Community & Economic Development Committee (ced) - Regular Meeting

Community and Economic Development Committee. Happy New Year. I believe on starting on time and ending on time. Whatever ending on time means with this committee, I never really know. Kind of depends on what hot topics we have to talk about. So let's start with the role.

Casey?

Here.

Mulcahy?

Here.

Ortiz?

Present.

Vice chair Kameh?

I know she's here and she will be here, I'm

sure. Okay.

I want to welcome our two new committee members, council member Casey and council member Mulcahy. I look forward to your participation. I know you'll bring forward a breadth of knowledge in areas that we may not possess on this committee at this point. So welcome aboard. Thank you. Thank you. This is our first meeting of the year. We have no, not reviewing the work plan. We have nothing on consent, so let's just jump into the committee reports. And I will acknowledge that council or that vice mayor Khamenei is walking down the stairs and will be here in thirty seconds, I'm sure.

So let's, Nancy, let's begin with the proposed economic strategy work plan for fiscal year twenty five, twenty six, twenty six, twenty seven.

Thank you very, very much, madam Chair, and to members of the committee, Nancy Klein, Director of Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs. I'm here with Carrie Adams Hapner, Director of Office of Cultural Affairs and Assistant Director of OED, and Blagge Zalalich, who is the Deputy Director for Business Development. So a lot of what is going on in the work plan is in their domain. And Jeff Ruster got held for a second on an emergency call. He will be joining us, I hope.

So if you would go can I have the clicker? Thank you very much. We'll go to the first slide. I wanted to take a minute and give you a background and purpose for the work. The very first thing is OED collection of services within our scope.

One, of course, is business development, economic development. One is cultural affairs, very much experience economy, etcetera. One is work to future jobs and training, and one is real estate. And all of those help each other and manage from a manager's, the city manager's lens and the council's lens, so the work is cohesive. That is who we are and basically the cross collaboration work we do.

Also wanted to remind that we have a very good economic development strategy. We did the strategy in 2010, we updated in 2015. The strategy overall has 12 goals. In 'sixteen, we had been working with, continued to work with a two year work plan so that we could come to CEDC and counsel and focus, because working across all 12 all the time is with the resources particularly we have was we want to be most effective. So I also want to note that in March 20, with the pandemic, we pivoted away from our normal work plan and focused solely on the pandemic.

And we serve primarily small business communities who were most affected by the pandemic. There were other things going on like Google that we were very much a part of, but the work plan work focused on small business. So this is an excellent time to refocus on our goals. And in preparation for that work, we did compare, go out and look at San Francisco, San Diego, Austin, Phoenix, other cities. And what we've come to find is that urban cities are doing very similar work.

We are not in the wrong place where we're focusing, we are in the right place where we are focusing. So that's why we want to come talk to you about our goals and objectives. And in the report, we have a number we have the key results and metrics, but we're going to focus for the main on goals and objectives as we talk today in consideration of time. So, the five goals. Goal number one is essentially retention, attraction, and growth expansion of companies and sectors that can grow the pie for the city.

Jobs, revenues, people. The second goal is all about small business and a vibrant small business community, vibrant neighborhoods as part of that. Number three is all about workforce and training. Number four is about everybody's downtown and the vitality of downtown. And the fifth is very much looking to the near, present and beyond That will be we already do a tremendous amount with arts and culture, and in recognition of the experience economy, sports and entertainment is essential.

It's integral to the rest of what we do. So those are the five goals that we have pulled out from the strategy. We then took the goals and put them into objectives or added objectives to help us do the work. And you see the objectives there. Strengthening the first one, strengthening Citi's corporate business ecosystem with special focus on top technology and manufacturing companies.

And it's reaching out and integrating, committing ourselves to work we did a lot before the pandemic and have since done, but doing even more. The second is supporting retention and growth of jobs and medium companies. For example, one of the key results is ensuring that we're coordinating annually with at least 140 companies to make sure they get what they need and that they know that they have, in effect, concierge service with the city. 1.3 is managing the city's real estate assets, which do two things, and those would be in the key results, make money for the city through our assets like leases. And secondly, we are an important catalyst to many departments doing their work, whether it's buying land for parks or for housing securing leased sites, buying hotels or purchasing sites for permanent affordable.

Before I go on to goal two, I understand, I see that the council member has a question. I'll wait till you. You'll wait till okay. Look forward to it. So that is goal number one.

We would now move on to goal number two. That is maximizing the city's resources to strengthen small business. Currently a great example and key results is our work in business associations and in neighborhoods. We've gone from three to 12 business associations and neighborhoods, and we intend to keep pushing more. And all of the goals and objectives we're speaking to are based on current budget and staffing, just to make sure I've shared that.

And we also want to assist capacity building services through helping community based organizations do what they do even better, and then making sure business associations, through your offices and through the city OED or other partners, know about resources that are available to them. So that is with the entrepreneurship that speaks to with 2.2, the entrepreneurship talks about resources and building capacity. On to goal three. There are two objectives under the goal of workforce training, and there's a lot under each one. The first one is really helping grow career opportunity for youth and adults in high wage, high growth occupations, particularly those youth and adults who have been underserved.

An example of that is Jeff's work in Work to Future support at least 1,400 youth and adults, 80% of those employed into high wage, high growth occupations like manufacturing, health care, construction trades, accounting, etcetera. Over 60% of those clients are unstably housed, and 80% are BIPOC. Another piece out of the key results that Work2Future is working on is helping with upward and economic prosperity, upward mobility, for example. Support the city's homeless implementation plan and serve in this year as a pilot, 100 unstably housed individuals with 70% of them finding and securing employment in those one of those five industries. And the second is complete a pilot with the sheriff's office of an in custody program serving 20 youth so that once they leave the system, they have an opportunity to get gainful employment, which is a principal way to not have folks back in jail.

On the second objective, which is expanding work with the businesses, and the work there is essential to have a pipeline into those businesses, and the identified goal is 300 businesses a year helping with their workforce needs, and again, very much focused at those who are underserved. And again, just mentioning, have a lot of cross Jeff has a lot of cross collaboration and partnership with AI semiconductor, PG and E, power pathways and working partnerships in the construction trades. On to goal four, which is enhance the vitality of downtown. It's everybody's downtown. And one, we want to maintain and grow downtown's commercial and residential base.

Part of that is the outreach work to the tenants there, knowing when their lease is up, getting ahead of that, so we work to retain those tenants. And I do want to mention recent, very recent data shows that San Jose is a good bit off the bottom in terms of back to work. Downtown is now 58% back to work, just below New York Metro. So we have our resilience is becoming stronger. And the second is make sure we're reaching out on visitors and residents.

That combines with what we're going to talk to in the fifth goal and very much about the experience economy. And then lastly, and Carrie and Silicon Valley SV Creates had done work showing the strength of the arts and creativity market of over 5,000 jobs and two ninety two million coming from arts and culture on an annual basis. So this, as we talk about the fifth goal, again very much focused on sports, entertainment, arts and culture, is incredibly important. Part of that is geared to 2026, road to '26, and then beyond, for those of you who know Buzz Lightyear. But we have a tremendous amount of assets that we need to coordinate and build on.

As John Poach from the Sports Authority says, it's not at all just getting the event, it's getting it back. And that's the work we want to excel in. The other thing in 5.2 that I want to mention is helping those in the creative and experience economy. The arts grants, even though overall it seems small, they're incredibly important with 115 TOT funded arts and cultural grants totaling somewhere around $5,000,000 and at least 35% of those are BIPOC. And then I will leave it at there and ask thoughts or comments.

