Community & Economic Development Committee (ced) - Regular Meeting

you you you . .

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, it's 1.30, and I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is the Community and Economic Development Committee. Would you take the role, please, Yasmin? Casey? Here.

Mulcahy?

Here.

Ortiz? Present. Vice Chair Comey? Here. And Chair Foley? Here. You have a quorum.

Great, thank you. We are not reviewing the work plan, no consent calendar, so we're just going to jump right into the reports. Let's start with the Housing Department Loan Portfolio Audit Report. Hi, Joe.

Hello. Good afternoon, Joe Roy, City Auditor. I'm here with Allison Pauley, Adrian Perez, and Maria Valle from my office to present our audit report, Affordable Multifamily Housing Loan Portfolio, Clearer Goals, and Stronger Oversight Would Improve Monitoring. Also in the box is Eric Sullivan from the Housing Department. Affordable housing serves a low to moderate income residents in the city of San Jose, and to support the development of affordable multi-family housing, the city's housing department provides loans to developers for the construction of new properties and the preservation of existing properties. Along with the loans come restrictions on tenant rents and income to ensure that units remain affordable. Over the life of the agreement and affordability period, housing staff verify that property owners repay loans, meet affordability restrictions, and maintain buildings. The permanent loan portfolio totals over $745 million. Across roughly 220 properties, there are nearly 25,000 units with active loans, affordability restrictions, or in the pipeline. Many loans were recorded before 2012 and are also subject to regulations from other lenders and government agencies, including the state and federal government. The objective of this audit was to assess housing's processes for managing the affordable housing loan portfolio, including loan servicing and compliance monitoring. As described in the city's adopted operating budget, in addition to providing loans, housing manages and oversees the city's affordable housing loan portfolio, including loan servicing and monitoring and compliance of deed-restricted apartments. Housing's role is to provide asset management, which involves monitoring the financial performance of properties and the overall portfolio, which differs from property management, which relates to the day-to-day operations of a property. As part of the work, Staff conduct financial reviews, which involves examining audited financial statements, operating budgets, and other documentation required to be submitted by property owners. They also monitor affordability restrictions. Property managers submit rent rolls with rent levels and tenant income information to housing staff. Staff are expected then to check whether the rents are within the allowed rent limits for the unit type, and they may also check tenant incomes. Lastly, they conduct property inspections, which enable the city to monitor the building's condition and any problems that need to be addressed to maintain the long-term viability of the property. There are two findings. I'm going to turn over to Allison Pauley from my office to talk through those.

The first finding is that housing should assess the asset management team's goals and resources. As Joe just described, the asset management team's role is to monitor loan compliance for the city's affordable housing loan portfolio. This involves verifying that borrowers repay city loans, that housing units comply with affordability restrictions, and that properties are appropriately maintained. We found that the team has not completed all annual property reviews or inspections in recent years. According to Housing, the team has historically not been able to complete all reviews annually of the more than 200 properties in the portfolio. Vacancies and unclear expectations have hindered the team's ability to complete its work. In addition, the current software tools may not be sufficient to meet the goals of the program given the size and scope of the loan portfolio. Replacing or retooling software would help the team complete their work. At the time of the audit, Housing was developing an automated rent roll portal to assist with reviews and working on developing standard operating procedures that would support staff to complete their work consistently. We recommend that housing should develop a program-level strategic plan to identify program goals and resource needs, reconfigure the current software or acquire an asset management software platform, and update and standardize operating procedures and training. Our second finding is that housing should strengthen oversight of affordability restrictions and higher risk properties. Some properties in the affordable housing portfolio do not comply with affordability restrictions, have not submitted required documentation, or have repeated property violations. We found in a limited sample of 878 units across 10 properties, representing 4% of the total units managed, 110 units had tenants with incomes above the cap for their unit type, which was 13% of our sample. Based on federal standards, incomes slightly over the limits generally aren't considered a problem because we don't want to penalize people for raising their incomes. However, 48 units had tenants that earned 140% or more of the income cap. That was 5% of our sample. That income level meant that they exceeded the federal standard. Another concern is the potential for tenants incomes being below expectations, meaning they fall well below the target income level for their unit. This can leave the tenant overly rent burdened and put the property's financial stability at risk if the tenant income revenues are very low. We also noted the housing does not have a documented escalation process to address compliance or property violations. Despite differences in property compliance, the asset management team's current approach does not differentiate financial and affordability restriction monitoring based on the risk of the property. We recommend that housing develop policies to address over-income and under-income tenants and resolve significant or repeated property concerns, as well as to establish a risk rating system to prioritize compliance monitoring. This report has nine recommendations to improve the management of the affordable housing loan portfolio. We would like to thank the housing department for their time and insight during the audit process. With that, we would ask that you accept the report and cross-reference it to the August 18th council meeting. We will be available to answer questions, but before that, I will turn it over to housing for the administration's response.

Thank you, Zurich. Solihuan, Director of Housing. I want to first thank working with the auditor. This is my fourth audit in the last first two years here. It's actually been incredibly helpful in situating the various management challenges that the department has faced and coming into this role. So I appreciate the work of Joe and his team. To provide some context, as we looked at this audit within the broader portfolio, there are sort of three unique situations the department deals with. The first is we are not in first position, meaning for those noncompliant units that are over income or under income, the state, through the tax credit advisory committee, the federal government, through the IRS, they're of first right as well as the equity investor to ensure compliance. What our traditional role has been is adopting the federal, the state, and then the equity investor's requirements, and then we monitor for compliance going forward. So we play and we sit, and I appreciate Joe and his teams understanding of the unique role that we are set in in this work because we're not the first to react when there's non-compliance because we don't and we're just an investor we're not the equity partner we're not in the ownership structure we are not the state tax credit regulating agency So we play a unique role of ensuring this, and as we work to improve our monitoring, a big part of that would also be in communications with our other regulators. And then two, as we look at the size of the portfolio, one of the challenges in working with Joe and his team was that we are not properly staffed for this size. This, with just the next two loans that have just been approved by council, will now exceed $800 million across some 21,000 units, over 200 buildings. So ongoing compliance and monitoring either needs robust staff or alternatively, as noted in the audit, robust software. And right now, with all the fine-tuning we've done to the existing CRM and Salesforce, it does not meet these types of needs. Having come from managing tens of thousands of units in other jurisdictions, we certainly need a much more robust system. So overall, with those three contextual analysis, we accept these findings. It's been incredibly helpful to go through this process. I'm happy to answer your questions.

