Community & Economic Development Committee (ced) - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. It is now 01:30, and this is the community and economic development committee. Could we have the role taken, please?

Casey?

Here.

Mulcahy?

Here.

Ortiz? Present. Vice chair Camay? Here. Chair Foley? Here. You have a quorum.

Great. Thank you. The first item on our agenda is to review the work plan. We do need to approve a deferral of the moderate income housing strategy status report until the next CED meeting, which is in March.

So moved. Second.

Thank you. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak? Seeing nobody up there except staff on this side, let's, move to a vote. Thank you. We have no items on the consent calendar. Next, the first report item is, the CED City Service Area Performance Measures Status Report.

Good afternoon, committee.

Thank you. Welcome.

My name is Eric Tierraella Jensen, I'm an assistant to the city manager and I'm joined today by Jennifer Pioze, senior executive analyst. And we are here today to bring an item to the committee on community and economic development, city service area performance modernization, an initiative that we've been working on for the last couple years in alignment with the city managers foundational strategic support focus area of driving organizational performance. The committee will recall that we've actually been here a couple times, specifically in alignment with the housing department's performance audit. We came to the committee in January and April 2024, but today we are actually excited to talk about the whole CSA, not just the Housing Department. So we're excited to share some of these stories.

The committee will recall that the city uses a performance based budget in accordance with City Council policy to provide data around evidence, performance, outcomes to the budget process. We haven't really updated our measures in earnest over the last couple decades and so this was a great opportunity for us to make sure that the data and performance measures we provide to the council aids in decision making is really the most meaningful measures that we can be providing to the council. From an administrative perspective for the CSA, we really provide transparency into the operating budget of a budgeted workforce of around 483 staff which is about 7% of the city's budgeted workforce. Really what we're measuring here is five departments and offices and 12 core services under the areas of the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs, one core service under the Fire Department, four core services under the Housing Department, two core services under Planning, Building and Code Enforcement Department, and one core service under the Public Works Department. In terms of storytelling, what we really try to do in the performance modernization is capture the identity, is the work of the CSA in the community.

And so this committee knows for CED that is a broad range of services and programs spanning you know two fourteen affordable housing units constructed annually, 400 items in the city's permanent collection of public art, over 223,000 permits issued through the SJ permits portal, work to future clients, rent stabilization efforts, companies receiving permit assistance, over 400 planning development review projects approved annually and 15 major environmental reviews approved. And so looking at the CSA we're excited to show the council what to expect in the next operating budget. Data was provided for most of these performance measures and each year we work to iterate and improve them and so we'll allude to some of those changes as we go. So now I will turn it over to Jennifer to carry forward the presentation.

Thanks Eric. For the modernization project, we aim to systematically align the qualitative and quantitative elements within the CSA structure to monitor and evaluate services. We do this by assessing the existing CSA mission, outcomes, and strategic goals and propose an update. These draft updates are used to guide the creation of community indicators and propose updated CSA and core service performance measures and updated activity and workload highlights. Performance measures at the CSA and core service levels measure how well we did something, and activity and workload highlights at the core service level measure how much we did of something.

It's a measurement of scale or output. New to our process are community indicators, which measure what impact we have on the community, the public, or our staff in the case of our strategic support, CSA, and can be disaggregated in some manner whether we usually do this by race or ethnicity or geographical location. The city may not be wholly responsible for a community indicator, something like high school graduation rates, but we do play a part in the success of our high school students. The hope is these updated tools will more accurately measure the success of department service delivery and create tools to have more informed discussions around service delivery and celebrate successes, as well as identify the resource gaps, whether that be things like staffing or budget and how they can be addressed. Ultimately, we wanna move the organization from doing performance measurement into performance management, whereby we use these tools in storytelling to guide changes in program delivery, support data and reporting, and justify resource allocation.

As part of the modernization effort, we updated the community and economic development CSA's mission, outcomes, and strategic goals, which is what you see on the screen. The mission was updated to facilitate evolution of the city to foster strong communities in a diverse economy with shared prosperity for all and is supported by three outcomes. The first of which is thriving, inclusive, and attractive communities in vibrant public spaces, strong, responsive, and equitable economy, and the third, accessible and diverse range of housing and business opportunities. And supporting these are the six strategic goals that you see on the screen, but I won't read for sake of time. The community and economic development CSA metrics were also updated, at the CSA level and core service levels.

The full measures, definitions, data sources, and data can be found in the fiscal year twenty four twenty five operating budget, and any refactoring updates, that we're making will be reflected in the upcoming fiscal year twenty five twenty six operating budget. Community indicators which are what are shown on the screen now are the measurement that show trends affecting outcomes and show the overall well-being of our community and staff. These can be represented as a number, a rate, or percentage, and are able to be disaggregated as I mentioned earlier. The data sources for these indicators are a mix of residential residents, excuse me, perception data and operational data. A few examples of indicators include our city land use breakdown, jobs held by San Jose residents, and the housing cost burden.

The CSA performance measures describe how well the community and economic development CSA work is meeting outcomes. The data sources for these metrics are also a mix of residential resident perception data and operational data. A few examples of these measures include quality and diversity of arts and cultural activities, development project on time reviews, and housing production rates. And I'm gonna hand it back to Eric.

To close us out, for the presentation today, our recommendation is to accept the status report on this initiative. A couple next steps that the council should anticipate is that the budget office will publish these updates to the performance structure of the CSA for the twenty five-twenty six operating budget. CSAs will also share performance measures during the budget study sessions in May which is an opportunity to engage more and you should also expect the administration to use these performance in justifying budget decisions and recommendations to the council in the future. So with that we are available to questions. Sorry, I need to thank all of our collaborators on this initiative too including the Office of Racial Social Equity, our IT department under the leadership of one of our partners, RT Tangri, and of course the offices and departments of the CSA.

We are available for questions.

Thank you and thank you for your presentation. I see no one in the audience except, again, for staff, I will note. So, I will turn to counsel and council member Ortiz.

Thank you, madam chair. I wanna start out by thanking staff for their in-depth report on our CSAs and performance measure status. The modernization of our performance metrics I believe is a step in the right direction helping us better understand the impact of our programs and services. However, as we continue refining these measures I think it's important to ensure that we truly reflect the outcomes we want to achieve for our communities. So I'd like to ask a few questions that hopefully will provide me some clarity.

So for my first question is for outcome number two. The performance measure workforce innovation and opportunity acts clients. So that tracks the percentage of work to future adults and youth clients who are low income or face significant barriers to employment. I wanted to ask, does this measurement also evaluate whether participants are being placed in high paying jobs or high quality jobs that offer a competitive wage? And also is there a metric to track program completion rates for participants because it's not just a metric to see who is participating in the program but we also want to know who is finishing and if there are positive labor outcomes.

Great question councilmember. We'll ask Nancy Klein to help out with this one and note that we do have other parts of the CSAs where we report on other performance measures. These are really kind of the top priority ones that we measure. It's not always a comprehensive list. So Nancy go ahead.

Good afternoon Madam Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the question councilmember. We can follow-up because yes there are, short answer is yes. There are measurements that relate to which industries, and for the most part it's the five industries that are high growth, high wage, like manufacturing, like tech, like health, those pieces. And we do have a breakdown of if it's an internship, how many completed the internship, and if it's placement, how many have been there for a year. Usually the systems don't go beyond a year, but I we can definitely follow-up and get

Any insight into that? Any like first take, like report on where we are with with those measurements?

It's a high percentage. 75 to eighty percent of internships are achieved and it's seventy percent or more have been employed for a year longer, a year or longer.

In one of those designated tracks, those four, five?

Yes. I

just wish the numbers could be bigger, right? We're talking about 800 and something.

Yeah.

It's a function of how much money we have or don't have, but the program does well.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate Next that, is for outcome two, which is consistent staff feedback, which I believe measured as a percentage of projects that receive consistent staff feedback throughout the project review. I wanted to ask while we are tracking the percentage of these projects receiving feedback, how consistent defined in this context? I don't know if Chris would be there. Thought Chris was here. Oh there he is, he's up there. If you would be the first person.

So just to allude while Chris comes down. So in that aspect of the CSA we work to pair kind of customer experience data as measured through survey which is the one that you're referencing is a survey measure, so it would really be you know how the customer interprets that survey alongside the operational data like actual on time completion. So Chris you want to add anything to

Chris Burton, Director of Planning, Building Code Enforcement. So to Eric's point, we use customer feedback to understand the customer's position relative to the information.

So it's mostly from perspective. There isn't necessarily a benchmark. Yeah,

correct. There's not like a standard by which we can say because each project is unique and different. So it's generally how they feel about the feedback that they're getting from the staff.

Okay. Alright. Thank you, Chris. Sorry for making you walk down those For outcome three, the performance measure overcrowded residential housing by tenure attracts the percentage of overcrowded housing units. How are we collecting that staff how is staff collecting that data to determine whether which unit is overcrowded? Is that information gathered through resident surveys or another method? Because I can tell you many of my residents would be uncomfortable sharing those details. I don't know if we have an answer for that.

Correct. So that's not something that the city collects, it's actually a U. S. Census data so we get that data from the U. S. Census.

Okay. And how are you guys defining overcrowded?

So in this breakdown it is occupied by one point zero persons or more per room and that excludes bathrooms and kitchens.

Okay. I see. So if there's two people in a room and etcetera. Correct. Okay. Thank you. And then additionally one of the community indicators under outcome three which is the amount per year per household wage that a sole provider working full time must earn to support themselves and their family by benefit category. While we are measuring the necessary income levels, can we also track how many households meet this income threshold and how many fall below it? Are we keeping track of that already?

So I think in other places of the city we might have that data and use that data related to income levels and you know quartiles or not. In this instance we're tracking just the living wage and the median annual income age. We can certainly explore kind of a breakdown of you know percentiles above or below and kind of use that to do more demographic analysis as well.

So you're just tracking the amount of people who make a livable wage if I could confirm?

So it's the definition here is that the amount that sole provider working full time must earn to support themselves and their family. And then we have it by median annual income.

Okay. So then you guys are just putting forth a number that you guys have collected?

Right.

Okay. Alright. Thank you. Appreciate that. And that's all my questions.

Thank you, council member. I will note that this CSA, what what we're listening to today, this report will go to the budget process, and then we will hear a full update from the CSA along with all the other CSAs in our budget study sessions as we go forward in May, I think, is when those April. April? May.

Mid May.

Yeah. Okay. Council member Khamene.

Thank you. And thank you so much for the status report. I know it takes a little sort of like moving around things, trying to get all of the the outcomes and the measures and everything correct. I was just wondering, in terms of how you are going to use this, I'm wondering if, just to bring greater depth year over year, will you be also tracking that over time to talk about trends?