This is very much a work in progress. We appreciate the input, and we will be bringing it to council, full council, on March 4 coming up soon. Thank you very much.

Chair Foley, if I could add. Please. Just quickly, very quickly, I wanna first of all thank staff for all their hard work on this updated work plan and also just acknowledge that this is version one point o. We acknowledge we have more work to do in terms of refinement and making sure that we are in fact focusing on what's important to this mayor and council and our community, and that's one of the reasons why we have requested for the cross reference to March 4 council. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Thank you for that presentation. This committee is focused on economic growth, and that's what this report is all about. Of course, we talk about a lot of other things, but this economic growth is one way that our businesses survive, our employees thrive, and our downtown in the city of San Jose becomes an, an experienced place where people wanna live and grow and raise their families. With that, I'll turn to council member Ortiz.

Thank you, so much, madam president. First off, I just wanna thank the department for, president. Sorry. Committee chair. Was I supposed say madam chair?

That's fine.

Madam we almost we almost had a madam president. Unfortunately, we we went the wrong way.

Madam president, that

I'll sounds switch our president for you any any day of the any day of the week. But returning to give you guys some kudos, Nancy, I just wanna extend my gratitude for your team, your thoughtful updates. It's been a privilege to serve alongside council member Rosemary Kameh, vice mayor Rosemary Kameh on the small business advisory committee. Really seeing how far the city has come from before when I was on the board of the Hispanic chamber or with the Alamogue Santa Clara Street Business Association where it was very hard to get the attention of the city to now seeing this overall robust strategy of outreach to small businesses and even our immigrant businesses. I just can't thank you enough and I just want you to know that as a council member and as the liaison to the committee, effort.

I see that staff are focusing on it. And I just wanna thank you for that. Appreciate it. I do have some questions. In regards to reference number one, and I know I mentioned this in in the email to you about advocacy for small businesses and making sure that our council or CED focus on that as well.

I wanted to ask like, you know, many businesses are coming to me, especially mom and pop small businesses, and they're saying, hey, permits at the city Of San Jose cost anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000. If you go for a liquor permit, forget about it. Right? So and I know we've just done some things to alter some of the planning processes for housing which is very important. I like to see that same attention focused on our mom and pop businesses who are struggling, you know, and are gonna be struggling especially as we see the anxiety with deportation operations going on especially in my district.

So I just wanted to ask, was there ways that we could implement or explore, reduce of whether it's permit processing times or you know cutting permits. I know that they're cutting permit fees. I know that to me when I've raised this, PBCE says, well, the the permit fees are cost recovery. Right? But then we also learned at the last council meeting that we're not charging as much for court and code enforcement violations as we could in general. We could raise the fee that we charge for code enforcement violations. And so I'd like to see if, you know, the administration is interested in exploring some incentives for small businesses around permitting both cost and times. If there's we could, I'm sure we could rearrange things in order to make up the cover request through other fees.

Councilmember Blagge will begin as business development is directly her domain, and I will likely have a thing or two to add. Okay.

So Councilmember Ortiz, we're always trying to find a way to assist our small businesses every day with the work that we're doing out there. We learn more and more about kind of what different areas could potentially help them survive, thrive in our city. So a few things that that we already have in place that we are gonna go even deeper on as we as we expand our work into the small business ecosystem is our small business ally program, right. So we have two small business allies that are of substantial, a substantial advocate and resource for small business. The other, and part of what they are doing also are the CASP grant management, which has to do with facilitating grants for small business that are looking to do kind of disability related improvements and upgrades to their businesses.

Part of also what we are doing is the Ally program is able to get more small businesses into some of the specialized streamlined programs for permit reviews such as the STAR program, or the special tenant previously the special tenant improvement program. So there are a variety of different ways that we are trying to work with our partners in PBC to streamline processes and reduce costs as we are learning from our businesses what is kind of the largest or some of the largest hurdles for them to overcome. I think some of the things that you bring up are points that we can take back in our regular conversations with our interdepartmental partners and try to figure out what recommendations we could kind of bring forward as a suite of opportunities.

I appreciate that. I know that we did that study session where we had the developer firms here talking about the obstacles that they face, the barriers to development. And I think practices like that to hear from small businesses whether it's communities of color or American citizens talking about their barriers I think would be good. In in reference to goal three, and I'm all bored with this. I understand, you know, our tax revenue.

We need to make sure that we are recruiting, know, list companies. I know Google's coming in hopefully sooner than later. What are we gonna do because jobs are one of it, but then making sure that San Jose youth and our residents are ready to fill those jobs is another thing. And I you know I've seen you know I've seen that unfortunately corporate responsibility hasn't expanded to making sure that they're hiring in their own backyard. And I'm a supporter of the H-1B visa, but I think sometimes companies use that as the first choice instead of looking around and saying oh we should start work with this school district and set up a workforce development program or something like that.

And so obviously I wasn't here in conversations when Google was happening, but I want to know in the future what could be done. And I'm not saying like mandating, I know we can't mandate company hire, but what we can what can we do to incentivize the hiring of our public? Because, you know, these companies could give us a 100,000,000. Everyone that comes in give us a 100,000,000, but it still won't move the needle as much as if they were hiring our youth to fill these jobs.

And Jeff is best respond.

Yeah. I think we're fortunate, council member, that we're one of the few workforce development boards that's located within an office of economic development. Many are located within social service agencies. So I think that inherently gives us really good connections and real time information as to what the hiring needs are of large, medium and small companies. And I know Work the Future has benefited in terms of the relationship.

Obviously, we have very closely with Blogay and her team in connections with Google, with NT Technologies, with other firms, both in advanced manufacturing, IT, these high wage, high growth jobs. So we've been really good. What we can bring to the table is obviously opportunity to train these individuals and give them the talent that we they need. We serve a lot of individuals that have multiple barriers to employment. Again, Nancy mentioned 60% aren't stably held. Many are very low income, youth and adults. But when we talk with the employers, we're talking to them about giving them qualified workers, and it's our job to make sure that we deliver on that promise. So I think we've had very good success. About 83% of the clients that we place into employment are in these high wage, high growth sectors and the majority are there a year later.

Appreciate that. I'm glad that they're getting those jobs, but I want them to be at these companies that are coming in, these companies that are benefiting. Know before in the past, prop 13, these companies had to invest in our school districts. They had to invest in our local city at a level that built up an infrastructure to prepare that. Unfortunately, we don't have that anymore since prop 13.

So I just wanna address that because we have people in East Side San Jose, know, black and brown youth who are just as smart as other community members and they're not giving the shot because they don't have the same opportunities. And so I just would hope that people that come into our city absolutely let's court them, but let's let's also talk about what their plans are to make sure that our youth are being hired. And then finally I know that there's a hiring freeze. And I know you have a mighty team, but I've also known that you some people have stepped I mean, no public servant is always public servant jobs are always competing with tech and everything like that. Well, how are we gonna manage, you know, implementing this vision? I know that a few people have transferred out. What what are what are your thoughts with that?

Council member, I very much appreciate the question. And you're you're asking a really important question that really pertains to all the departments with their workload. So if it should end up that we lose staff, then we have to really look at our goals and objectives and key results and see what modifications may need to be made and or tighter deliverables. And is there any possibility of thinking even further about cross collaboration and strategic partnerships? We aim to do that. Always good to be aiming to do more.

And you're not able to fill those roles because of the hiring freeze, right?

