally charge less than $4 per hour. Downtown San Francisco and Oakland have viable public transit alternatives to driving, which downtown San Jose does not. I personally will not be able to attend many events in downtown because of this, and I have heard the same from many others. These are not empty threats. If you pass this, you will see significant decreases in visits to downtown San Jose. If you need to raise money, tax people with money, property taxes, business taxes, etc. This tax cuts across all economic sectors, including many people who can't afford it. In that sense, it is unethical. Destroying foot traffic in downtown is not the way to raise money. If this change to metered parking passes, people will cease to explore downtown. They will only go there for specific purposes for the minimum time. You are restricting people's freedom of movement and exploration if you pass this. This is undemocratic because your constituents obviously do not want this. I predict this loss of people coming to downtown will actually lead to a net loss of parking revenue and a loss of political approval for members.

Amber.

I'm sure the intent is not to kill downtown businesses and culture, but that is exactly what is going to happen if you pass this. According to a 2023 report by the United Ways of California, 52% of households are struggling. And just any marginal increase is going to make this just completely, completely unaffordable. We again, like Joseph said, don't have a good public transit system. And as a lot of other people have said, many, many workers need to use public parking because they're not supplied. WORKER PARKING. THESE ARE WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. THEY DON'T MAKE A LOT OF MONEY. YOU'RE JUST TAKING IT OUT OF THEIR POCKET. IT'S UNDEFENSIBLE. INDEFENSIBLE. THANKS FOR YOUR TIME.

THANK YOU. BACK TO COUNCIL.

THANK YOU, TONY. THANK YOU TO EVERYBODY WHO SPOKE TODAY DURING PUBLIC COMMENT. LET ME START WITH THE VICE

Thank you. I really appreciate all the people, small business owners and residents who frequent businesses downtown that you came out and spoke today. We adopted a budget recently that had this component in it. So in a minute I'm going to ask Jim Shannon to come forward and talk about the budget impact. But first I'd like to hear from the Department of Transportation on outreach. How was outreach done in relation to this? Is it Heather? I know John's not available, but is someone here who could address how we did reach out to the community or if in fact we did reach out to the community and how often?

Good afternoon, Heather Hoshi, Deputy Director of the Department of Transportation. Outreach in this scenario was done mostly internally. We reached out to the downtown San Jose Downtown Association to discuss the proposal. But because it was part of the budget process, most of the outreach is done through the study sessions and the budget proposal being published. The proposal doesn't have this coming into effect until August, so the month of July, we will enact our communications plan that's currently being drafted to reach out to businesses through San Jose Downtown Association who does our coordination and communication around our parking programs for us. And we will go to business meetings with business association and update websites and have conversations throughout the month of July.

Okay, so that seems a little bit backwards that we would go to them after we have approved in the budget this particular increase. It seems to me that we should have spent a lot more time reaching out to the community, engaging their input, and actually finding out their concerns about the costs that their staffs will have to pay in increased parking. So I appreciate we're doing it in July, but that's too late. When you say internal communication, so you're saying, did we reach out to the business association and encourage them to reach out to their membership? Did we reach out to the Chamber of Commerce? Or did we simply just send them emails saying, please come to the study session?

The emails, none went out to the Chamber of Commerce. Downtown Association received an email early May, I believe, explaining the program and the changes and offering a meeting. But I understand that that email was missed. So challenges there that that didn't hit.

Okay, thank you Heather, I appreciate that. Sure. Jim, can you tell us what the, we depended on these dollars when the budget was passed. Councilmember Casey is asking for a deferral. He's not asking us to deny the parking request yet But he is asking for a deferral. So if we were to Either not implement or delay at all. What's the what what's the amount in our budget that we need to overcome?

Thank you for the question vice mayor Jim Shannon cities budget director. So the The way the budget worked is that the increase in revenue would flow into the general purpose parking fund, annual amount about $1.2 million, and then be transferred into the general fund. And so if there was a deferral here, that would reduce those revenues by approximately $150,000 to $200,000, which would then need to be absorbed within the general purpose parking fund. And so it would reduce resources in into that fund, but it would not affect the transfer to the general fund Okay, so what you're saying is the funds that go into the parking fund only get transferred when there's funds there Is that what you're saying the the the transfer is budgeted and the the transfer will go through so all of our transfers will be budgeted through and And so then the balance in the general purpose parking fund goes down by the amount that's transferred. So if the revenues coming in don't balance the revenues coming out, then the overall balance of that fund is gonna lower. And so there is the fund balance which would then be impacted for a deferral of the time that we were talking about would probably be 150 to $200,000. which would be absorbed, again, absorbed within the general purpose parking fund. I wouldn't expect a service level impact.

No service level impact at the moment. Correct. Okay, I appreciate that, thank you. Councilmember Casey, question for you. You asked for a deferral until August. I assume it's the first council meeting in August. And if it is, what do you expect to happen between now and then?

So I'd like to see some engagement with the ground floor retail folks that'll be impacted with the hopes that maybe there'll be an alternative that they can discuss and that we'd be open to.

Okay, could you...

But at a minimum, just the public engagement and opportunity for folks to weigh in.

Yeah, I think it's clear the community at large did not know about this increase. Whether the Downtown Business Association knew or not or attended the meetings, that's really irrelevant. What is relevant is that the small business owners here didn't know about it. And really, I think we need to take ownership of that outreach. and we need to make sure that we engage them and have as much outreach as possible and input as possible from the local business community. As many of them said, many of them are thriving because of 2026 right now. But when that goes away, will they continue to thrive with the increase? I don't know. We've heard really good information about their concerns and I think I share those concerns, too. So I would appreciate it if you included in your motion specifics about outreach, that we conduct outreach, really guerrilla-type outreach, that we're engaging boots on the ground outreach for the small businesses and spreading our net as wide as possible, however you want to include that in your motion.

I think verbatim what you just said.

Then I am happy to support the deferral. I think it's really important that we take a look at the impact on these small businesses and our thriving community in downtown San Jose that we're trying to encourage to thrive. And we truly don't want to put any impediments in the way of making our businesses successful in downtown. So happy to support you on the deferral.

Right. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Appreciate it. Let's go to Council Member Campos.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Vice Mayor, for those clarifying questions. I also want to thank Council Member Casey for pulling this item so that we can have the community participation that I know is needed on an issue like this. And so no questions. I just wanted to share some remarks first to our community who showed up. Your voice is so important on this issue. I want to thank everyone who shared their stories and it resonates deeply with me because as someone who was also born and raised in San Jose and some of my first jobs were in the food industry, working at High Five Pizza, working at Maggiano's. So I know what it's like to work all day on your feet and to be taxed at every turn. So I want to thank you all for sharing the stories that make the affordability crisis of our city and our region very real. And so to council, what I want to share is that in the budget that we just adopted, we are considering how our city can be looking at the issue of affordability. which we heard is impacting our small businesses, our residents, and deserves to not just get swept under the rug or tucked into council focus areas, but really deserves for us to think about how we can address this issue that is impacting people's ability to thrive, our business's ability to thrive, and our city's ability to grow and thrive. So, again, I thank everyone who came in and demonstrated that this work takes all of us, and I look forward to supporting the motion. Thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember. Councilmember Tordes?

Thank you, Mayor. I want to again echo the comments that already have been made, thanking everyone for writing into the council and also coming out to speak today. I agree that many of the concerns that have been raised are very reasonable, and I also agree that the city could have and should have done better in terms of outreach here. I think the challenge that we face, as has been mentioned, is that we have already factored in these increases into our budget, so there is going to be a cost to deferring or not moving forward with these increases. At the same time, we've heard loud and clear the importance of parking to many of our downtown businesses in terms of success, which is part of why during the past budget, we were happy to work with the Downtown Association and the Mayor's Office on the proposal to expand the city's 90-minute free parking program to 700 spaces in the convention center garage. What I fear if we move to defer this item is that because the subsidy for expanding free parking was also coming out of that general purpose parking fund, that if we end up having low balances in that fund, that this could be one of the first programs that looks to be cut in order to essentially pay for deferring this item. So Jim, I'm not sure if you would be the best one to answer this question. We're just wondering if you could speak a little bit to the health of the balance in the parking fund and whether you feel we have the ability to both absorb this deferral while still moving forward with the convention center free parking expansion.

Yes, I think the parking fund is healthy enough to accommodate both.

Thank you. That makes me feel a lot better about deferring this item. I think things that I would love to see, I think some of the concerns that have been raised here, one that stood out for me was the impacts to a lot of the employees of our downtown businesses. I would love to see some analysis to see if there's any room to have any set-asides for employees in terms of having either decreased parking rates or increases to free parking availability you know downtown employees who would be impacted here and also curious just given some of the comments about the over concentration of the impacts of this program in the downtown core if it would also be possible to see any sort of analysis that looked at broader you know changes to the parking program to you know prevent it from being over concentrated on our downtown business owners so I guess question for maybe DOT if that is something that could be accommodated by the time this comes back to council in August

She deputy director and to Tegan. We could absolutely look across citywide and do an analysis. It would require some manual data collection on occupancy which is time consuming but we could make an attempt to get that done before August.

Thank you for that. I guess then I would ask Council Member Casey if you would be open to including those two directions, looking at employee parking waivers and changes potentially to citywide parking as opposed to concentrating this downtown.

Sure. And I'd like to offer we've got a ton of interns in my office this summer, so we'd be happy to help out with the data collection. Amazing. Thank you.

Just to add one more item, we do have an existing employee program that allows downtown employees in the downtown core to receive monthly parking at a 50% discount, which roughly equates to about $50 a month to park in the parking garages.

Thank you.

Thanks, Council Members. Does that conclude your questions? Yes, thank you. Great. Council Member Mulcahy?

Thank you, Mayor. I'll definitely be supporting the motion and the amendments on the floor. I just want to take an opportunity to say there were several parking-related budget surprises. We got one for Lincoln Avenue and Willow Glen that, you know, the Business Association never had a chance to respond to an email. that was missed, and so we're doing triage now after the fact, and to Vice Mayor Foley's point, it does feel like we are in reverse. I think we're grownups. We probably could have handled the conversation long before it sort of ends up in a budget. I don't think any of us like those kinds of surprises. We've certainly heard from the community they don't like them, but as a leader of a district that is now looking at this down the barrel and trying to make sense of it all and to help facilitate the community who's now going to have or may have paid parking. I just can't emphasize enough how important it is, not just the outreach, but the information in advance of a decision. Thank you.