Great. Thank you so much for the presentation to Joe and your team and to Eric to your response. I think this is an important audit that we understand the scope of first the amount of units that we have a financial interest in and then the oversight and management of them or oversight is really incredible and having the right software will help with with the right amount of staff in place as well. So with that, first I'll turn to any members of the public. Do we have anybody wishing to comment? I see no one out there. Okay, thank you. And turning then to members of the committee, Council Member Kamei.

Thank you so much for the presentation and for the information. So one of the things I noticed is that the recommendation was to have your goals and objectives first and then go to sort of updating the software. But given that it really takes a long long time to go through procurement uh why couldn't that have been done a little bit sort of more either concurrently or you know at least get some of the works going because uh uh it's it seems to me that if you're not able to have the the software in there then uh i i i just thought that it you need all of the time necessary to be able to get it done uh because it's a is one of those critical tools.

So I think this question was to the audit itself, which was I don't know if necessarily we're sequencing it that way. Okay. I think it's helpful to understand what the goals are of the program so you write the RFP correctly for the software. Okay, so I mean. Whether that's a complete strategic plan in place or it's far enough along that you can inform the scope of work you're looking for in the software systems.

Does that make sense, Eric? Yes, that makes sense. A lot of these, though they're partitioned out with various deliverables, a lot of them are going to get started kind of coterminously as we look to schedule this forward.

Oh, okay. So it's not wait until it's completed and then start it because, okay. Correct. That sounds reasonable. I also know that you did have some vacancy. I understand you're in the process of either hiring or recruiting to help in that process.

Yes, the division is now fully staffed as of two weeks ago. So now it's fully staffed and ready to proceed forward. Now it's a matter of just focusing around the audit work that we have to do while also addressing immediate exigent circumstances in three or four of the properties that were already been red flagged through our initial system that we have to address coming from the collapse of the first community housing portfolio.

Thank you so much. Well, with that, I would like to move acceptance of the audit report and cross-reference it to our council meeting on August 18th. Second.

Thank you.

Council Member Mulcahy.

thank you vice mayor um uh joe and allison thank you for the staff briefing on on this item um i'm just curious eric um are we we're not in first position on any of the 800 million 21 000 units or 200 buildings correct so i guess the question would be if you were to implement recommendations put forward here what could you actually effectuate in the

issues that were called out in the report so yeah so there'll be two areas where we can actually effectuate one is for those properties whereby they have been funded through a tax credit investor because there's some that are not and i'll explain that in a minute to a tax credit investor we can have a first review that then allows us to inform the take acts and the sedlacs about this property as well as the developer who consistently comes back to us for future funding, and we can consider that on future funding. And we've actually done that with a few of our preservation deals that have been moved forward in the last six to eight months. And then two, for those that are not Loan Compound Tax Credit funded, but are funded through bond issuances, whether through the city or through third party issuances like CMFA, then we're able to have, we have a little less sort of thumb on that, but as we're working to improve our joint powers agreements with those entities, we'll be able to provide that notification of noncompliance for future funding requests, as well as reconciliation of current issues which is what sort of the challenges around the first community housing portfolio has really brought to light, is those entities did kind of fell down on it. We stepped in to cure it. Now we're notifying all of them. And further, as we're going through the reconciliation process, learning what are ways in which we can improve our loan documents so that way they can empower us to put us in a higher position for compliance. And that's part of the ongoing work that we're doing.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Could I add one thing really quick? So the recommendations were really around processes, around how do we address issues as they come up or as we identify them? And one of the things that the consultant that Eric's team had hired back in 2025 noted that there's no real clear definition of what noncompliance means and to really define that and have a process to kind of step forward. So our recommendations really are, again, how do we have processes to identify these issues? What does non-compliance mean and what are the ways we can, within this complicated regulatory environment, step in to address those issues? So I just want to kind of clarify that a little bit.

Thank you. So, I mean, in your case, Eric, it sort of serves as a pre-qualifier for these deals as they come forward. But how much can you influence if you're, you know, eighth on the list of the stack? How much can you influence decisions made by those in first position, second position on the deal that you're looking at?

So our influence is likely limited to communication of noncompliance because we're considered for most of these deals to be, quote, boots on the ground, even though we're in sort of third position of enforcement. What we're learning as we're going through the untangling of the FCH portfolio is that Their expectations were, oh, well, we thought you, the city, were going to do this. We're like, well, that's not what the documents say, so let's talk about that going forward because we're going to have to reposition if the expectation is that we become the actors of first response rather than second or third or fourth in some cases. So we're going to have to talk through some of that language, and since all LIHTC properties end up in the same three upper-tier investors, We've already begun some of those negotiations about what future loan agreements need to look like if that expectation is to meet reality regarding compliance.

Thank you.

Okay, I want to thank you. I want to follow up a little bit on that. So if a property owner is in noncompliance because their rents are too low or too high, let's say, or the tenants are earning too great of an income, you mentioned that our role could be to notify some of the underlying lien holders of that. But as a lender, a red flag goes up, and I start getting concerned about the risk to our investment. Should we raise a red flag to the underlying liens and the underlying lien holders, then call the loan? Are you concerned about that?

Yes, and this is, as Joe had properly articulated, This is a web of compliance, and we sit in awkward spaces in some sense. Again, going through the FCH unwind, we're learning where a lot of these limitations are and where expectations did not match legal language in the documents. And so we end up with distressed assets, particularly severely distressed assets, that we, as the only entity that's here in San Jose, we have to resolve and step in, which then completely resituates the entire portfolio, and we get in from asset management to property management. We're stepping down a level much closer to the asset. And so this is some of the work that as we're looking to improve our processes, we're at least able to provide more timely notification. At the same time, ensure that the property owners know this is an issue with some of the more modern loan documents. We have vast powers to step in, take buildings, reposition property managers, all of that. But some of the older loans from the RDA days, very limited authority.

So thank you. I know that you're watching this from a risk management point of view, as we should in an asset management. These are huge assets that we have tied up into all of these properties. And while we're focusing a little bit on the tenant and how much the tenant can make or is making in relation to how the property rent the requirements in the property that they're in we're not talking about condition at all and when we're looking at some of these distressed properties the condition may be something that is something very untenable for us to address and should we become the responsible party who then takes over the management of the property, we have to address that condition. For example, the Fay and other properties that we've been dealing with. So I know you're mindful of that. I am as well. I think this really shows. the importance of the work you do and to make sure that we have number one software that is allowing us to track these properties more quit more easily and then staffing to follow up on the tracking that we're doing with that I don't see any further hands raised so let's vote thank you for that motion carries and we will see this in council When did you say the 18th? August 18th. Ooh, long after our July break. Isn't that nice? Aren't we looking forward to it?