There are two positions that we made it before the hiring freeze that we are engaged in a recruitment process, but there are others where

we Just are to put a reference, there's some very smart d three staffers who are looking for a job. I'm not gonna say no names, but they are looking for a job. And so I know they've worked with small business, so I'll shamelessly give them a plug. And then finally I know I got thirty seconds. I don't know if you guys saw this article in the Mercury News about silvery towers, slavery towers where they they held undocumented immigrants there against their will. It's going be auctioned off. Is this an opportunity for the city of San Jose? Could we potentially work with some partners to create some affordable housing? But I know it's 600 units and I just I feel like it's an opportunity and I know that one of the priorities is downtown, so I just wanted to hear your guys' thoughts if anything's on your agenda.

Thank you for the question councilmember. We're honestly really happy that it'll be auctioned off because hopefully the other tower will get filled. There are quite a number of people living in one tower, none in the second. And I don't fully know the answer, so I'm going go talk to Eric Solevan. Thank

Thank you council member. Vice Mayor Kameh.

Thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation. And you know, I want to echo council member Ochis', sort of accolades on, you know, you've come a long way and, at least, you know, in the last two years that I've been, here. So I really, really appreciate it. I know you have a small but mighty team and you have a tremendous breadth of work that you do.

So I I do wanna recognize that. You know, one of the things as you're coming to council in the next few weeks, one of the things that I think would be helpful, because there's so much here, I'm wondering if there's a way to have sort of snapshots along the way where in a very simple manner you would have sort of a way to describe where we've been, where we currently are, and where we're going. Because I think that I'm going to forget the number of small businesses that have now been sort of like you know from four or three to now 10 or 12. And and that's pretty significant. And so as you think about well by the end of this year, if you wanna be at fifteen or whatever that is, right, it would be nice to see sort of where we've been, where we're where we're where we are at this point in time and where you'd like to go.

Because you know I know that a lot of effort goes into this, but you know we hear it once and we're on to the next thing. At least you know there's just so much, right? And so if there were a, I don't know, a one pager that says as you're moving along your goals, I think they're good goals, but as you're moving along and you're doing and accomplishing, these are the things you accomplish. And it'd be very helpful I think at least for me to be able to recognize that yes there's Look at all the wins that have happened, right? And and you'll have it sort of varying in the different goals, right?

But I think that it's helpful to understand where we have progress and where we've yet to put more either time or energy, you know, into into each of the goals. Because I think that yes, we can go back to every single report that you come back and give us, but it's also for me a way to easily monitor and say, oh yeah I remember that thing. We went from four and now we've got you know 10 or 12 and what a great success, right? And so we may be behind in one of the other goals, but I think helpful as you're moving forward, right? So that's a suggestion for you to think about.

The other thing is, and I think that, council member Ortiz alluded to it a little bit in terms of working with other departments and you know, what are the correlations correlations and collaborations, right? One of the things that I wonder about, he talked about PBCE, I wonder about finance. You know we have been informed that you know sales tax has gone down. So I'm thinking, okay, sales has had gone down. What is it that we are not doing or is there something that we need to do more of or, you know, what is the correlation between the work that you're doing the revenue coming into the city.

There are relationships and maybe you know things lag, right? We all know how you know sort of like sometimes you project something and then you realize well no it didn't happen the way we thought it was gonna happen because something else happened. But I think that to me it's it's a way of being able to be more integrated in terms of the work that you do really correlates with revenue for the city and interest in the city. And I think that we should have a better sort of like holistic view of of how we could have better understanding of does something need to change, right? And ask those questions as to whether or not we need to try something different.

And so you know it sort of like occurs to me that even in the area of workforce development which was mentioned earlier, what are the jobs of the future, right? I know that our clean energy department is interested in those who may need to start building up the skills for, you know, everything is gonna electric. The future is electricity. Not everything, but you know for the most part that is coming. There's a tremendous interest in preparing our youth for the jobs jobs of the future perhaps in you know, to be an electrician or to be a technical person or whatever it is, right?

I don't know what those jobs are, but I know that the the the the unions are interested, the departments are interested, the community is interested in putting something together. And you know it's sort of like how do you cross those those collaborations so that we start having them now? You know, because I mean we're, this is beyond 2026, right? So you know, getting the interest early on in you know a training of some sort, right? And apprenticeships.

And I know we've done them before but I think that we have to start way early, like into high school and and see what partners we can come together with and be more aggressive on that. So it's really the correlation between departments and collaborations that I see. There's lots of opportunity, but I do know that you have a small staff and a big workload, but I also think that there's those in the community that want to partner. And and I would I would encourage you to do as much as you can to be able to, you know, exercise that sort of collaborations. Thank you.

If I may, madam chair, just two quick things so I I can make sure you know we were listening. One, you were speaking about telling our story and making sure that we're sharing with you and the community so the story gets out there. We're doing outreach, as mentioned, prior to today and will continue to do outreach. The conversation in the building with department heads was very much about that. Making sure, and it's partly their story too, right, because we do do a lot of collaborations.

The other is, and we can follow-up, happy to say that Jeff does a number of programs with high school students to make sure that they get internships and then hopefully jobs eventually, and young adults, as well as thinking through what sectors, those five sectors are what we believe will continue strong into the future. They are shown to be growing. That's always what we need to look at. And for example, you mentioned electricity, really important, and it may take a little bit of a hiatus this administration.

The thing Nancy is that you're saying that Jeff has done these things and you know, wouldn't it be nice to know that 500 students from Eastside Union High School District participated in whatever. Right? Council member Ortiz, guess what? Look at where these kids are and look at where look at the jobs they were able to obtain. This is kind of stuff that I think needs a little bit more what is the next thing?

What is the next step so that you know, not just that yes, we're doing these programs, but yes, we're getting results. What are the results? Because at the end of the day, it's great that you're doing all of this, but if we don't know that you know 200 kids or whatever whatever the the figure is in you know 12 schools have participated and guess what? So and so got these kind of jobs. You know it's sort of like we know it's happening, but is it getting the results that council member Ortiz is talking about? Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Mulcahy.

Thank you. There we go. Thank you. Rosalyn and Nancy thanks for the preview before today. I know we talked about a little wordsmithing on the goals, and I see that you've kind of paired some of that down.

And I do want to address a couple of those now. But I first want to acknowledge Councilmember Ortiz talking about mom and pops. I would think that if in this new role that I have, this committee, this kind of conversation is probably where I feel the most comfortable. And just in talking with many mom and pops over the years, a lot of times they just really don't know the right question to ask. So if they're lucky enough to find their way to Juan Barelli and his team who can help coach them to know the right questions, do I need a signed permit?

Do I really need a, you know, a new kitchen remodel for this? Right? And that sort of interaction between our departments and the county health and so forth. And so I think it's just really important. The more that we can steer people towards the resources we do have available, the better.

And I think, you know, the more our offices are equipped with understanding when those questions come to us, how to sort of point them in the right direction. The other thing is they don't always end up with a landlord that knows what they're doing, a property manager who knows what they're doing or a broker who can tell them anything about what they're up for. So many times we have businesses that are opening without really understanding what they've done. So I think that Juan's group can be really helpful in that way. And really understanding the lessons learned each time that they go through and coach somebody through process can be really important.