Correct. So there are different ways that we use this performance data. One of the most important is we set targets for these performance measures that are both for the next year assuming certain resource levels and we also set five year goals for parts of the performance measures. And so that is a really important tool for us to use to one look forward and then we also look back as well. So we do report on a couple of years worth of data each operating budget to show kind of longitudinally over time how we're doing looking backwards.

And then something that council member Ortiz touched on, benchmarks. You know I know it's not appropriate across everything, but I think that having certain benchmarks and comparators to others, you know, that we can say, okay, does this mean it's a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I think that sometimes having those benchmarks are, helpful as we're looking at the information and the data. So I know it sounds like there are some situations where you might not have that, but wherever you can, to me, it it just would would create greater context as to, hey.

We're on the good side of really even though the percentage may be lower than we would like it, we're still sort of ahead of the game, right? So I think that anytime you might be able to introduce benchmarks, it's just very helpful.

Yeah, we totally agree with you both looking kind of vertically like in comparison to county levels, how are we doing relative to other jurisdictions in the county, the state level, and the federal level, but also looking across peers which I think for us we've done a little bit of analysis on who our peers might be for CED, large cities on the West Coast are some of our closest peers. One of the decisions that we've made in selecting community indicators is try to find comparable data sets like The US census, like the American communities survey, like the Bay Area Equity Atlas to find things that we can measure for ourselves that other people are measuring in the same manner. To your point, we can look at what are they doing, if they're you know depending on where we are to like replicate models and policies.

Great. Well thank you so much. And with that I'd like to move acceptance of the status report.

Second.

Great. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote. Perfect. Thank you for the presentation. Moving on to my favorite subject, downtown and regional wayfinding status report. Look forward how we're gonna find our way around downtown.

Alright. Good afternoon, members of the city council and chair Foley. Jessica Zank, deputy director for the Department of Transportation, and I'm here with Nathan Donato Weinstein and, some members of our team who have been working, as you know, on improving wayfinding in San Jose. So this has been really a team effort between the departments of transportation and economic development with coordination with parks and rec and planning and others as well. So we were last here in May 2024, and we are back here in February.

So some of you are very familiar with this, but for others, of course, this is relatively new. The city is really interested in improving the wayfinding experience in downtown as well as other parts of the city. And what we mean by wayfinding is giving people the ability to navigate easily and seamlessly from one part to another, especially when we're thinking about people who are on foot and really filling in those gaps in the urban fabric that people experience. That can be through literal signs and literal maps like you see here. It can also be through iconic infrastructure or public art or other components that just help you naturally orient and then find your way.

Good wayfinding helps people explore and discover. It also creates, much better feelings of safety as people feel confident that they can go from one part of an area to another without losing their way or getting disoriented. Over time, we have, really looked at the state of wayfinding. We have some remnants of wayfinding efforts that were back typically from the redevelopment era, but they have gotten dated and are in need of updating both because some of them are incorrect or they're not well maintained anymore. We also have noted that many of the signs are oriented towards drivers, which is great if you're arriving in a car, but if you're not, those signs don't really help you at your scale.

Also have done a walking map over time with our partners at the Downtown Association, Team San Jose and others, but we currently don't have one that is up to date post COVID. And we are very cognizant of all of the excitement coming to downtown, especially in 2026, but, you know, starting even later this year. So with that, last May, we presented kind of six areas of work that we're doing to improve the wayfinding experience starting in downtown. We'll go through each of these. I'll do the first, and then I'll pass it over to Nathan.

Alright. So the first is tactical signs, which we're really happy to announce. We are installing now. They started going in earlier this month, and, our pedestrian oriented new signs will wrap up this Thursday, weather permitting, I am told, which is very exciting. This is funded by a grant that we sought a couple years ago from the state.

It is an affordable housing sustainable communities grant associated with a project on Bassett Street in the north part of downtown. So we were able to include way finding efforts as part of that grant, which allowed us to do within a mile radius roughly of that site, pedestrian and bike oriented signs through the downtown. So these are meant to be encouraging of exploration, not just here's where something is, but rather did you know you could enjoy a night out, for example, as you see here in the historic district. We also have included QR codes in this so that we and our partners, again, like the downtown association and others, can update information without too heavy of a lift. So these are a couple of additional examples of those signs.

We really appreciate the work that our staff and our partners did to kind of come up with interesting, thought provoking, fun information about where you could get to that you might not realize you could within a short walk or bike ride. With that I'll pass it to Nathan.

Thanks Jess, I'm really excited about those signs. So the other piece that is rolling out over the next month is our revised walking map. So you know we all now have access to digital assets like Google Maps and Apple Maps, but physical and locally developed walking maps on paper can still be a really key part of the experience for visitors who are from out of town. The last walking map was actually developed for the last Super Bowl in town and received a couple of updates but nothing since the pandemic. And so this year as part of the current agreement with the downtown association we are updating and improving that walking map and our first print run is timed to coincide with the Nvidia conference happening next month.

And the new map will be QR code enabled so we'll be able to track how many people are actually engaging with the printed map to understand how people are using it, and we'll continue to work on updates going forward. Next staff is working with two really important partners on how to improve way finding. First in partnership with San Jose State University. We are exploring improvements specifically focused on the Paseo De San Antonio as the university expands along that corridor. Concept being looked at involves extending the universities on campus way finding totems into the Paseo pointing to both university and broader downtown destinations, kind of blending the town and gown a little bit.

We expect to have a more defined project very shortly to update you on. Staff is also continuing to engage with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission which is piloting some standards for transit oriented wayfinding signage and totems. Eventually all Bay Area counties will see consistent transit wayfinding making the experience more seamless for visitors. But next up I want to discuss another element of our work plan which is around digital way finding, which we have been continuing to explore the feasibility of these kiosks which are used in other cities to provide interactive maps, event information, and business promotions while also generating revenue through advertising. San Jose's sign code currently restricts commercial advertising in the public right of way and while changing the sign code remains some ways off due to staff capacity, DOT staff conducted a request for information to assess market interest, potential revenue and implementation feasibility which will also better in form a future sign code update.

So the RFI was completed in December and although staff conducted substantial outreach to vendors, it yielded only responsive submission. And that submission suggested a network of between thirty and fifty kiosks could work in downtown generating up to $30,000 per kiosk annually, but the response did not address several key challenges that we were really looking for including regulatory restrictions through state law, infrastructure needs, and overall feasibility and market analysis. So with all that in mind, what is our game plan for 2026 with Super Bowl, NCAA, and FIFA all coming our way. It's critical that way finding is improved in time for major public events and so I'm gonna spend a quick minute on two pathways continuing to look at digital options and then enhancing what we've been calling tactical signage. So council had asked us to explore this last fall, this notion of a temporary digital way finding pilot for 2026.

So we did include a question about this in our RFI where we asked about temporary activations like digital sign trucks or temporary kiosks. We did not receive a substantial response from vendors on this question but outside of the RFI staff has been thinking through these options independently and there are some products out there that could work in key locations but in terms of kiosks what we typically think of in conjunction with digital way finding, there continue to be some big challenges even with temporary tools such as cost and procurement and whether we need to still change the sign code. If ads were involved. And so that said staff will continue to coordinate with and support partners like the Bay Area host committee on implementing event specific digital tools which have been featured during major fan activation events by event producers. But that being said, given those challenges we do want to highlight what staff believes are some more attainable opportunities related to tactical and traditional way finding including some creative temporary options.

First the newly installed wayfinding sign network that Jess detailed could be expanded and for special events you could even layer on top temporary signs using things like corrugated plastic in line with the existing branding and design. Window clings could be installed on vacay storefronts with custom messaging and maps, pop up wayfinders as seen in the slide which are used by some of our local event producers like San Jose Jazz. Even things like sidewalk decals can be really effective and here are some more examples of what this could look like. The real goal here is to make it easier for visitors to navigate downtown using flexible and lower cost solutions that can be deployed quickly without having to figure out major infrastructure issues. And these types of interventions are a lot more flexible.

We can tailor them to different events and while funding would still need to be secured either through the city or sponsorships, they're the kind of solutions that can be implemented with existing partners and contracts. And in some cases even developed in house as we did with the signs that Jess was showing. So to bring things all together we're continuing to move forward with our 2025 wayfinding work plan, getting the new signs installed, working with partners and rolling out the new walking map. For 2026 staff recommends prioritizing building on what's already working, that means expanding existing signage and layering in temporary wayfinding for major events. And then of course we're gonna need to be working closely with our partners like the host committee, the downtown association, team San Jose and our event producers to make sure our event, our efforts align and that visitors have a seamless experience navigating downtown.

And with that we are happy to take your questions.

Nice picture Jessica.

What a decade will do.

Thank you for that presentation. I'm excited to learn that we're moving a little bit forward on wayfinding, and I have some questions, but I'll go to the committee first. Council member Casey.

Thank you for the presentation. One of the new council members here, so this may seem, something's already been answered. But how are you I understand the physical world in placing these way finding opportunities for folks, but is there a way to interact on your phone as well? Because these digital kiosks are awesome and I like revenue to the city, but everyone's walking around with a digital kiosk in their pockets. And is there any way do we have an app, any way to monetize that or how that goes?

Yeah. Absolutely. It's a it's a great question. So two things, and then Nathan may may have others. But the one of the ways that we're thinking about interacting digitally in addition is the QR code so that you can understand, well, what are they talking about? Where where can I dine on the historic district? Right? And then you could use that QR code to pull up, alright. Here's some more detail. Alright.

I have, you know, a couple Asian options or spaghetti, you could kind of see more detail digitally. So that's one way. The other thing that I think we're trying to balance here is when we've started some of this work, one of the key complaints we had from downtown visitors or residents or employees was that they were actually burning out their phones' batteries walking around downtown. If they were out for an event in particular or for a long evening, you know, they'd they'd be working through the whole battery because they were so dependent on their phone. So we're trying to give them both information digitally, but not expect them to be staring at their phone instead of enjoying the environment.

Right? So that so that's maybe a little bit more than you wanted. I think the question about how might we monetize some of that is a great one that we need to explore further.

But Alright. Thank you.

Council member Mulcahy.

Thank you and thanks for the presentation. Just a few questions around sort of some practical things around these. So when you talk about the tactical signs, I know we've done some of this in the past and it sounds like you're installing new ones now. Are these the zip tied kind of plastic material?