I'll turn to our city manager.

Yes, thank you for the discussion and conversation. I do believe that we fell short in this outreach on these rates. It's been a long time since we've done rate increases like this. I have instructed staff to treat major rate increases like we do our utility rate increases where we notice, not formally notice through the formal noticing process, but engagement and outreach before the budget is published. for all future major rate increases. So we treat it fairly similarly where it's going to have a lot of affected people.

Thank you, Jennifer. Appreciate that. I think that's a good practice. Council Member Kamei.

Thank you. Thank you for all of the speakers who came to share your thoughts regarding this issue. I just want a little bit of clarity in terms of where we are since we were talking about downtown and now we've gone wider. You know, parking in and of itself is a huge problem throughout our whole city. And now that the state of California as well as the previous city council has said, hey, you don't have to provide parking. It is a huge problem in District 1, and I'm sure that everyone has their different experiences throughout the district. I think that it is probably a discussion that needs to be had in terms of what the heck are we going to do about parking? People love their cars. and we don't have the transportation infrastructure to be able to say that you can get from point A to point B in a timely manner when you need to. So I think that in the long run, we're gonna have to have a bigger discussion on this, so I'm just putting that on the table for next fiscal year in terms of some time when we talk about this, because as we know, just because you build something, if you don't build the parking, there are consequences so people still like their cars and when we don't have the parking whether it's on big events or anything like that it's a problem so this is I'm just saying that I don't know how far you're thinking of looking at the citywide but maybe it's just commercial areas or whatever, I don't know. But it is kind of a bigger thing than just the issue before us.

Thanks, Councilmember Weismer.

Thank you. I appreciate the discussion around this issue, but I have a question for Councilmember Tordillos. When you requested that the deferral include coming back with a study of citywide parking, can you expand on what you're referring to?

Sure, I guess I was imagining rather than doubling the parking rates for these 900 meters downtown, if going to $2.25 citywide would bring in a comparable amount of revenue, but without the concentrated impacts downtown. Analysis kind of in that realm.

Okay, two concerns about that. One is now you've expanded it to the whole city and that means outreach and engagement of the whole city. I don't think that can be accomplished by August 10th, whenever our council meeting is. I'm willing to think about it and look at it, but as someone who lives and represents a very suburban district, I'm wondering how that's going to work and whether the resources, the staff resources we have who are looking at downtown parking, whether they have the bandwidth to expand their parking search to the whole city of San Jose and what even looks like so I I'm supportive of the motion in general but I'm concerned about that that piece the the citywide component if because I don't know what that means it's just too big and I'm not sure the city staff has the bandwidth between now and then to to come back to us with any sort of proposal or thinking on what that might be. And we wouldn't want it to say, okay, well, Lincoln Avenue has this great built-in parking, so let's just increase parking there. We certainly wouldn't want that to happen. So I'm just concerned about expanding it to the citywide component.

Thanks, Vice Mayor. I don't believe we've changed the motion on the floor, though.

I might have intimated that I was open to- So should we just clarify what the motion is? Yeah. So Council Member Todias, in light of the Vice Mayor's comments, is there any way you want to circumscribe the area or shrink it?

I think I'm generally open to just exploring alternatives that have less of a concentrated impact downtown. Understood that that could have impacts on staff resources, but I don't think our staff capacity should mean that we automatically assume that the foregone conclusion is that only downtown pays these increases. So I'd say within the staff capacity that is available, just would love to have more than one alternative before council in August.

Can we pursue that without the actual outreach to the community, just conceptually see what the impact would be without actually making the outreach? Is that something the Vice Mayor would be open to?

Well, conceptually, sure, because we're not bringing dollars and cents and impact or policy yet. So conceptually, I can agree with that.

Okay, great. Okay, thanks for clarifying. Did you still have your hand up council member?

Yes. Sorry, just one more quick clarification. I know on the topic of outreach, one of the questions that was raised was why this didn't go to the downtown parking board. I understand they have had challenges meeting quorum for many meetings in a row. So I was wondering if the administration could just address kind of the status of the downtown parking board and whether we expect them to weigh in on this item before August.

So thank you very much Council Member Tordillo. You're correct that the downtown parking board has had a lack of quorum and recruitment has been difficult. So I think we could certainly endeavor to convene the downtown parking board and renew those efforts. But I think to your point on the quorum that that may be a challenge that's ongoing. Thank you.

Thank you for clarifying there. I think there's definitely the potential to do the necessary outreach here without the downtown parking board. Mostly just wanted to level set expectations for folks given that it was referenced in the public comment. So thank you.

Thanks, Council Member. Okay, I think that's exhausted council discussion. I appreciate the motion from Council Member Casey. We'll also be supporting it. I think we're ready to vote. Tony?

Wait. I don't have enough people signed in. That's weird. So can I have everybody vote verbally, and then we'll get this fixed?

Sure. You want to call the roll? You can just say aye. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That carries unanimously.

Okay. We'll get the sign-in fixed.

Okay. Thank you, Tony. Thank you all. Okay, we still have the remainder of the consent calendar. Do we have a motion?

Move for approval.

Okay. And Tony, I hate to interrupt you there, but I think we'll go to public comment on consent now if we can.

I have no hands or cards for consent calendar as a whole.

Great. Can we back to the council? I don't see any hands, so let's vote. We'll do a voice vote.

I think we've got it. Just give me one second. Okay. Okay, go ahead. You can vote on your screens. Motion passes unanimously with Ortiz absent.

Okay. Thank you, we're on to land use consent. On item 10.1A, I need to recuse myself as I received a contribution of over $500 from the trustees of the nonprofit organization applying for this rezoning. So, and I believe that may be true for Councilor Mulcahy, but I'm gonna hand things over to the Vice Mayor just on item 10.1A.

Thank you, Mayor. Councilman, do you need to recuse yourself as well?

Yes, Vice Mayor, I need to recuse myself. We own the property next door to this particular site. I'm going to recuse myself, and I don't need to leave the dais, but I will be leaving the dais for it. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Tony, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this item?

I have no cards or hands for this item.

Okay, do we have a motion from council on this item?

Move approval.

I have a motion and a second. I see no hands raised. Let's vote. This is 10A, yes.

I should have. Motion passes unanimously with Ortiz absent and two recusals.

Okay, great. Turning it back to you, Mayor.

Thanks, Vice Mayor. All right, we're on to item 10.1B, landmark rescission for the Southern Pacific Switching Tower. I'm sorry? Oh, I'm sorry, these are consent. Yes, thanks. Council Member Cohen just reminded me we can hear these together. So it's items 10.1B and 10.1C. Do we have a motion?

So moved. Second.

Great. Tony, do you have public comment?

I have no cards or hands.

Okay, coming back to the council. Let's vote. Thank you.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great, thank you. We're on to item 3.1, report of the city manager.

Thank you, mayor and council. I have no report today.

Thank you. We're on to item 3.3, proposed ballot measure for the November 3rd, 2026 election to amend city charter to allow the city council the option to utilize ranked choice voting only in an election to fill a vacancy in the office of the mayor or council member. We do not have a staff presentation, so we'll start with public comment and then come back to the council.

Okay, thank you. I have 11 cards so far in person. I have four hands on line. As a reminder, speakers must comply with the city's code of conduct for public meetings. Please direct comments to the body. Limit remarks to the agenda item and observe the time limit, which is one minute. Conduct that materially disrupts the meeting or interferes with others' ability to participate may result in muting or removal as authorized by law. When I call your name, please come down to the podium. You don't need to speak in the order you're called. First person in the microphone, go ahead and speak. We're also asked that instead of applause, you show your support visually such as jazz hands or thumbs up so that the speakers further down the line don't have to wait extra time. We appreciate your cooperation. We're starting with Robert, Amanda, Steve Chesson, David Neuswanger, and Cindy for our first set of speakers.

Mayor Mahan, Vice Mayor Foley, council members, my name is Steve Chesson. I'm co-chair of Better Elections for Santa Clara County. I'm not a paid lobbyist, I'm a retired software engineer. You will hear a lot of negative comments from RCV opponents today. One minute isn't enough time to respond to everything they'll say, but I'll try. They will say that it is confusing. I sent you over a dozen exit polls of voters who've used RCV. An overwhelming majority say they understand it, they like it, and they want to continue using it, and that's across all demographics. They say it is not auditable, yet every RCV election in California goes through the same audit process that non-RCV elections do. They say it can't be hand counted, yet RCV has been used in Australia since the 1920s, long before machines were available to count RCV ballots. Finally, we asked EMC Research to survey likely voters about RCV. 63% of San Jose voters said that they support ranked choice voting for San Jose City Council and mayoral elections. Please put the proposed charter amendment on the ballot. We support the amendment to put it on the 20- Thank you.

Thank you. That's your time. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, my name is Amanda Molendorf, and I'm a San Jose constituent affiliated with the Equal Vote Coalition. I appreciate this council exploring creative options. The cost savings from a single vacancy election is real, and I support that goal, but the method matters. RCV claims to guarantee a majority, but routinely manufactures one by discarding ballots until someone clears 50% of what remains. It claims to advance candidates with broad support, however, in competitive races, it eliminates them before the final round. and it has real implementation issues. In 2022, Alameda County miscounted ranked choice ballots across all cities, and it even changed the winner of an Oakland school board race. Not only that, a usability study found that most voters can't describe how their votes are counted, and once they learned, it seemed almost undemocratic. RCV is not the only creative option. There are many other methods that preserve all the cost savings while fixing RCV's failures. Ranked Robin, star, and approval voting. Please consult with the Equal Vote Coalition before locking in RCV. Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker. Also, Diane, come on down, Larry Stone, and Soren Larson.

I support this measure because of the cost, but also because it delivers high-quality elections. Data show that people do like it, that voters do understand it. I support it. I hope you will too. Thank you.