And I think at the sort of the flip side of that as we talked a little bit about business associations and you're doing more of those, which I applaud and think it's great. You're coaching more associations into the bid or the PBID process, business improvement districts where essentially tenants pay the fee and that goes to sort of a collective, you know, way to spend money in your district or the PBID which goes to the property tax side of the equation much more reliable. Once they're established, I think just like a one Borrelli for the small business folks that are opening for the first time, we need to figure out a way where we can really coach those business associations, P Bids, bids up, most of the time they really don't want to be involved with the city. Most of the time, they just might need, you know, to to have somebody from one department in the city sort of, prevent a roadblock from happening for an event or for a special function. And so I think we need to pay a little attention to that in my view because I think we've built some really good ones and I think there's an opportunity to sort of let them fly with a more organized effort around kind of one stop shopping for problem solving for those that are organized in that way.

I want to talk about goal number four. So many years ago, I was the co chair of a group called the Greater Downtown Development Strategy Task Force, right? And one of our you know, kind of objectives in 2000, yes, I was alive in 2000, was how do we break down the barrier of Highway 87 as an example. We always thought about downtown being 4th Street on the East, 87 on the West, Julian on the North, and 280 on the South. And, you know, we've done a very good job of that and we've got the, you know, lots going on West Of 87.

And I was pleased to know when I showed up at City Hall that we think about it as the greater downtown. And yet in this bullet we're not really doing that we're saying focusing on downtown and I think it's important. To acknowledge the greater downtown in the context of we've done so much work. You know in areas around Derrida on right which in the kind of the classic. Downtown would not be included if we didn't put greater.

Or in the stitching districts idea that we're thinking about around how to connect San Pedro Square Market in District 3 to Little Italy just on the other side in District 6 and all that sort of going on in the Alameda. So I'd like us to think about that kind of a wordsmith if you will to be thinking a little bit more broadly about all that we have to offer in our greater downtown. And then the other one is number five. It doesn't feel aspirational enough to me. Develop means like we don't have them already.

And I think things like fostering, promoting our, stimulating our, advancing our, you finished the sentence of a great bullet already around sports, arts, entertainment. We have so much to offer. And I think, again, similar to that notion that we want to support our, you know, BIDs and P bids with sort of that, you know, one task force, very similar in this way that we want to embellish all that we have as opposed to we're not at a developing stage anymore. We've got a lot of those variables that you've already sort of pointed out. So I want us to think a little bit more aspirational in that particular goal.

But I will say when you showed me the 12 that you used to have to the five kind of more direct and targeted, I think it's super important about the here and now that we're doing that. So I appreciate the hard work to maybe jettisoning some things that are super important to people on your team, but to really focus I think is really important right here and right now. So thank you so much for the work. Thank you, Roselyn.

Thank you. Council member Casey.

Thank you, madam chair. I wanted to thank staff for all the work you've done and acknowledge the important role you guys play, particularly as we enter into a budget rough budget season here. You guys play an important role in potentially down the future us never having to deal with those types of budget shortfalls. So I want to applaud your efforts and I just had two points I wanted to make or actually one point, one question. I noticed that you guys are doing a lot in terms of retention.

I didn't see much in terms of attraction. And how do we strategize in terms of targeting potential folks that we can bring into San Jose, whether it's identifying large companies in the area close in neighboring cities whose leases are up potentially and we can kind of slide in and maybe offer them something more attractive here in San Jose. So just food for thought there. On the other point, I know housing is doing a homelessness data consolidation project to kind of overcome some of the interdepartmental issues and consolidating that. Is OED considering anything like that a data driven project across departments to where we can get some of the vital information that we need under the OED umbrella?

Thank you very much for the question council member. We, again as part of telling the story, we do work a great deal on data and in a collaborative fashion with other departments. PBCE as example, DOT, or Public Works. And we agree we need to do more of that as I think I mentioned came a little earlier in this conversation. It's time we geo code several areas so we'd be able to more readily what is going on and then delve into the why. So agree. We we do do some, we need to tell that story better, and we need to do more.

What about in terms of the permitting process? I heard someone commenting earlier on a small business having some issues kind of getting through that process. Do we have any optics on when someone comes in, how long it takes to get to the pipeline, what the costs are and our metrics on that?

Always give credit where credit is due. And Chris Burton has done a tremendous work on dashboards. And we work with him, Blaget's team in particular work with him closely on trends and what's happening and thinking through where can we help. That work, Blagge, I don't know if you wanted to add anything.

Don't, Nancy. I would just say that in terms of the actual numbers and the timeframe and kind of those metrics, PBC holds that. But as Nancy mentioned, we work very closely on kind of a case by case basis, trying to provide kind of an alms bud person service to the companies, so that they understand the deliverables that PBC is looking for, they understand the timeframe, and that we're trying to help set as clear expectations as possible. But I I do think your point about us keeping some of our kind of internal metrics and tracking that is is a very good one, and I think is something that we can start thinking about for ourselves.

Yeah. Because it would help, right, instead of instead of having reactionary, we could kinda see where some of the logjams may be and sort of proactively trying to get them out of the way. I had one other point. Oh, so there are internal consolidation data driven projects we can do. But what about in terms of dealing externally? For example, the county deals, I think Michael or someone had mentioned, the county deals with, for example, health violations and then the state does, like, for instance, alcohol licensing. Like, all that information is important for small businesses. And in terms of the one stop shop proposition Mike had mentioned, Michael, sorry Michael. Is there any way we can have that all in house on one dashboard or one stop shop scenario for local businesses?

Go ahead. I mean I would say that our small business allies really do serve that purpose. They are either they know directly how to connect the small business person to either the right agency or the right person, or they know you know who internally in the city it works most directly on that on that specific subject matter. So we're they're even more integrated into our small business team in the office of economic development based on some shifting that we've done. So I think we're good and sorry, and the fact that at least one of our small business allies has been with the city for a number of years.

So we're constantly trying to fine tune the way that we message, because it's very difficult to message to 60,000 you know businesses in the city with the staff that we have. I think that's probably a place where we can continue to get better to make sure that people know that there is this resource. But once they know there's the resource, our resource is very good about making the correct connections.

And just want to add to that, thank you Blagge, we have aspirations about certain data. For example, it would be great to find a way to longitudinally track who's coming in and out of Work to Future so we can see what's working over time. We generally can only track for one year. Beyond that, there are a lot of data sets that are either county or state, and they're not down to the city level, so we just have to approximate, which isn't nearly as advantageous. Go ahead Carrie, I know. Oh, I thought there was one more. So we agree and looking at data is really important to us.

If I could just circle back, if I have a couple of minutes. On the attraction piece, is that something that OED is gonna potentially include moving forward with this? Or is that something potentially even the council or the mayor would actually have to take the baton and run with? Is that how do you envision that piece being solved?

Attraction is everybody's along with being downtown. So OED has embedded in the work plan targets for types of companies and numbers of companies. And as we go out, if a council person has time to be engaged, it's great for us to either make the introduction or be engaged in ways of thinking from a council point of view and with the mayor. We welcome you. Here's what we want. And being knowledgeable about their business says a lot.

Awesome. Well, just wanna acknowledge the work you guys have done to date and emphasize how vital the role you guys play for our city, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Council member Casey, would you like to make a motion to accept the report and cross reference to council for March 4?

I certainly will. Everything madam chair just said is my motion.

I will second.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and for all of the thoughtful questions and comments from my colleagues. It's clearly we have people on this committee who are very passionate about the economic growth of the city and very much focused on assisting for the most part our monpas, our small businesses. And, council Ortiz brought it up.

Vice mayor Kamese leads the task force. And I know that in a prior life, council member Mulcahy is involved in a small business. Although, I don't know. Do you qualify as a MonPaw? I don't know.