These are actually metal. So they're a real much more permanent but still pretty low cost. They are larger metal. They're on their own poles. And they're made by our sign shop. The the city, the Department of Transportation, has a small sign shop that creates all of our street signs and our own in house team that was partially on the last picture there, our second to last picture, they've made these. So it's an upgrade. They're much more weatherproof than the corrugated plastic and zip ties that we used Great nearly a decade

to hear. When we talk about we can't afford to do what we really wanna do, we're gonna do this instead. I always worry about aesthetic and I have this really fancy word that I use called janky. Like we just have to be careful that if we're trying to be mindful of cost and still trying to get somewhere, we also have to make sure that it isn't cheap, right? And it doesn't feel janky that it's gonna not look good in two months after we put it in, right? So I guess the question is how are we going to maintain these? Is this going to be like a groundworks, eyes and ears, people on three eleven?

How are we

going to audit and make sure they're still looking good as we go?

That is how we have proposed to do it and done it in the past is since Groundworks is our eyes and ears out on the street, we actually have sometimes even had extras for them where they could replace it really easily. And so they'll tell us when there's a sticker or there's graffiti. If we can't get it off, then we'll come up with a replacement strategy.

So we have other districts that are mentioned on your map. I know Santana Row kinda does its own thing. But if one of our business districts like the Alameda or Willow Glen wanted to sort of jump on with this kind of treatment, is that the intention when you talked about before about this could be beyond the greater down beyond downtown itself?

Yeah.

Yeah. It is. I so we we first wanna see how well this works, right, in the in this current iteration. But if it does work well and others want in, like, with the original corrugated plastic, I believe that the Lincoln Avenue District did do a small round of those corrugated plastic signs. I think we'll have to be mindful of funding because, as I mentioned, this was grant based funding that we're using for this round of signage.

We can look for those opportunities anytime we have something like the affordable housing related sustainable communities programs. So we can look for those. And while while we love this, we don't have any staff who are truly dedicated to wayfinding in the city. So that's the other part of capacity and funding that we'd have to think through. But I think, you know, it's going well and we do have the resources and the interest, we'd love to hear about it.

Or if an association had some funds that they wanted to expend themselves, would the city sign shop be available to do those?

They have been terrific. They are actually doing this on overtime. So, you know, all of those things would be feasible.

Okay. Last thing. Just our signage in general downtown, you know, as we prepare for '26 and you know we're excited about that. Are we auditing the existing signs to make sure that we're getting rid of graffiti and replacing signs that have walked off somewhere and we just didn't know it?

It's a great question and actually one of our other prongs that we didn't include in the presentation is kind of cleaning up our existing sign portfolio. And so the DOT and OED teams with the downtown association have been developing a list of our kind of priority signs to intervene on either by just replacing them or in many cases just removing them because information is bad info. So that is what's happening next.

Thank you both.

Anything else? Thank you. Council member Kamay.

Thank you and thank you so much for the report. You know, was curious. I know that we're working towards 2026, and a lot of the implementation is going to be done from now until then. We're going to learn a lot from the initial signage. But I was curious in terms of sort of durability and the life of of the of these signs. I mean, I'm glad to hear that it's not just the zip ties because they don't last that long. But I I was just curious, is this thought to whatever gets put up will last till 2026 and maybe beyond? Is that I don't know how you're looking at that.

Yeah. It's a good question. So, yes, these are the same material as any of our parking signs or any of our So street they are weatherproof. They are set to last. So I think it's only if, you know, the city decides that things have, you know, gotten too dated or things have changed on the ground, you know, we could opt for that, but there's no lifespan associated with them like there was with the corrugated plastic and zip ties. Ties.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And with that, I'd like to move acceptance of the status report.

Second.

Great. Thank you. I do have a couple of questions. Thank you for the presentation and the briefing last week. I have a question about the walking map, that you're working on creating 10,000 units, that seems like a lot, of a paper map to know whether a paper map is actually going to be utilized or not. And you mentioned the downtown association, but are what's the cost of the map? Who's is that coming from the grant as well? The production of it?

No. It's actually coming from our service, our annual service agreement with the downtown association and this line item was budgeted at $15,000 and so that included the redesign, the updating, the checking of the directory listing and the printing.

So explain that to me a little bit Nathan, they pay for the 15,000 or we pay them 15,000 and then they do the work?

We're picking up the cost associated with the design and production and then that includes their kind of staff time of their existing staff to work with the graphic designer and also do some really intense ground truthing of updating the many dozens of businesses that are listed on the old version of the map.

Okay. Have we ever considered or should we consider paid advertising on this map? This seems like a really good opportunity for businesses in the area that we may be driving customers to their business, their restaurants, Little Italy, etcetera, that someone may wanna pay for advertising. So I feel that we're leaving money on the table if we are not out there soliciting people who can contribute, who would easily write a check for this kind of advertising. I mean, 10,000, that's a lot to have your name in front of Nvidia and other conventions.

That's a big deal. So tell me about our process there and why are we why if we're not doing that why not.

So I think that's a great idea as we look to what we want to do next which are annual updates of this map. We don't currently have funding identified for that and so it could be a way to subsidize going forward how we're going to keep this map up up to date. You know the first time out after about five years since the last version of this map. I think what we're really interested in is how are people going to use it. What other things are are folks looking for in the map. And then from there you know I think it's very likely we may have some extra room that we could fit some ads on but we'll need to talk with our partner at the downtown association about how that might work, it's not a bad idea at all. Well,

if we are paying for this map, then we should be driving the decision and not the downtown association driving the decision. It should go the other way around. So I'm I just I don't like to leave money on the table when in we're such a big way. The other thing I'd like you to consider is 10,000 units seems like a lot when, the biggest convention we have is a tech convention and they're gonna use their phones. So if we cut back the amount, can we reduce the cost of 15,000?

Just something to throw out there. Couple other questions I have is, in relate Nathan, you said that our municipal code prevents us from allowing paid advertising on public spaces. Is that what you said?

Yeah, that's right. That is the restriction on doing these ad supported digital kiosks in

the right of way.

So we'd have to get a change in the muni code too? That's right. Okay. And then finally what's the next step for you? When will you coming back to us? I know that we're getting a 2026 update in June. Will that be included in the 2026 update?

Yeah. Exactly. That's what we were gonna say. We we will be working closely with with Tommy and others to prepare for that update be then And And And then we'll do over this past year and what we think should be prioritized next.

Okay. So we'll get one report in June and then one in February, the year's fall.

And then one to your pleasure Hopefully, is the work

the advertising is all taking place. Jessica, you mentioned something that and and how will you know when the signs are working?

I think, you know, we'll be looking to some of our businesses, of course, to understand what they have seen as well as to to members of the public. We don't currently have like a survey or anything official planned, but we can certainly think about that and and take that back into kind

of Okay.

A more official

I am excited, to have this done now. It's really exciting to finally see way way finding. Is there anything is it possible that we can take a look at the draft map or ahead of time? Or maybe

Yeah. I'll coordinate with your staff.

That'd be great.

Yeah. Absolutely.

That'd be great. Alright. With that, thank you so much for the presentation. Let's vote. Yay, I can check wayfinding off my list for a few months. Okay. Yeah. Next item is what? It's item three, which is the housing catalyst team work plan status report. We have Jared and Eric making this presentation.

Good afternoon committee. Jared Ferguson, principal planner with Planning, Building and Code Enforcement. I'm joined by Eric Sullivan, our director of the housing here today to provide you a status report on our housing catalyst teamwork plan. So first just some background. In 2018, we created the housing catalyst team in conjunction with what was then known as our housing crisis work plan.

And the housing catalyst team is an interdepartmental team composed of staff from planning, building and code enforcement, our housing department, the office of economic development and cultural affairs, recreation and neighborhood services. And that team meets twice a month and was tasked with implementation of our housing crisis work plan, which was intended to increase the production of housing in the city. And so moving into November 2022, staff provided a final update on that housing crisis work plan that coincided with the end period of our last housing element. And as we were working on creation of our new housing element, taking the learning experience and successes we had with that housing crisis work plan, we proposed the creation of a new housing catalyst work plan that would ride alongside of our new housing element that was under development at the time. And so June 2023, the city council adopted our current housing element, and with some additional work, the state certified our housing element of January 2024.

And then moving into implementation, in February, we provided an update to this committee on our housing catalyst work plan, and then in March we provided an update to the city council in conjunction with our housing element annual progress report. And the housing catalyst work plan is really meant to show the work that is already underway in implementing our housing element, so programs and strategies meant to increase housing production and provide for preservation of existing affordable units. And it shows kind of the work that we've already initiated or intend to initiate in the next two years. And it can also provide a place if there are additional work items around housing production or preservation that staff feels we want to pursue or that City Council directs us to pursue that might be an addition to what's in in the housing element. I'll pass it to Eric next.

So Eric Sullivan, housing director, says we think about this work along the housing catalyst. First, you know, the community economic development committee as you've we provided this continuum before is focus on kind of the orange points, looking at ways in which we spur production from our work around permanent supportive housing through home ownership of market rate and subsidized, and then our work around unit preservation. So within that capsulation is how we think about on the continuum where this work around the housing callus fits in as it relates to the CED committee. So this chart then captures what has been the status of the production in 2024 as part of the overall housing element period. So the blue notates those issues, those permits that have been issues which equates to units that are under construction.

As this slide, the next slide will show, we continue to be short on production as notated in the orange what is supposed to be our tracking on a year over year basis throughout the period of the current housing element, The blue shows kind of where production actually is today. This next slide next captures, again, similar notation, blue notates current issued permits, those that are in construction today versus those in orange, which is where we need to be. As we continue to show across the income scale on this slide, we continue to lack an overall production due to a host of various economic challenges over the last year and in the upcoming years that we're likely to face.

So moving into the work plan itself, we have included a complete work plan as attachment A in the report that provides updates on each of those work items. On the slide here is something that our housing catalyst team worked to develop to show really the impact and level of effort for each item in the work plan. These measures are intended to show two things. So for impact it's meant to measure what we anticipate the impact of full implementation of a program to equate to once it's done. So for a high impact item for example, that would staff would expect that that would enable production of a significant number of market rate or affordable units annually, either entitlement or new construction, or it could result in preservation significant number of affordable units.

Some items on the work plan might be legally required, and other items might, staff might need to do more work in order to determine what the potential impact is. And then the level of effort is really meant to represent what the staff time and resources are needed in order to accomplish or implement those work items. And then these two items together are used by staff to prioritize the work. So if we have a high impact item with a low level of effort, that would be something we would try to work to accomplish first. And so we're constantly looking and updating these as a part of our work plan and dashboard.

So moving into the specific program updates themselves. So when the state HCD certified our housing element, they sent the city a letter, and in that letter they mentioned specific programs in our housing element that they were going to be paying particular attention to as they were monitoring ongoing compliance. Staff has been made aware that moving into this current year and into next year, the state will be paying particular attention to our progress in implementing those programs. This is not just for us, but for all jurisdictions that were mentioned in those letters. And so as a part of this report in our presentation, we are providing specific updates on those programs that were mentioned in the letter.