As of today, 19 states have banned ranked-choice voting in all state and local elections. Do we really want San Jose to become the first city in the Santa Clara County to adopt ranked-choice voting that replaces our simple, transparent, one-person, one-vote system with a complicated, expensive, and potentially manipulative voting method? Just to look at the Dominion Rank Choice Voting Profile, 14 complex settings. Most of them have two to three options to choose from, including one that allows results calculated to nine decimal points. You can say we don't use those settings, but your manager do not. does not prevent any of this setting being used in the future. Rank choice voting is a complicated calculation voting system, not a simple vote count system. San Jose already have serious budget deficit and urgent priority. We don't need to add a cost and also complex of rank choice voting.

Thank you. That's your time.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, City Council. I'd like to speak in support of placing the charter amendment for her ranked choice of voting for special elections on the ballot. I think it saved millions of dollars in unnecessary costs to hold I think it also may make our city elections fundamentally fairer. I think passing this measure in a city larger than San Francisco would also set a strong example for the rest of the state. Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker. I'd also like to call down public speaker Happy and Lawrence Liu.

I'd like to encourage you to vote for this measure. I think that it will save money and make elections fairer. Avoiding traditional additional election cycles will save money, and I think it will help decrease election burnout. People have fatigue. They need to show up to vote for us to have a democracy, and when we have one after another election each time, it's just too much, and people just say, I'm done, I'm not doing it. I think Rachel's voting is fairer because it helps ensure that my preferences get taken into account. Of course I always have my favorite candidate, but it doesn't mean that there isn't someone else I would be happy with, and I'd like that to be considered in the election process. People worry that RCV is complicated, but do you guys understand it? You're no different from me or your other constituents. Of course we need a clear ballot and we need education, but that's a one-time upfront investment in the education, and I think we can do that. Finally, I think RCV, thank you, that's your time. Next speaker.

I'm Larry Stone. Ranked choice voting is bad public policy. It's bad public policy for regular elections and for special elections. Virtually every claim the proponents make have been invalidated by serious independent academic studies from Princeton University, the University of Minnesota, San Jose State, and others. It has failed or been rejected in cities and counties in Michigan, Vermont, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, and Washington. Yes, elections are expensive, especially in California, but the governor and state legislature could change that very easily, like Oregon and Washington. But sometimes, sometimes the cost of elections are some of the best and most cost-effective expenditures a government can make, just like the elections that elected all of you. One-choice voting, one person, one vote, should always be the democratic standard.

Thank you. Next speaker, Gabby Chavez-Lopez, come on down, and Ali Hughes.

Hello, my name is Soren Larson. I'm here from District 9. And one reason for instituting ranked choice voting that I think I have a good grasp of is the youth interest in politics. I feel as though many of my peers are disillusioned and feel underrepresented. They feel pressure to vote for candidates that they feel are just like a damage control vote. I don't think democracy should be about damage control. I think it should be about passionately engaging with your government and your community in order to help create the world that you want to see. If ranked choice voting comes to be, I think it will reinvigorate people's joy and interest in politics in the democratic process and will allow them to vote for someone who they do feel strongly about while also being able to rank a most likely candidate so they can get a two in one. They can have their cake and eat it too. What they're really interested in and they can have their damage control. And I think this would be great for turnout, especially among young people. Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello, Mayor and city council members. I am from District 4. I am a 19-year-old, and I do not have health care. I can barely afford a dream to buy a house. I cannot afford college right now. And while all this is happening, in our most recent runoff election for county assessor, about $13 million of taxpayer money was spent. That's $13 million that could have spent investing in people like me, without health care, living the Silicon Valley dream of not affording anything here. Taxpayer waste is huge in San Jose. We have 1 million people in San Jose, a $420 billion GDP, and yet a $5.5 billion budget. Every dollar counts, and by wasting our money on runoff elections that cost $13 million, we could have caught that cost with ranked choice voting. Thank you for your time, and I urge you to support ranked choice voting on the November ballot. Thank you.

Alex Shore, come on down, and Robert. Hi. Ranked choice voting is communist voting, and it is against our Constitution. You are here. You are not my God. Did you guys all pledge allegiance to the God above America? We are under God, not under government. Just because you tax us, you are here making decisions, doesn't mean that our sovereignty belongs to you. So therefore, how can you appropriate our votes at the contingency of other people's votes? Earlier, there was a software engineering. Oh, I totally understand now. It must be Silicon Valley trying to make money off of government. $13 million. No wonder you want to tax us. Tax us, regular people to death. So then you communist, what do you call, what do they call you guys in communist China? You're the ruler class. The ruler class. You get to tax us because we are nothing. We're just fertilizer.

Thank you. That's your time. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. My name is Gabby Chavez-Lopez, Executive Director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley. And I spoke and supported this item at the Rules Committee, and I'm here today to reiterate that support. And I want to thank the authors of this memo. The Latina Coalition has supported ranked choice voting since 2021 because it removes barriers for participation, encourages more respectful campaigning, and rewards candidates who build broad community support. And as someone who has recently personally experienced a special election firsthand, I also understand the significant resources, time and community fatigue to put it nicely. that come with multiple elections. So ranked choice voting is a more efficient approach and encourages candidates to engage across communities rather than focus on a narrow base. So I respectfully urge you to consider this option for our city and when special elections come up we have options and tools at our disposal that can help encourage participation. Thank you so much.

Thank you, next speaker. I also have two cards that are anonymous, so if you submitted a card without your name, go ahead and line up. Go ahead.

Hi everyone, great to see you all. I'm speaking in my capacity as a lifelong District 2 resident, speaking just as myself, and I've been a big supporter of ranked choice voting for a number of years now. Please vote to put this on the ballot. It is good policy and it is good for our democracy, and it will also save the city money. Furthermore, ranked choice voting is an easy concept for people to understand. all sports fans understand first second and third place and especially with the world cup going on right now that's even more top of mind this is an easy concept for people to grasp and the polling shows that additionally it also rcv also elevates the voices of voters while making sure that the city has the funds to provide the services that these folks need thank you for the thank you to the authors of this memo for fighting for voters voices i urge your support to put this on the ballot thank you thank you next speaker

Good afternoon, my name is Robert Rissel. I'm of no significance, but ranked choice voting is a scam. Its promoted purpose is to ensure candidates for office are elected by a majority of voters. Ranked choice does not accomplish this. Our CV simply combines the votes of different rankings and the redistributed votes of eliminated candidates until one candidate has an accumulated sufficient numbers to constitute a majority of the participating voters. This is an artificial majority. No one candidate has received a majority of first place votes. Other concerns are the chance of an individual voter's top choice winning is diminished. Many voters may not understand the ranking system. Many voters may not do the research to affect logical rankings. The opaque computerized counts are subject to an increased integrity questions. Only computer experts can confirm the accuracy of the count.

Thank you. That's your time. Next speaker.

I'm here at a personal capacity. Ranked choice voting is good government and it is being implemented by governments throughout the country successfully. How many more governments need to implement ranked choice voting before we make it our policy here in San Jose? Or how many more times does this important and intriguing item have to come before the council before we implement ranked choice voting in San Jose? It is a democratic way of electing, and as we noted, it is also a more cost-efficient way. I want to thank the council members who put this memo together, Kamei, Mulcahy, to name a couple. Thank you for your work on this. Please implement ranked choice voting for special elections straight away.

Thank you. Next speaker. After this speaker, I'm going to move over to Zoom. I have Sue followed by Kelly. Go ahead. Hi.

Can you all hear me? Okay, cool. My name is Vicki, and I live in San Jose, South San Jose, D2. And I urge the council to refer the ranked choice voting charter amendment to the November 2026 ballot so voters can decide on this. Okay? Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you. Sue, go ahead. Thanks.

Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm here to oppose the implementation of ranked choice voting for San Jose local elections. The push for RCB is not coming from your constituents. The push for RCB is coming from large, dark money organizations such as Soros Groups, Arabella Advisors, Tides Foundation, and other groups. FairVote, CalRCV, and Canyon Snow locally, who want to radically transform the way our elections are conducted. Our current process, the principle of one man, one vote, majority wins, ensures that each citizen's ballot carries equal weight in determining election outcomes. RCV allows one person's ballot to be counted more often depending on who they support and how the candidates are ranked. RCV will further disenfranchise voters. It's proven to be more expensive, complicated, hard to understand, And in the end, it's the computer system and the way it's programmed that determines the results of an election. That means different candidates can be declared the winner depending on how the machine has been configured. An RCV election is neither transparent, observable, or auditable. Vote no on moving. Thank you. Kelly? Kelly?

Kelly? Okay, I'm gonna move on to Petra followed by Michael.

Hi, my name is Petra and I am a long-term resident of D3 here in San Jose. And I am asking you to go ahead and put on the ballot to let voters decide about rank choice voting. I am personally in favor. It costs less, as people have said. More people will get their first choice or a compromise candidate choice, meaning more empowerment for people. And I read that the last vacancy in D3, the run cost 3.6 million in San Jose. I just wonder what we could have done with that money instead. So many things. And I would just like to add on real quick that A lot of people know about ranking things if you spend any time at all online, you know, that ranking any kind of thing is ubiquitous now online and people are used to the S to F tier ranking. So use that as your way is your tool. And thank you very much for your time.

Thank you Michael followed by Gabriel.

Hi, my name is Mike Rogers. I'm a decades-long resident of San Jose and Silicon Valley. Ranked choice voting is an abomination, simple and plain. It is not transparent. It will decrease the voters' confidence in the government, which is already at a historically low level. Somebody mentioned the 14 settings on a menu machine, an astronomically high number of permutations of what these settings can do. virtually change elections. It is not a transparent process. It's not audible in spite of statements made to the contrary, right? One person, one vote, and it also is voter suppression because once people's ballots are exhausted, they are no longer, vote is not counted, and we end up with four candidates in office. rather than better candidates, which does happen in democracy. It's an undemocratic system, and it's meant to diffuse our intents of the voters with respect to their own government. Thank you.

Thank you. Gabriel?

Hello, I am with district 5. I'm just urging the council to vote. Yes, to move this. To the November election for voters to decide at this point, this is not about the merits of rank choice voting, but whether the voters should get a choice and deciding what if this is for their city or not. uh the council voting no to this would be quite paternalistic and ignoring the unanimous recommendation of the rules committee it's about time that we especially the younger generation saw some solutions to what we feel as quite powerless and changing the system and we feel that the many times What is on the ballot is not represent the candidates on the ballot are not representative of our interest or we don't get to vote for the folks that maybe don't have as much of a chance, but this allows us to At least have that vote.

