Community & Economic Development Committee (ced) - Regular Meeting

Yes. Let's begin. It's 01:30. I'd like to start on time. As you all know, I say this every time we start a meeting. Welcome to the CED meeting. Could you take the role, please?

Casey? Here. Mulcahy? Here.

Ortiz? Present.

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

Great. Thank you. We, the first item is to review the work plan on, there's one item, the housing ballot status report is being deferred to May 19 to give time to present it to the HCD committee committee before it comes to us. Is there any members of the public who wish to speak on that, on this item?

No public comment.

Okay. Then do we have a motion to approve?

Motion to approve. Second.

Any discussion? If not, let's vote. Thank you. Moving on reports to the committee. The first item is business development division activities annual report, and I believe Blage is going to kick this off.

Good afternoon Chair Foley and committee members, Sublagi Zlalich, Deputy Director in the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs and I am pleased to be here alongside Vic Farley, my colleague in the department to present to you the annual activity report of the Business Development Division. Today we'll walk you through the breadth and range of work managed by the business development division focusing on key highlights over the past year and also provide you with key goals for the year ahead. To successfully deliver this work relies on the support of colleagues across all city departments and importantly the engagement of multiple external partners, stakeholders and contractors. This report serves to demonstrate the scale of impact the division has with the business community across all of San Jose. The division is grouped into three teams.

The first covers both small business and neighborhoods, and then we have our work in the corporate outreach and engagement with medium and large sized companies, and finally our team leading the efforts for continued economic vitality and vibrancy in our city's urban core. I'd like to just briefly acknowledge the work of Nathan Donato Weinstein, our downtown manager who as of yesterday actually took up the position as the first economic development manager for the city of Campbell, so we're sad about that, but he has led by example and has been instrumental in many of the successes across the division over the past year. We wish him well and we are now recruiting for his replacement. In addition to our three teams we have Carlos Velasquez, public information officer who leads all of OEDCA's communication work and we are nearing the final stages of recruitment for economic data analyst position. Looking at the key numbers that highlight the city's economic vital signs, we can see that in 2024 our stock of businesses remain broadly the same, however we did lose approximately 20,000 jobs with the largest losses being in the professional scientific and technical services as well as manufacturing and retail.

Nevertheless, unemployment remained roughly the same at 4%. This shows the churn in the labor market and the resilience of the Silicon Valley economy in keeping the resident workforce stable through change. Regarding real estate, we saw small reductions in office and retail vacancy rates, industrial vacancy rates slightly increased but we're also seeing significant new industrial development and there continues to be strong demand for relatively limited amount of industrial space in the city. Consumer spending resulted in a record sales tax for restaurants, however overall there was a small dip of 1% largely the result of declining EV car sales and lower gas prices. This was the first decline in sales tax in three years for the city.

Business investment held up in 2024 and contributes a much more significant percentage of sales tax generated close to 30% than in most other California jurisdictions.

Thank you, Blarghe. Good afternoon members of the committee, Chair Foley. For the small business team, key highlights in an incredibly busy twelve months included the first full year of of the new Small Business Advisory Committee, the establishment of new business improvement districts in Tully Road and the Monterey Corridor, and the continuing ongoing support we provide across 11 neighborhoods. And alongside this, we sustained the work of the Flea Market Advisory Group, launched the new free legal service for small business owners, and for the first time contracted to deliver the first women's entrepreneurship program. We should also recognize the success of this year's holiday Shop Local campaign.

Here on the map, you can see the neighborhoods we are actively working in and the program for the next two years of

supporting business associations and moving forward with the principle of self sufficiency. We are on track to establish up to four more new business improvement districts over the next fifteen months in addition to the Alameda Property Based Business Improvement coming to City Council tomorrow.

Looking at our key services, you can see here that the outcomes from the small business team include assistance to 2,500 businesses who need permitting advice delivered by our small business business allies. That 100% of the storefront budget was allocated resulting in 65 awards. And we launched the two new services I've mentioned, the women's entrepreneurship program that established 39 startups, 130 jobs and the free legal advice that has supported 50 business owners on a wide range of issues. I'd like to also say that our partner organizations in the business owner space continue to provide vital free support to some 14,000 business owners. And this ecosystem of independent organizations and contractors is part of the secret source that underpins entrepreneurship and business retention across the city.

The promotional work and use of digital media this year has elevated the reach of those services to many more businesses. Looking ahead, we have the Alameda C bid on the City Council agenda tomorrow. And in the fall, we expect to see Storey Road plus Alum Rock and the East Village move forward improvement districts. We aim to have the new digital one stop shop available for all 60,000 businesses in San Jose and the new startup and neighborhood grant programs launched. Again, with limited resource, we move forward in the next twelve months to strengthen both the local business ecosystem and proactively promote our grants and services.

Thank you.

Some additional business development activity by the numbers. We are very proud of the fact that the city receives almost $3 in revenue back for every $1 of staff salaries on the team. We are also very proud that in twenty four-twenty five we estimate we will have retained or attracted approximately 7,000 jobs, which is closer to pre pandemic numbers than we've been in recent years. In the past year we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Foreign Trade Zone. San Jose's Foreign Trade Zone 18 is associated with approximately 30,000 jobs and generates $25,000,000,000 of activity per year, number two in the country.

Over the past year we've been very pleased to expand the corporate outreach team recruiting one additional permanent and one over strength position exactly actually one year ago today. This is powering our capacity to engage large employers and businesses. Large employers approximately 1,100 of them in total sustain almost a little bit more than half of our city's jobs and invest significantly in supply chains both local and international. Engaging with large employers goes to the heart of slowing and hopefully turning around the job losses we have recently witnessed. The team also supported successful chips applications this year of over $90,000,000 of investment in new fabrication facility construction and updates to existing facilities.

And lastly, the team actively supported the mayor's office in the expanded artificial intelligence ecosystem and has been heavily engaged in promoting San Jose as the AI epicenter. Looking ahead, the corporate outreach team will continue to lead and proactively engage with the city's top employers and revenue generators, expand broker and partner relationships to attract new investment including in the focus area of advanced manufacturing and AI. Now as for downtown, it has been an incredibly busy and productive year with the success of the Moment pop up program, the high profile Nvidia conference attracting over 25,000 people to downtown, as well as coordinating the work needed to bring the city council approval to pedestrianize Post Street, launching the unpermitted vendor program which substantially improved the experience for visitors and retails during the holiday period and proactively led the important work of safety and security improvements in the downtown through the Mayor Safety and Security Committee. There will be a more extensive update on the downtown progress at June's Community and Economic Development Committee. So as you can see on this slide, in March 2025, the City Council approved the new OED strategic work plan with the following objectives for the business development division.

This will drive the work that we have described over the next two fiscal years. Currently there are four objectives in the OED strategic work plan, three of which are under the business development division umbrella. The first is to retain and grow jobs and revenue and promote innovation from large and medium sized businesses in key sectors such as manufacturing and artificial intelligence. And we have a goal of 10,000 jobs retained or grown over two years. The second is to foster small business resiliency and create thriving business districts.

And the third is to accelerate a thriving downtown. And with that I'd like to just, oh where did they go? There they are. Okay with that I'd just like to acknowledge those are the faces of the people that do the work day in and day out on the business development team. You can see their names to the right there and I just want to acknowledge their hard work and their passion and their continued commitment to the city of San Jose and give them a little bit of kudos. And with that we Vic I and I are here to take any questions that you have. Thank you very much.

Thank you for the presentation. Disappointing to see Nathan move on to another jurisdiction, and also Nancy Klein retired at the end of the year, so we've lost two people who contributed a lot to OED. So Nathan Nathan, I hope you're enjoying where you are, but come back. Don't enjoy it too much. Come back to San Jose. Are there any members of the public who wish to speak?