So the items on the slide here are those programs. So the first item P4 is around affordable housing tools for North San Jose. This is in addition to other work that we've done. We created two new housing overlays in North San Jose and applied them to sites that did not previously allow for housing. And those overlays either require mixed income projects or require 100% affordable.

This program would look at additional tools that could facilitate additional affordable housing creation in North San Jose. Right now we want to see how those new overlays work out. Those new overlays were created just last January. We've already have one application under review right now, and interest in other sites as well. And so I think we want to look and see how the overlay works and then look to see if there are additional tools under this program that we could look to apply for not seeing production start to pick up based on those overlays.

And then p seven is our city infill ministerial approval ordinance. This was something approved by council in December. This is a significant work item that we anticipate to have high level of impact in terms of the speed at which projects can be entitled. So ministerial approval benefits from a CEQA exemption and also does not require a public hearing. So we've made significant progress on this work item.

Council directed us to look at expanding this to additional areas of the city, so we'll continue this work, but we've made significant progress on this item. P nine is around affordable housing production goals in Dieradon, and the housing department's forthcoming new construction requests for proposals will prioritize new affordable construction in the Dierdad Station area. Item P35, our small multifamily housing program, we also feel that this is a really significant and key program in continuing to advance housing production. This program would look to allow for up to four to 10 units on sites that currently do not allow that level of density, so missing middle, medium density. As a first step in this program, we're gonna be analyzing the economics of certain prototypes for missing middle in our cost of development report that we anticipate bringing to City Council later this spring.

P40 is another very significant program. It's an evaluation of our urban village planning process. How we can look to speed up adoption and implementation of urban village plans. There's kind of three categories that we are looking to, three strategies we're looking to help facilitate or speed up the urban village planning process that we outlined in the report. The first is continuing with our traditional urban village planning processes.

We have two urban village planning processes underway now, one at the Saratoga Avenue El Paseo Urban Village, and one the Alum Rock East Urban Village. And then there's two other approaches we would like to take. So first there are two station area, transit station area corridors that have several urban village plans along them. We think that there's an opportunity to kind of do those plans together. And also potentially in conjunction as we look to comply with MTC's transit oriented communities policy.

And then there are about 19 of what are known as neighborhood urban villages that are defined in our general plan. These are really smaller urban villages typically, maybe one or two shopping centers generally and kind of the outer lying areas of our city. We think that there's an opportunity to look at how those could be maybe planned in one joint effort or through one policy to get those done more quickly. And then the two last items, reviewing and revising our permit findings to meet current state rules. We started to do that work, we anticipate completing that by the end of the year.

And then housing balance report I-four which examines changes and trends in our city's housing stock. The housing department will be bringing forward a presentation to the committee in April on that, and I will pass it back to Eric.

So in addition to our work around production, as Jared was giving an overview for, we also do work around anti displacement. As N4 communicates around preservation community development capacity building, the department has released grants and leverage other funds with other nonprofit organizations to build capacity within community development organizations to pursue paths like becoming community development housing development organizations, otherwise known as CHOTOs, to pursue opportunities for land development and land trusts as we did back in October with the South Bay Community Land Trust and other examples by that where we can help nonprofit organizations that are community based build additional capacity to get into housing production and prevention work. In addition, the soft story program in r 13 articulates our work around preserving units for our VLI and ELI families or extremely low income and very low income families, which provides an opportunity for further stabilization within our communities. We'll be coming back to this committee as directed back in October with our full financing and program strategy around Soft Story later this year. In addition, our work around s 12 for eviction prevention, as we had reported out in the rent stabilization plan, we continue this work within the courts by providing direct assistance in collaboration with our partners in the county as well as with the law foundation to resolve disputes between landlords and tenants.

We continue to invest in that work. As as 20 talks about around tenant price tenant preferences, the council provided the tenant preferences policy, which was adopted by council last year, and we're going through the implementation and revision of regulations regarding the implementation of that policy now. As s 32 talks through regarding local law, local enforcement of state tenant protections, we are now going through as articulated in the rent stabilization plan, strategy plan, we are gonna be revising regulations around our TPO and APO, so tenant protection ordinance and apartment rent ordinance programs as that process is currently underway. And then lastly, as I mentioned earlier for R2, we released our preservation NOVA, NOFUN. We have been working with the South Bay Community Land Trust and Somos to implement the first of those acquisitions around preservation of sites.

We are also working with a couple of other organizations around potentially leveraging city private and some county funds around preservation to expand some more public private partnerships around preservation in the coming years. In addition to some items that have been completed, so if we look at p 14 housing and business corridors, we've done a lot of work around downtown incentives as well as growth area incentives to spur more housing in our commercial areas and in and around our DOTs. P 24, housing on public quasi public lands. The city has we've looked at over the last eight months the work that the city has done on prior department owned lands and other city owned lands and how to expand as well as incentivize more opportunities for mixed income housing development on city owned lands, that work is ongoing. For R6, for mobile home parks, in addition to the designation that occurred a year or so ago, we're also looking at ways in which we expand out and improve our regulations around mobile home parks.

So that is just an add on to what was already completed with the general plan designation. Under age 13 regarding regional homelessness response coordination, we continue to work with the county and all of our regional partners on a particular initiative such as our homelessness prevention system, which has maintained and had good outcomes of 94 of the participants in the homelessness prevention system being able to stay stably housed, that's just one example. On H14 on emergency shelters and zoning ordinance that was implemented and completed in the last year as well, and then lastly on I 10, those with lived experiences having a seat in the commission that continues to move forward with the Housing and Community Development Commission with I believe two members of a lived experience on the commission now. So the annuity items, one is around the development incentives. As I mentioned on PZ1, we passed both the downtown incentives and the growth area incentives in collaboration between planning and housing and DOT and office of economic development.

So that has continued to move forward and then around technology needs to adjust the recommendations around TPO as part of the strategic plan to prevent stabilization program and in response to the audit. We are going to be coming forward with improvements to technology in order to better manage the database of all the properties that are subject to the TPO to get to improved compliance. So in terms of next steps, so on March 12, there's an upcoming study planning session with the Planning Commission. City Council also has an item regarding the housing catalyst team work plan and then the update to the housing element coming forth here on March 18. In addition to that, we continue the housing catalyst team work plan.

It's gonna issue with the PBC dashboard, which is up and coming, and then the housing department in response to all of our various audits has updated and improved dashboards regarding our housing production and preservation that we'll be looking to provide updates on here in the next couple of weeks. And then that is a report for today. Thank you.

Thank you. A lot of good information. First, there is no public comment, so I'll move to the council. Council Member Ortiz.

We gotta do something to make these meetings exciting, I guess. I don't I don't know. First off, thank you, madam chair, and thank you to our staff and housing team for this robust report. So I have two questions regarding a statement in the memo about the policy I introduced to ban the sale or use of algorithmic devices for residential dwelling units. It can be found on page 15.

Police staff writes, the constitutionality banning the use of algorithmic devices is under question and such a prohibition would be unlikely to change housing costs materially. First I just wanted to ask staff can clarify what specific constitutional concerns have been raised regarding such a ban.

There are two legal lawsuits that have gone forward from multiple states and initial judicial opinions that are raising these questions now, and that's what it was a response to. We can forward the news articles on it, and that's where the question had came to. The department continues to monitor this issue as it progresses through the court system to see where it ends up lying.

Thank you. And given the department's Department of Justice's ongoing cases against price fixing through RealPage and the recent lawsuit naming corporate landlords operating in our city, San Jose, such as Greystar and Cushman and Wakefield just happened last month. What basis do you have for saying that a ban on algorithmic devices is unlikely to materially impact housing costs? When removing that tool that facilitates price coordination inherently reduce the likelihood of artificially inflated rents?

It is difficult to say what is gonna eventually be the final decision from the system, that's one. Two, if a decision does come out and renders that the tools are not both legal in its use, to say that has a direct effect or an indirect effect on the reduction or mitigation of rent is very difficult to say. And then three, even if we can get to both implementation of a final judicial decision, implementation of the provision or removal of those tools, how to project over the time period, what impact that would have on rents is highly unforeseeable at this time given all the other factors that

could Then how could it be foreseen that it likely won't have an impact?

Anything is possible.

Exactly. So then I would just say that it's important to not put opinion in the place of facts because we gotta be fact based in these discussions.

Sure. And the fact that is stated in the memo is that it is highly unforeseeable to have any impact because of the variability that goes into rent determination.

Okay. Thank you.

Council member Kamay.

Thank you. I know that many of us feel like, oh, we just passed the housing element, but, it's like the, Golden Gate Bridge where once you get to the end, have to start all over again and, you know, the work starts. So, you know, I know that we are working towards implementation and that we're doing all of the the, the different, sort of measurements as we move along. But it seems to me that, through this whole process I mean, I I learned so much and I'm sure everybody else possibly did as well. I'm wondering how we can, you know, kind of like look forward and prepare because before you know it, we're already in it.

And housing production, as we all know, has not been as favorable. Right? And of course, those are market forces. But, you know, it seems like HCD doesn't really care about the market forces. What they care about is the numbers. That's I my own personal opinion and interpretation. And so given those kind of circumstances, we don't look that good. We are trying many different mechanisms to try to help that, which I think helps our cause. But you know I'm curious as to what are we kind of like preparing now that it's early enough to be able to you know sort of like move into the next phase of the housing element so that it isn't as painful.

Yeah. I think that's a great question. Mean we're we're we agree with you. We're really trying to make sure we we plan and go through the process eyes open knowing that it you know it took longer than we thought last time. And so I think we're already starting to look at what groundwork we need to lay to start the next housing element, the seventh cycle process.

And I think we already anticipate that there's going to be some significant general plan work that needs to get done in advance of preparing that new housing element draft to increase the overall capacity in our general plan for housing units. And so we're going to start to have that conversation I think with you next month at the CED committee meeting we're going be talking about our citywide team in planning and our work plan and in that work plan we're going to start to look at and talk about new four year review for the general plan. And so that's how we're starting to think about what kind of pre work do we need to do well in advance so that we leave enough time to fully prepare the next housing element. Also understand there's probably going be a lot of new requirements. There's already state laws that are changing in terms of what has to go into that next, seventh cycle housing element that are just is just gonna add on to what we have to do.

So

Yeah. Well, I'm I'm glad to hear that because, if we can make it less painful, that would be great for everybody. Okay. With that, I would like to move acceptance of the status report and cross reference this item to the March 18 city council meeting.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I have a few questions. Last year we had a really informative presentation on the cost of residential development and it was determined that no development was being done because it's not financially feasible to build anything. In memo, it's mentioned that an updated report on residential development will come. Will that be coming to CED and if so when?