And and I own and I own a MonPaw that we closed a cup we retired it a couple of years ago. So I'm very sensitive to what small businesses need in particular, and know that there are small businesses thriving but also struggling across our city. So we have to make sure that the resources that we provide are that we help all of our small businesses who might be be struggling. I know we're focused somewhat on downtown, and we're focused on other areas in the city, but small businesses need help everywhere. I've been interested in looking at creating a neighborhood business district or or a bid, and thank you council member Mulcahy for educating me on the difference between the two.

And I'm hoping that council member Casey and I can sit down and chat with with you how we might create one between 9 and District 9 And 10. But I think that I love the idea of the ally. That's great that the there's someone out there who can help small businesses, but I'm concerned about how that message gets out there. If we're depending on social media or emails to reach small businesses, it may not reach them. They may not be checking their email.

They may be running a restaurant and they're too busy doing everything else just to make ends meet to even pay attention. So how are we reaching out to our community?

Yeah, very good question. We try to do a variety of different things, but I'm just gonna say upfront, we can always do more, right? So if there are specific ideas that you have that we are not implementing right now, we're all ears. I would say as council members you are a great liaison for us, you all have monthly newsletters, we've been trying to be better about sending you each month or your staff each month kind of items to put in the newsletter, things such as you know upcoming seminars, educational trainings, technical assistance that the city is providing. So we're trying to utilize you as council members and liaisons to your districts more than we have before.

We are also working in 12 different kind of neighborhood business corridors. That doesn't mean that every single one of them is going to kind of mature into a bid or a P bid, but we're working in a variety of different places in the city, and so we're trying to be, and we have a staff liaison that is kind of working with you know one or two different business districts, and so we're trying to push out that messaging both with door to door BizWalks, with business association, social media, digital media, with emails, so we're trying to cover our bases in that way in 12 different districts. I would also say that in certain places the business associations are more mature and they have a great distribution list of businesses that they're in contact with, and so we're utilizing that distribution list. And then in other locations we're also trying to get much closer relationships with larger property owners so that they can also be telling their tenants about the services that are available to them. So I'm sure there's more ways and more things that we can do, like I said we're all ears, but those are some of the different ways that we are trying to communicate with our business community.

Thank you, I appreciate that. The newsletters, while it is something that we might include on our newsletters, that's not necessarily going to business owners. It's it's going to business owners if they happen to be live in our business, in our district or do biz if they're registering in a different way and not necessarily for the business information. So what would be really helpful is if you had a database of businesses within our district with information. I know when we were looking at giving the award awards out for the legacy business and then the small business, you were able to generate a list for whoever asked.

And when we took a look at that list, we thought we noticed several businesses that were legacy businesses. We had no idea. We knew they'd been around for a long time. We had no idea they'd been around seventy five, eighty, ninety years. That's right.

And that so that list was really helpful. If we could all have that list, then, and if it had emails or contact information, it would be really fabulous, because then we can use that and we can market to that particular list ourselves, and include information that you're talking about as it relates to the allies, the grants, the cap grants, and everything else that we're doing. And also, it's an opportunity to market our other events that may be coming up, particularly our twenty twenty six events, but each in our districts we all have events and working with our businesses would be really helpful. So I wanna encourage you or maybe challenge you to create a business database list that you can share individually with each council member in in our district so that we can then utilize that. And with that, let's vote.

And for the record, there was no public comment for the item?

Oh, thank you. I'm sorry. I completely forgot to ask that. Thank you for keeping me in on track for that. Alright. Everyone vote yes. That motion carries. Thank you. Moving on to the next item, which is the commercial anti displacement strategy status report. I think we have Vic and Blaget staying. Vic joining and Blagay. Thank you team for that presentation.

Okay, if I can get started. That's okay.

Yes please, I'm sorry, were you waiting for me?

That's okay. Please proceed. No problem. So good afternoon Chair Foley and committee members, Blag Isolowitz, the Deputy Director in the Office of Economic Development, and I'm here today with Vic Farley, our Assistant to the City Manager who leads our small business team, and is also the lead on this anti displacement strategy that we're going to be working towards over the next fifteen months. Just a couple of remarks, this is an issue that goes back several years from the decisions that City Council made when approving project in Downtown West, and subsequently impacted by the COVID pandemic, and very recently about some state legislation that you are going to hear about.

So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Vic for a very brief presentation and then we welcome your questions and comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Bloggi, and good afternoon committee members. Happy New Year to you. And thank you for your feedback on the previous item in relation to small business. I appreciate it very much. Thank you. This presentation provides the committee with a quick overview of the work to be undertaken over the next fifteen months. We define commercial displacement as the involuntary relocation of a business from its current location. The circumstances can often be unique to the business and the property owner. But in general, you can observe three things. A site could be redeveloped.

The scarcity of property drives up rents higher than a business can afford to pay within a neighborhood, say. Or the long term there is significant increases in the overall value of land combining to create a shortage. In San Jose, we estimate using the business license data that there are over 17,000 small businesses who we define as commercial tenants. Now looking back at the pilot that Blade was referring to, the original decision by city council in October 2019 was to pilot work in the Alum Rock neighborhood. Now this work was impacted by the COVID pandemic.

But a key outcome over this period included the establishment of the Latino Business Foundation, the partnership that was drawn together with X Site Credit Union and Somos Mayfair, culminating in the opening of the new center in Quetzal Gardens. The focus of the outreach during the COVID pandemic was to ensure business owners applied for federal and state grants and loans. And we achieved just over $50,000,000 of individual grants and loans to businesses located in the zip code 95116 over this period. And in the twenty three-twenty four budget approval was given for a two year position of an east side economic coordinator to drive engagement with the local business associations, attract new partners, and importantly to bid for funds. Now looking statewide, in the 2024 the governor signed into law the Commercial Tenant Protection Act, previously known as SB eleven oh three.

And this provides for state regulation of the commercial property market and is designed to offer a measure of protection through establishing clear processes based on a small business and its head count. So a business with five staff or a restaurant with 10 staff or a non profit with 20 staff become a qualifying business under this new law. This requires landlords to provide documents in the language of the tenant, to provide notice periods, to define and make transparent all costs, and an obligation to follow the process. This legislation came into effect on January. So looking ahead, using the business license data, you can see in the table that when we combine the single person with the micro business the one person and the two to five in the table and the two numbers in red that there are just over 14,000 tenants which is equivalent to some 80% that qualify under this law.

So it's a significant number and it's across all districts in the city and something that is important for both landlords and tenants to understand. So we took this discussion to the Small Business Advisory Committee on December 5. And five points were essentially made within the committee. That a business owner needs some time to make good decisions. If a business needs to refinance, then access to advice and responsible capital is important.

Legal advice for both the landlord and tenant can be vital in safeguarding the interests of both parties. Land use zoning is important to both protect jobs and neighborhoods. And the city should consider both short and long term partnerships with both the public and the private sector. So looking at the work plan and the highlights going forward, we're focusing on providing a more in-depth understanding of the commercial property market in the light of SB eleven oh three. An evaluation of local neighborhood economic resiliency given the work we're currently undertaking in neighborhoods.

Recognizing the role of the city's economic development efforts coupled with our limited resource. And then importantly looking ahead with our work and how we engage more effectively with our partner organizations. So in terms of the milestones and the timelines, here are the proposed milestones and timelines for the committee. We'll be kicking off with external stakeholder engagement. We'll be establishing internal coordination.

We aim to report back to the Small Business Advisory Committee in the 2025. And subject to the progress we make return to CEDC here in the '26. So that conclude concludes the overview. Thank you. Happy very happy to take questions and feedback.