No public comment.

Okay. Great. Then I will turn to my colleagues, council member Ortiz.

Thank you so much, Vice Mayor. First, I just wanna start by thanking staff for the very thorough report, and of course, all of the work that you do day in and day out to make sure that we are strengthening our local economy. I definitely wish that the federal government would take your lead, but unfortunately it seems to be going the other way and making your jobs harder. But I do appreciate that we have competent and willing staff here on the local side to make sure that our small businesses and even large businesses have a place to go when they need help at the city level. I do have just a few questions and comments.

First, I just want to note that the report mentions that the business development division is currently staffed with 18 positions, 12 permanent and I believe six time limited and that the total will decrease to 15 positions by July 1 this year. Just wanted to ask especially with how some of the staff have gone on to other opportunities, how are we going to make sure that our small business community or just businesses in general won't be impacted by roles that will be going away?

Sure. Council member I would say that you know what has helped us significantly is really the establishment of that OEDCA work plan. And so that work plan that was approved by council has enabled us to really prioritize the work that we're doing. It has some key results. You know some of those key results are around small neighborhood or neighborhood business corridors and small business facilitation. Some of them are around downtown and some of them around corporate engagement. And so I think really the way that we are going to kind of manage reduced positions is with you know even more focus on the things that really drive the results that we collectively are looking for.

Okay, Alright. Thank you. I appreciate that. In line with that question, you know I know that we have our Eastside business manager which is a great essential role to the Eastside. Given that staff are leaving and then we have some staff that have rolled off, how are we gonna make sure that we're protecting that staff member's bandwidth to make sure that the East Side gets its fair share of services that the intention of the role was and and that they're not being pulled. I know that the scope includes some attention to other areas as of now, but how do we make sure that Eastside gets its fair share during this time?

Yeah. We don't anticipate council member that it will be a problem to make sure that we're kind of handling the situations and the business maybe challenges or questions that arise or that certain opportunities or situations that arise on the East Side. I mean part of what we are doing is also looking at all of our other positions and how everybody's kind of filling in the team. And so while we will have the position that is specifically named East Side Coordinator will be facilitating other duties of the small business team where we have no concern about not being able to give the attention to the businesses that the coordinator has been working with currently or to the East Side when we're looking at the workload of the team as a whole. So it's really about, sorry that was a long winded answer but it's really about kind of redistribution of what everybody is doing in general to most need meet the need that is most present.

Okay. Appreciate that and I know that as we did analysis by there's a city council in the county, we know that East Side was one of hardest hit places by COVID, which was kind of like the reasoning for that East Side business coordinator. What

are

we thinking of like, I guess, time dedication like is sixtyforty or what are we looking at in regards to how much that role will still focus on the East Side given the great need of your department?

I think it's really difficult to place kind of an exact percentage on it right this minute when we kind of don't know what is coming up. I mean we know that we have, we do still have some contractual services with certain service providers that that are going to be moving forward, we haven't lost that we're kind of re upping some other contract services. So again we it is very difficult to say it's sixtyforty or '50 5, What we are going to do is make sure that we are addressing all of the needs that come forward to us, addressing all of the initiatives that come forward to us, if we cannot then we'll be very honest about what trade offs might have to occur in order to be able to address those needs. I mean with everything there there are oftentimes some trade offs and and our commitment is to be very upfront about that if we're gonna run into some sort of situation like that.

Okay. Well I just you know that I'm sensitive about that topic and I've been watching that and just I know that the original concept was pushed by former council member Magdalena Carrasco and I just want to make sure that you know based on needed it's all about perspective. Right? People cannot be reached out by East Side businesses who may not understand how to reach out to city hall or what OED does and then people could think, oh well we're getting all our calls from other places so there isn't a need in East Side San Jose. So I just want to make sure that sensitive and you know if if Eastside businesses require people to be more boots on the ground that we do that and we don't just think okay things are good because nothing's happening over there.

Alright. Okay. And then I I guess in regards to I know that we're talking about BART phase two and there's going to be a business resource program. I know you guys have been working directly with them in regards to that. Are we confident that our businesses will survive the construction with these services? Or do we think it's not really meeting our goal for that?

I think at this point, Councillor Ortiz, it's a bit too early to say. We're looking at a twelve year construction engineering fit out process. So I think that we have to hold VTA to account for that business resource program and see the effectiveness as it's deployed. It hasn't yet started. So I think the next twelve months is a very important design phase and a very important kind of local business engagement phase that VTA, we encourage them.

We work closely with them to get out there and speak to the business community and to work with the recognized associations and business leaders on the East Side. So I think they're in a kind of looking and learning mode because they want to design a program that works. They've got four elements to their program. The most significant element is the business grant. And I think that's the point at which we want to see the detail and how that the mechanics of how that will operate and the effectiveness of that.

When we did the analysis of who the businesses are and where the businesses are, you can basically say about 70% of all the businesses along the line of BART Phase 2 are in downtown. So that's kind of where most of the impact is. But that doesn't mean that, for instance, on 28th Street and close to 28th Street where the proposed station is in Little Portugal, the impact won't be significant. So I'm not suggesting in any way that there's a sort of disproportional or uneven impact. But we will have to kind of track each station development on its own merits and see what the design engineering construction impacts are in relation to the businesses that are located there.

So this is going be a long term piece of work that involves everyone. And to come back to your question, we will have to hold VTA to account for the effectiveness of that program as we move through the construction phase. Coleman all the way around to Berryessa, it's a very significant it's the biggest construction engineering project in the city. They have somewhere like 700 businesses within a two fifty feet walk to anywhere along the construction line. So it is a very important project program for us to track for the next twelve years.

Okay. Well I know that due to the federal administration I kind of threw a wrench in that. So who knows whenever that is actually we actually get the money to finish construction project. I just hope that we continue to keep that in mind just given previous construction disruption how that impacts our brick and mortar businesses. And of course I want you know, BART here to San Jose, but I don't want every single mom and pop immigrant business to be wiped out at the same time that that happens. Happy to attend the opening of Jackie's Place. Saw your your team there. It was a great event. Delicious food. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing that the SoFra area really.

I think they were they're talking it the the Soul Street or something like that, the the community. They were calling it the Soul Street. So, hopefully, we could get some attention over there and really highlight some of our black owned businesses. So it was beautiful to see a woman owned black owned business open, here in downtown. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Of course, we have a long way to go with VTA as we still don't even have the total amount of funds designated, that is the delta, and and there's still still some question about the federal funds. But, very important, we get that update all the time and the up at VTA as a director, and we do, I personally have concerns about the effect on small businesses during construction. So we'll council member will be sure to keep an eye on that. Council member Kamay.

Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. I I really, really wanna thank the team for, your achievements. I think, you know, if we look back a year ago, we thought, well, maybe we kinda got there. But now you've raised my expectations. Right? So as you move through the neighborhood commercial corridors, right, we expect big things. So that's my sort of forewarning. But I think it's really been refreshing. It really is.

And I think that the community is ready to move things forward. And, you know, I think that during the COVID time frame, there were so many businesses that, didn't survive. And I think that, seeing that many of these areas are coming together as a group in the neighborhood, wanting to also reach out to, neighborhood associations even and and trying to work together, I think has been, very refreshing. So I I wanna thank the staff. I wanna thank everyone who's involved in that.

It's exciting being a liaison to the small business advisory committee. So much has happened and, you know, the programs that are being offered many times were not amplified as much. And now people are, oh I heard about, you know, illegal services. I heard about this. I heard about that.