We did not receive a vote for Council Member Ortiz in the system.

Council Member Ortiz?

Did you want to take a verbal vote?

Yeah, yes. Sorry, I was talking. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, moving on to the next item, City Council Focus Area Status Report, Building More Housing. Jared and Eric remains.

Thank you chair. Jared Ferguson principal planner with planning building and code enforcement joined with Eric Sullivan our director of housing. So we're here today to provide you a status report on our focus area of building more housing. So for our agenda we will start with a quick background on the focus area. and then an update on the focus area goals, and then lastly we'll discuss next steps. So as a reminder, the focus area creates visibility on the problems most impacting our community, putting those issues at the top of the pyramid here. These continue to be our most complex initiatives requiring significant staff capacity and cross-departmental coordination to drive progress. We manage these areas differently from the rest of the pyramid where our other core services and programs are delivered through day-to-day department work. Our core value is that our work involves cultivating an organizational mindset of learning with the goal of driving results for our community. This includes some of the principles shown here. These are the types of conversations that we are excited to have through the focus area update today and beyond into next year as we continue our work. So now to get into our third quarter portfolio update for the building more housing focus area. This slide shows the overall structure of the focus area with our continuing long term goal to meet the city's housing needs across all income levels by making San Jose a great place to build housing. As a part of this work, we've identified three problem areas to focus on to make progress towards this long-term goal. Number one is land use policy and regulation. Number two is development services process. And number three is linking land and capital. So this slide highlights trends in our indicators, which are housing units entitled, building permits issued, and certificates of occupancy issued on a per unit basis. These represent the key three stages of development and those within the city's control with building permit issuance being the key indicator for arena progress and signaling the start of new construction. quarter three was lower in terms of housing units entitled but was stronger was a stronger quarter for building permits issued. Since the City Council approved the multifamily housing incentive program in December of 2024 2216 units have moved from entitlement to construction, however, there are still not enough units being built to meet our goals. So of the 10 goals for this fiscal year, seven are complete, two are on track, and one is off track. So for our first goal, 1.1, under problem one, land use policy and regulation, we have our general plan for your review task force process. So we started the task force process in October and have held seven task force meetings since then, with about one meeting per month. And we're on track to complete this goal by the end of the fiscal year. This has been a major undertaking from our team, and we are moving faster than any of our previous general plan four-year reviews. In late April and early May, we held four open houses in addition to numerous stakeholder meetings and focus group meetings in coordination with the City Manager's Office of Racial and Social Equity. We'll have one final task force meeting this Wednesday, task force meeting number eight, and then a final planning commission meeting next Wednesday, June 24th. We'll be at city council on August 18th with the conceptual framework of general plan changes with the recommendations from the planning commission and task force. Goal 1.2, this is to expand our city's ministerial approval process for residential development into downtown. We completed additional analysis as part of our citywide planning report to this committee in October, following the state CEQA reform contained in AB 130, which provides a new CEQA exemption for housing development. Some of the benefit of the ministerial process is offset through this new CEQA exemption, but staff still believes there is value in moving this effort forward. The added work related to the implementation and analysis of SB 79 along with the necessary capacity to keep the general plan for your review process on track contributed to this goal getting off track. Additionally, the scope of this work has been expanded through the budget process to include a 90-day guaranteed approval. Staff has made progress to initiate the environmental work necessary to complete this item. Coal 2.1 was to analyze options and report on development services timeliness and report on those findings. This goal is complete CD heard this item in December, with an analysis of permit tight timelines for both affordable and market rate housing. Affordable housing projects met targets through close coordination while market rate and other development timelines were lengthened. PBC and ITD are developing standardized permitting performance metrics. Council's interest in the permitting process and process improvements led to the April study session with our optimization work ongoing. Goal 2.2 was to bring forward the environmental standard permit conditions and the CEQA process guidelines to city council. This was a major undertaking for the team to complete and was completed last month with council approval on May 19th. Goal 2.3 is also complete and was to conduct analysis of AB 130 and SB 131 that contain new CEQA streamlining. AB 130 reduces timelines compared to the previous typical review processes. SB 131 also provides other opportunities for streamlining through other exemptions or limiting the amount of additional review necessary during the environmental review process. We've seen faster project processing using these new routes, but tribal consultation remains a challenging aspect for timelines through these processes. The new laws are also reducing the department fee revenue and are shifting the CEQA analysis onto the city when we look to make policy changes. We're evaluating staffing restructures, historic resource impacts, and the implications to community engagement. Goal 2.4 was to update the development fee estimator by adding multifamily construction by December of 2025. This goal is also complete. The fee estimator tool now includes multifamily construction. Overall, the tool now supports residential, ADUs, commercial, industrial, and multifamily new construction. We're continuing to evaluate the tool's performance and future expansion into other areas. And with that, I'll pass it to Eric for the next set of goals.

Thank you, Jared. So Eric's the one director of housing and I'll go through the three items or four items for the housing department for 3.1. The first we did is the cost of redevelopment study, which is complete. We'll be returning with the updated cost of redevelopment study in 2027, which will also include the additional items as listed in the council memorandum from two months ago. The studies show that with some fee reductions in waivers, it can improve the economics of some projects going forward, and that has certainly been the case as over 2,000 units have been put into production through the multifamily incentive program. 3.2 is also complete. This refers to the work being done around an analysis of entitled housing projects with various financial feasibilities. So we took that analysis of all entitled projects, overlaid that to the cost of redevelopment analysis. And the next step we're going to do is getting into more specifics regarding these projects to see if the types of financing tools that memorialize in the march 18th information memo on cost burden households and alternative financing structures can be utilized to catalyze those projects going forward whether under our multi-family or downtown incentive program as well as expanding affordability options through our master leasing tool For 3.3, this item is also complete as we'll continue to do our analysis on the effectiveness of our market rate incentive programs. As mentioned prior, over 2,000 units have gone under construction with high amounts of affordability and deed restriction, as we also continue to look at the potential coming online here of the bankability conversion, which is the picture to the right here and then eventually the Gateway Tower project, which has been temporarily caught up in some ship overview, but now we've been able to move that forward with a hopeful closing here in August. And lastly, for 3.4, this item remains on track as we look at alternative financing programs, such as our master leasing tool that we brought forward to create affordability at downtime distressed assets at the Fay, and looking to use this tool going further down the AMI scale in other potential projects as this has opened up a strong amount of interest. and public-private partnerships to apply this tool to other projects, as well as looking at ways in which we can bring this affordability level down for other Office of Residential Conversions, and we continue to explore those opportunities and provide a continuous update. Then lastly here going forward, the next items here is the MBA of 2026, 2027 focus area worked, talked about the direction that's gonna be incorporated into this from the March budget message. The June budget message as well was also adopted as we continue to move that forward. In the fall of this year, we will come back with the annual report to City Council. And then in December of 2026, the committee will receive a status update on progress and lessons learned. throughout the various deliverables in the plan. And that is the update for the building or housing focus area, and we look forward to your questions.