We are working with HRNA advisors on a revised cost of development study now. It will come to CED, I don't have a clear line of sight as to when today but I can

Okay. Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to know if it was coming back to this body or to counsel, it's gonna come back to us. Great. I noticed that in the market rate housing, there were, last year, 5% of our permit goals was reached. That's pretty pathetic. But I'm more interested in what's actually broken ground. Of that number, I see 184 above market. Did any actually break ground or those are just permits issued?

So these are actually building permits issued. So generally a building permit issuance coincides with the start of construction. So usually when we're looking at like entitlement or planning permits, that's more speculative. This is more certain and this is actually the point at which we do count the units officially with yeah. Our

good. Then we put some incentives in place towards the end of last have shown interest in moving forward. Can you tell me what that interest is and how how far are they moving forward?

So we'll be coming forth with a memo for the first project, the first for two of those three projects here in the next month. The first has already been posted for his 28 notice. That's for Hanover's 905 North Capital project, then Urban Catalyst four ninety eight. West San Carlos project is the second one that's already underway. That's moving forward as well, so we're coming forward with that public subsidy memo. And then we're working with the third project which was the Saratoga project. So think we'll have clarity on that one here soon.

Wonderful, those are the three projects that we thought might be going forward. Yes. So it's good to see that it's actually happening based on the incentive program that we put into place, good. I also note that the missing middle is a big concern and that will be included in the residential report as well, the development report?

Correct. So that'll be included in the residential report talking about the missing middle and some options there for incentivizing more missing middle development.

Okay. Thank you. And I'll note that the general plan is up for its four year review and I understand. So in our next CED meeting, we'll have more of an update on what's happening citywide, and you'll be discussing that process and how it might go forward and what you'll be looking at?

We'll be talking about our overall work plan for the citywide team, which includes general plan work and kind of give you an overall picture of what our workload looks like and what our work plan items work like. So which would include that future work in the general plan.

Okay. And will the urban village plan, the streamlining, the 20 neighborhood villages that we don't have plans yet, will that be coming in the general plan conversation or when will we see that analysis done on the neighborhood villages?

Yeah, it's still a work in progress. We're actively working on it right now. I think what we're trying to do is look at the general plan, do some analysis to understand what could we do in the context of an annual general plan change or what really needs to be done in the context of a four year review and what capacity might need to get added through that. So we're trying to do it as fast as possible, but seeing what would need to go into that four year review process versus what we could maybe accomplish sooner than that.

Okay, Roselyn did you, I see you ready to push your button.

Thank you Chair Foley. Just one quick note that I know as staff is thinking about the scope for this next four year review, we're working through it now, and that is something that we actually bring to the full council to get council input and action on that specific scope before we move forward, and we anticipate bringing that probably late spring, I would imagine, or sometime later this year in terms of the scope for this next four year review. And one other quick thing, just a small point of clarification on the cost of development work that we're doing, we typically have not brought to the CED committee, we usually take that to the full council. Okay. But we can certainly consider the best path forward, because things are changing in terms of the information that we're collecting and how we need to share that with the council.

Okay, great. Whatever the appropriate body is to hear that. I don't want to slow down progress on the report. Let's get it to the appropriate group that needs to see it quicker. One final question regarding soft story. I know we're set to implement that soon and we were depending on federal funds to help offset the cost to help the property owners do that. Federal, what is the status of those federal funds and should we consider delaying the implementation?

So those federal funds remakes were from FEMA and FEMA has had some challenges recently as they're going through a significant transition at the federal level. So as we consider and see how those transitions occur, I can't speak to now what that looks like or whether or we're ready to opine on timing.

Yeah. I mean, just echo that. We're we don't have a specific timeline from FEMA in terms of when we expect to hear about an award. We're continuing to work with the state agency. They're in direct communication obviously with FEMA, so as soon as we have an update on anticipated award, we'll be sure to get that information to the committee and council. Yeah. I think in the meantime, and Eric has been working on alternative. We talked about that when we took the ordinance to council last fall about other ways to fund the program. Okay. I look

forward to future updates on that. One of the benefits of the program and how we were rolling it out is how we were going to assist the property owners to make sure they got the work done to make their properties safe. And that depended in a huge way on federal funds. So I'll be curious to see what the alternative is and whether we should consider delaying implementation. I know it's a rollout of eighteen months, but the first tranche is eighteen months, I think, but it's still a burden, and we want, but it's a burden financially, but at the same time, we wanna make sure our units are safe.

So it's it's a little bit of a catch 22. So I look forward to the and a status update on the federal funds. Thank you for that. With that, let's vote. Okay. I lied earlier. I said way finding was my favorite subject. Actually, this next one is really my favorite subject. Which is that's right. It's like all my children. Well, only have one, so she's my favorite. This is the California Environmental Quality Act streamlining for downtown status report.

Okay. Good afternoon, Chair Foley and City Council members. My name is David Kian. I am principal planner on the city's environmental review team. I'm here before you this afternoon to talk about CEQA streamlining and an overview of the California Environmental Quality Act, otherwise known as CEQA.

So this presentation actually gets at two distinct council directions that are actually entry related. So this presentation starts with an overview of the development process and CEQA streamlining with a focus on exemptions. This section will talk about a summary of findings from previously collected stakeholder input and also a review of peer city metrics with regard to CEQA. It will also include an overview of the CEQA process, including how we determine which projects are exempt from further CEQA review and which ones require greater analysis. Also recommendations for how the city can change its processes to allow more projects to be exempt.

And finally, a progress report on the 2022 audit recommendations. Then this presentation will pivot to a more focused discussion of the Downtown Strategy 2040 EIR, including an overview of the EIR, its benefits to streamlining and also strategies for further streamlining downtown development. So, first I'm going to start off with a good old summary of the stakeholder input that we received from prior outreach efforts. There were several outreach efforts over the past ten years. In 2016, we did the management partners study update, which is an overview of the city's development review process including CEQA.

We also had the ad hoc committee back in through 2016 to 2020, I believe. And then we also had the most comprehensive part was the 2022 audit of the city's environmental review process with the report that was issued in March 2022. I want to highlight specifically some findings from that report because it was the most comprehensive survey. So, this is a highlight of some of those responses. Per that survey, about 62% of respondents felt that the environmental review process in the city took longer than expected.

But sixty five percent of the respondents felt that there was good staff communication on the nature of the technical analysis. There was a feedback that 48%, let's see, 46% thought there was good staff communication on guidelines. However, 46% also felt that the city's environmental review timeline was unreasonable. So, a mixed bag basically CEQA takes a long time even though staff has provided good overall good guidance. I also want to highlight some general information that we've received from other feedback from stakeholders.

We recently held a Developers and constructions roundtable to discuss CEQA processes, and there are several developers issue expressed some other concerns. Some one of the primary concerns was that there's too much in influence of the city attorney's office in the CEQA process. Process. Another one was that the city issues does not issue enough exemptions as they like. Further was that the city request a lot of technical studies including for projects that are exempt that adds cost and timeline to projects.

Projects. And also that the city should develop standard mitigation measure language and standard conditions of approval to help streamline documents. Responding to the overview of the CEQA process, this is the comparison of the peer cities that took place as part of the 2022 audit. Seven cities were evaluated. This includes LA, San Diego, Long Beach, San Francisco and Oakland and Opidas and the City Of Santa Clara.

This review was comparing their sequel processes to our sequel process in San Jose. It was not a direct comparison of overall timelines. However, there were some snippets that did come out of the audit report that are interesting to highlight. One was that the audit found that the city's environmental review process for EIRs was very similar to the city of Los Angeles based on their data from 2013 to 2020. In addition, the city of Long Beach claims to be able to complete an EIR within one year based on very focused project management.

There is a caveat here. The City of Long Beach has their environmental consultants contracted in house. So they do not do how the City of San Jose allows applicants to hire their own environmental consultant off the city approved consultant list. So, there's a differentiation there. The auditor's review of peer jurisdictions was a key factor in coming up with their 12 recommendations that they included in the report.

This is a high level overview of the CEQA process. There's more detail provided in the memo and the attachments, but just overall, this is the process for projects that are subject to CEQUA, meaning non ministerial development projects. So, this is 99% of projects that come through the planning department. So, the first determination when a project is submitted is to determine if project is exempt from CEQA. And that is a process that I will discuss in more detail shortly.

It's based on criteria in the CEQA guidelines. If the project is not exempt, we determine if the project is covered by a previously approved CEQUA. So, this is an example I use frequently is if they're doing a new building that's within the Santana Row area that was already covered by the Santana Row EIR, then we would determine is this project consistent with the Santana Row EIR and either issue what's called an addendum, which is a statement that there's minor changes to the project that don't change the impact conclusions or a determination of consistency, which is essentially a statement saying this is completely consistent with what was evaluated in the prior CEQA. If there's no prior CEQA, then that means that there will be requirement for full new analysis. This is either in the form of an initial study that would lead to what's called a mitigated negative declaration or MND or negative declaration ND.

This is a statement that the project would result in impacts but with mitigation measures reduced to a less than significant level. Or an environmental impact reporting EIR would be required. This is a situation where if the analysis determines that there will be a significant impact that cannot be mitigated unless it's significant, then an EIR is required. I'm going go into a bit more detail about what's required for these documents in the next slide. So, this is just a brief overview of what's required.

Exemptions do require at times some level of technical analysis to determine if the exemption if the project meets the criteria for an exemption. The type of analysis varies on the type of exemption requested. There is a wide range of time lines in terms of how how long this a project with exemption would take, that would vary from three months to over twelve months. It just depends on, again, the type of project. An addendum or determination consistency analysis may be needed in order to determine if the project conforms with the findings and impact statements of the original CEQA document, usually typically EIR.

So, this process can take again anywhere from three months for a very simple addendum or up to over twelve months for a more complex addendum. MND or ND have required studies for all the resource areas. This is a full initial study that would have required technical analysis to support the findings in the initial study. These in the past four fiscal years typically take about twenty two months. And finally, an EIR requires the full level of analysis that an M and D or initial study would.

But in addition, it requires additional sections including study of alternatives that would reduce the impacts of a project. So, EIRs are usually for the most complex and controversial projects in the city. Typically, they take about thirty months. Granted, I want to have a caveat here. This is from total review time from project application to project approval.

The environmental review process is only one section of that, which I'm going get to in the next slide. This is a breakdown of the total project review process for an EIR. This graphic comes from the 2022 audit report. The area in orange or it's actually it's more yellow. The area in yellow is the part of the review process that is during active participation of the applicant and or environmental consultant.

So, this is not time that the city is working on the environmental review. The city's role is in green. Based upon the review of the past fiscal year, review times, we estimate that approximately 15% to 25% of the total review time is actually in the city's court, so to speak, with the city doing active environmental review. So much of the time period of the total review time is actually on the applicant and consultant. And this is one of the major reasons why the 2022 audit focused on ways to improve coordination with consultants, better management of consultants, also standardizing processes.