And so I think that it is definitely something that, you know, I'm look I'm looking forward to more of. And just really wanna thank you. I know that the team is slimming up and that you're focusing, but I also know that you have a very good team. And I just wanna say thank you. This Friday, I went to the Rivian opening over at Santana Row, and it was great.

So anyone who has a Tesla, they're taking Teslas as a trade in. So they were trying to get me to Okay. Give my Tesla up. So but, I think that having having different options down, in the area, and it is a sales office, so, please frequent frequent the area of Santana Row and take a look at the the new Rivians. They're absolutely fabulous.

And I know from first knowledge because my son has one, and it's it's great. It's great. It's great. A great vehicle. So with that, I just wanna say thank you, and, I'd like to move acceptance of the annual report today. Second.

Thank you. Rivian versus Tesla. I don't know. Council member Mulcahy.

Thank you vice mayor and chair. Thanks for the report. Vic and Blagge appreciate it. You know this is one of my favorite topics. And we've talked a fair amount and I appreciate our back and forths conversation, especially recently.

This is the first opportunity to say thank you to Nathan, although you're not here to hear it. He sort of went out quietly, but certainly gave a lot to San Jose and remember him from his reporter days, and he was really a great reporter too. So very fond of Nathan, and I know he'll be doing well in Campbell. Just a few questions. Blagga, you had that sort of sizzle page that you brought up that you talked about the $2.8 to $1 cost.

Can you talk a little bit more about where you're pulling the data for that? Is that on the generation of NBD and BID and PBID monies to $1 spent? How are you coming up with that?

No, it's actually around sales tax revenue and some of the property tax revenue, but majority of it is sales tax revenue. So businesses that we've assisted and you know are a percentage of our staff salaries because not all of our staff time is spent you know solely helping business as we would like it to be, but there are other things like administration and performance measures reporting that we have to do. So that's we take a percentage of our time that we're actually doing outreach to the revenue that is generated.

Okay. So on the corporate outreach, you have Joe, Doug and Noel in that group from what I saw from your slide. Can you give us just a little flavor of like what does that mean? What is corporate outreach doing? Give us a few examples of what the day in the life of a corporate outreach staffer at City Hall looks like.

Yeah, of course. I would say it's a little bit of both receiving incoming calls about kind of assistance that medium or large sized companies are looking for whether that is they've got something in quite honestly with our colleagues at PBC and they're looking for some assistance with their permitting or development facilitation. And then on the other side it's kind of proactively reaching out you know we've got our lists of the the top sales tax generators, we've got our lists of the top employers, and so making sure that we are very proactive about engaging with them and kind of getting through a significant number of meetings. Some of them just check-in meetings, other of them you know we know that they're looking to expand or they're looking to move to a new location and helping them with that. Another kind of key aspect to the work that we've been doing is really our relationships with the commercial brokers because they're the ones that really have their pulse both on the tenant side and on the landlord side of you know kind of who's out there look either looking for space or who has space available.

And so making sure that we're arming them with the most recent information about the city services that that we provide, about you know whatever marketing collateral that we have, just helping them put San Jose's best foot forward. And I think you know part of the OED strategic work plan is really even focusing more and strengthening our relationships with commercial brokers even more. So that's a little bit of what we're doing. So combination of proactive and kind of incoming requests for assistance.

Okay. So on the proactive side, I would just say I've said it privately and I'll say it now publicly on the microphone. You know, I got into this role to be helpful in this way And even with the brokers that you're talking about, a lot of those people I've been working with for the last twenty five years use me, whether it's on those calls. You have lots of we're so,

do that. I

It's And super important able to help have your office be the conduit for us. Mhmm. You know, there's things that happen that I read about afterwards and think, hey, that would have been a really good opportunity for us, me, Mar office to be a part of. We're really trying to be very present on all new business openings and making sure that and in some cases, we've worked with the office and in some cases, that hasn't come together. I just think there's a real opportunity here for some of your spokespeople for the city to be a part of those openings, to be a part of that relationship building because it does matter that they grow and stay here.

So please, please use us. And then the you talked about an economic development analyst post. I remember like the first week I was here, Vic, I asked you for a list of the top employers in District 6 for example. What kind of data analyst work will this person be doing?

Yeah, you for the question. Councillor McKay here. I mean there's three or four major items at work. One is sort of citywide strategic analysis, who the businesses are, where the businesses are, what do we know about the businesses. Then we've got two major data sets we have to constantly try and manage well.

One is the business license data which tells us where 60,000 businesses are across the city, who they are, how long they've been there. That is a substantive task. And then area that I've taken responsibility for within the team over the last few months that this position will look after is sales tax because that in itself is a world that lives in its own kind of language and its own history. And we want to connect the two. We want to connect business license data and sales tax data.

And this position crucially is there to do that job. And the output of that that will come to you in future years is really about how we dashboard this. The information that comes out of that, how helpful is that to you in terms of decision making and policy recommendations. And in a sense, that's the gain. If there's a speculative end to this, it's really being at the forefront of how we apply AI to some of that and give us a much better platform given our limited resource.

We've talked about our limited headcount. So if we can use better tools, better software to make better use in an applied way. I think that's part of our management challenge over the next twelve months. But we need this position to give us a kind of professional lead in these roles on these big data sets. The other side to it is also some of the data that sits in the marketplace.

Whether it's Cushman and Wakefield reports or reports that come out of the governor's office that we need someone to look at it and say what does this mean for San Jose? How does San Jose compare to other regions and the rest of California? And kind of almost give us the heads up, what is it that we should be doing that we're not doing that we could do if we knew how to apply our data better?

I'm glad you talked about that because I really look at it as an aggregator. There's so much data out there available established organizations that matter to us, whether it be state organizations, brokerage houses, you know, we sort of talk about vacancy, but each different house you talk to you're going to get different number. So like let's figure out how that person is going to help us make sense for what matters for San Jose data purposes, right. So sort of looking at that person as that skill set being an aggregator who can interpret a variety of different available data sets that are out there. I think I have just a couple of minutes.

Want to switch gears to the CBID for the Alameda that's coming to us tomorrow. I just want to call out Kat and Annie who are sitting here in the audience today and your teams who have gotten them through this process. I want to just talk about the people that can work for San Jose. There's resources that go into the consultant contracts that deal with our bids and P bids. Do you have an approved set of who can work on these or is that on an as needed basis we go out to the marketplace and ask for a response to an RFP?

It's an as and when. We go out.

It's a what?

As and when. If we need a consultant, we issue an RFP. They're very competitive in the field of work that we engage in and that we make decisions on that basis. The only other way in which we function in this field of working with neighborhoods is because we like to ask the business community in that neighborhood what their preferences are and how they like to see things is sometimes we may award a grant to that association because they want to directly manage the relationship with the service provider. So that's the sort of A model, RFP. And the B model is a grant. But we generally speaking go down the RFP route 80% of the time.

And, that's my time. Thank you.

Thank you council member. Vic, I have some follow-up questions regarding the analyst. You mentioned something that concerned me a little bit, and that is that you were looking at three areas, but two of them were connecting the business license tax that a business pays to the sales tax. But there are many businesses, service businesses, that do not pay a sales tax. So how are you accounting for them?

I had a mortgage company. We didn't pay a sales tax, but we paid a business license tax. So, in a tool that is useful to a council member is the businesses in our district, when when we ask for a list of the business in the district, we get a huge list that includes businesses that I would call them quasi businesses. They have a business license tax, but they're a trustee of an estate, and that isn't someone who's ever going to expand their business. Most likely, they're unwinding their business.

So, how can we, or how will the analyst be used to make those data points more effective for both your use and our use as the council member in the district?