So, thank you Thank you back to council All right.

Thank you, Tony. Thank you to all of our public commenters Let me turn to colleagues. We'll start with councilmember Cullen.

I

Yeah, thank you, Mayor, and thank you to everyone who came out and voted because the discussion about how we implement democracy in our city is one of the most important things we can talk about, so I appreciate all the input. Five years ago, San Jose's Charter Review Commission spent over a year reviewing our city's charter and made recommendations for how to improve our operations. And one thing they recommended was converting all our elections from a top two primary general election based system to a single step ranked choice voting methodology. When the council reviewed the report, we did not move in that direction. We did not move that recommendation forward at the time. Besides the inherent cost savings of switching from the current system to ranked choice voting, it is also clear that there are major advantages to ranked choice voting. As an example, I'll just point to the most recent governor's race. Many voters kept saying they couldn't vote for the candidate they wanted to vote for or the candidate they supported because they thought their vote wouldn't count. But with RCV, everyone is free to vote for their favorite candidate, knowing that they can vote for their second choice, and their second choice will still get their votes in the end. Secondly, and more importantly in my mind, RCV avoids the problem that the rest of the electorate decides who your final two choices are in the general election. These days, if you look around at the most recent primary election, Almost every contested election, the candidates that made it through to the general election received under 25% of the vote. Then when the general election came, voters are left with just a binary choice between two candidates who had under 25% support. So the voters are left with very little choice. But under RCV, the majority has a say in who gets elected in the end. And since we last discussed this at council, many other jurisdictions around this country and around the world have gone to RCV. I'm disappointed that I'm kind of still hearing the argument that our diverse community in this city won't be able to understand how to rank candidates on a ballot. Everyone ranks things every day. Everyone makes decisions every day based on rankings. If you're with a group of people who wants to go see a movie and you ask everybody, choose one movie and we'll pick one, you might end up with a movie that 20% of the people want to see. But if you ask everybody to pick their top five movies, you'll find a movie that everyone has an interest in, and you'll get a better outcome. I have faith that the residents of San Jose, no matter who they are or where they're from, will easily figure out how to rank their electoral choices. In fact, the largest and most diverse city in our country, New York, has been using RCV, and it's been going off without a hitch. It is also currently used statewide in Alaska and Maine and in local elections in San Francisco, Boulder, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and many small cities, including Palm Springs and many other cities in the state of California, among dozens of other cities around the country. Less than two years ago, when we were discussing how to fill the vacancy in District 3, several of us on the council were concerned about the cost of following our traditional election approach. And we had this debate. Our choice is between appointing somebody putting something on the ballot for a two-step election. We found out at the time that the charter did not allow us to make that choice, to have the option to put it on the ballot with a single ranked choice voting election. This action would simply allow the voters of the city to decide if we should be given that choice in the future as a council. It doesn't implement it. It doesn't bypass the voters in making a choice about it. It allows the voters to say, yes, this should be an option in your arsenal for future elections. It's also interesting, by the way, that both the candidates who made the top two in that election support the concept of and understand the advantages of ranked choice voting. To be clear, again, this ballot measure would give future councils the option of using RCV and only for filling vacancies. It would give us a good testing ground, though, to see how well it works in our city and allow the county to use the system that they already own that supports ranked choice voting. And voting yes today doesn't impose anything on our voters. It empowers the voters to decide if they want to add this option to the charter. It puts it before the voters. So I want to thank the members of my Brown Act group for their deliberation on this item. Thank you, Council Members Kamei, Tordillos, and Mulcahy for signing on the original memo. Now onto the replacement memo that I submitted yesterday. Every year, and Jim's here, you can confirm, I'll just have him nod if I, as I say, as I ask these questions. Every year the improved budget includes money for a possible ballot measure. This year in the 26-27 we put in about $2.3 million into the budget to cover a ballot measure for November, is that right? Okay, around two point, somewhere in the $2 million range we had on the ballot. Since we submitted the memo, we learned that the cost to do it this year, because we only have three districts in the city that are holding elections this November, and therefore we're not paying for a citywide election, the cost would be about $2.7 million to be on the ballot. But in the mayoral year where an election is already being held citywide, the marginal cost to add a ballot measure that would be budgeted ahead of time would be under 700,000. In fact, it was about 630,000, I think, in the 2024 cycle when we had a ballot measure on the ballot. So it would cost us $2 million less to hold the election in March of 2028. So in consultation with the co-signers of our original memo and Mayor Mahan, who's also in the Brown Act, we decided it was prudent to place the measure on the twenty twenty eight primary election which will be held in march twenty twenty eight rather than this november that allows us to roll back into our budget at the end of this next fiscal year about two million dollars in savings that were put into this year's budget will set aside under seven hundred thousand then for the election in two years and that will help us in in our next budget cycle i wanna thank uh... the city attorney's office for their collaboration as process they moved quickly mainly because we had already considered this as a couple four years ago or five years ago as after the Charter Review Commission did their work they the City Attorney's Office also worked with members of the ranked choice voting coalition and others in drafting a resolution with ballot language to move this forward they also helped my office draft our replacement memo that was put out yesterday, moving it to March 2028. Since the presidential election primary date is not set in stone, the memo calls for us to place it on the March 2028 ballot but bring back, presumably on consent in the future, the final language for the resolution that will have the actual date in it once the date is set by the state legislature. So I wanna make a motion to approve my memo. Just to be clear, the memo approves the resolution that was drafted by the city attorney's office with the amendments to change the November 3, 2026 dates, wherever it appears in the resolution to the 2028 primary election, bring back on consent for the final adoption before the deadline in 2027. And I would also like to incorporate into the motion asking the city clerk to bring back a info memo before the item comes back to council, incorporating the items number one and two from Council Member Dewan's memo, asking for an analysis. The analysis should be much more thorough now because many more cities have adopted RANK CHOICE VOTING SINCE THE LAST TIME THE ANALYSIS WAS DONE AND THE CLERK'S OFFICE DID A REALLY THOROUGH ANALYSIS FOUR YEARS AGO BUT THIS WOULD BE AN UPDATED ANALYSIS THAT WOULD COME BACK ON AN INFO MEMO SO THAT'S MY MOTION THANKS COUNCIL MEMBER SECOND FROM TORDEOS LET'S GO TO COUNCIL MEMBER CAME

Thank you to all of the speakers who came out to give your perspective on this. And I want to emphasize something that Councilmember Cohen mentioned, and this is really to ask the voters to decide to give us that option. And I think that it's certainly worthwhile to be able to move forward on this, so I will be supporting the motion.

Thank you. Councilmember Casey?

I appreciate the spirit with which you guys put this forward in terms of cost savings, but I've heard several times folks mention how easy it is and it's understandable. And all I've heard to define ranked choice voting is that you rank your candidates. Nobody's defined it yet for me. And I challenge you to do so in one sentence, and I don't think you can. And that complexity, that extra layer of complexity for folks who already don't turn out in droves to vote I think is unnecessary. The education will have to go into explaining this to the voting populace. I don't know that we have the mechanism or platform to get the word out in any meaningful way. So I just don't understand the need to add an extra layer of complexity to the voting process. I think we should be making it as simple as possible. One vote. Again, I just, I don't understand why we had to make this so complex unnecessarily. Thank you. I won't be supporting it.

Thanks, Council Member. Council Member Condoles.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank my colleagues for the dialogue today, you know, and especially the effort to look at ways to reduce the cost of special elections and how we can essentially, ultimately, increase voter participation. I think that's the goal. But I do also have some concerns, and these concerns stem from my firsthand experience going door to door and trying to obviously get elected, but it means going to folks and saying, hey, do you need help filling out your ballot? And a lot of uneasiness or nervousness from folks who are either first-time voters, who are not who English or participating in the American democracy and voting is new to them. There's a lot of, I don't know what to do. So you literally have to walk through the ballot like, oh, this is what's on the ballot. And here's, they're like, oh, I want to vote for you. How do I do that? Well, you see that bubble, you circle it. And even then, it's still... Do I color it in? Do I exit out? Checkbox? And you have to spend time. And I know I spent time doing this. And so it makes me nervous that if we don't pair whatever mechanism, RCV, the rank choice system, with a robust education and robust system, a campaign for how we're actually going to be educating our community. And for me, our folks who are monolingual, for folks who are first time and new voters, that's important to me. And I don't see any of that in the memorandum. And that's some concern. And so I'm uneasy about this. And ultimately, I think the goal of all of us should be to get as many voters and participants of people we're going to be representing to vote. That's how our democracy works and that's how it's successful. And I'm not sure that's necessarily gonna do that. And I will ask a question to the author of the memorandum is, we're essentially committing to putting something on the ballot two years from now. And, you know, we're going to get an informational memorandum based on Councilmember Dwan's blue memo. But, I mean, if we're already deciding this is what we're going to do, then how are we able to, how are we going to be able to fine tune and or, you know, make changes to that if we're already, you know, locking the hands of future councils and saying we're going to put this on the ballot tomorrow? you know, come the primary 2028. And so I do have a concern on that.

Yeah, let me just say, first of all, as we know in procedure, and I'll, you know, speak with my procedural hat, nothing's ever locked in stone. I mean, the councils can always revisit, councils can always amend, councils can always decide to undo something up until any deadline. So this would be, you know, having gone through the process of bringing this forward and having the Attorney's Office draft the memo, If we have majority will to move it to the ballot now, I think it makes sense to move it forward. But that doesn't mean that if something comes up in a memo or some other time that causes concern that nothing can be changed. It's also going to come back with the final resolution to add the date. At that time, obviously, there could be changes made to the resolution. So there's nothing locked in stone by this action today. And I'll just answer your other question about outreach. We're not actually calling a special election today. We're not calling for any ranked choice voting. We're putting it in the charter to allow for future council to have that conversation. And I would expect a future council, the first time this is done in any given district, to have to include a conversation about how we make sure that the voters understand the process that will be used. If the council's will is to use it at that time, which it may or may not be.