Great, thank you Eric, thank you Jared. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

No public comment.

Thank you, I see no hands raised from my council. Is there a motion to accept the report?

Motion to accept the report. Second.

It's been moved and seconded, let's vote. Thank you. Motion carries. This is not cross-referenced. We'll see it later in council, a different update. Next item and the last item of the agenda is the City Council focus area, Growing Our Economy. Ladies?

All right. Good afternoon, Vice Mayor Foley, Chair and Council Members. Jen Baker, Director of the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs. Happy to be here to deliver the Growing Our Economy Focus Area Goal Updates. And... We have for you a summary slide. We'll go ahead and advance forward through the focus area background and methodology, which we know you're well familiar with. And provide for you a retrospective of our activities leading through Q3. All right, so you can see from our summary slide, we have made some good progress over the first three quarters of the year. We have 11 of the goals in blue, so we've initiated and completed those goals. Eight in green, so they're tracking to where they should be for this point in the year, and then, or to that point at the end of quarter three, and then four in yellow. And the four in yellow are ones that need a little bit of attention through the end of quarter three, but may have made some strides as we're getting close to closing out the end of the fiscal year. All right, so my pleasure to kick us off into business development and workforce preparedness. You can see we've completed two of the goals, goal one and two, or one, two, and one, three, and have made considerable strides on the remaining four goals. But just like to highlight a couple of the activities for you. in that the growing the economy focus area retrospective is intended to be a look into and reflection on how the quarter and our work progress is going and the longer term trajectory of where we would like to be. For Q3, we would notice when jobs attracted, expanded, and retained. So up through quarter three, we've registered 3,978 jobs where the business development team has lent a specific role in helping facilitate either the retention or the expansion and creation of jobs. So we have worked on the metrics and how we take credit, if you will, for that job creation and our role as facilitators, and tracking to where we would like to be despite the headwinds of some economy and policy changes that have made the business development environment a little bit erratic. Some of the ways that we've been able to get San Jose out in front of communities through our business outreach teamwork. We have been in the field at a number of trade activities in advanced manufacturing, photonics. We attended SemiCon West this year. So really an opportunity to lean into outbound recruitment activity. And I think that's a very important part place for us to be as a city, but also as a state in the ways that California is leading the national economy through our investment and innovation and jobs creation. One of the areas I know that this committee has been particularly interested in is our advancement in implementing expanded AI-focused workforce. And so I have some great data and statistics to share with you on those initiatives. So we have enrolled, just in this year, 95 participants in longer-term AI training programs. So those are programs with a trajectory where an enrollee has decided this is the arena that I want to excel in and is specifically focused on AI skills growth. And people are still finding their way to AI and deciding when and how to engage. So you'll see that there is considerably more activation in workshops. So we've seen over 300, 342 participants in AI workshops. And these are more condensed doses of introduction into AI workplace skills, AI project management, AI infrastructure and technology, and AI for QuickBooks. So some doses where people think they can take a workshop, be able to increase their marketability, either as they're reentering the workforce or striving for workplace mobility. And then likewise, we've seen some good subscriptions so far to online learning classes. So 289 AI course completions across a number of learning modules, everything from fundamentals to basic AI theory to AI and cybersecurity and information technology. And I'll share with folks a shout out to our San Jose Public Libraries. If you take your library card in, you can log into LinkedIn Learning and gain access to all of the LinkedIn AI training modules for free. And so that's a great way for all community members without regard to being enrolled in our specific workforce programs to be able to study or learn about AI at your level of entry, at your pace, and during the hours of day. that you have available to gain that enrichment. What we're hearing from clients is that there is a strong interest in AI foundational skills and practical workplace applications. And so it's not just folks who are looking to enter into an engineering or a computer specific field, but it's really clients who see AI as integral in their capacity to be joining the workforce across a lot of different types of positions. We've seen recent placements in engineering, data analysis, software development roles, project management, product management, network and systems administration, manufacturing and semiconductor positions, as well as healthcare administration and business operations. So really the full gamut of good mobility creating jobs. And some of the placements that have been achieved through our Work to Future program have landed at Some of the major name firms that you would recognize is Google, Apple, Amazon Web Services, Capital One, ServiceNow, Meta, Palo Alto Networks, Juniper Networks, Applied Materials, Supermicro, and other technology-focused employers. So a nod to the focus of the Work to Future team and engagement with the community that tends to seek services, and we encourage to seek services from Work to Future, who are most often the most removed from the workforce chain. And this is really a program and an opportunity for people to regain the jobs pool and do so in a way that can create self-sustaining income and economic mobility. And that trajectory is paying off well for us. The intent is really to create workforce readiness, career mobility, and future workforce planning. I have a lot more data, but I'll pause on that and just share lastly that the demonstrated interest is across applied AI learning for all workplace functions. And that is encouraging because we know that increasingly that's a skill that people are going to need to be able to remain competitive. With that, I'll advance to my colleague, Erica. to speak more on infrastructure readiness.