I'm gonna take this one from from Vic. So you're you're absolutely right. There's a lot of cleaning of the data that has to be done and there are a variety of different sources that we pull from and then we use our small business team who's on the ground when we're working in a certain neighborhood to kind of do the personal touch and the kind of you know the eye test because they know a lot of the folks. So the key is really in this data analyst position having someone that understands that the data needs to be cleaned, it's not always kind of just there and accurate, and then working very closely with multiple data sources as well as with our team to do that checking. And so oftentimes we get like you said a very very long list, we are able to take a look at it and say well this doesn't apply to this situation.

Sometimes we miss you know we're human but but it's kind of a whole process. It's not just a you can go to one place, do one pull, and you're gonna have the the most accurate data.

I I appreciate that. It's a lot of work to analyze the list glean out the ones that aren't going to be useful for our purposes. So I'm I'm glad you're on it and and understand the difficulty, and and how we use it is by being able to contact our businesses and see how we can help them be successful, or what's in their way that is preventing them from being successful, which leads

I could just add to that. I think one of the other things that we are doing now is working much more closely with our finance department on the information that is collected, you know because business license kind of a lot of the information is self reported and is voluntary, and so we're trying to to let our colleagues in finance know how important it is for us to get an email, how important it is for us to have you know accurate counts of employees for a variety of of different kind of exercises initiatives that that we are you know both doing ourselves and working with the different council offices on. So that's really great. Our folks in finance I think are understanding that more and more now.

Well, and maybe maybe even recoding the different businesses such as, I use trustee as an example, there's thousands of trustees who are just managing their own personal property, and you don't want we don't wanna see those. We don't need access to those, and if you could have a category on the business license tax or wherever that categorizes them, then you can take them off the list. Then you don't have to hand sort them in any way. Two other questions regarding small businesses, and one is regards to the free legal advice. How do we communicate that to our community?

We provide information that enables any council member and their staff to have the link. There is an online digital link that would take a business owner directly to the book an appointment page online and the business owner can make that appointment online very easily. And Elevate community have a commitment to reply within forty eight hours to any email received on that line. And Carlos, our public information manager within the division has actively promoted the service in a number of different ways online. And we can also include it in any updates to each of the 10 council members and your staff when we provide an update on all the courses and programs and events that are being offered by the different independent contractors and organizations.

So I'm very happy to put that, ensure that is a regular feature the monthly updates too.

Vic, I would suggest. I didn't know this existed. So, I would suggest that you put it at the top of your email. And, even in the regard column where it says free legal advice for small businesses, push this out. That way my staff isn't gonna miss it, and and my staff may know this already, but I'm not gonna miss it either.

So it it's we don't want we wanna help our small businesses. I didn't know this existed, and so getting it out to the council offices and then to the public, and maybe even letting the chamber of commerce know might really be helpful. The other question I had was about the SBA Ally and the Disability Access Improvement Grant. How many people have we helped with that? Or businesses?

I'd have to ask Juan Barelli who manages that to give you the number. Inquiries for the grant, but we don't have a lot of grants issued.

Why don't we have Juan come down and give us quick update

on and as the we are approaching, thank you, I'd like to know if we have inquiries why we're not moving, what prevents them from moving forward.

Is this on? Okay. Hi, everyone. Juan Barelli, the City of San Jose Small Business Ally with the Office of Economic Development. So the grant we have had successfully awarded and completed grant programs with two applicants.

We have three currently in process. And we do have a number of large number of inquiries about the grant. But like leading a horse to water and getting them to drink, it's oftentimes challenging for them to turn around and submit the applications and actually apply for the grant. I think some of the challenges are they kinda feel that they haven't been hit with an accessibility lawsuit in years. It's not gonna happen to them until it happens to them, and then they panic.

When the grant was first initiated, it started during right before the pandemic started. So businesses were focused on maintaining their businesses, surviving, paying their rent, paying their employees, not paying out of pocket to make accessibility improvements. After the pandemic, we expanded the grant to include the cost to make the actual improvements to help them make the actual improvements, and we've had three more applicants since then. We have a number of businesses that I met with recently for Alum Rock Village Business Association, for example. Three or four businesses that were very, very interested.

I met with them two weeks ago, and I have not heard back from them. So we have promoted it at every single business association meeting that we go to. We have had special workshops and trainings in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese in person, online. It's just been really challenging to get businesses to drink the water and to apply for the grants.

I I appreciate that you're still out there advocating for the program and trying to get people to, make their businesses ADA accessible. It's it's extremely important, but understand if they, don't come to you and ask for the grant, then there's not much you can do. But thank you for for working on, and thank you for answering my questions. I appreciate that. Thank you. That's it for me. Why don't we vote? Thank you. The next item is a work to future activities annual report. Thank you for that presentation.

Hi Jeff, welcome.

Thank you and good afternoon Chairperson Foley and City Council members. I'm Jeff Ruster, the Assistant Director with the Office of Economic Development. And I am joined today by the dynamic duo of Sangeeta Doral, the Director of the Work the Future program and Ruby Carrasco, the Manager of the San Jose Works program that falls within the overall umbrella of programs that Work the Future operates. And in just a couple of moments, they'll present to you kind of the key accomplishments of Work the Future and its programs over the last twelve months and also talk to you about some key issues and some new initiatives that we'll be rolling out in the upcoming months. I just wanted to provide two quick points of context.

As many of the longer standing members here on the committee know, a lot of our presentations are filled with numbers, OKRs, in terms of clients served, people we got jobs for and percentage of people that got jobs in high wage, high growth occupations. Those are all really important in terms of being input, output and outcome indicators. But I think if you ask the leadership team here or if you asked our board what they're most proud of and what they think the most impact is, it's these numbers compared with who we serve. The majority of our clients are unstably housed. The majority of our clients have two or more barriers to employment and the vast majority of our clients come from low resource census tracts.

So really it's these people. I think the imagery of what our client is, it's that person who's that one paycheck away from losing their car, from being evicted from their apartment, or losing their home. So as a board, as a leadership team, we feel our job is not just to get someone a job, but to get someone a job that pays enough a living wage that has future growth potential. So they have a fighting chance of not only surviving here in a high cost of living environment like Silicon Valley, but hopefully thriving with their families. The second thing is that any success that we might have, we need to give credit where credit is due.

And that really is due to the partnerships that we have both inside and outside of City Hall. We work with many community based organizations including San Jose Conservation Corps, San Jose Job Corps, Bill Wilson Center, Destination Home and his partners. Sangeeta will actually talk to you about a learning program, a pilot program that we have in support of the city's homeless implementation program. Also with departments such as Parks and Rec, the San Jose Public Library, the Youth Empowerment Alliance, we work very closely with them on our youth programs and also with the San Jose Works program. And then just kind of as I pass it over to Ruby and to Sangeeta, with all sincerity I really do want to thank all of Council because you have been instrumental in our success.

You have gotten the word out when we are doing job fairs. You've walked the neighborhoods with us when we're going door to door. You have referred businesses to us that when they're hiring or when they're laying off. And you've hosted our San Jose Works youth. So you are truly the trusted intermediaries. And really as kind of the hesitation, the fear and the communities has risen once again. I think your advocacy really will be much needed and continue to be needed in the months and years to come. So thank you and let me hand it over to Sangeeta.

Good afternoon, council members. I'm Sangeeta Durral, Work to Future Director. I am pleased to share an update on Work to Future activities. Work to Future's focus is connecting our clients with workforce services leading to high wage, high growth occupations, especially for those who have multiple barriers to employment. As the table shows, Work2Future placed a total of seventeen thirty five clients, nine thirty five through the WIOA program, and 800 through the San Jose Works program.