Yeah, no, that's fair. I guess, I mean, would you entertain an amendment to your motion that would bring this back to us before officially placing it on the ballot in the primary of 2028? Just so we have an opportunity to have this dialogue without the expectation that, you know, if we do nothing, it's automatically going to be on the ballot. Just so we can have, I mean, we saw from earlier, sometimes we may think that we do a good job of reaching out to folks and, you know, with the parking meter, but, you know, there's still things that fall through the cracks, and I want to make sure that the community knows that we are going to have an opportunity as a council

to be able to deliberate uh this without without the presumption that it's already going to be on the ballot in spring or uh in in the primary of 2020. well yeah i mean and item number three on the memo from yesterday says bring back the return to city council to amend the resolution that basically is where it gets approved without that action it's not on the ballot if that doesn't get approved on that date it doesn't go on the ballot it has to get approved when it comes back to council at a later date That's what item three says, because there is no date set yet for the election, so the council would have to take a vote to affirm.

But in your comments, you said this is coming under consent.

Well, it may or may not. I mean, first of all, anyone can pull anything.

And I'm assuming it's flying under the radar to make sure, or not flying under the radar. It's a procedural thing to make sure that we go through it. What I want to make sure is that we have a substantive dialogue to make sure that, A, we understand the type of analysis that was produced as part of the friendly amendment from Councilmember Dwan's memo, but more importantly, that we have an opportunity as a new council, we're going to have new colleagues in 2028 to have this conversation wholly and holistically at that point.

That's the memo. The resolution, the motion itself does not specify consent. That was my throw in. It says bring back to council, so I'm happy with bringing it back either way.

If the clarification... is to come back to council before being placed for debate and dialogue. As a regular agenda item. Yeah, as a regular agenda item, I'd be more inclined to support that.

That's fine. I mean, that fits in the language that's here now.

Okay, for the seconder? Okay. Thanks, Councilmember. Let's go to Councilmember DeWan.

Thank you, Mayor. THANK YOU TO COUNCILMEMBER CANDELES MENTIONING THE MONOLINGUAL IN OUR UNDERSERVED COMMUNITY AND I'VE MET A LOT OF CITIZEN WHO HAVE A VERY DIFFICULT TIME JUST TO SIMPLE VOTING AND THANK YOU COUNCILMEMBER COHEN FOR ACCEPTING THE RECOMMENDATION ONE AND TWO. THE REASON THAT I'M BRINGING FORWARD THIS MEMORANDUM BECAUSE I BELIEVE THAT THE COUNCIL SHOULD HAVE MORE INFORMATION BEFORE ASKING VOTERS TO CONSIDER MAKING AMENDMENTS TO THE CITY CHARTER. AND ON TOP OF THAT, COUNCILMEMBER CANDELAS DID MENTION WE'LL HAVE NEW COUNCILMEMBER AS WELL. THE PROPOSER IS NOT ABOUT TAKING A POSITION FOR OR AGAINST RANKED CHOICE VOTING. THERE ARE REASONABLE ARGUMENTS ON BOTH SIDES. RATHER, IT IS ABOUT ENSURING THAT WE MAKE AN INFORMED DECISION BASED ON THE DATA, THE EXPERIENCE, AND LESSON LEARNED FROM OTHER JURIDICTION. THE PROPOSED CHARTER AMENDMENT WOULD ALLOW THE CITY COUNCIL TO UTILIZE RANKED CHOICE VOTING IN SPECIAL ELECTION TO FILL VACANCY FOR MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBER. Before advancing such a measure, I believe we should better understand how ranked choice voting has performed in neighborhood. I mean, the neighboring city, California city like San Francisco, Oakland and others that have used the system for many years. THE ADDITIONAL ANALYSTS WOULD INCLUDE VOTERS TURNOUT AND PARTICIPATION DATA, IMPLEMENTATION COST, VOTER EDUCATION EXPENDITURE AND ANY PROJECTED FISCAL IMPACT OR SAVING. IT SHOULD ALSO EXAMINE THE IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES. best practice, and the experience of communities that have already adopted ranked choice voting. I also believe it is important to understand how voters interact with the ranking process and whether additional voter education efforts may be necessary to ensure broad participation AND UNDERSTANDING. AND I'M GLAD THAT WE DEFER THE ACTION UNTIL THIS ANALYSIS IS COMPLETE AND WE CAN PROVIDE BOTH THE COUNCIL AND THE PUBLIC WITH MORE COMPREHENSIVE AND TRANSPARENT EVALUATION OF THE RANKED CHOICE VOTING BEFORE CONSIDER A CHARTER AMENDMENT. THANK YOU. I YIELD MY TIME.

Thanks, Council Member. Council Member Tordillos.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to start by thanking Council Member Cohen for his leadership on this item, both this time around, but also back in 2021 after the Charter Review Commission originally recommended that the city move towards ranked choice voting. I would note that in the five years since then, that three states and 39 cities have adopted or made use of ranked choice voting for the first time. So this is clearly an electoral reform that is picking up steam. And because it has been picking up steam and gaining momentum, we also have a lot more evidence and data than we did back when this was first considered. And the data has shown that cities that have adopted RCV have generally elected more women and more people of color to positions of power because RCV helps to give candidates from marginalized backgrounds a fairer shot in municipal elections. There's also been some extensive research on turnout. I think valid questions in terms of what we need to be doing from an educational campaign perspective, how this might impact voting trends. But the data that we do have, which I hope will be elaborated on in that info memo, has shown that RCV does not decrease turnout amongst marginalized communities. But I think one of the motivating factors here coming off of the special election last year, as has been shared, is just the opportunity for the city council to have the power to make a choice to save money on those runoff elections. In the case of specials, I don't know how having ranked choice voting in last year's election might have changed the outcome, but we all know that it would have saved the city over a million dollars, which I think given the tough trade-offs we had in this budget season, is something that the council should at least consider having the authority to do, assuming the voters agree. So I am grateful to be a part of the original memo with Councilmember Cohen and our colleagues, and we'll be supporting the motion on the floor.

Thanks, Councilmember. Vice Mayor?

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss a really complicated issue. I know there are many people in the audience who said ranked choice voting is really simple and easy to understand. Well, I may be stupid, but I have a really hard time understanding it. Even after seeing some YouTube videos on how it works, I understand it now. But if I had to explain it to someone, I could not. SO IF I WAS KNOCKING ON DOORS AND TALKING TO CONSTITUENTS ON HOW TO VOTE, I COULDN'T EXPLAIN IT TO THEM BECAUSE IT IS COMPLICATED. COUNCILMEMBER CANDELLAS, YOU MENTIONED SEVERAL POPULATIONS THAT MIGHT HAVE DIFFICULTY UNDERSTANDING THE BALLOT, RANKED CHOICE VOTING, AND I'LL ADD ANOTHER ONE. AND AS SOMEONE OF THE OLDER GENERATION NOW THAT I CAN SAY THAT, It's difficult for some of us to understand the concept of ranked choice voting. I happen to have a brother who lives in Portland and Multnomah County and they just adopted ranked choice voting and I asked him how it worked and he said, I didn't understand it. It's very confusing. I just voted for the one person and that was it. Did your person win? No. Who won? The person three steps down. That doesn't say it's necessarily a democratic process to me. I appreciate the debate. I sit on the Rules Committee, and the reason I voted yes to bring it forward was not because I supported ranked choice voting, but because I wanted to have this debate amongst counsel. Frankly, I obviously have a lot of concerns about ranked choice voting and this motion in particular. I'm curious as to why this council in 2026 is getting ready to vote to put something on the ballot in March, April, May, June, whenever it happens in 2028. There is plenty of time between now and then to have this debate. I will note that of all the people up here, I am the only one who will not be present when we discuss this in 2028 as I term out at the end of this year. So this is my opportunity to speak on this issue. Ranked choice voting is complicated, and while it may save money for the candidates, certainly, and while it may save money for the city over the long haul, I'm wondering what it will cost in dollars to educate our community when we do put this on the, when and if we put this on the ballot. It's not just the cost to place the item on the ballot. It's the cost to educate our community about the issue on the ballot. And that's just as confusing. Do we just hope they'll go to the ballot and vote yes because they trust us? I don't think that's the case. So there's going to be money expended, and we're tying the hands. I know it's coming back at some point, theoretically, and now it's not in consent, which is good. But we need to know what the dollar amount's going to be, both from putting it on the ballot and the education component of it. We need to do tremendous outreach to all of our populations. I'm just wondering... Why now? There's no need for a special election. And what this does, it offers the council three options if there is a vacancy. In my time on council, we've had two rounds of vacancies. and both times I was very consistent that we take this, allow the community affected to vote for their representatives. First time I wasn't successful, we had council who we then voted to appoint ourselves, and Councilmember Kendellis, I'm happy that you were one that we appointed at that time, and then you ran an election and prevailed in that election. We also, the following, or a couple of years later, we had a special election, and Councilmember Tordillos, you won in that one in a very tough race, but not a ranked choice voting. I wonder how that would have turned out if it was ranked choice voting, and I'm glad that you prevailed and you're here. So, it's not that I'm against voting, it's then the question of how will the council decide, we're going to fill this position by ranked choice voting, we're going to fill this position by a primary and general election, or we're just going to appoint. How will the council decide that? It's kind of complicated, and that leaves a lot of politics in my mind up to the discussion when that vote is made, when that vacancy occurs. So I have more questions than I have answers for. I'm not satisfied in rank choice voting, and I will be opposing this proposal.

Thanks, Vice Mayor. Let's go to Council Member Mulcahy.