Good afternoon, council members, committee members, and members of the public. Erica Grafo, assistant to the city manager in the Office of Economic Development. So as a reminder, problem area two focuses on infrastructure readiness and ensuring that companies have the infrastructure that they need to meet their needs. As of the end of March 2026, Goals 2.2 and 2.5 are complete. Goal 2.3 is on track to be completed by the end of June, and goals 2.1 and 2.4 are at risk of meeting their deadlines, and I'll go into that in a minute. On goal 2.3, which we're on track for, since the previous reporting period, we received two additional planning applications, bringing our total to four. We anticipate one additional planning submittal by the end of June, which would allow us to meet our goal of five for the fiscal year. On goal 2.5, we are also excited to see that LS Powers permits were issued ahead of schedule, and we celebrated their groundbreaking last month, very exciting. For the two goals that are at risk, so starting with goal 2.1, this relates to PG&E energization. So PG&E successfully energized two out of the three projects earlier this year, but the final project, which is the STAC data center in North San Jose, will be energized in August, so we'll be missing that deadline. I actually toured the stack project on Friday to learn a little bit more about the delays. Well, that's not what the tour was about, but I did learn about the delays. And there were some issues with materials, long lead item, but actually some really significant issues with the utility as-built drawings, so where telecommunications lines, where San Jose storm lines or sewer mains and other existing infrastructure. The new transmission line that's serving that facility, it's an overhead line, but the transmission pole has a 40-foot foundation. And so every time an unmarked utility was identified, the team had to redesign where the pole was located. So PG&E did offer to serve stack through temporary power to meet the deadline, but stack declined in favor of pushing out the in-service date and waiting for permanent power. One just interesting tidbit, I'm gonna nerd out on you guys for just a second. So the substation that serves STAC data center is a gas-insulated switchgear. So unlike air-insulated where you see all the transmission, the transformers, this one's all within a building. And the gas-insulated switchgear it insulates the line so that the space can be consolidated and it reduces the overall footprint. So typically gas insulated switchgears are, they use gas like argon or other things, but this substation, the first in the entire country, is using oxygen, is using O2. as the insulating gas, making it the first clean air GIS substation in the entire United States. Pretty neat. Okay, thanks for letting me nerd out. So switching to goal 2.4, the city had hoped to execute our exclusive negotiating agreement with Prologis by March of this year. However, after pausing to allow the city of Santa Clara more time to determine whether and how they wanted to participate, The city has opted to move forward without Santa Clara's participation in order to avoid further delaying the project. Staff are now negotiating a cost reimbursement agreement and the exclusive negotiation agreement directly with Prologis, and they aim to have both documents executed by July of this year. I'll turn it over to Blage.

Thank you, Erica. BLOCK IS THE LAWLESS DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR THE CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURAL AFFAIRS. AND I AM HERE TO COVER THE GOALS ON NUMBER THREE, WHICH ARE DOWNTOWN AND NEIGHBORHOOD BUSINESS DISTRICTS. AND SO WE HAVE TWO TASKS THAT ARE COMPLETED, TWO LOOKING GOOD IN GREEN AND TWO MOVING FORWARD BUT YELLOW AS OF THE END OF Q3. The two that we have completed, Goals 3.2 and 3.3, as of Q3 for Goal 3.2, we have facilitated the attraction of six new ground floor businesses. Just a couple I'd like to mention. Hopefully you've all had the opportunity to dine at the casual but chic Popping Claro at the base of 50 West San Fernando. In addition, another positive add to downtown that we'll be having a ribbon cutting here in the next month or so is west coast community bank and they decided to locate their first brink bank branch and offices in downtown san jose and they'll be at the base of 10 almaden for goal 3.3 with respect to placemaking it really is both the little things that matter and kind of the big exciting beautiful projects that are easily recognizable With respect to the little things, our downtown management team proactively worked with the United States Postal Service to have them replace all 15 of their mailboxes in the downtown core within a month of the Super Bowl. So getting a government agency to work that quickly on that sort of project I think deserves some good kudos. On the larger scale, Honing into our power of partnerships, our downtown management team led the way in getting together the new owner of the former Greyhound bus building together with the mayor's staff and they really turned the opportunity for beautification there into a volunteer opportunity that was connected to the mayor's state of the city, which was part of our Super Bowl weekend festivities. So some really, if you haven't been by that building, boy, does it look different nowadays. So looking good and green as of Q3 for goal 3.1, we were 60% towards completion of our goal around commercial lease renewals, We have three commitments, and the one that I can mention is that of Berliner Cohen, who is going to keep their 100 or so employees in the downtown core, so very happy about that. And in goal 3.4, this is really an area where our small business team has been after it, and already by the end of Q3 far exceeded the stated goal of one new business improvement district. And in fact, this year, currently, we've got the formation of three bids, Alum Rock, the Alameda, and Story Road. And at the end of Q3, we're also in process of forming the East Village bid, which has since been formed. And just lastly, we're making solid progress on a couple of our goals that were deemed yellow at the end of Q3. For goal 3.5, we completed a lottery with 450 entrants, selected 30 small businesses that were going to be interviewed for our Small Business Startup Grant. They have since been selected, and the Small Business Advisory Committee has subsequently given their approval for those awardees, and we're going to be distributing that funding in July. And next up, we have our neighborhood and economic grants that will kick off on July 1. And then lastly, number 3.6, there was a yellow light at the end of Q3, but we're moving ahead on streamlining actually two processes. Interdepartmentally, we are working on the outdoor sidewalk seating, program and process and then also in conjunction with our colleagues in pbce and county health we're working to streamline restaurant permitting so we've been busy on on goal number three all right and rounding the bend with goal number four sports and entertainment district planning