Of the nine thirty five WIOA placements, five fifty five were adult and dislocated clients and three eighty young adult clients. 82% of these placements were in high wage, high growth occupations. Of the 800 San Jose Works placements, three seventy five were through the subsidized program and four twenty five through this unsubsidized program. We will now share details on the two programs. Starting with WIOA, we are on track to serve 1,200 clients this fiscal year with a variety of workforce services.

80% of the clients are BIPOC and sixty five percent have multiple barriers to employment. As mentioned before, 82% of the clients are placed in high wage, high growth occupations and as shown in the pie chart, the distribution within the sectors are as 13% in information technology, 17% in healthcare, 28% in business and accounting, 16% in advanced manufacturing, 19% in construction and trades, and 7% in other sectors with the majority being in education. Examples of occupations are network and software engineers, accountant system and database administrators, nursing manufacturing engineers, and technicians. And as shown in the table here, here are some examples of employers within these sectors and to name a few, Applied Materials, Western Digital, PayPal, Kaiser, Sutter Health, and PG and E. Lastly, on WIOA, it was under consideration for reauthorization, and it's yet to be finalized.

One provision that is expected to be included is the increased training requirement from 30 to 50%. And so, order to ensure a smooth transition, we have started planning exploring strategies to mitigate negative impact on client services. Our goal is to continue to build and strengthen existing partnerships to leverage resources. And as Jeff mentioned earlier, our partners are critical to the success of our programs. Our partners like the Bill Wilson Center, Metro Ed, Job Corps, Conservation Corps, various departments within the city, the county, community colleges, Department of Rehabilitation, Employment Development Department, adult education, and many other community and faith based organizations have been critical to the success of our programs, including some programs that we have launched in support of the homeless implementation plan.

I will now pass it on to Ruby Carrasco, who will share details on the San Jose Works program.

Good afternoon members of the council. Ruby Carrasco, program manager of San Jose Works. San Jose Works has successfully placed 800 clients into employment opportunities and next steps in their careers. Which of those three seventy five gaining paid work experience and skill building, while four twenty five secondured unsubsidized placements through our job market. Through our paid work work experience, a 100% of our participants were trained in skills related to and tied to high wage, high growth sectors, ensuring our youth are not just working, but working towards stability opportunity.

In addition, 90% of our clients came through us through the Youth Empowerment Alliance, Parks and Recs, or live in a priority neighborhood that face persistent challenges, reaching the youth who need these opportunities the most. Within ninety three completion rate, our clients are showing up, sticking with it, and finishing strong, and thanks to our community rooted support and partnerships. Here is a picture of our March 25 job and resource fair held at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, a beautiful and culturally significant space right in the heart of the community. We brought over 30 resources representatives, creating a one stop hub for job seekers and families to connect with employment opportunities, supportive services, and guidance. Through our following up efforts, 60 sorry, we're proud to align with the Children and Youth Master Plan by placing 140 young people internships across city departments, including several placed directly at the city council offices.

These experiences not only build career readiness, they build civic awareness and connection to local government. Through our AI training initiative with Eastside Union High School District, 70 clients earned paid internship with leading tech companies like Roku and Nvidia, gaining hands on experience in one of the most in demand sectors today. In a pioneering step towards equity and second chance, we launched an in custody pilot program where 25 participants received career advising and job readiness training while incarcerated. This is a model for early intervention and future reentry success. And lastly, meeting people where they are.

We hosted six job fairs in our low resource census neighborhoods, areas in highest needs bringing opportunity directly to the community. Through our follow-up efforts, 61 participants responded and every single one reported a successful outcome. Of those 29 secondured jobs in high wage and high growth occupations, demonstrating that our program doesn't just help people get work, it sets them on a career path with real economic 32 of our participants took the next step in their education, with 26 enrolled in college and six in a vocational program, and notably 13 are doing both, working and pursuing education, showing the level of resilience and drive cultivating through this program. These long term outcomes speak the quality of support, the strength of training, and most importantly, the determination of the individuals we serve. We are proud to introduce Jacob Topete, a Mount Pleasant High School graduate and one of our very first interns in our San Jose Works mentorship program.

Growing up in a gang impacted neighborhood, Jacob never let the circumstance define him. With grit, talent, and support of our long term partner with JP Graphics, Jacob went from intern to employee and is now a student at San Jose State Unified in the arts and Design program. He's even launched his own Etsy store and continues to grow his brand, a true example of what happens when opportunity meets determination. And I will now pass on to Sangeeta so she can introduce Jacob.

We now conclude our presentation with a few words from Jacob, who is here with us today to share his success story. Okay.

So hi. My name is Jacob Topete. You know, I go to school across the street, and then I work at JP Graphics, you know, pretty much every day. And I feel like San Jose works has really helped me because it's opened up like a whole bunch of doors. Like, I the in the internship was originally from marketing, but being there also opened the door to printing. And then from there, it opened it up to sales. So that's what I'm currently I'm doing right now. I'm doing a lot of sales. And then I go to JPGraphics. I run the job myself.

And then most of the time, either the client comes, picks it up, or I go and personally deliver it to them. So I think it's really opened up and really given me a real, like, hands on experience to, like, the printing world, sales world, as well as, you know, going to school at the same time, you know, chasing the degree. And I feel like I've been able to get both worlds, and I've had immense support. You know, they've really opened a lot of doors for me. Like, this is the first time I've ever been here, and then, you know, I'm talking to all you guys as well today.

So, yeah, I'm I'm grateful. I like to thank everybody at San Jose Works, and then I like to thank my boss, Joan, as well because, you know, I I wouldn't I wouldn't be here today without all of their support and help. Thank you.

Jacob, that was awesome. Thank you very much for being here. And I wondered why Joan was here. And now I know why Joan was here. Thank you. Are you finished with your presentation? Okay. Great. Thank you. Let me get in touch.

Yeah. That's Jacob, you're a wonderful example of someone who's dedicated on to lifting themselves up, getting the best education they can, working for a fabulous woman owned business, by the way, who's extremely successful. She's a great person to learn from. She I've worked with her many, many years, and she has the most positive attitude that you are truly blessed to be able to work with her. So I'm I'm so glad you found home there and found success there. And thank you for the wonderful presentation and the work that you are all doing. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

Yes. We had two cards submitted. One for Jacob. I know he just spoke. And Joan Escobar, please make your way down to the podium. You will have two minutes. Thank you.

So I am the owner of JP Graphics. We're a certified women owned, certified green printer in Santa Clara. I also own a wine called Idle Time Wines, and I'm out there trying to prove everything is better with print, including wine. You know, about eight years ago, Anthony came over with for City of Works offering you these paid interns. You know, it's one of those things where somebody's offering you things for free and you don't always take it. Right? You don't always know what it is. But I've been very active of trying to bring youth into this thing. We keep throwing things back. I'm very outspoken about we need to bring back trade schools, we need to bring back passion and arts and etcetera.

So I accepted it the first time and I'm lucky enough that I have a marketing girl that's sort of arranged. She did all the interviewing with them. She did it. And they bring them to me and I'm just supposed to inspire them. And so this has been my fourth one.

In fact, Jacob came to me, I wanna say four years ago. He came in as a junior and we had one of them that was doing social media. He saw all the equipment, did that kind of stuff, and he went away. I would take them out to lunch afterwards, tell them that as they went through, inspire them that they had they could have anything they wanted to print, their own business cards, anything they want, graduation programs, whatever. But inspiring them to dream bigger, think more, that there's more to it because most people think that I'm a FedEx Kinkos when you walk in the shop and it's you know, I have to get over that myself.