So, Niddle's overview of the city's CEQUA process, there are multiple reasons to determine why a project would take a certain type of CEQUA path. This includes project size, if the project is on a hazardous materials list, or if the project could impact a historic resource. Still, three quarters of private development projects in the last fiscal year qualified for an exemption or were determined to be consistent with the prior environmental document, therefore requiring minimal analysis. About just on just over a quarter required a more in-depth analysis either in the form of an initial study for an MAD or ND, an EIR or an addendum to a prior document. So the vast majority of projects going through the planning department that go for approval are just are exempt or consistent with the prior CEQA.

Now there are multiple reasons why a project doesn't qualify for an exemption. It has to go through a higher level of review. Have it listed here, but some of the primary reasons in San Jose that kick a lot of projects out of exemptions are that the site is on a hazardous material site listed by the state. This is colloquially known as the Cortese list. There's also the major issue that comes up frequently is that impacts to historic resources.

If the site contains a structure that's over 45 years old and analysis that finds that it could be a candidate landmark, then that will trip the project out of an exemption. It could require a full blown EIR. I also have on here another issue that rises for a particular class of exemptions. Many types of exemptions have relatively straightforward requirements, but there is what's known as an infill exemption. And an infill exemption exemption has a series of findings, including that the project is consistent with the general plan and won't have any impacts to noise, air quality, or transportation, among other factors.

This is a fairly broad exemption exemption that applies to a lot of projects that would otherwise not be able to use any other exemption. However, the requirement that it's consistent, that a project be consistent with the general plan and zoning means that projects that are doing a rezoning or a planned development zoning or a general plan amendment do not qualify for this exemption, meaning that there are several projects that get kicked out. So, in terms of strategies to increase the number of projects that will qualify for

an

exemption, number one would be to have more flexible development standards so that projects do not have to come in and do rezonings, especially planned development zonings that then would kick them out of that infill exemption. If the applicant did not have to file for a rezoning, there's a higher chance that they could qualify for an infill exemption. Another area would be to expand the areas of the city covered by program level EIRs, such as the Downtown Strategy 2040, that then projects that are consistent with those plans and those EIRs could then do what's called either a community plan exemption or an addendum to an environmental impact report, just like how many projects do of downtown, which I'm going to get to in a minute. Finally, there is the possibility of expanding the residential ministerial permit approval process. This is similar to the city's infill housing, ministerial process that was approved by council in December.

Expanding this requires some updates to policies such as the city's transportation analysis policy, particularly for projects that are in areas that are in areas that you can mitigate VNT impacts, but they are not on low VNT areas. So, the program level EIR recommendation actually comes from the 2022 audit report. The auditor's office found that many cities use these EIRs for a variety of CEQUA streamlining. City of Oakland and City of San Francisco, for example, frequently use these for development in their urban cores. They frequently do either an addendum like we do with Downtown Strategy or they do the community planning exemption, which is very similar in analysis to an addendum to a Downtown Strategy.

Basically, the idea of a program level EIR is that it is a program of a plan and projects that are consistent with that program or plan would be able to utilize this EIR for sequel clearance and focus only on project level impacts. There are many challenges, however, to repairing program level EIRs. Mainly, they are very costly. The consultant costs can be range of 300 to $500,000 or more. Staff needs is significant not only for environmental review staff, but also for the citywide planning team to update plans and policies.

For example, just environmental review staff for a program level EIR can be three hundred to six hundred hours or more depending on complexity. There's also the long timeline. These EIRs often take two to four years or so to finish. I know that the downtown strategy EIR took at least four years in order to complete. And finally, there's funding issues.

Finding funding for this kind of work is often difficult. I know that there has been some funding from the MTC for certain types of EIRs and plans, for example, the five wounds. That is one area source of funding. But absent those kind of funding from grants and such sources, it is very difficult to find funding for this kind of work. Finally, I want to finish with a report on the status of the 2022 audit recommendations.

Since adoption of the audit in March 2022, PBCE has completed four recommendations completely and has partially implemented five of the recommendations. This includes broad based training for staff and within the planning department and also other departments. It also includes having regular check-in meetings, kickoff meetings and recurring meetings with consultants and applicants in order to keep up to date on project scope and schedule. And also to clarify any questions or comments that the consultants and applicants may have. Also preparing standard permit conditions standard operating procedures for typical CEQA processes.

We've also developed performance metrics that the city then uses data and tracks against and publishes this as part of the PBC East customer service charter. Finally, one key component of the audit recommendation was a requirement that applicants hire a consultant from the sitting list of approved environmental consultants. I'd like to report that we have just updated that list and we've actually just passed the appeal period for the latest update list. So that updated list will be coming shortly. So these recommendations respond to the August 2024 rules memo.

Now I'm gonna pivot and talk about the mayor's budget March budget message regarding the Downtown Strategy 2040 EIR. So this is the city's most used program level EIR and has been very successful at streamlining a large amount of development within downtown. So since 2018 when this EIR was adopted, 42 projects have been approved under this EIR, 16 of which required a supplemental EIR and 26 which qualified for an addendum. The Downtown EIR was amended in 2021 as part of the Dierden Stationery Plan update that significantly increased the amount of development in Downtown. As you can see here, it went up to 22,000,000 square feet of office and over 21,000 housing units.

That includes Durden Station area and downtown total. So there's a lot of development capacity that's been evaluated. Quite a bit of it has already been entitled. And so there's it has been successful in terms of the development that's been coming through in the past five years. The streamlining benefits of the downtown strategy are numerous, particularly as a programmable EIR individual projects can focus their analysis specifically on project impacts.

It means that projects coming in do not have to evaluate transportation vehicle miles traveled analysis. They do not have to evaluate greenhouse gas emissions, traffic related air quality, or traffic noise. This is all covered by the overall downtown strategy EIR. In addition, projects have no new significant impacts or no exacerbation of existing impacts in the downtown EIR will qualify for an addendum. As I mentioned earlier, 26 projects qualified for an addendum since 2018.

Now this downtown EIR does streamline projects in terms of overall timelines. So for projects that qualify for an addendum, the total review time is about four months less than it would be for an equivalently sized project outside of downtown that would have to repair an initial study or an M and D. So, that would be four months reduction. Also, supplemental EIRs, because they focus on particular impacts and do not have to evaluate the totality of the entire all the resource areas. They are also streamlined.

Typically supplemental EIRs in the downtown area are seven months less review time than EIRs outside of downtown. However, there are many challenges for downtown projects. So, challenges for downtown projects stem from the primary fact that downtown allows the densest level of development in the city. The density allowed is about two and a half times anywhere else in the city. For example, a residential project in downtown could have up to 800 units per acre.

What this means is that there will be more intense construction impacts, pile driving, excavation, steel construction, significantly more intense than your typical wood frame construction you see elsewhere. In addition, because downtown has old lot patterns and development is right next to existing buildings, this also leads to potential impacts related to construction impacts onto existing structures, especially structures that are inhabited by residents or schools and also historic resources. I would mention that historic resources are probably the primary driver of what determines your CEQA in Downtown San Jose. About a quarter of the downtown area is already within a quarter of Downtown San Jose is either in a historic district or is a designated city landmark. This is a very large area.

And so that is a major issue that does raise up when projects are analyzed and then it triggers EIRs. Of the 16 EIRs that have been repaired since 2018, 15 have been due to impacts to historic resources. So the analysis required for downtown projects. All downtown projects have to do some level of technical analysis. And this is because the wide range of types of development and construction techniques for downtown projects means that you cannot evaluate everything at a program level.

So, project specific analysis is required. And it's based upon various factors including the type of construction, the level of excavation including number of levels of underground parking. Also, the proximity of the project to historic resources. And also, if the site is within an area that would shade parks and open spaces such as the Circle Of Palms and the Plaza De Segur Fais. So, there's multiple factors that would trigger additional analysis.

And this is very common. This is actually common also in other cities like Oakland and San Francisco that have these program level EIRs. So a major part of the mayor's memo was what options do we have to further streamline downtown development. So this is a chart of what of two different strategies to further streamline downtown CEQA. So the first strategy would update the downtown strategy EIR and particularly focus on areas that are not historic resources.

Historic resources, the biggest time most time consuming effort in order to update. So, this strategy, we'll look at other areas, for example, updating guidelines, thresholds, standard impacts, and standard mitigation measures to further clarify based upon what's currently in the downtown strategy, EIR. This would allow clarification of the process and would allow projects that were coming in under this strategy to be able to be streamlined if they are not impacting historic resources. It can also support a potential ministerial process for parts of the site parts of downtown that do not excuse me, parts of the downtown area that are not adjacent to historic resources or that are contained historic resources. Based on a very high level GIS analysis, this would be about 40% of the downtown area.

This strategy would build upon work that's already underway for the environmental review guidelines and thresholds. So it wouldn't be a huge amount of additional work. Therefore, we are anticipating based on outreach to several consultants that this work would take approximately $240,000 to $280,000 for consulting cost and would also take about eighty to one hundred and twenty staff hours. Review time would be estimated to be approximately nine to fourteen months. This would be after the execution of the service order, which can also take a fair amount of time.

The second strategy gets at the heart of what is the most important issue for downtown projects, which is historic resources. This would be a comprehensive survey of downtown that would update and provide a baseline for future development. This historic survey would review existing data and would also review other sites that have not been evaluated and determine if they are eligible as candidate landmarks or candidate historic districts. From this, we can also update the current design guidelines that apply to historic districts, including the St. James Square historic guidelines and standards, which are quite out of date given that they were prepared in 1989.

Now I do want to make a caveat here. Even with historic survey, this is a point in time. So the historic survey would need to be updated on a regular basis. However, there has been no comprehensive historic survey of downtown since we provide an excellent baseline for future planning efforts in downtown. And we'll also provide information to applicants about what to expect with their project as they go forward and to know what the process is for historic historic impacts.

Importantly, this could also extend the parts of downtown that would qualify for potential ministerial ordinance. This would this would allow potentially up to 75% of downtown in order to qualify for a ministerial ordinance because there could be guidelines and standards that would apply to projects adjacent to historic resources. You know, the residential infill housing ministerial ordinance that was approved by city council back in December had a specific criteria that projects within 100 feet of a historic resource or 300 feet of a creek or riparian area would be excluded. This would allow potentially ministerial within a 100 feet of historic resources with specific guidelines. So I also want to have a caveat with the ministerial just because there's other factors here.

This is a very high level GIS analysis that staff did. It does not account for sites that are occupied residences. The current ministerial ordinance excludes sites of occupied residences. So, this not account for that, but it does show the degree of downtown that could potentially qualify. However, like I mentioned in my slide on program EIRs, this is an expensive process.