What a wild ride it's been since last spring when all of these focus areas and goals were identified. For goal four, or for focus area four, we have five completed or activated but mostly complete goals and then one that is still in progress. But I really want to focus in on goal 4.4 and 4.5. The team has produced and or facilitated eight special events and seven public artworks specific to SJ26 activities. We're really excited that the entertainment zone policy that was CALLED FOR AND SUPPORTED BY COUNCIL HAS BEEN ACTIVATED INITIALLY FOR SUPER BOWL BUT SOFA DISTRICT WILL DEBUT ITS FIRST ENTERTAINMENT ZONE NOW FOR WORLD CUP THROUGH CITY DANCE. SO WE'RE SEEING THAT POLICY IN ACTION AND TAKING NOTES AND PREPARED TO REFINE THAT ALONG THE WAY. As a team, we've facilitated 622 event days. Again, this was up through quarter three, through 193 event permits. That represents over 128% of the goal, and attendance to date through quarter three is 1.95 million people. What's really remarkable about this goal is the number of events and the type and complexity of the events. So as we know, the scale of attendance of some of the events in and around the major sporting events has invited tens of thousands of people. That necessarily requires a much more intensive interdepartmental coordination with security, with transportation. with Public Works really across all of our departments who are supporting the event load. And then also, even looking at this isolated year, 128% of the goal, this is after 24 or 25, where the special events team had almost doubled the number of events days that they permitted. So, I mean, the team has not grown. They're just really moving mountains to do great things for community, to create these envelopes for civic engagement, and in collaboration with our our colleague departments putting forth safe and accessible community activities. And for folks who are interested, tonight is also a City Dance Night, so you can come to Disco and House this evening, also in the Sofa District. We've been working to identify goal 4.6 is one that we hear a lot of inquiry into, which is identifying uniform metrics and timelines with Team San Jose and the San Jose Sports Authority to commission a comprehensive economic impact report on 2026 major sports events. I think one of the retrospectives that we're keenly aware of right now is that different types of data gets published on different timelines. Foot traffic data comes out first, And then revenue per available room night comes out variably between a couple of weeks and a month or more afterwards. And then the actual economic impact in dollar data that we would see directly as the city comes in with our business tax rolls, which are reported quarterly, and there's some lag time in how that data comes to bear. But we can anticipate through our contract with the San Jose Sports Authority a comprehensive SJ26 report that has been commissioned with a firm. It's called Sports Economics. That is specifically adept at monitoring these types of impacts. So we look forward to continuing to collaborate, report out with the bits of data that we have as we have them, and then having an amazing end-of-year wrap-up. These are all repeat sites.

Just go to the end.

All right, with that, we're happy to field questions.

Thank you. That was a lot of information and very exciting what's happening in 2026 and all the FIFA activities and watch parties. And I know many of us have things to come in our districts. It's an exciting time to be in San Jose. And looking at this last year and thinking how this was going to all play out, it's really, I think, exceeded expectations. our expectations of how smoothly everything, knock on wood, I shouldn't say that before it's over, but how well it's been received by our community and just the energy level of all the people who are attending is really exciting to participate and see that. So with that, I'll turn to members of the public, but I don't see any.

No public comment.

Thank you, so I'll move on to our council council member Ortiz Thank you vice mayor madam chair, I also want to thank staff for this report Exciting topic great to hear about all the amazing things that are going on citywide and in downtown just want to thank everybody who's put work into today from all the various departments not just OFFICE OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. GLAD TO HEAR THAT BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS CONTINUE TO BE A STRATEGY FOR THE CITY. I THINK WHEN I LOOK AT SAN JOSE AND KIND OF LIKE OUR MORE UNDER RESOURCED AREAS, WHETHER IT'S LIKE DISTRICT SEVEN OR PARTS OF DISTRICT THREE, The best way to bring in new resources is this new strategy of a bid. I don't think that the Alam Rock bid, the new one that was mentioned during your guys' presentation, we're not finished yet in East San Jose. I'd like to see one on Story Road as well. and then hopefully in the Alum Rock Village, but we'll see if they change their perspective on the bid. Once the corridor starts getting nice things, I'm sure there's gonna be some FOMO, which is fear of missing out. And so that'll allow us to push them to cross that ledge. Also, I think on the same conversation of the bid, in one of my budget asks was the formation of the Story Road East Business Association. We're forming that as we speak. We have an initial meeting with business leaders later this month, and so hopefully, and I know that was approved, and so I know that Community Strong Solutions will be able to provide us that support that I know they've done in so many of our districts. And so hopefully that'll be something that we could explore later on in the vein of bids, because that would be a quite sizable one. We're thinking from Story in White all the way to King and Story. Also really happy to see streamlining. I know you guys hear this all the time, and I'm sure PBCE hears this all the time, But the permitting really is a tax on our business. And especially in East San Jose, when a lot of our business owners don't really understand the intricacies and the specifics of permitting. I mean, I think I was just emailing Chris now about a guy who did all this construction. And then now it's like, oh, I have to have permits? And it's like, yeah, you got to have permits, buddy. And so I want to make sure that... Permits are important. We've got to make sure we're doing everything to code, but also want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to support our entrepreneurs in realizing their vision. Because if more entrepreneurs realize our vision, that'll increase our tax revenue. And so really glad that the city and multi-department um a coalition is is leaning into that topic and i know it's not easy and so thank thank you for uh uh that and then and then also of course the the grants that's that's extremely important um to this city i think that i read somewhere that there's going to be grants for um uh i guess organizations that are thinking about starting a business association i think i read something is that is that accurate

So the second grant program that we just took to the Small Business Advisory Committee is the Neighborhood Economic Grant Program. So we have about $145,000 that was allocated through the budget. There are going to be three or four grants. They're larger grants, so they'll go three or four grants, somewhere between $20,000 and $45,000, kind of depending on what the project is proposed and depending on kind of how the interviews go. But that is a program that is geared more towards organizations looking to do something a little bit more comprehensive in neighborhoods rather than to a specific business for a startup need.

Yes, well, it's the form like a business association, right or no?

Is that not accurate? Not necessarily. That could be one of the things that is proposed, but it could be other things. It could be activations. It could be, you know, a small kind of infrastructure project.

Thank you for that. I'm sure that all my colleagues are probably interested. Where can we find out some of the determining factors of what makes an applicant look effective when they apply or something like that? What are you guys looking for from the groups?

Sure, of course. So two things we can forward to the committee in the packet from the Small Business Advisory Committee that met earlier this month. There was a write-up on kind of the criteria and what the program would be. So we can forward that and make sure everybody has it. And then secondly, we're going to launch the application in early July. And right now we are formulating and working with some of the members of the Small Business Advisory Committee to exactly kind of map out the program and the parameters.

Yeah, I want to apologize to Vic and my colleague. I know I've missed the last couple of ones. It was a little bit of a busier reelection than my colleague here. So thank you for holding down the fort. And then finally, I just want to, I know I'm running up on time. I just really wanted to thank the staff for the work underway to advance the outdoor seating improvements in the memo brought forward by myself and our colleagues. Activating our commercial corridors, whether that's Winchester, Stevens Creek, Alum Rock, I think it's of vital importance for our local economy. And when I drive through my district, I just see a lot of underutilized outdoor space. And you see other cities, whether it's in the United States or outside, just being innovative with how they are doing outdoor dining, performances and things like that. I think any way in which we can allow entrepreneurs, restaurateurs to maximize space is very exciting. At the same time, I think the amount of coordination that has been required to improve a single process highlights a broader challenge. we continue to hear from are are small businesses which is small business owners don't think in terms of you know specific city departments and i'd be surprised if you know a small business knows the difference between oed or pbc and so they you just want a process that allows them to improve and grow their business without millions of steps. So I wanted to see if staff, whether it's you here or somebody in the audience can speak to it, what the biggest barriers to creating a more seamless permitting experience for our small businesses could be. Whether it's you guys or Chris or whoever wants to speak.