But then about, I wanna say, two years ago, Jacob sends me an email and says, hey, Joan. I got accepted into the San Jose State program to go to the marketing or to go to design school. Could I come work for you while I'm going there? And I said, Jacob, not only can you come work for me, but let's get you those scholarships that are out there for the Visual Media Alliance. So what I'm saying is we need to these programs need to bring these youth to come in and work to our local businesses. And then from there, these local businesses need to get them scholarships and the programs to get over there to help them get where they want. I I inspired him. I said, you know what? Start an Etsy store. People just don't realize. Thanks.

Push this? Joan, you're Yeah.

And let's continue to push this. I know my two minutes is up, but I want to say that this program is probably the most inspirational thing. That if we could get more small businesses, they're our future work programs. He's my guy. And I guarantee you, I get him for four years, we both win.

Thank you. You're inspired.

Please fund this big time. It's very good program.

Thanks, Joan. I appreciate it.

More speakers?

That is all.

Okay. Great. Thank you, Joan, for your passion. I appreciate it. Moving on to council member Ortiz.

Thank you, vice mayor. First off, I just wanna thank Work2Future for their work on numerous workforce development programs, making sure that residents, especially our youth, have access to high road careers is one of my priorities as a councilmember, and I'm excited to serve this year as the liaison to the Work to Future, Development Board. As I've said at council recently, our workforce is an important part of the discussion when we talk about, economy. And it's essential that as large employers come into the city of San Jose and medium sized employers, whether that's Google, Nvidia, or Amazon, we make sure we're giving the tools to our residents to be prepared for those type of jobs. It's not necessarily a hand out, right?

It's a hand up because these employers need skilled and trained professionals and our youth need these type of jobs. And I just want to thank Mr. Topete for being here. I'm your council member. I represent the East Side Of San Jose. I actually am a graduate of a workforce development program. A business took a chance on me and that experience really opened up my life and you know ten years later I'm sitting on the San Jose City Council. These workforce development programs really do a lot to empower youth, especially youth who are never exposed to businesses whether that's corporate or the small business environment they can really be enlightening. So I can't thank the work enough that Work the Future does. Does.

I do have a few questions. So I wanted to ask, I know that you know our programs whether it's San Jose works or other workforce development programs for youth, they're not the longest right. I think some of them are two months, some of them for a summer. How are we working with, I know you mentioned other training programs, how are we working with other non profits and workforce development organizations to make sure there's handoffs and to make sure that you know our youth are continuing down that pipeline and don't go on off ramps but go on ramps to other opportunities. Well

Council Member Ortiz thank you for the question. We are working very, very closely with Bill Wilson Center and our homeless implementation plan, and offering a lot of career services on-site, working very closely with the case managers there. We're sort of implementing this case management model called the shared case management, where we're sort of looking at it from a holistic standpoint and looking at all the barriers that they have and using this shared case management model to help them with that upward ramp to paid work experience program and then moving on to unsubsidized placements. So, working really, really closely with the staff over at Bill Wilson Center. Similarly, we are working very closely with MetroEd for our in school youth program and offering similar services in terms of career pathways, career path for exposure.

And MetroEd has been very, very instrumental in helping bring some employers to the table for the paid work experience program. We're also looking at working closely with other entities like Jamboree Housing to offer similar services. We're working very closely with San Jose Conservation Corps, Job Corps to offer similar workforce services so we can have this ecosystem in providing career services.

How about programs like Pivotal or Year Up?

We haven't worked with these two entities yet, but one of the things, one of our strategies in terms of leveraging resources is to look at new partnerships and that's something probably we will definitely look at for the next program year.

Great. Appreciate that. I know that not all participants get a job directly afterwards and so I want to make sure that, you know, it's good to say that somebody's enrolled in college, but you know college isn't the one size fits all approach and so I agree with business owner Joan when we really need to start thinking about apprenticeships and trades programs that are really getting people into the workforce and getting that hands on skill. Because we got people getting degrees and they still get into a job position and they don't know what they're doing. It's much better to have somebody get that work experience in a high in demand and high job position.

How are we reaching out to new companies that come into the city of San Jose? How how is work the future making sure they are being a part of the conversation when employers are looking at, you know, the city of San Jose whether that's reaching out to OED or the chamber or other entities? How are we making sure you guys are a part of the conversation?

Okay. So one of our goals is to engage with businesses. Last year our goal was to engage with 300 businesses, and we were able to achieve that goal. And one of the services that we provide these small, medium sized companies is helping them with their hiring and recruitment efforts. They are also invited to our job fairs. We work very closely with them. If they're interested in hosting some of our work sites in terms of paid work experience programs, they've also participated in that. So, really continuing to have that conversation in terms of all the services we have, especially centered around their recruitment and hiring needs.

Who does that outreach?

We have a dedicated business team.

Our Separate from the corporate outreach team that we were talking about earlier?

Yes. We work very closely with the business services team at that just presented. But we also have Work2Future also has a dedicated business services team that work very, very closely with businesses and engaging them in again with the services we have.

Great, great. I'm passionate about this, this why I'm asking so many questions. I know there was a slide that had a list of different businesses that were that was in your PowerPoint deck. I forgot which slide it was. Do you know which one I'm talking about? Yes. Number four. I think it's number four. Maybe not number four. There we go. So are these all partners of the Work to Future program or are they just employers in the city of San Francisco?

They are employers, but many of them are also partners. For example Applied Materials, Western Digital, Nokia are partners in helping us launch our semiconductor apprenticeship program. We have PG and E who is also a partner. Through our PG and E, we've had a longstanding relationship with PG and E in offering pre apprenticeship training program. We have a 90% or more placement rate with PG and E.

And, some of the other companies are we work very closely with the Office of Education in providing, again, some of those paid worksite experience programs. See. Roku and Nvidia, we a program there as well with the paid work experience program. Lockheed Martin is something that we're going to be exploring this program here to offer again some semiconductor manufacturing apprenticeship program. We're also in the process of launching a healthcare initiative with Kaiser.

Yes. So, we're doing a lot of work with some of these employers, but many of them are companies that our clients get placements.

And Councilmember, sometimes they start off as partners. I know like a lot of the companies that Ruby with for the younger youth, the freshmen and sophomores are really doing it more out of community spirit, but then as they kind of realize kind of the potential candidates that we can offer, they become employers. Similarly, some of our board members actually originally were our clients. They attended a job fair. We did an on the job training program with them and then they decided to join the board and become more actively engaged with Work to Future.

Okay. That sounds good. I know historically corporate perception WIOA funded programs hasn't always been great. They do not see whether regardless of Work Your Future whatever program it is just having worked for a workforce development program and worked with employers they've just had a negative perspective on that. Are we doing anything to you know court these businesses? Are we you know bringing them to meet with graduates of the program? How are we utilizing test cases like the gentleman who just talked about his success as we pursue these partnerships?

Yes we are. We go to a lot of these graduating events. For example PG and E just had a graduating event. Semiconductor manufacturing that we launched last year we had a graduating event, so we do invite employers as well as our clients to attend these events. But I do understand that we need to do more of these, and we are planning to have a lot more events at our career center at Las Plumas, so that the employers can see all the work that's going on at the career center, get to meet with the career advisors, and see if there are anything that they can share in terms of their hiring practices and what have you.

So, we're going to be doing a lot of that. And we're also going to be doing some customized, specialized recruitment events, inviting a few employers within the sectors that I just mentioned earlier, and sort of having this very concerted effort to address the needs of that particular sector.

Sorry, one other thing if I may. We actually are convening a group of advanced manufacturing companies and also through a separate convening healthcare companies where we're working with them directly and there's community colleges, the university is present to really develop a true partnership so we understand their needs, start designing programs together with them, and then the clients that we have can be really referred to these employer driven programs.