The consultants that responded say this could take anywhere from $525,000 to over $640,000 to do the EIR and survey work. It would also take about three hundred to five hundred staff hours. This would include environmental review staff, planning staff and also the historic preservation officer. It does not include additional time that a historic preservation officer would have to spend on updating the historic resources inventory. And the estimated timeline, again, would be quite significant, at least twenty four to thirty months.

And it would require that this work occur after execution of the service order, which again can take quite a bit of time. Given the current budget environment, staff would recommend that if the city council wanted to proceed with a streamlining option, they would proceed with strategy one, even though strategy two should be a goal in the long term because it fits benefits to future downtown development. Next slide. So, now I do want to go over a quick review of the CEQUA process improvement work plan that the PBC is currently working on. So, this is an overview of recommendations from the 2022 audit that are currently underway.

First among them is the sitting list of approved environmental consultants.

David, perhaps you could give us the highlights on this slide.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then also we're working on the environmental guidelines, which we're targeting going in June. So with this, I can conclude staff's presentations. And staff is here to answer questions.

Great, that was a lot of information. Thank you for all of the details. It's very helpful. I'll turn to my colleagues, Council Member Casey.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So the slide where you showed the vast majority of the time was on the consultant. Just kind of want to dig into the consultant piece a bit if I could. How many consultants do we have on that preferred list?

At the moment 15, though it's being updated and actually will be updated this week.

And the updated version, how many did we cut from the previous list?

There are a couple. I'd have to get back to you on that. I know there were a couple that never submitted qualifications for this round. So they didn't make the list because they didn't submit statement of qualifications.

And so is that the criteria we use? I'm trying to figure out how do we identify consultants that are going to work fairly quickly and identify folks that we could somehow, if a developer was so inclined, that the city and the consultant can come together in a expedited project timeline. Whether that would cost more to the developer. And I'm sure some of them would be willing to pay because time is money, and thirty months is a long time to wait. You could miss a cycle waiting that long potentially. So has there been any consideration given to, I guess a more stricter criteria for the consultants that we take on and have them be willing to work a much quicker timeline?

Thanks council member. Want to just sort of re frame kind of this a little bit which is to say that really what we're doing by creating a qualified consultant list is sort of quality control. We're not sort of managing the consultant's workflow. Obviously many of these consultants are working in multiple cities. They have multiple projects on their docket at any time. That relationship still very much is maintained between the developer and the consultant. So for your example, absolutely they could work with the consultant if there was an opportunity to accelerate that process. It's all about whether or not the consultant could accommodate that. And certainly they have options on that list to try and work that through with various different consultants.

Yes. And Council Member Casey will also say that part of the criteria for judging, reviewing the statement of qualifications was ability to respond to comment and maintain schedule and maintain coordination with the city and the applicant. Okay. Thank you.

Anything else?

Yeah, one question.

Okay.

So, in a perfect world, I understand Long Beach has their consultants in house. But in a perfect world, how fast should we anticipate going or could we go?

Yeah. Council Member Casey, it definitely depends on the scale and complexity of the project. I mean, obviously, in a perfect world, we'd have staff dedicated to these efforts and being able to really work at speed and also have the consultants basically no daylight between the consultants and city staff. I will say that we have in the past with priority projects managed to work very well at getting very complex projects through very fast, but it did take a significant amount of staff time and coordination. I'll use the example of Downtown West.

Downtown West was in a very fast period and a challenging environment where we got that EIR finished in one years, point which is quite a lot. But we had one staff member dedicated to it. We had excellent communication of the consultant. That's actually part of the audit recommendations is seeing that process and trying to apply that to other projects. Whoever given staff resources and consultant resources, it's imperfect to think that we can have a strict level of recurring meetings and coordination as we did with Google, but that's our target.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Ortiz.

Thank you, madam chair. Thank you to our staff for this exhaustive report on your efforts to streamline the sequel process, a very important process very indeed. While I'm in favor of reforms to reduce unnecessary and redundant work that gets in the way of development, I'm cautious about potentially overriding the good that comes from the CEQA process including the avenues for community input. I have two questions. First one is how do program level EIRs impact the community engagement process? And are there still mandated community meetings for residents?

Councilman Ortiz. I can respond about the program level EIRs. So program level EIRs, like all EIRs of CECO have, require a pretty robust community input process. This includes the notice of preparation process, which is a thirty day public comment period where people can comment on what they are concerned about or want to see in the EIR, plus a scoping meeting. And also there is a forty five day public circulation period response to comments.

And also typically with program level EIRs, they are associated with a plan which will also have its very robust community workshop process. Individual projects also will have community meetings. Even if a project qualifies for an addendum to the downtown strategy, there would still be a community meeting based on the size typically. So that process still occurs. We also publish all our CEQA documents even for addendums for downtown.

They are published. We notify interested parties. They have an opportunity to comment and we will respond to them if they do comment. So despite the lack of a public circulation for some documents, we still do have a robust outreach process and we do will respond to comments if they come.

Great. Thank you so much for that clarification. Additionally, I know the memo credits San Francisco's ability to shorten review timelines on its use of in house environmental review consultants instead of having developers hire their own. Is this something that the city has explored before and what would prevent us from building this capacity ourselves?

Councilman Mortise, that has been something the city has explored several times over the past ten years or more. One of the biggest constraints is that we do not have the administrative capacity in order to handle those contracts. Many other cities have a greater administrative capacity to manage those contracts. Given that San Jose does not have that, we decided to go a middle of the road approach where we continue to allow applicants to hire their consultant. But we have a pre vetting list that applicants will have to choose their consultant from.

Thank you for that answer. Could you elaborate more on administrative capacity? So, you mean that just leadership doesn't have the capacity to manage them or essentially or?

Yes, let me take a shot at that. So like most of our operation our CEQA team is funded through largely fees from development. Certainly the folks that work on private development projects. There are two positions in our we have six planners that work on CEQA. There are two supervising planner positions, one of which is vacant and then David in the principal planner position.

So outside of two positions, the rest are all funded through fees. And so the way that that cost structure has been developed, it does not include any kind of administrative staff on the back end that's working on sort of the invoicing or contract management that would be required to sort of balance the sort of sixty, seventy projects in a given time to get them all through different and various sequel processes. So it would be a much more sort of complex project management task and we would need additional resources on that. We'd have to look at how we restructure our cost model to account for that additional staff.

Thank you. Appreciate that. So you said the way the cost structure is set up, it's not set up to be able to have that capacity. Is there a way to change the way the cost is set up? Because I imagine that developers if they feel like their project is going to be at a more rapid pace and go through the process more, they may be more willing to have discussion regarding the cost.

So yeah I'm happy to sort of have a much more in-depth sort of conversation probably offline about sort of everything that goes into that. We've discussed this on a number of levels not just relative to CEQA, we've actually talked about it throughout our development review process that there is the opportunity for enhanced project management and more sort of high touch communication to help accelerate process. The challenge is the way that our cost structure is our costs are distributed equally across all projects. It's an hourly rate model. So we look at the total cost of the department and divide that by the number of productive hours available.

So if we increase the cost at one end for large scale development, it also increases the cost for smaller projects that are still having to go through a sequel process elsewhere.

Okay. But we could potentially look at some sort of sliding scale, right? Or I mean I just imagine the longer it takes the more it's going to cost anyway, Right? And so I just figured and I'm it'd be interesting hearing colleagues' con conversations since they've worked in development. Think a few of our colleagues have worked in development in real estate, but I just feel like there's something around that conversation that could be done in order to improve the process.

Thank you. Yes. Councilmember, I'll add that the memo that came through rules and open government did have an additional item attached to it which was an MBA through the budget process that looked at the cost structure of how we were operating our CEQUA team. So I think we'll be providing more information through that process.

Thank you.

You. Councilmember Mulcahy.

Thank you Chris and David for the report. I probably won't dig into that question that Councilmember Ortiz was bringing up because it sounds like you're coming back with more information on that?

That's correct.

Okay.

When you put up the two strategies, can I assume that if you went strategy one route that it would still apply city downtown wide? But if you came across a project with historic elements that you'd then have to do a sequence scope specific to historic mitigation, historic evaluation. Is that fair?

Yes, Councilmember. So the first strategy would essentially keep the same process with regard to historic resources. Currently, a project comes in. If they're not already listed as a candidate or designated landmark or they're not in a historic district and the building on-site is over 45 years old, they would prepare historic analysis. And then if it found that the structure on-site is a candidate landmark, they'd have to go through the EIR process.

This actually just happened recently. Consul is gonna be seeing an EIR for the demolition of a mid century modern building North 1st Street, just outside of downtown. That as part of that process, it was discovered. Surprise, this is a candidacy landmark. And so they had to do an EIR for the residential project. So they this Strategy one process, they'd still continue to have to do that. So basically that process would not change.

Is there any way to because that's one of those that goes to timeline, right? And oh, surprise that you just raised. Is there any way to look specifically at that process itself to see if there's a way to streamline? For example, just having done it myself, I remember intending to save a building but wasn't necessarily going to do it in the way that some in the community would have wanted it to be saved. And so they attacked the consultant who did the evaluation for us.

So I would assume that if you're qualifying EIR consultants, you're probably not necessarily qualifying the subs that would serve underneath that EIR consultancy. So do we do anything like that down the line with other subs to qualify them under a similar city process that you're doing now?

Councilmember, we do have a list of environmental excuse me, unenvironmental, of historic consultants that we have vetted and we do recommend. Don't in my knowledge, we don't actually have a requirement that people use that list, but we do have a list that has been vetted. So that would be the recommendation for people to use somebody off that list as they're doing historic analysis.

You look like you want to say something, Chris.

I always want say. No. I mean I think to David's point right it's not a requirement at this point. Typically what we'll do in situations like that is say here's a list of consultants that have recently or successfully made it through the process and that it would be a good idea to select from that. But I think it's something worth looking at. Certainly I think there are aspects of this process that we can continue to refine and tighten up. It's worth a look.

I think when you look at the issue that council member Ortiz was raising and that you are addressing through earlier MBA. Right? I mean is there some guarantee around cost and time if the city was doing these in house? I think it still doesn't prevent you from having similar attacks on CEQUA that come today and every day. So I think sort of evaluating that as part of the piece so that we're kind of all understanding what you get if you go that route?

Yes. I think there's a lot to sort of pull apart. I don't know honestly that sort of a completely in house solution would really meet all of our needs just given the breadth and diversity of projects that we deal with. Just the range of scope and the ability of applicants to work with a mixture of different consultants seems to give us a little bit more flexibility especially because it allows them to then sort of discuss timeline and negotiate around sort of what deliverables look like. As far as sort of how we continue to think about that process and that sort of if there was a way to go about an enhanced process.