Yeah, I think our interdepartmental communication is really the first step. And then also just being prepared to staff the types of requests that come in. And so I think there have been some good strides this year in the streamlined restaurant program, in the STAR program, where people know and are continuing to learn that they can come to the city for certain expedited permitting opportunities, and then just continuing to refine. If an inquiry comes in to our small business team or to really anyone at OEDCA, You know, we can communicate that to our colleagues in PBC to have a sort of a more seamless approach so that folks feel like when they come to the city, they're coming to the city and then we can help them navigate to the right subject matter expert to achieve their ultimate end.

Thank you, Chris.

I think Jen sort of hit it straight on the head with that one. It's really about how do we get out in front of our customers to help build education and provide them the information so that they have a better insight coming into the process. And so we have a really great partnership with OED in creating that sort of handoff when there's businesses that they're working directly with. And then we're also working throughout PBC to make sure that we're providing that information clearly to applicants up front. So we've just gone through a process to completely revamp our building web pages. So you can now go in to the building site to start your permit, and rather than having a million different links in different directions and people trying to figure their way through that process, it's been really simplified. You go up, there's four buttons up front, you know, and it's, am I a small business? And from there, it's sort of, what is the type of work you're doing? So people can really understand those requirements up front, and it's much more accessible. It's also allowed us to be much better prepared to provide better language access as well. So, you know, to the extent that we can get the information out there, certainly we'll continue to work on our process to be a better partner with small businesses once they come in. But the better prepared they are at the start of that process, generally the more successful they are.

Great, thank you both. One follow up, you may wanna wait down here, Chris, but for each of your departments, as you guys have been working together, speaking with small businesses, is there a certain section of the process or aspect of the permitting process that our businesses are struggling with or continue to face barriers? Has there been engagement around figuring out what I guess that point is within the whole procedure?

Well, I would say for different types of businesses, there are some trends for the types of infrastructure that can be challenging for a certain business type. Small business restaurants, for example, are usually getting ready to move in or retrofit spaces that are very unique to each building. And on a case-by-case basis, it's hard to create a process solution when The plans and the sort of infrastructure of the buildings that they're moving into are very different, but there are certain aspects of opening a restaurant in particular that we can educate small business owners on as they're getting ready to advance further into the process, or as they're looking at spaces to say, like, will this actually work for the thing that I would like to put in this location? And sometimes that answer might be that it's suboptimal for one reason or another.

Awesome. Yeah, I think restaurants are a great example just because, you know, all the small businesses are cost-sensitive, but just given the startup costs, certainly if there are physical improvements to the space around a restaurant, they get particularly challenging. Also, what I think we find is restaurateurs are fantastic at opening restaurants. They're not experts with permitting. They don't understand, you know, the process. They may go out and find... great contractor who's great at focusing on improving the space but again may not be as well informed on the process there's not the same you know we see with some of the types of businesses there's consultants that work directly to get them through that process restaurateurs are trying to pull the pieces together so really what we think about in that instance is how do we design a process that makes it more accessible so when you look at something like a streamlined restaurant program it's about having the whole team there so we can respond really quickly and the coordination we're now doing with the county is to minimize that back and forth between hey you couldn't go do this from the county now go do this with the city so they can hear it all at once that they don't have to be an expert to know that they have to go and sort of get a county health permit before they get a building permit or what the implications may be if they make changes down the road so so really that's it is how do we tailor our services to meet the need You know, the other pinch point, you know, obviously I know we've discussed before, is use permits. So things where, as a city, we've made a decision that we want to regulate to a certain extent. So whether it's off sale of alcohol, you know, things like that. We've created guardrails for the community in that sense. And obviously, again, that's a much more involved process. that folks who are just trying to open a small business don't have the expertise and knowledge around. So again, we work closely with those people. We try and give them the information up front to say this is what you're going to need to get through it quickly and effectively to hopefully we can minimize that stress.

Thank you.

Thank you. I was wondering how to politely cut you off, but you did yourself. Thank you. Council Member Mulcahy.

Thank you and thank you, Jen, Erica Blage for the report. I'm going to kind of go in order and just have a few comments and a couple of questions. I first want to just say to Council Member Ortiz's questioning, I think the other piece is as soon as you go to a restaurant and one with liquor, you start bringing in other agencies, whether it be the health department or the state with the ABC. So it it certainly adds a level of difficulty. so erica i don't have much for you but that was a really cool day being able to open or do two ground breakings for ls power in the same day so glad that they're ahead of schedule um blog a few things for you you pointed out the um uh greyhound bus station beautification which was great i was there painting that day but i don't know if you've noticed and maybe you guys had a hand in it but the the vacant lot that's always looked like you know terrible right you know this sits behind 160 west santa clara street has now been improved and there's a big dome out there where they're doing watch parties so it's a pretty cool sort of byproduct of this work downtown so it's a big improvement just at that corner and then with myth i think is got a new investment there so um i want to get your recipe on the you the post office because we've got a bunch of mailboxes that need to be um improved all over the city but certainly we do in d6 um so i'll take that contact um and then on the staff support for um the bids and c bids i think you know i'm a huge fan and a big proponent of them um i just curious what is in your work plan for those that you birth what's your sort of responsibility for you know sort of graduating them from birth to toddler to on on out is that a third party contract program is that internally in-house that we're doing that just want to make sure that once we sort of birth these you know programs that they've got support that they've been used to for at least a year or two in advance