Thank you, Mayor. I also want to thank the members of our Brown Act and for their collaboration and thanks to the co-signers of the original memo. I'll begin by acknowledging that I did not enter this conversation as a supporter of ranked choice voting. I was likely more a disciple of Larry Stone and still have concerns about using it for all elections. I appreciate my colleagues for working together, though, to develop a compromise that reflects both my concerns and their perspectives. Under this proposal, if voters approved the measure, the council would retain flexibility to choose. And I appreciated, Vice Mayor, your outlining the two choices and what we've been through, and just thinking about the application, if the council had chosen to use this tool in my colleague to my left, Tor Dios's election, would that have saved the number of months that this body was without representation of District 3, not just from the resignation forward, but from the absence of that council member even before. So it was long before when that council member left the position. There was kind of a vacancy even before that. So the time piece to me matters. So the fact that it's a choice, and the circumstances at that time, I think would be taken into account. So I've heard the legitimate concerns from members of the community, and I just disclosed I have some of my own, including questions about voter turnout and community engagement, and that's been reflected in the conversation here, and those absolutely deserve consideration. So while cost is the primary factor in my decision to support the memo and the amendments that have been put forward today, Representation is also an important consideration. And to the point, if we can restore a district's representation more quickly and at a lower cost than a two-step election process, that is compelling and it's worth having the option available to us. And again, depending on the circumstances, you just outlined two very different circumstances. Ultimately, I support this item with the amendments, especially today, because it is fiscally responsible, preserves flexibility, and it leaves the final decision to the voters. This proposal does not require the use of ranked choice voting. It simply allows voters to decide whether we want that as an option available to the council. And then there's another checkpoint along the way. Because when we do find ourselves in these special elections, this is a tool that gets pulled off a shelf. We may decide to go back to the appointment in certain circumstances or the other choices. So I'll be supporting it based on the flexibility and on the fiscal analysis.

Thanks, Councilmember. And I'll just chime in briefly because I think my perspective probably most aligns with Councilmember Mulcahy's. I think there's quite a range of opinions on the item. I think special elections are a little different because you're more likely to have a situation where a council does not have representation for a longer period of time should the council choose an election. And that puts us in a tough spot because when we've had vacancies, I at least and I know some of us have felt very strongly that it should go to an election that people should have to campaign publicly for the support of voters and not have the indirect democracy of an appointment when we have made appointments it's largely been because of the argument that the district just shouldn't have to wait so long to have representation and so this gives us a third option which is have an election but to Council Member Mulcahy's point have it decided faster At the same time, I also have concerns about ranked choice voting. There's the issue of complexity, the cost of education. This has been noted. I thought Councilor Condela's points were well made. I would offer one other, though, that I haven't heard anyone say, which would give me real pause were we to consider this beyond special elections, where there's that extra time pressure. Normally our elections are staggered long before the incumbent is out of office, so you don't have that gap in representation that we're pointing to, which to me makes a special election scenario potentially very different. When we have those elections as regularly scheduled and we know when the incumbent will be out, I prefer a two-step process because I think it's psychologically very different for voters to look at a field that might have five or six or seven candidates have their eyes glaze over and have a lot less certainty over what the choices are. And I think there's a real value to winnowing the field. And what we see is when elections are this evolution in dialogue with the voters. And when you winnow down to two candidates, there's a starker contrast. And there's a very strong incentive at that point. In fact, the entire incentive is to get to a majority position, to audition for the support of 50% plus one of that polity, of that body. I think there's something healthy about focusing the choices, having those final two candidates have to move to the middle a bit to try to get to 50% plus one, and sharpening the choices for voters who could be quite overwhelmed on a ballot with what could be, I mean, in the case of an election, I recently ran in 62 choices. So I just personally, I actually really prefer the two-step process because I think that evolution... is sharpening for both the voters and the candidates, and it allows things to play out over a longer period of time, and there's something healthy about that. But in the case of a special election, I could imagine a future council saying, we want to have an election, but we don't want to wait six months. And this would therefore potentially be a tool to use. I appreciated being in the Brown Act. I wasn't ready to sign on to the memo, but I sort of share the mix of there can be value in having the option while still having some real misgivings about this being a primary tool that we use. Okay, let me, we've got hands up for another round of discussion. Actually, we have not heard, have we heard from Council Member Koppos yet? I don't think we have, so we'll go to you first, and then we'll come back around.

uh thank you mayor i appreciate those reflections and i just want to share a thought as i'm hearing my colleagues discuss this item with uh 2028 as the year that we're looking to revisit this in 2027 being that that time in between and also being a very important year for us as a city celebrating our rich history and having some dollars that we secured in the budget for whatever celebrating 2050 might be, I would encourage us to think about, you know, what civic engagement can be done that benefits us in this respect, because we have a civics masterclass that is available in three languages. It is self-paced online, and it's a hidden gem. I don't think enough people know about that, so I'm curious about if this moves, if this passes today and we have the opportunity to incorporate a module into that civics master class and as part of what we're doing to celebrate our city in 2050, how this conversation can have its place because I think that the one team approach has a lot to offer in how we think about sticky issues like this. And so I would just encourage us to think creatively about how we're not just keeping this issue in a silo, but really, and also not using the lack of education and awareness as a reason to not move forward, but as an opportunity for us to think about how we can grow as a city. So I will offer those comments. Thank you.

Thanks for that, Councilmember. Okay, let's come back to Councilmember Cohen.

Yeah, love it, love it, Council Member Acampos, great comments. Just two things that I heard that I wanted to just quickly comment on. One is, you know, as more and more jurisdictions begin to use and there's more and more familiarity with rank choice voting, at some time in the future, I can imagine this council not having the same misgivings or feeling that this is more mainstream. And having the option in the charter already there for it seems to be a good thing to have. There's no, this doesn't force any particular action, but The soonest we are anticipating a vacancy, although vacancies come up for unanticipated reasons, but it's 2029. By then, there could be a lot more comfort and familiarity. By 2031, which will be the next cycle, there could be even more. So that's kind of the spirit with which this would move forward. And secondly, I'll just comment on what Vice Mayor Foley commented about about the campaign. city itself wouldn't be spending any resources on a campaign as it can't i mean it would be the rank choice coalition and others out there who are interested in this who would run a campaign raise the money and do the spending the spending for the city is putting it on the ballot but the city can't spend money out of its budget to promote a ballot measure so i just want to make sure that that's that that's clear thanks councilmember vice mayor

Okay, finally. Thank you, Council Member Cohen, for that clarification. I appreciate it. And for your comments, Council Member Mulcahy, but I just need to offer one clarification. There was a caretaker council member, very capable, serving in the role of District 3 Carl Salas from January until the election was concluded. And yes, there was a vacancy leading up to that for sure. But once Councilman Salas took over in that role, the council district did have tremendous representation for that short period of time. I just wanted to make that clarification. Thank you.

Thanks, Vice Mayor. And then also just in terms of timing, to be on the 2028 primary ballot, it would need to return to council by no later than November of 27. Is that right? Just to give people a sense of timing. So still quite a ways out. Okay. Thank you all for the robust discussion. We have the motion from Council Member Cohen, I believe. Second, Tordillos. Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes eight to two with Foley and Casey voting no.

Thank you. Okay, we're on to item 5.1, actions related to the award for the large format advertising sign request for proposals at the San Jose Mineta International Airport. Council Member Mulcahy, I believe you need to recuse yourself on this item.

Yes, Mayor. I need to recuse myself from this item, and I'll be excused from the dais for financial conflict. Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

All right. Good afternoon, Mayor, Councilmembers. I'm Mookie Patel. I'm the Director of Aviation at San Jose Moneta Airport. With me co-presenting today is Marta Baratoni. She's our Deputy Director for Finance and Administration. We also have several subject matter experts in the audience should there be additional questions. This is just a four slide quick deck and we'll move as fast as we can. This process officially with council direction back in 2024 asked the airport to move forward with an RFP solicitation. There was another method that was used prior to 2024 that began in 2021 that was contested, so we moved forward with a clean process in 2024. That obviously took some time to write the RFP in September of last year. We issued an RFP. October of last year is when we completed the process. We received two bids. and made the selection, which then required us to move forward with a CEQA process. That CEQA was received May of 2026, and we are here for final award.

Good afternoon.

Tony, I'm Deputy Director of Finance at the airport. Shown here are the location of the proposed billboards. The large picture at the top shows a full map of the airport with the two billboards marked by the orange dots. So as you can see, both are alongside Highway 101 between the Delacruz exit and the 87 interchange. The two smaller pictures at the bottom of the slide show a close-up of each of the two locations. So on the bottom left, you see billboard location number one, which is going to be close to Economy Lot parking garage alongside Highway 101. And then on the bottom right-hand side, you see billboard location number two, which is next to airport bus parking and our cell phone waiting lot. All right, a few key items and elements to mention. So this proposal assures that the billboards will be in compliance with city policy 6-4, which includes that we would use 100% renewable San Jose clean energy, that there would be a five to one tree removal requirement. That means for any one tree that is removed, five trees would be planted in the city of San Jose. is 621 billboard takedown per sign. So we are contemplating putting up two billboards, which would mean 12 billboards would be taken down throughout the city, the location of which have already been outlined in the memo and are in low-income, high-crime areas. Financially, this would provide the greater of a minimum guaranteed 600K a year. or 55 to 60% of gross revenue to the airport. So this would mean that over the course of the initial 10 years of the agreement, that will be a minimum of $6 million for the 10 years, or an estimated $20 million based on projections from out front. So finally, the airport is making a recommendation of award to Outfront Foster Interstate, and we would like to respectfully request the council's approval. Thank you.

Great, thank you for the presentation. Do we have a public comment?

Yes, we have two requests to speak. Jason Hemp and Sean, please make your way down to the podium. As a reminder... Speakers must comply with the city's code of conduct for public meetings. Please direct your comments to the body, limit remarks to the agenda item, and observe the time limit. Conduct that materially disrupts the meeting or interferes with others' ability to participate may result in muting or removal as authorized by law.

OK, your timer is not going to be visible, but you are limited to one minute because you have something you're sharing.

Should I start?

Let's wait for your. OK, go ahead.

Good afternoon. Jason Hemp, District 3 and member of No Digital Billboards in San Jose. We keep revisiting this topic. Some of you were here back in 2022 when this came before you and we're back hopefully for the last time. The memo that's proposed omits a few things that I just wanted to fill in as well as give you a few points to consider. One, there was a memo posted, I mean an op-ed posted by the airport commission back in 2021. They opposed this project for many reasons. And the article is on display for reference. Key concerns, environmental, Flawed business case, free speech, restriction, concerns, and large public opposition. There was over 150 people that came out during the airport commission during that time opposing this. Also, I would consider there are lack of details.

I'm sorry, that was your minute. Next speaker. We have two hands on line, so after the in-person speakers, we're going to go to John, followed by Les.