I just I think there are some aspects in that that when we did the 2016 fee study that can really sort of redefine the way that we established our fees across our development process. There were some goals in there about how we ensure that service delivery is equitable across all of our streams. And I think part of the challenges as we continue to direct resources, which is something we do right around key priorities is that there is some amount of service that's lost to other projects as well. So there's a little bit of a balancing act that we have to kind of go through with that.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks Madam Chair.

Council Member Mulcahy, would you like to make a motion to accept the report?

Will make the motion to accept the report. Second.

Great, thank you. Don't say dramatic. I know, it's so serious. I do have, some questions, but Chris and David, you for that presentation. Seeker reform, has been a long time priority of mine from 09/2019 when we had an old priority setting, system.

It was one of the things I put forth as, CEQA reform and didn't get enough votes so it didn't go any anywhere from there. So I'm happy to see that you're looking at how we might be able to streamline CEQA. Streaming lining CEQA and encouraging development really is critical to the fiscal health of the city, particularly when we're facing difficult budget times we we need to figure out a way to build. So the planning work as a revenue driver for the city and is now time to double down on our efforts to streamline. I have a couple of questions for you.

On page nine of the staff memo, talks about the structure's age of 45 years old triggering a historic review. Now I don't know about you, but 45 doesn't seem very old, and if I do the math, forty five years ago is a house or a structure built in 1980. That doesn't even meet mid century modern time frames. So why is it forty five considered a historic year? That seems arbitrary. How can we why is it forty five and how can we change that threshold?

Thank you chair Foley. So the forty five years is actually based upon I think it's even federal law about what could be a landmark is 50 or older unless there's certain overriding circumstances. The forty five years is because a project may be getting close to that fifty year timeframe, so we want to evaluate the significance. But fifty years is the really key. A building that's 50 or older than would have the potential qualify as a landmark.

So that's it's coming from state and federal guidance and law. At fifty years, forty five years buys us some time. It's I will say that it is interesting to see as time goes on. You start to see projects that you think what that's historic, but that's now happening in brutalist architecture from the 1970s that I'm going use the example. There was the Sumitomo Bank building on City Plaza that was evaluated and determined to be a candidate landmark based upon the architect and the design.

That was a brutal structure. So that would not have been considered a historic resource a few years ago, but now it's getting to that timeframe. And yes, we are now getting into the 80s. Buildings like the Gold Building in downtown now potentially could qualify at some point.

Do other cities, are they strict on that fifty year timeline?

Because it's coming from the federal and the state, it's pretty consistent. Other cities will have maybe more up to date surveys. So for example, city of LA has had a citywide survey and updates that. I know San Francisco has a lot of historic surveys. So, that helps update and so people know what projects are coming through. Just because a building is 45 or 50 years old doesn't mean it's a landmark. It just means it's evaluated. We do what's called a Department of Poplarks and Recreation form and just determine from there and have the findings that we have on the record.

Well, think that's the point that I'm trying to raise. And don't get me wrong, historical significance is important. But if we're adding a review of historical significance of properties that are forty five years, and as I said, that's 1980, having a hard time in my head thinking, that things that were built forty five years ago have any historical significance at all. We're not talking about the brutalist building that was demolished on, a few years ago or anything or mid century modern. That's a different time frame.

1980, we had a lot of bad hairstyle and bad fashions in those days, so not sure we had a lot of great buildings. Hey. As someone who you know, I I am of a certain age. So

Chair Folio, I mean just to sort of build off of David's point. Really the key here is to look at how we're approaching surveys and that's ultimately a resource question. The idea being that yes when you do surveys you find those historic buildings that you can say look these are the ones we want to preserve, but you also find all the ones that are not. And then you can clearly say okay this stuff we can let go. And that's the key and the ability in those cities that do have pretty comprehensive surveys throughout. That's really the benefit they're getting is to sort of cross off those buildings that we're not worried about.

Okay. Thank you. I'm going to move on to another topic and that's related to local transportation analysis versus vehicle miles traveled. We've moved over to vehicle miles traveled, yet in the report it seems that CEQA still depends on LTAs, which we're not really utilizing anymore. We're using vehicle miles traveled. How can we move from one to the other? Why do we continue to use the old process?

So, Chair Folwe, actually it's part of the transportation analysis policy five-one. So, when the city transitioned from level of service, which is based on traffic ingestion to vehicle miles traveled in terms of its CEQUA metric, it kept some of those analysis as part of the local transportation analysis, not for CEQA but more for neighborhood information and also for knowing if there's additional off-site improvements that public works would require or request. So it's really not necessarily used for determining impact under CEQA. It's more for A, information for neighborhoods and also neighborhood groups because neighborhood groups were asking this information all the way through even with the new policy update. But also knowing what type of off-site improvements public works can require.

Okay. So it's not part of the CEQA analysis yet we're still doing it because of five-one?

Yeah, five one in there. And part of that was because the neighborhoods like, for example, the neighborhoods around Santana Row were very much interested in traffic congestion, cut through traffic, etcetera. And so the idea was that to have this transition, removing these analysis from determining a sequel impact but there's still information that is out there as valuable was determined to be valuable to the neighborhood. So it was kept as part of five dash one.

Okay. One other reference I might wanna make is regarding parking, that we removed parking standards in development a couple of years ago, yet it seems that CEQUA is still analyzing parking and that's a required trigger within the CEQUA report. Why is that if we remove that requirement? Parking is removed

from CEQA in I think 2009 or 2010. So there actually used to be a checklist item and the transportation would impact parking and that was removed. And so our CEQA documents don't evaluate parking supply. So you cannot determine if there's an impact from a project based on parking.

Okay. Alright. Looks like we may need some some effort from us to create some policy changes to allow CEQA reform to go forward. I'm wondering, you know, I know that we have, we look at the city of San Jose as being conservative as it relates to a lot of issues. And so sometimes from a legal standpoint, we wanna on the side of being really cautious and conservative, and that's mostly a good and prudent way to go.

But are we being overly cautious? Are we being too careful to the point where we're hampering development because it's causing such long timelines that it makes it more difficult for a developer to pencil it out. Just something to leave you to ponder with because I think that is and I'm looking at the attorney and he's smiling, so is the one over here. I appreciate

I'd I'd love to address that if I might. Please. Yeah. Well especially because so I couldn't leave here without saying hello to you all. I'm Daniel Sesuwet, the senior city attorney for San Jose and I was brought up here primarily because of a comment that was made about how much time our office takes to review CEQA documents and I'll address that in a second. I think from my perspective it's about analyzing risk, right? That's what I'm looking at. I'm here to defend the city, I'm here to make sure that our general plan and our code are followed and that's my job. Do I want this process to go as fast as possible? I do.

Do I want as much development and housing in this town? I do because I love my city and I want it to go smoothly. As far as streamlining, if I can give a little bit of perspective from where I came from, so I worked with three different local government agencies before coming to San Jose and I haven't been here all that long coming up on three years. But everywhere else I worked, the planning department would hire the consultant and work with the consultant to manage that environmental analysis process. And the applicant had to ask permission to see a draft draft of the environmental document or the response to comments and so forth.

When I came to San Jose I realized that that was flipped on its head and that was a request from the development community that they have opportunity to to hire the consultant, work directly with the consultant, and I don't know if flipping that again now is what I'm hearing from the diocese that we would like to maybe have a little bit more control within the planning department where the developer community was the one who asked for the control over that process to begin with. And so we removed the firewall that was between the developer and the consultant so that they could control that process. And now I don't know where I mean you see the bar of how much time the the documents sit with staff is very minimal compared to the time it sits with the consultant. Now I spend perhaps two to three weeks at on an entire very comprehensive analysis, not the two to four months that I think Eric Schoenhauer who's a lobbyist for the developers had stated at this Rules Committee back in August. So two to four months it does not happen, I can guarantee you that it's it's a matter of weeks over the process of maybe two years.

But I'm looking for risk and I'm looking for liabilities that you know the city may have to endure, But I certainly want to speed up the process wherever we can, but I don't know where that's coming from from the city side. And I'm always happy to hear ideas and to work to implement those policies, but I'm not sure if we've gotten there today. But I'm always happy to to listen and to provide input.

I appreciate that, and I'm I'm not sure we've gotten there today either, but I look forward to more of a conversation. Managing risk is what you do, and we should all be concerned about the risk. But there's trade offs. But it's an educated trade off, and does that one make does that trade off make sense? Or are we subjecting ourselves to greater liability?

And that isn't a place I wanna go. I don't wanna put ourselves in a greater, position of liability or risk. So how we manage that I think is is important, and that just means that we will continue on with a conversation and figure out how we can do this, but I I really appreciate this conversation starting here after the memo from the council council members last, earlier, or August I guess, and then also the mayor's, March message really started this process going. I know we've been talking about it for a long time, but it put it more in the forefront of what we should be looking at. So I do appreciate that.

Chris, do you want to have the final word? Always.

So I will say because I think those are all excellent points and absolutely we're constantly trying to manage that risk. As a big city we are a target for lawsuits and we successfully defend them based on the strength of our CEQUA documents. Produce very comprehensive, very good CEQUA documents based on the work that David and his team does. We did have the firewall in place as Daniel mentioned. It was an earlier policy that we did.

And I think part of the reason we removed that was in conversation with the development community. We found that we continue to sort of get into this situation where completely absent discussions with the developer we would identify impacts, right? And that's it, right? It's an impact. Now you're either going to mitigate the impact, you're conditioning the project to mitigate that impact in a certain way, or if you can't mitigate it, you're into an EAR. And the developer request was, well hold on a sec, I can change the project and then there won't be an impact. And we want that, right? We want that iteration, we want that flexibility because philosophically department, goal is to deliver on development. We have a general plan that guides us in the way we want the city to build out. That's our goal.

We want that. So everything we do is really to how do we best align our process, all of our policies and regulations with the development community to deliver on that promise. So I think there's a million ways to go after it. We're constantly trying to work to find the right one. It's probably going to change over time.

And I think that's really the commitment as we kind of bring forward these work plans is to say these are things that we've identified that are going to be key changes that will help continue to refine that process. The one thing that we didn't talk about a lot which we probably should have, I just want to point out is probably the biggest and most significant improvement we'll make in the coming year is that standard set of mitigations and conditions that go into the zoning ordinance. We bake that in. So there's no question through the process about what you have to do. It's already laid out and it allows us get to through the process much, much quicker.

Yeah, I appreciate that. So Chris, David, Daniel, thank you so much for the presentation. Let's vote. And thank you to my colleagues for hanging in there while I ask my questions. With that, I see no public comment. We stand adjourned. Thank you.