In terms of our work plan and how we'll continue to support bids, I think each bid comes to fruition through a different arduous process and different levels of momentum. And I did just want to pause, and I know there had been reference earlier to a Story Road bid coming online, but I do want to recognize the distinct efforts of a Story Road bid that was adopted and advanced by council earlier this year through the hard work of the Story Road Business Association. So the prior mentioned additive bid would be a different one than the existing one that was adopted. So I just wanted to make sure for members of the public who weren't necessarily charting all of the improvement districts that one was advanced and adopted for Story Road through a lot of hard work. and then always interested in seeing where there is momentum for a community to rally around other bid opportunities. I think for staff and in terms of budgeting, it's important for us to be thinking also proactively into the next years for how we want to steward the bid program, and that will be part of the focus area activities. One of the I think one of the nuances of bid formation is that you have volunteer board members who then are responsible for sort of keeping the plate spinning or the ball in the air and keeping bid functions compliant. And that's a really delicate balance if you have a chair roll off or end their service or retire or whatever it happens to be. I think we just need to be mindful of watching and continuing to build the capacity of bids and encourage them to build their outreach beyond just a person or two who may be a really influential leader in the community at this moment in time so helping them build the capacity so that they have longevity which i think will require some consulting support and for which we've budgeted for this coming year okay great so short answer is yes we're going to stay with them and try to help them advance out of

you know, from going through this hurried process to get all the votes and then, you know, implementation. So I appreciate that. Okay, let's see. So on 4.6 I think is where we do the economic study. I think this was you, Jen, talking about it. And I know you were talking about the sports authority and a contract there. So aside from the economic piece, which we all know is so important and I assume they're gonna be sort of working with the likes of a Team San Jose and other groups that have been part of this work, what are we doing internally as a city? And it may not be fair to be asking just you this question, but you may know whether this is sort of afoot or not. You know, it seems to me like building a playbook. Like when you think of the diversity of programming we've done this year from an Nvidia takeover to, you know, table tennis championships, you know, latter part of this year, what are we doing internally to make sure that we're kind of documenting and understanding all of the challenges we faced and overcome and the implementation of the work we've been doing so that we aren't reinventing the next time. Is there anything in that way that we're doing right now?

Well, we've certainly adopted some cadence of data capture and also understanding in the lead up to events where we want to have antennas out into the community to understand how events are being received and the extent to which businesses are included in the process. And so that process has evolved nicely. I think after the Super Bowl, we had a lot of inquiries immediately following for all manner of data and being able to acknowledge that that doesn't all come out all at once. You don't push the data button and have an amazing report. And then being able to preempt what we knew would be some levels of inquiry around GTC and March Madness. It was a much more organized media and data capture plan around the March activities. And then to the extent that we're now into World Cup, that plan and process has also evolved on the data capture side. Our special events team holds retrospectives after these events to understand where were we appropriately staffed, where were there challenges, how would we do things differently, and so we're definitely on a pathway to continuous improvement. Is there a journal or log that captures all of this great institutional knowledge? Not yet.

well i think the thing you said at the very end is exactly what i was looking for so we you know our events team really is looking at that because they've been at the center of a lot of the different coordination between the departments where you know us really learning and remembering that for the next time i think is important so if what you're saying is the events coordination team is sort of doing that already um i think that's a good answer to the question All right, so then just, I skipped over one, and that was on the certificate, the health certificate streamlining. I don't know if any of you were involved. Last year, we did the restaurant round table, and we invited the county, and Supervisor Abe Koga was there. And it was like the health department didn't know why they were there when we had that meeting. I'm wondering what kind of progress we're making in this specific regard. So whether or not we, back to Council Member Ortiz's point about streamlining, you know, a streamlining program, how are we doing now in making sure to make that connection to our health department and how they can help us move quicker?

There's definitely an ongoing dialogue from a client and customer experience standpoint. We've received a lot of inquiries from vendors who are interested in the food space or VENDING DIFFERENT PRODUCTS AROUND THESE MAJOR SPORTING EVENTS, AND WE OBVIOUSLY LEAD THEM TO THE CITY OF SAN JOSE DOING BUSINESS, RULES OF ENGAGEMENT WEBSITE, BUT ALSO FORWARD THEM TO THE COUNTY SO WE CAN SHARE WITH THEM SOME OF THE DIFFERENT COUNTY CRITERIA AND MAKE IT A BETTER EXPERIENCE FOR SMALL BUSINESS. interests who are trying to find the right information and not necessarily knowing that they may need to talk to a couple of different people to have their business presence be legitimate.

Just to add to all the things that Jen said and then to add to that we're specifically have started a cadence of meetings with our our colleagues in the be part of PBC and e And then also with County Health and so we they now know why they're in the room and what we're trying to achieve And and we're starting on that journey forward Okay, great.

I know the red lights on just are you going to do an education piece on the library card LinkedIn and partnership that you talked about right at the beginning um would be happy to create something yeah i think it'd be fun to share that you know for people who are ai ai curious and linkedin members that would be good in our public library system thank you would you care to make a motion Oh, yes, I will move to approve the presentation. Is this a referral?

Accept. Accept. Yeah, accept the report.

Thank you.

Is there a second? Okay, thank you. Moving to Council Member Kamei. I'm sorry I jumped the gun on the motion.

That's what I was going to do. Anyway, no, my colleagues have covered quite a bit already. But I just want to say thank you because this was a big lift. We didn't know how that would be in terms of using this new system of tracking things. but I've seen a lot of good work come together and the results speak for themselves. So now that you've set the bar high, you know, it's gonna be sort of like, expectations of high standards. But I just simply wanted to say thank you, because I know it's a lot of work, a lot of coordination, a lot of pushing the noodle and doing all kinds of things. And I recognize how much you've done. So just thank you. And thank you for your team. because we don't do this in isolation, right? It's not just us, it's others and it's cross department too. I like that cross department thing. And I'm glad that you do have some way of communicating with the health department. I think it'd be interesting sometime in the next year to even think about doing a forum with the health department and small businesses, food trucks, food vendors, whatever, because there's a whole gamut of stuff that has a lot to do with the health department, and they're sort of in isolation. So something that you can think about for, you know, sometime in the next coming year or so, to be able to bring entities together to say, we're going to talk about the city and public health or health department in terms of the food industry, right? I think it'd be very interesting so people can have their questions answered. But thank you so much.

Thank you. And just to follow up, thank you for the presentation. We're heading really in a great direction, and it's exciting to see. And I, too, would like to see the information about the LinkedIn AI workshop in connection with the library cards. That's something exciting. would be good to push out to our community, especially in our upcoming newsletter. And the additional information about the grants that you talked about, Blage, the criteria, what you're looking for, that we might be able to help some of our businesses look into what that might mean for them. With that, I see no further hands. Let's vote. Thank you. Motion carries. Now, that concludes our formal part of our meeting. I don't see any members of the public with their hands raised, so we stand adjourned at 2.51. Thank you.