Great. Thank you for that presentation. Any council members council member Ortiz.

Thank you, madam chair. Madam chair, this time.

I like the promotion.

Yeah. Yeah. Wanna wanna echo just some of my positive comments that was shared with Nancy and the rest of the team. It's been as I mentioned, it's been a pleasure working on the small business advisory committee with both of you because I know both of you have been in those meetings. And just piggyback piggybacking off of what you say, you know, anti displacement.

Many people think of that as rent control, but it's more than just rent control. It's also commercial anti displacement and and commercial business protection. And I'm glad that this conversation is being held here right now at the city hall. I think, Victor, you know, I've been since I've got elected, I've been trying to get this conversation going with OED and because I just seen especially in Alum Rock how volatile sometimes the small business community is and really you could check from one month to the next month and it could be a new shop or, you know, something that's been for years could have a bad month and then you know you no longer have you know the Pink Elephant Bakery or Vito's Pizza or something else that's been really a staple and important to like the cultural identity of a neighborhood you know. You know, as as the economy continues to take challenging turns, I I think that these conversations are extremely important if we are to retain the American dream here in the city of San Jose.

Because I do believe that the small business entrepreneurship is the American dream and that is one of our goals as a city to make sure that our economies work for those who do wanna start a small a small business. And I I really do feel like this is great progress and this is gonna be a historical memo that our city will be voting on to meet our small business community where they are, you know, and and not where we expect them to be. And so I did you know, one one thing I just wanna elevate similar to what I mentioned in the previous conversation is just how in many cases the permitting process does put our businesses at a disadvantage. Many cases in the Latino community or in the immigrant community in total, they don't even know about these permit processes. And they may be putting their businesses together and they don't find out until there's a police come to their office or somebody from code enforcement comes.

And so I really think by investing in that dedicated liaison that we were talking about is a clear way to reduce some of those barriers. Almost like kind of like a case worker for businesses here. The go to person that people can go to so that they're not waiting for months. Because I know that permitting takes a long time but we shouldn't treat big projects the same as just like a mom and pop project. I know just for example street vendors.

I know street vendors who are paying thousands of dollars for a permit and they just run a cart. And so I really think that it's crucial that we talk about that. I do have one question about just the analysis, the small business volume analysis. The memo implies that the 21,000 small businesses on residentially zoned parcels of land are not at risk of commercial displacement. What is the reasoning behind this? Is this because they're home based businesses? Could you elaborate?

Yes, they're home based businesses. And they fall outside of the terms of SB eleven oh three.

I see.

And secondly, they are treated somewhat differently in the context of the kind of business that they operate. So they're not part of this calculation.

I have like on Story Road or White Road or King, there's and I'm sure you guys have driven by. They have, like, sometimes people are doing taxes out of their home or a tailor. So these these type of businesses would not qualify for any of our support.

They all qualify for our support.

Yeah. But just not for this anti displacement?

Correct. They're not they're not part of the calculation as to who would qualify under the law.

What if they don't own the house?

They still don't qualify under the law because it's very specific in the law as to what is defined as commercial property. So the logic of this is if you're in residential property, you're not counted. If you're in residential property with your own business, you're not counted. You have to be in commercial property. That's the key principle here.

But aren't these properties, they're not just residential. Like some of these properties have commercial usages in their zoning, right? Because you can't start a business if it's just residential.

A number of people do

I mean, know they do, but like Yeah. The ones that are, like, in front that say come to our tailoring, those those can't just be residential zoned. Right?

You have a complete history here.

Okay. We'll check-in on this then off offline because I have some more questions about that.

Thank you. Of course.

Yeah. Think there's there's some combination of zoning, right, that that allows in certain districts you can have a residential property, but that can have kind of an enterprise on that So I think the differentiation is although that's not the universe of businesses that we're going to be looking at for this specific kind of SB eleven oh three, that doesn't mean that our services that we provide to small business to you know help them survive, grow, expand are not, I mean we're here to service them as well, right. So again back to council member Foley's point about how to be better in touch with them. I think those are conversations that we absolutely want to have so that we can make sure that they are have access to the services we're providing.

All right, thank you. Keep up the good work.

Thank you for the report and updating us on that new law. So you could operate a business in a residential property with a conditional use permit. That would allow you to be legal in in that. But my question is why does this law not protect zoning, residential zone property where a commercial prop commercial tenant is occupied? Why is it just commercial zoning is the provision legislation? I'm just curious.

I don't think I can answer that. I'd have to go to the city attorney at some point to get a debrief on how bill that went through various versions of approval in the capital at Sacramento and where it finally ended up. Because there as you can imagine this was a bill that was had very strong advocates and also very strong opponents. And so that's how the process, if you like, of compromise reached the governor and what he was prepared to sign off on. So I can't give you the detail of that.

Okay. What I can say is that the impulse here was to support micro businesses who were most at impact of being displaced. And the kind of source point here was the state had been very active on legislation to support housing production. When they kind of did a kind of very simple review as to where you're most likely to build residential development, it was probably going to be on commercial pieces of land or plots or zoned

land.

And therefore you're probably going to find businesses on that land or property or site. And therefore, there was a kind of sense I think of political judgment as to how far you could go to support housing production, but offer something that enabled to be established processes to enable the landlord and the tenant to be able to move on. And it kind of, the legislation doesn't stop displacement. All it does is effectively introduce rules of process and due process. And I think the sensitivity to that is ensuring that there's good communication across the city, so that a landlord and a tenant kind of follows that.

That we don't want to see lots of litigation. We absolutely do not. And within the small business committee there was a sense within which legal advice would be really helpful to both parties. And there was a view that, particularly say a restaurant that when you relocate a restaurant you may have a high capital cost. You can't just pick the kitchen up and move it from location A to location B.

And so therefore the question of having sufficient time and notification comes back to I think a point that you raised in the previous item which was the city being able to offer good information to the business owner to say this development could be happening in nine months. You should be planning now, not leave it to the last thirty days. And you also want to offer something as a point. When I did the work in Alum Rock a few years ago, it was very self evident to me talking to business owners that they did not understand the permitting process. They rarely come into City Hall.

And they do want someone to act as their advocate within City Hall to be able to find out the information that would be helpful to them to then enable them to make decisions. So it's, I'm sorry that's a long answer Chair, but it was essentially there's a sense here that we want to go from something very informal to develop a process over the next fifteen months to bring it back here that everyone would think, yes, this could work.

Alright. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Would anyone like to make a motion to accept the report?

Move for approval. Second.

Thank you. Let's vote. Oh, oops. I forgot to ask for public comment again.

We had no public comment.

Okay. Thank you. No problem. Where is my manners? Thank you. Motion carries. Thank you for that. Moving on to the next report, which is the real estate services division activities annual report. I see Kevin coming forward.

Good afternoon. My name is Kevin Ice, director of real estate for the city. I oversee the real estate services division of the office of economic development and cultural affairs. Here today with our annual report focusing on FY 2324 highlights and performance metrics. The division focuses on managing the city's facilities, overseeing revenue generation in addition to real estate project tasks.

For fiscal year twenty three twenty four, all performance metrics exceeded targets for the year. Total revenue was 3,768,646 inclusive of facility and telecommunication leases and surplus sales. In addition, we completed 140 total real estate projects serving our client departments by performing property acquisitions, sales, easements, leases, right of access agreements, and property management. Departments served include housing, parks, public works, environmental services, transportation, police, fire, the attorney's office, energy, the airport, and other city manager or citywide priorities and projects. Breaking down the revenue generated, for surplus sales, there was 867,000 exceeding the target of 600,000.