Go ahead. I just wanted to make the point of people like me who have medical conditions, this is going to affect us. For me, it's actually blinding and it could easily cause an accident. I talk about seniors who have a lot of visual issues, people who have seizure disorders, and I feel like you've blown us off all this time. But there are many times that I pass areas where there's a bright sign on a dark night and there's a, over near 24th and Santa Clara, there's that jeweler that has a bright sign above there. And there's many times I actually have to pull over and just wait for my eyes to adjust again. So I just see this being an issue for people like me and there's plenty of people like me. And so again, I speak out against putting up these signs.

John. followed by less.

Yeah, this is John Miller with the No Digital Billboards Group. The memorandum leaves out significant information, does not contain any details on the size or format of the digital displays. It's unclear whether there are requirements for CEQA review in addition to the CEQA review that was conducted in the past. Also, the vendor evaluation table provides no criteria definitions. Without definitions, the evaluation is meaningless. And of course, the fact the airport commission voting against billboards at the airport not once but twice isn't mentioned in the memo. Finally, does the consul care that except for one letter, all of the letters from the public regarding today's review oppose billboards at the airport? Long past time to ask yourselves, just who are you working for? the public or the billboard companies. Thank you.

Les.

As the city continues to normalize large digital advertising screens, I want to remind you there's widespread resident opposition and that these decisions are changing the identity of San Jose. City leaders said downtown billboards would boost the local economy. So why are these signs pushing Cotter's soccer team and Canada tourism instead of Team USA and local World Cup events? These ads have been running constantly at the CPA the last few weeks. I also don't think it's appropriate to advertise sports betting on city property, but that's exactly what's happening again on the downtown billboards. And I expect we will see the same pattern on the airport billboards. This is really the definition of selling out. The proposal also has no details on size, height, no reference to comprehensive environmental review. And the project history presented is incomplete, and I urge you to ask some harder questions before moving forward.

Back to council.

Thank you. Okay, coming back to the council. Let's see who had first chair, vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I feel like I've seen this presentation several times before back into 2022 when our council was very different. I think council member Cohen, council member Mahan at the time, and I was here when we voted to move forward. And then for various reasons, we had to put it out for bid again. and now this is the result of that i'm assuming isn't isn't that correct i i i'm just i'm not going to make a big speech i've supported this in the past and i'm going to support it again so i'm just going to move acceptance of this item and hope that we move forward okay second from condos counselor cohen

Thank you. Yeah, it feels like Groundhog Day, but I'm glad that maybe this is the last time we'll be discussing these particular billboards. Just a couple quick questions. I know before we had the internal provider that's different than out front, and we were trying to kind of collaborate, coordinate. Now these are two separate providers, and so there won't be necessarily any synergy between the two sets of billboards, or how is that going to be done in any way?

Yeah, so Clear Channel Airports is the one that has the advertising inside of the building. Even though their contract does allow for advertising outdoor, this RFP per council direction to bid it out is being awarded to a different company. The message is a little different. Also, they're on the highway. They're facing 101 as opposed to passengers or internal customers. So there is a difference.

And then there was a comment about size, but presumably the size that we're talking about is the same as it was under the previous contract. Is that right? Or what's the...

Yeah, just to clarify on the size, so the proposed size is 14 feet by 48 feet wide, and it would be about 55 feet above ground.

Both of those signs are actually smaller than the previous proposal, so that's why they had to go back through CEQA approval.

So it's within the parameters of the previous proposal, but even smaller for size. And I really appreciate that we're continuing to move forward with the... you know, under the rules that we put in place as part of this discussion in 2022, we're able to have a robust discussion about what we expect of the billboard installers in terms of environmental impacts, tree replacement, energy use, et cetera. So I appreciate that we're still, we have these guidelines in place and I think it makes our work stronger going forward. So thank you so much for bringing this back.

Thanks Council Member. Okay, I don't see any other hands. Tony, let's vote. motion passes unanimously great thank you all okay we're on to item 5.1 actions related to the 9469 willow keys corridor improvements project tony do we have public comment i have no cards or hands for this item all right coming back to the council great thank you tony let's vote Motion passes Is that a yes or no I heard I heard I an I motion passes unanimously Okay, well, thank you Rhonda item 6.1 long-term power purchase agreement with Shell Energy North America do a public comment I Have no cards for this item. Okay, coming back to the council item 6.1. I Great. Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. We're on to item 6.2, San Jose Clean Energy 2026 Integrated Resource Plan. Tony, do we have public comment?

I have no cards or hands for this item.

Okay. Coming back to the council, item 6.2. Move approval.

Second. Second.

All right, let's vote. Okay.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, Rhonda. Item 7.1, first amendment to the agreement between the City of San Jose and the City of Milpitas for animal care and services. Do we have a public comment?

Yes, I have two comment cards at this time. We just read the reminder, so I'm not going to repeat it since it was just a few minutes ago. Dinah and Sean, come on down.

All right, good afternoon. Thank you for letting me be here. And just a reminder, we're all one step closer to July recess, which I'm sure you are all looking forward to a break. And I also wanted to thank the mayor, the city manager, and council for, again, your ongoing support of animal services. And my name is Dinah. I'm an advocate of spay and neuter and preventative services through our animal shelter. And regarding the extension of the contract with the city of Milpitas, I just wanted to make sure that sufficient consideration was given to the shelter's capacity to actually provide services. While this contract doesn't change the current jurisdiction for animal services, San Jose residents are already driving across town, lining up as early as 4.45 in the morning in order to potentially still get turned away. I was there at 5.30 yesterday. I was turned away. So we still have many challenges that are in place that need to be addressed. Thank you. That's your time.

Everything she said. But also on the unhoused front, we have many animals that we're trying to spay and neuter. And right now, most of the advocates can only get appointments for small animals and maybe medium animals. But if you think about it, like pit bulls, big animal. Golden retriever, big animal. Anything that's a big animal, a big dog, we can't get appointments for. But who's having the most puppies? Pit bulls, German shepherds, golden retrievers. So this is a problem, and we need more appointments for them to stop our puppy population out there. And the city is not a good partner in this. So if this contract does not provide more appointments for spay and neuter for these large animals, you're really increasing the puppy population out there. And there's going to be more cats that are killed out there. There's going to be more puppies that die, more dogs that get hit by cars, and it's your fault. Back to council.

Okay, thank you. Coming back to council. Council Member Duan.

Thank you, Mayor.

Well, I appreciate the funding toward Milpitas, Milpitas funding for us for animal cares and services. I do have a question for staff. I'll wait for our director to come down. While you're coming down, I'll ask the question. Many of the municipal animal services agency report cost per shelter animal is at about $1,000, especially when veterinary care, longer stay, specialized treatment are involved. And I know that sometimes it costs even more. Did the $551,000 paid by Milpitas in 2024 and 2025 cover the San Jose Animal Care Services actual cost of providing the animal care and field services to Milpitas residents?

Good afternoon, I'm Matt Lesh, Director of Public Works. So the question is, in 2024-25, did the $500,000 or so cover what was in Milpitas? So I believe it did. What this contract does is it expands, because you've been providing additional resources to us over the last few years, so we can improve our services and provide more consistent care. So this levels up with the additional resources to the proportional share that goes towards Milpitas. We were under contract under that particular amount that we had, and so we re-engaged with Milpitas on how we calculated it, very clear about what our expenses are to run the shelter for the sheltering piece, medical care, and for the field services, and this is about a 30% increase to level up to what you've provided us in the past.

All right, well, thank you very much, and with that, I move for approval of this item.

Thank you. Council Member Cohen?

I think my question got answered. I had been asking in past when we had these contracts with other cities whether or not we were getting our costs covered to make sure it was worthwhile for us to be providing service to other jurisdictions. What it sounds like is it wasn't

really weren't getting back what we should have before but that we will be now well it did not line up to what was the additional services that have been provided by council to the shelter and a proportional share across the board it was pretty hard and opaque to see how this agreement before was calculated because we didn't have a spreadsheet that tracked back this actually went back about 10 years or 15 years depending on how you looked at the start and just did a cola or cost of living increase each year to get to where it was in the preceding term and so this time we rebuilt up built it so that we have an easy way to calculate it against the animals that are coming in from alpitas we have accurate counts of animals that are coming in from alpitas that are transparent both for Milpitas and for the city. So make sure we're, I can't miss it. So I believe we were pretty close, but this levels up with the additional resources that have been provided recently to the shelter.

And we have other jurisdictions that we also serve and their contracts are coming up when?

So those are coming up for, they're structured slightly differently. their structure and the way Milpitas was in three year term chunks. If you notice in this contract, I'm extending it for nine straight years. And so it's a much longer term. So we don't have to come back every three years to renegotiate with them. We'll be coming up with them, I believe, next fiscal year for Cupertino and for Saratoga.

Presumably those will be resized to the new level of service.

They were resized before. We'll make sure that those things are trued up and connected to what those services are, plus the animal counts coming in from those jurisdictions.

And this new contract with Lapidus has some built-in triggers that allow us to escalate if other services are provided.

if we provide additional services we would say that we could open up the contract again to level up those terms for the level of service we have right now and the animal counts coming in from a petis it's crazy consistent it's about 490 animals for the last four or five years okay so thank you next council member okay tony let's vote

Great, thank you. We're on to item 8.1, actions related to grant agreements for multiple programs serving households experiencing homelessness. We have a brief staff presentation. So I'll turn it over to Eric as soon as he's ready.