In a perfect world I think as companies are coming coming into this city and as they ask for whether that's tax incentives or any sort of breaks so that they see San Jose as a viable location. I'm hoping that we could say sure we're happy to give you those incentives but please have a conversation with the work the future because you know one of the main reasons why we have this major income inequality is because we have lack of access to jobs. Proof is in the pudding because even there's data that shows that even young black and brown men and women with degrees, if they go through the interview process, they still are not getting jobs at the same rate as individuals who are not black and brown. And really people without degrees will be considered for jobs before black and brown individuals. Could you know reference that study to individuals.

But I think it's very important. And then finally I know we hosted a 100 interns or a 100 plus interns here at the city of San Jose. How many of those interns have we hired?

So right now in just the last year about some of our seniors that graduated, you guys have hired roughly about 20 within across the departments. We're talking about city hall, library, and PRNS does an amazing job about hiring the jobs that they not only refer but that they also host.

Alright. Thank you. That's a good number. Appreciate it.

Council member Casey.

Hey. Jacob, do you mind coming back down again? Sorry. While you're coming down. So just a question. You're obviously a success story, so I'm interested in understanding how you even heard about the program and got involved in the first place.

Okay. Yeah. So when I was in Mount Pleasant, it was online school at the time because we were on Zoom. So my multimedia teacher, mister Kavada, he actually told me like, hey, you know, do this. It might be online, so it might be a cool way to make money while you're at home. But it ended up being, you know, in person. I know I did the inter interview online, but then the actual job, you know, at JPGraphics was in person. So I think in person was better I got.

Okay. So your teacher just put it on your radar and you followed up. Anybody else that you know in your class, your grade, your neighborhood do anything like this as well or are you the only one?

I know the girl that worked because it was two interns two interns at JP Graphics. She was also I think a year older than me and at Mount Pleasant as well.

Okay. And she heard about it through the school as well?

Yes. Yeah. I was school.

Okay. That's perfect. Thank you. Appreciate it. And thank you John for really digging in and helping out. We really appreciate it. Thank you Jacob. Mhmm. I wanna thank Jeff and Sangeeta for meeting with me last week. Really appreciate you guys taking the time. This is one of the types of service I think that more people in our community need to learn about. My concern though is and my office is trying to put together a day or some sort of program or event where we make this known to our district. But in terms of your bandwidth, like how many Jacobs or folks coming in can you guys handle? Is there a concern that and I'm hoping all of my council colleagues will do something similar to what we're trying to do in terms of creating inflow to you guys. But is there any issue with you guys not having the bandwidth to accommodate the additional flow?

Yeah. The way I would respond to that is, and I'm going to use Ruby's term, we have kind of a no wrong door approach with our unsubsidized program. So that's a program where we're placing into employment a minimum of four twenty five youth every year. We're not paying for their salaries like we do with the subsidized program. So I think really all that you can do to really kind of drive the youth, I mean kind of refer them to the job fairs, specialized recruitments, to Ruby and her team that are located over on the East Side of the Las Plumas facility.

Those youth will still get workshops in terms of job readiness workshops, financial literacy, leadership training. And we can actually pave some supportive services, transportation for example, so they can make it through those first four to six weeks of their employment to kind of get them up and going. So I would say we have much more capacity there relative to say the subsidized youth where we're paying their salaries and that is subject to budget availability.

Now is this information being provided to each of these schools and that's probably how the instructor made Jacob aware of it?

So we've actually had a long standing partnership with Eastside Union High School District in their career pathways, which are now considered their electives. We've been in partnership with them since 2016, where they would refer about 60 to 100 of their career pathway students into our program, mostly juniors and seniors, that is how Jacob was able to hear about this experience. But Eastside Union High School District again, one of our long term partnerships, we depend highly on them as kind of the pipeline for youth referrals, so making sure that we are not only accepting those youth that are in these pathways, but also the ones who are really in need of our programs that are not going to be exposed as easily as students from other high school districts or whatnot.

And council member two, I think a key part of this referral youth hearing about our program is through the Youth Empowerment Alliance. As Ruby mentioned, 90% of those youth are coming through Parks and Recs, the Youth Empowerment Alliance or live in a priority neighborhood. So I think there's different kind of specific referral channels that we have and partnerships that are long standing. This is our eleventh year Ruby that's coming up for for, San Jose works.

Awesome. Well, I I really appreciate it. Enjoy hearing about what you're doing. Excited about trying to spread the word in our district as well. Thank you. Thank

you. Council member Kamay.

Thank you. I want to say congratulations, Jacob. And, you know, I know that there are gonna be lots and lots of things, for you, good things in the future. I wanna say thank you, Joan. You know, your participation is tremendously key. This could not happen without people like you, and so thank you so much. I wanna thank the team. I know the work that you've been doing. I was liaison previously and certainly it's something that is just amazing, absolutely amazing. So thank you for the report.

Thank you for the work. I wanted to just ask in terms of the training requirement that has been increased to 50%. How much impact is that? Is it like a little deal or medium deal? Is it a big deal? You know I was just curious because when when something gets imposed on you obviously that means that if you do this then you can't do that. So I'm I'm just wondering how that's gonna affect the work.

I think it's a medium to big deal because we are looking strategies to see how we can mitigate impact on client services. It is also a time maybe for us to kind of look at our service delivery model and be a little bit more strategic in terms of the services we have, but without impacting the clients we serve, because we do serve a lot of clients that have many, many barriers to employment. So, it is a big deal, I think there are things that we can do to help streamline our services, some of the processes without again affecting the quality of the programs. So, we're just waiting to see, but we've been aggressively planning for all contingencies. Yes.

And, And our hope is that we can continue to serve the clients we serve, especially those that need our services the most. Yeah.

Understand that this is an annual report to CED, but I think that if if this change turns out to be a bigger deal or something that needs to be addressed, I would, you know, sort of encourage letting us know before the whole whole year goes through because I think that you've had such great success. And having to shift may be something that, you know I know that this year has been very unexpected, unexpected, right, in many ways. And so, you know, maybe, you know, mid year or something like that, at some point to inform us of of how this requirement is is impacting you. If it isn't doesn't turn out to be a big thing, well then okay, the annual report will be fine. But I just put it out there so that we at least are informed of of that impact.

And council member on that note, if this 50% is included within the wheel reauthorization that Congress is still looking at at this moment, it would not probably go into effect until FY twenty six-twenty seven.

Oh, so you have a little bit of time.

We would have time to adjust. Nonetheless, I'm sorry, what Sangeet and the team will be doing is gradually moving towards that 50% requirement in this upcoming year. So we're going to increase the amount of funds that we spend on training by about 10% to be kind of at the midway point in terms of where we are with that 50% requirement is, because it is a significant change to the service delivery model. And we do believe that we'll be able to adapt. Our biggest concern would be the impact it would have on harder to serve clients and stably housed because they really do need intensive case management before they're even ready to go to a community college or to some training organization.

That's the biggest concern that we have. We think we'll be able to maintain the numbers, but we really want to stay focused on those clients that have again multiple barriers to employment.

What is the percentage at this point?

About 30%.

About 30%. Okay. So you do have a ways to go. Alright. Well, thank you so much. I I really appreciate it. I don't know if was there a motion to Nope. I'd like to make a motion to accept the annual report on Work to Futures activities accomplishments.

Is there a second?

Second. Okay.

Thank you, council member Mulcahy. One thing I would like to add is that in the March, we approved the work plan, the economic strategic work plan for OEDCA, which included four objectives. We had a fifth objective that was a memo submitted by council member Campos, and it was referred to this committee. This commit staff is working on an MBA that will address the fifth objective, and or the requested fifth objective and take into consideration budding budgeting, staffing, and trade offs. So we'll see that, coming forward in the budget process.