Revenue was primarily derived by the sale of land in a property swap arrangement with the San Jose Water Company. We sold roughly a quarter acre of land at the intersection of Sunol And Home Streets. And in return, we received 5.59 acres of parkland, including a needed trail easement and roughly three acre or three quarters of an acre to be added to Del Monte Park in a future expansion phase in addition to $820,000 Facility lease revenue totaled $1,295,000 exceeding the revenue target of 1,100,000 New leases were completed in the year, including Home Eat in the former Flames restaurant space. This lease will bring in 2,100,000 over the first five years of the term and has brought new life to the intersection across from San Jose State University. And Campus Burgers, serving affordable quick serve hamburgers in the Paseo De San Antonio.

These businesses are both off to a great start, showing strong demand in our downtown core. In the year, we also renewed the city's lease with Whispers Cafe in Crapery adjacent to the Hammer Theater. Whispers has been a strong partner in the city space and keeping that business operating is a win for downtown. They they provide a sit down breakfast option that isn't a well served choice in downtown, so we're happy to have them. Other lease work included putting putting together leases for the city as a tenant on behalf of the energy energy department and their move into the former Mercury News space at 4 North 2nd Street and a short term lease for the Collab, which was an innovative space for housing department staff to collaborate with the County Of Santa Clara and nonprofit partners and engage in case management activities.

Telecommunication leasing increased significantly this year bringing in 1,600,000.0 exceeding the target of 1.4. The macro telecommunications program has been navigating the merger of Sprint and T Mobile which has had a negative impact on us as those companies had duplicate installations at certain facilities. T Mobile has been terminating those duplicate leases as they're allowed to, including two during this fiscal year. So our increase in revenue for the year reflects our efforts to sign up new leases including with Boost Mobile as they have moved into the space vacated by T Mobile. So we took one step back but two steps forward.

Real estate has been working to procure a land and property management database platform that will be used to complete our audit requirements focused on reporting including for vacant land management reporting. The procurement process was completed during the year and database build out is now underway with a goal to go live with the initial build in February. So now I'll turn to a few project highlights from the fiscal year twenty three-twenty four. Supply for the homelessness response, the homelessness response team is our top priority. We completed two ground leases in the year.

The Cerrone Yard, lease on VTA property will allow for the development of 200 tiny homes, and the Via Del Oro ground lease on land owned by the Serrato Foundation will allow for an additional 100 tiny homes. We also acquired the McEvoy property to support permanent affordable housing efforts, which has the capacity to develop 365 units. And we extended a ground lease with the county for the Haven Cooperative Housing Project. For the parks department, we assisted with the assignment of the Raging Waters lease, which allowed for a new operator in time to open as Kalabunga Water Park in the February 2024. Real estate is now supporting an RFP process to secure a new long term operating agreement.

I've already discussed the property swap with San Jose Water Company, which will have a significant beneficial impact on the future expansion of Del Monte Park. In addition to the three quarter acre property that we received to increase the park's footprint, that acquisition secured the city's ownership for all parcels along the block of Home Street and will allow us to vacate Home Street and incorporate that area into the future park build out, which will increase, the future Del Monte Park expansion by an additional point eight acres. For environmental services, we completed the lease extension with the county to continue the household hazardous waste program in the environmental innovation center and supported the regional wastewater facility with major projects including real estate tasks related to LS Powers, Power the South Bay project, the Army Corps' Shoreline Levy project. For the Department of Transportation, in addition to our typical right of way projects, we assist with major project support. Work this year included the acquisition of 150 Montgomery behind SAP Center for public parking and the acquisition of the Apollo property by the VTA.

Acquisition of the Apollo property was critical to secure a footprint for the new Diridon Station and preserve a route for high speed rail through San Jose. The city brokered the acquisition by negotiating the deal with the property owner, bringing along the VTA, and then completing and executing the real estate documents before assigning everything over to the VTA. The city had to perform this role or the broader Diradon coalition would have lost the time sensitive opportunity to secure this critical property. And rounding out our project highlights for the year objectives. Multiple land use agreements were completed to support Valley Waters Coyote Creek flood control projects.

Work is underway for phase a of their their project and phase b land use agreements are on track to be completed in time for construction during this year's dry season. Also, real estate supported the airport with two land use easements to support project build out. And finally, real estate process land interest requirements to allow the Signia South Tower student housing transaction to proceed, which allows for 800 students to live in our downtown core. That concludes the annual real estate services division update. Our recommendation is simply to accept staff staff status report, and we're available for any questions that the committee has. Thank you.

Thank you for that presentation, Kevin. Council member Casey. Oh, wait a minute. Do we have any public comment?

We have no public comment.

Thank you. Council member Casey.

Thank you madam chair. I appreciate the presentation and I don't expect you to have the answer here but just in terms of vacant leasable properties that we have and the corresponding market rents, just in terms of opportunities that are still available to us, Is that something we can get access to or do we have on hand?

Oh, absolutely. Yes. I think that we should follow-up to get you the information. I'm happy to share the council member Mulcahy as well. Happy to share what we have and talk about strategy and and opportunity.

Awesome. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Yep. Kevin, maybe you could share that with the committee.

Great idea. Thank you.

Council member Casey, would you care to make a motion?

Motion to approve.

Second. Thank you. Let's vote. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. Our final item is economic development activities quarterly report. This is a status report that we receive every quarter as the name would indicate. That is all that has occurred in the last three months in the city of San Jose. Carlos, take it away.

Alright. Saludos to the committee and members of the public. My name is Carlos Velasquez, and I'm the public information manager for the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs. I will be sharing a recap of our office's activities and communications during the previous quarter of October through December. This past November, we brought our small business owner community together when we hosted our second annual National Entrepreneurship Month event at City Hall.

More than 300 people were in attendance to learn from local business owners and experts about resources to start a business in San Jose or to help it thrive. We also honored 19 businesses with the business of the year and legacy business awards, recognizing those who have made a positive impact on our in our communities from job creation to philanthropy or innovation or who have operated for more than thirty years. On this slide, you can see some of the awardees like Pink Elephant Bakery on King Road and Happy Donuts on Winchester. Other award recipients included Heartbeat Cafe on Union Avenue, IBM Research, in Almaden, and J. Lohr Winery in the Alameda business neighborhood.

Our team will continue to host events that bring entrepreneurs and business owners together, and we will soon be sharing details for our next event in May. Workforce development is a core service of the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs, helping address the significant economic disparities in our city and county. Our work aims to bridge this gap, and part of this is helping residents, particularly underserved residents, secure high wage jobs. One recent example is our work with Partners Manufacturers San Jose on the annual manufacturing week in October, which included tours of manufacturing facilities for more than 550 students from schools such as Piedmont Hills, Independence, and Lee High Schools. Manufacturing is one of San Jose's most prominent industries, and these tours helped connect youth to the idea and reality of a career in the manufacturing sector, which provides good paying jobs, entry level jobs, and valuable skills to grow their careers.

In addition, our team has been working with Foothill College and partners to establish California's first semiconductor manufacturing apprenticeships right here in San Jose in the South Bay. 30 apprentices, 12 of them San Jose residents, were recruited with the support of our team and hired by Appliance Materials, Enableance, Infinera, and Western Digital. Now we got a little ahead of ourselves in the slide's text. The apprenticeships are about eighteen months long and completions will begin to happen soon. On this slide, you can see a ceremony that took place in December for a portion of the apprentices who completed college classes required for the program.