Thank you, Council. Thank you, Mayor. This is Eric Sullivan, Director of Housing. I'll go through a brief presentation related to our homelessness grant programs that are non-shelter funding. So this is other services and programs that we provide to persons experiencing homelessness, targeting basically six primary programs that I will give a brief presentation to walk through. So the first is our... Intervention services, which focuses on Dignity on Wheels, which is a mobile showers and laundry service that is provided through We Hope. Second is our targeted outreach and engagement program. This is an initiative that we have revised over the last year as we're further synchronizing our work both with our enhanced engagement teams as related to the code of conduct four encampments, as well as our work to divide the city into five quadrants, including a dedicated quadrant just within downtown. Secondly is our Supportive Services bucket of work. This is our youth and housing support. I'll talk through it in detail about what that program provides, services and direct rental assessments to youth aging out of foster care. Third, our SD Bridge program and our interpersonal kind of violence support, which is our domestic violence response unit. Our HMIS funding that we provide in collaboration with the county and then the Uplift program, which provides buses and transportation services. So first to Dignity on Wheels. So this is again, it's mobile showers and laundry. We served over 1300 individuals over essentially a 10 month period. That was the look back for this review. It provides a lot of showers and laundry. It also provides services. at our Taylor Street Navigation Hub. A lot of the individuals who were serviced through this during the look-back period included Columbus Park as well, where this service was stationed at that site for multiple months. In addition to intervention services for Dignity on Wheels, we also provide our targeted outreach and engagement program, which is our homelessness outreach. These are the contracts that we provide services through PATH and Home First. So this number of total individuals engaged also includes individuals who engage during the Columbus Park clearing as well as the work it does in responses as we've changed the tactics of execution after the clear of Columbus Park to be more reactive, divided up into the quadrants of the city as well as tracking those on lines. For supportive services and transportation programs, first we have our housing and youth support work. This is targeted to youth who are exiting out of homelessness or traditionally exiting out of foster care, but that's not the exclusive population. They're converted into permanent housing, so these are not shelter bed placements, these are direct permanent. housing placements and of the total 55 served during the prior fiscal year, 36 of those were also able to receive employment as well as housing services as they received both rental assistance and supportive services. Then we have our SJ Bridge program, which is our workforce initiative within our shelter sites. A total of over 121 program participants were signed up. Of that 121, 17 received full-time employment placements. There are far more, close to about 40, who are sort of on a part-time basis jobs, but we're primarily tracking the key outcome related to full-time employment, because it ensures stabilized housing and services. Then we have our domestic violence shelter program, which basically provides a direct rental assistance and hotel stays for individuals experiencing domestic violence. And we provided support to 72 individuals during the last fiscal year period. Our HMIS is the Homeless Management Information System. This is the primary HUD system. So we're providing additional funding in collaboration with the county as we are building out a module within HMIS to track our shelter bed. This is part of our coordinated efforts to consolidate some of our sites into the coordinated entry system and ensuring there is transparency in the placement of those beds throughout the combined system as well as the continuing work we're doing to improve and optimize our overall bed utilization throughout our entire 22 citywide system and the last program on this bucket of services is the uplift program which just provides quarterly monthly passes as part of our collaborative work with vta we receive about 6 000 in total throughout the city through various providers to ensure transportation access So overall, this represents about 6.2 million in funding through various sources, as listed on the slide here, including Measure E, our HAP funds, which continues to be an important part of contributions to our overall fiscal stability in providing our homelessness response. That's the quick summary, and I'm happy to answer your questions.

Thanks, Eric. Tony, do we have public comment?

Yes. Sean?

I appreciate Eric mentioning Columbus Park clearing, or sweep as we call it, because you sweep people from one place to another. All the people who are still near Columbus Park, all of them, were signed up by PATH for the NavHub East list, which is different, they told us, than the Here For You Hotline list. And I just talked to Eric right now, and that list doesn't exist. It's not real. It's just what PATH told people. And we saw it. We heard them say it. They told us that. This morning, people got swept again from the area. And I'm sure it's because of the statue and because of 3.6%. But sweeping people over and over and over again because of the failure to provide all of them housing isn't going to make things change. What changes is providing them housing Please do that. Back to Council.

Thank you. Council Member Kompas.

I just want to share a quick thank you to Eric and all of the housing department team for bringing this item forward. And I know it's not easy work, and I just especially want to appreciate the component dialing down on youth housing and what we're doing to support families and youth experiencing homelessness. It is a part of the Children Youth Master Plan that I look forward to seeing, you know, as we passed money in the budget to continue that work, seeing how we can work to ensure safer, more stable housing supply for our young people experiencing homelessness. And with that, I will move this item. Thank you.

Thanks, council member. I don't see any other hands. Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great. Thank you all. We are on to item 8.2. This is actions related to the home key standard agreement and transition of responsibilities for the Branham Lane interim housing community. There's no staff presentation on this item, so we'll start with public comment.

I have no cards or hands for this item.

Okay, coming back to the council.

Second.

Okay.

Okay. Councilmember?

Thank you. I was just trying to raise my hand to move the item and just wanted to offer another thank you for the work on this.

Great. Thank you. Tony, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great. Okay, we're on to our final agendized item. This is 8.3, Multifamily Housing Incentive Program Residential Tax and Fee Waiver for the Zero Sealy Mixed Use Development Building B Development Project located at 681 East Trimble Road. I will need to recuse myself from this item as I received a campaign contribution over $500 from an employee of the Hanover company who are the applicants for this fee waiver. So I'm going to turn it over to the Vice Mayor and step into the green room.

Thank you, Mayor. Do we have, we do have a presentation. Eric, take it away.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. So Eric Sullivan, Director of Housing, and I'm joined today by Banu Son, who's our Deputy Director over Housing Production and Preservation. So I'm going to go through a brief presentation here, and I want to begin by just giving a brief market update. You know, we have seen, as with all of the IPOs coming out of the region related to AI, we are seeing sort of a cycle, an investment cycle that is coming forward within the Bay Area that traditionally always starts in San Francisco, kind of makes its way down into San Jose. You can see in this slide, very briefly, that rents surprisingly have spiked almost 20% in San Francisco on the market rate side. Palo Alto, they're starting to teeter up. And in Santa Clara, we're beginning to see this very slowly in San Jose, as well as increases in the values of multifamily homes or like sites that are being sold. You know, we had mentioned during the budget process that Measure E had an uptick in contributions. A lot of that has to do with the numerous amount of sales on multifamily buildings because we're seeing capital being driven in unique ways now. And so a part of that is creating this investment cycle ahead that we are foreseeing that over the next roughly six to 12 months, there's going to be an uptick in available capital that's going to be invested into multifamily production as we're seeing that coming down from San Francisco into Silicon Valley and then into San Jose. So this program that we have put together is rather timely. There's also been an uptick in the amount of calls I've received from developers who are looking to take advantage of our programs that we have as there is now an abundance amount of liquidity within the system to invest in both property acquisitions as well as hopefully new construction. So this program is, you know, passed last year and revised earlier this year. It's certainly meeting a timely investment cycle. And so now I'm going to have Banu just walk through the details of this particular site with the Zero Saley Project.

Thank you, Eric. This slide just summarizes our multi-housing incentive program, and we're discussing the cost of residential development study that we released in December of last year. well, December 2025, and the fact that there are still a lot of challenges in the market in terms of development, and we are still dealing with high construction costs, interest rates, and insufficient rents really to cover the development costs. So the incentive program continues to be an effective mechanism to help move forward our market rate development projects. and one of which we're discussing today. And a reminder of what the incentive program provides and how it's helping move these developments forward in terms of financial feasibility is a reduction in taxes, as stated here, as well as a waiver of the INU fee with a minimum 5% of the units to provide affordable units up to 110% area median income. This is the Zero Sealy project. Hanover overall is providing across all of the various phases of this project around 1400 homes. So about a year ago there was construction that initiated for 531 market rate units. 134 of those were townhomes and building A, 397 units. Construction will soon start on 136 affordable homes as a part of this entire project. And today we're talking about building B, which is 372 units, 19 of which are going to be affordable at 110 area median income. And then building C will provide around approximately 361 units and we expect the construction of that to start in 2027. So a total of 1,400 units from Hanover across these projects. This slide just talks about the waiver we're requesting, the inclusionary housing fee waiver of around 4.5 and then a 50% reduction under the incentive program in the taxes. This is just an update on where we're at in terms of the projects that have been able to move forward under the incentive program. We're at around 2,300 units in total, and it's created over 400 units in terms of affordable homes. And down the pipeline, we actually have one or two more projects coming, and we are expecting to hit 3,000 units by year end, and by February, getting close to that 3,600 unit limit that was in the phase one of the incentive program. And that concludes our presentation.

Thank you for the presentation. Tony, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

Yes. Eric Schoenauer, come on down. You have one minute.

One minute. Do you represent the applicant?

Oh, okay.

You have five minutes. Five. You want five. Sorry. You need five minutes? Just checking.

I hope not.

Okay.

But it is honored to be the last item on your agenda for this session, I believe, right? It is. 8.3. In any case, good afternoon, Vice Mayor Foley, members of the Council. My name is Eric Schoenauer. I represent the Hanover Company and just wanted to come today to thank city staff for all of their work administering this program, but also thank the Council and remind the Council of the importance and effectiveness of the multi-family housing program. In this particular case, our project in North San Jose at Seeley and Montague, you're not just incentivizing a building, you're incentivizing an entire new neighborhood of nearly 1,500 units with market-rate apartments, affordable apartments, for-sale housing, all built around neighborhood retail and a brand-new city park as the center focus point right near our high-tech job center of North San Jose. So the program is working, it's effective, and this project literally wouldn't have gotten off the ground if you had not adopted the program. So thank you for that, and Hanover looks forward to continue investments in San Jose. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Sometimes we actually move the right levers. Back to Council. Okay. Does anyone have their hands raised or no? David, Council Member Cohen, I expected as much.

Yeah, I'm just going to say thank you to staff for working so well with the applicant. I drive by Zero Sealy Parkway. least once a week if not more and that that that first building is going up very fast and it's great to see this for almost 400 units of housing already under construction the exterior this building is almost the shell is almost done and i can see the plan is to move quickly on two additional buildings and so it's really it's it's really gratifying to see that we've pulled levers to make construction move forward and get a lot of housing in an important part of the city so i will move approval of this item second

Thank you, we have a motion and a second. Very exciting to see all these housing projects moving forward with the multi-housing plan program that we had established earlier this year. Let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, that is the last item on our agenda. So let's go to public comment. Carmen, come on down.

Is Carmen coming? Yep, there she is.

So it's actually ironic to have seen all this energy earlier about RCV and voting when I have seen zero energy from this body in regards to protecting black voters in San Jose. So I'm Carmen Brammer. I'm the CEO and founder of Global Majority Consulting. This is the second time I'm standing before you to demand attention required to protect the voice, vote, and representation of San Jose's black residents. I'm sick of performative politics. The lack of response from all of you speaks volumes. Every one of you has the responsibility to stand with our black community. As we head into the summer, I ask for you and your chiefs of staff to set up the time to meet with me. There's an unbelievable sense of urgency, and we must move forward because of what the Supreme Court did.

I'm sorry, that's your time. Back to council.

Thank you. That so concludes our final meeting of June. I will see you all in August.