I just wanted to mention that. With that, let's vote. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation, and I know this was your first time. You did a fabulous job, ladies.

Next

is Carlos with with our economic development activities report.

Alright. Saludos to the committee and members of the public. My name is Carlos Velasquez, and I'm the public information manager for the office of economic development and cultural affairs. My colleagues have shared so much of the great work we've done in the last year, already, but I will be sharing a little bit more detail of our office's activities these last three months. Black and women's history months were this past February and March, and our office collaborated with the city manager's communications team to highlight on social media, the San Jose women and African American entrepreneurs who inspire us.

On this slide are some of the spotlights we collaborated on, including Kim Coleman of Nefertiti Beauty Salon on North Capitol Avenue in the East Side, and the mother daughter team of Annie and Catherine, who I think are still here, and who run a business development agency based on the Alameda. We also highlighted the women leaders in our local business associations. Seven of the 11 business associations we work with are led by women, including Tamiko Rast of the Japantown Business Association, who you can see on the slide. Tamiko and the rest of these women are all volunteers, many of them small also small business owners themselves. We always welcome ideas or collaborations to highlight more entrepreneurs and business owners, especially as we prepare for Asian American and Pacific Islander month and pride month in June.

You can see on the slide a URL for an online forum where committee members can and the public can submit their ideas. Connecting with and bringing together our small business owner community to discuss important issues and share resources is a big part of our team's work. I think you heard a little bit about it today, but our team conducted extensive outreach this past quarter to promote the city's disability access improvement grants, which supports small businesses through grants that help pay for a certified access specialist report and to hire professionals to design and remove ADA barriers. As Juan mentioned earlier, our outreach included a Vietnamese language presentation to small businesses in the Little Saigon community and a Spanish language presentation to the Alum Rock Village Business Association, where we did receive interest from several business owners. In March, we also hosted the latest meeting of the small business advisory committee whose mission is to advocate for small businesses in San Jose.

Agenda items included a new policy agenda for this for California small businesses, a discussion on services provided by the city's planning, building, and code enforcement department, and an update on an all Spanish entrepreneurship program for women by our partner Prosperity Lab. Thank you to committee members, Kameh and Ortiz, for, serving as a city council liaisons to the committee. These meetings are open to the public, and the next one is scheduled for June 6 in City Hall. Strengthening relationships with companies in growth sectors like artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing are a priority for the city, and I'm glad to share some recent highlights of this work. In March, in collaboration with the mayor's office, we helped launch an AI startup incentive grant program, which provides up to $50,000 for early stage AI startups that establish headquarters or operations here in San Jose.

We've had a tremendous response with 80 applications received and still a few weeks to go before the application deadline. We plan to select and announce the red grantees later this summer. And on April 2, we celebrated a ribbon cutting at City Hall for the launch of Plug and Play's AI Center of Excellence, the first AI focused incubator of its kind here in downtown San Jose. Along with the grants program, this AI center will support the existing community of AI startups in downtown as well as support our team's efforts to attract more startups to San Jose. And on April 11, economic development staff were on hand for a press conference and tour of Nokia's new semiconductor fabrication facility on San Ignacio in South San Jose.

Thank you to committee member Casey for, also being in attendance along with, mayor Mahan and congressman Panetta. Last year, with assistance and support from our office, Infinera, which was acquired by and now known as Nokia, was approved for a $93,000,000 federal grant to support the development of this 40,000 square foot facility and a secondary one in Pennsylvania. I know my colleagues shared a bit of our efforts in downtown earlier. I wanted to add a few recent highlights. I'm happy to share that the 92 pedestrian oriented and bike focused way finding signs that we discussed with this committee back in February have now all been installed along with an updated walking map.

These were put up just in time for NVIDIA's GTC conference and its 25,000 attendees. Early stats about the conference reported increase in hotel stays, visitors from out of state, and restaurant activity with more than 13,000 dining visits reported among downtown's top restaurants, which represents a 132% increase over last year's conference timeline. We hope that this new signage supported these great numbers. And we continue to celebrate new businesses to downtown. This last quarter, we cut the ribbon on some of the businesses that you see on this slide, including the return of a downtown farmer's market now happening every Wednesday at Hammer Theatre Plaza.

And council member Ortiz mentioned earlier, we had a beautiful inspiring launch of Jackie's Place on 1st Stent San Carlos yesterday as part of the Sofa Street Fair. Our cultural affairs side is known as the largest funder of the arts in the South Bay and facilitator of hundreds of outdoor public events, but they also produce events too. This past Valentine's Day, they hosted a crowd of college students, families, and couples for Sonic Loveway, an evening of live music from Opera San Jose, Symphony San Jose Chorale, and the Silicon Valley Youth Harp and Ensemble, all in front of the Sonic Runway light installation at City Hall Plaza. I attended with my family, and there was a line all evening for the free professional Valentine's Day photos offered in front of Sonic Runway. In March, we had more than a 100 people attend the South Bay Arts Summit inside the rotunda, an event organized by SV Creates in our cultural affairs team that featured panels on the intersection of art and entrepreneurship, such as navigating contracts, pricing and selling your arts, and tax policies for art and artists.

On this slide, there are some upcoming events that you can see, which that are created that our cultural affairs team is organizing in which includes the final days of We Create four zero eight, which has been a campaign that inspires San Jose residents to express themselves creatively every day this month. A special tip is that tomorrow tomorrow's prompt will be butterfly scavenger hunt. Residents who designed and submitted a butterfly pattern during an earlier prompt this month will be able to view those butterflies come to life on their phone cameras similar to what you can see on this slide. The sister cities program in San Jose led by our office continues to provide opportunities for San Jose and its residents to engage with cities across the globe. Earlier this month, we hosted a 20 member delegation of council members, chamber of commerce members, and staff from the city of Okeliama, Japan, which at sixty eight years is San Jose's longest running sister city affiliation.

The delegation attended several meetings and events, which included a commendation at a city council meeting, a tour of the MLK junior library with city librarian Jill Bourne, and guests at a rotary club of San Jose meeting and a tour of the SAP Center capped by a sharks game with vice mayor Foley as you can see on the slide. We look forward to celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the of this relationship coming up in 2027. And finally, a couple of recent highlights to complement the update just given from our workforce development team. Last week, we had more than 300 people 400 people attend our annual spring career fair that we host in partnership with San Jose City College. We had more than 60 employers and resource providers participate, including the County of Santa Clara, Catholic Charities, Child Care, Careers, and Sheet Metal Workers Local one zero four.

And as Ruby mentioned earlier, recruitment is now open for San Jose Works, a summer paid work experience program for San Jose youth ages 14 to 18. This year's program will recruit more than 300 youth to work for employers like Roku, Create TV, the Boys and Girls Club, and various city council offices and departments. Departments. Youth are largely recruited from the city's youth empowerment alliance, but any connections you can provide, including referrals to host interns or to mentor a youth would be appreciated. We can send more information and or the link is available on this slide as well.

This concludes our report. Happy to answer any questions from the committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Carlos. That was a wonderful report of all the activities going on in the city of San Jose, and thank you for coming to the sharks game and documenting it with a photograph. That was that was a lot of fun. I have to say the Okayama delegation spent a lot of money on swag at the SAP Center, so contributing to our economy, that's a good thing. 2027 will have a big trip there as we celebrate the seventieth year anniversary. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

No public comment.

Okay. Thank you. Any comments from the committee? If not, then is there a motion to accept the report?

So moved. Second.

Great. Thank you. Let's vote. Thank you, Carlos. That concludes the regular portion of our meeting. I see no one in the audience for public comment, so I will adjourn the meeting. Thank you.