The program continues to grow with new apprenticeships starting this month, thanks to South San Jose's Western Digital and a fifth company to soon join the program. We look forward to sharing more about our workforce development efforts and ways our residents can participate. In November, our team and city council celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the city's foreign trade Zone through commendations to the 11 companies in the program. A foreign trade zone is a site in The US that is outside of The United States custom area customs area. This allows foreign merchandise to be admitted directly into a foreign trade zone duty free, helping facilitate investment, manufacturing, trade, and employment.

San Jose's Foreign Trade Zone, Foreign Trade Zone 18, was established in 1974 and currently includes companies such as Maxar Space and Tesla, as well as North San Jose's Lam Research, ISC Labs, and Bloom Energy. In 2023, San Jose's Foreign Trade Zone was one of the top performers in the country with companies accounting for 25 and a half billion dollars in activity and 30,000 employees. In May, we'll be hosting a foreign trade zone seminar at City Hall as part of our efforts to expand the number of companies in the Foreign Trade Zone. This past holiday season, we strengthened our collaboration with Team San Jose and local business associations to showcase San Jose as the Bay Area's ultimate holiday destination. Under this collaboration, we produced our third annual holiday shop local campaign centered around the promotion of our page, sjeconomy.com/shoplocalsj, which is an online guide highlighting more than 300 San Jose small businesses in 12 business neighborhoods to shop and dine in.

Through marketing workshops that we highlighted or produced, we improved the capacity and skills for business associations to promote their business in Corridor, helping them take ownership of their business neighborhood story. Thanks to our collective efforts, our campaign web pages received more than 20,000 visits, a 49% increase in traffic over the last year. Foot traffic data we received shows that there was a 4.5% increase in visitors to our key business neighborhoods over the previous holiday season, including 2,000,000 visitors to downtown, a 9% increase over last year's holidays. Our shop local campaign message is ongoing, and we've been highlighting our Little Saigon and Tully Road business neighborhoods and their Lunar New Year events that they are hosting, including one one this past weekend at Grand Century Mall and another in early February at Eastridge Shopping Center. Now our work to strengthen key business neighborhoods continues in other ways.

In this winter, we celebrated the establishment of the Tolley Road, Eastridge, and Monterey Corridor business improvement districts, the first to be established in San Jose in more than fifteen years. Business improvement districts, as were discussed earlier, in the meeting, allow business owners within a specific area to collectively invest in services and improvements that can attract more visitors and shoppers. This can be litter removal, private security, signage, and marketing materials that showcase the neighborhood's identity, businesses, and events. As you can see in the slide, there's a potential for two for the two business districts to raise up to a total of $549,000 annually to reinvest in their business neighborhoods. We look forward to helping administer these new districts as well as work this year to establish two more, along the Alameda and Story Road business corridors, both of whom have a strong and active business community.

As mentioned also earlier in the meeting, building relationships with medium and large companies, including those in AI related industries, will be a key objective of our work. And what better company to do so with than NVIDIA, a world leader in artificial intelligence. Last month, we were happy to facilitate a memorandum of understanding between the city of San Jose and NVIDIA to cultivate a future ready workforce through AI skills training for residents and city staff and other initiatives that establishes San Jose as a vibrant ecosystem for AI and marks NVIDIA's first direct workforce pipeline initiative with the city government. This partnership, in addition to the, parallel one signed by between SJSU and NVIDIA, news of leased office space by NVIDIA in North San Jose and the city once again playing host to the to their GTC AI conference in downtown this March underscores again the city's status as a national hub for AI. In December, we announced the five local artists who you can see on the slide who will serve as the city's twenty twenty five creative ambassadors.

Each of the ambassadors will create will produce a creative project that invites active creative participation from residents and celebrates the diversity of San Jose's cultural communities. In addition, the ambassadors will help lead the We Create four zero eight campaign, a month long creativity challenge organized by our cultural affairs team and scheduled for April 2025. We look forward to sharing information on the creative ambassadors projects, which will begin as soon as next month. And finally, every two weeks, including today, we share on our social media a calendar of upcoming workshops hosted by the city or our partners, as well as a monthly email to our list of small businesses. You can see on this slide a few that are hosted by our partners, including the ongoing free legal services available for San Jose based small businesses through our partner Elevate Community Center.

We will be sharing this week with your offices information about this and other workshops to share on social media and your e newsletters, and you can also find us at SJ Economy on all platforms. This concludes our report. Happy to answer any questions from the committee.

Great. We've been busy. Thank you for that report. It's exciting to see what we have done in the last quarter and what's coming forward in the next quarter. Looks like it's going to be very busy downtown with NVIDIA and other big events. Vice mayor Kameh.

Thank you so much. I I just really wanted to say thank you. You know, I, appreciate your sending as to what's up and coming so that we could put it in our e newsletters. And it's really been just wonderful. So I only have sort of like keep up the good work, do more, know people really are excited about that.

So I appreciate it and I think that you know just like a lot of things sometimes there are multiple ways in which people get their information. And so maybe they'll see it on my my e newsletter as well as you know the city and they'll say, oh yeah, I remember that workshop. I wanna go to that. And so I just wanna say thank you.

Thank you, vice mayor. I once again neglected public comment. Do we have any public comment?

There is no public comment.

Thank you. I shouldn't assume. I look out at the audience and I don't think there are any, but I shouldn't assume that. Vice mayor, would you like to make a motion to accept? Oh, wait a minute. No. Go ahead.

Make the motion. I'll go to council member. I'd like to make the motion to accept the quarterly status report. Second.

Thank you. Council member Mulcahy.

Thanks Carlos for the report. Question, when you talk about the geo tagging, I know we've been doing more of that through Team San Jose which I sit on the board and now that Leah is on there. Are we then taking any of that data sort of point in time and then sort of connecting that back to the economic spend that is happening in and around that time, say for example, our parking revenue in downtown when we're geo tagging around Christmas in the park or in the case of NVIDIA or can we extrapolate that geo tag to the impact of what we're when we're counting heads to how that sort of manifests in spending downtown? Are we at that place yet?

Yeah. Well, we are very fortunate to count on some of our partners, the San Jose Downtown Association, with that mobile phone traffic data that we have and that we've been able to use to measure the success of this campaign. I do believe that there are other additional ways to data that we can capture. I believe that there is information around credit card spending that I think we can elaborate more and that we'll be getting from our partners as well. But there is a wealth of information and we'll definitely explore that.

Cool. I think when you're talking about that in the future, maybe helpful. We're super excited when people are spending money in San Jose and I think this body especially would love to hear it. So if there are things that we're doing that are innovative that sort of tie back to the spend, that would be super helpful, I think. I'm going to take this moment just for a shameless plug, which I think is connected to the topic, but certainly to this committee on oh gosh, would somebody help me with the date for the Team San Jose Bash that's coming up?

It's the first week of February, and it is February 6 at 04:00, I think. But the idea is that it's a representative group, stakeholders of our $3,500,000,000 experience in tourism economy. And so it's an opportunity for us as we're talking about what can we do. Our presence and our understanding of our tourism and experience economy can be gained through some of that connection. So I'd make sure that we get that on everybody's calendar and and think about going there as a committee member. Thank you.

Thank you for letting us know about it. Anything else? If not, let's vote. Thank you. That motion carries. That has concluded our meeting, but I will open for public comment. Seeing no one in the audience, this meeting stands adjourned. You.