Community & Economic Development Committee (ced) - Regular Meeting

Welcome to community and economic development committee. I like to start on time, and it's 01:30, and it looks like everybody's here. Can we, take the role,

please? Casey? Here. Mulcahy? Here. Ortiz?

Present.

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

Thank you. We have nothing on the work plan. We do have a consent calendar, a couple of items that are in the consent. Do we have any members of the public who wish to comment on the consent?

No public comment.

Any of my colleagues wish to comment, or is there a motion?

Move consent calendar.

Second. Let's vote. Thank you.

Just waiting on one third votes. That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. We haven't had a CED meeting since June. In June, we went to, change the calendar so we would be meeting every other month. But when we were to meet, we didn't have much to discuss, so we canceled that meeting. Yay.

Don't you love a canceled meeting when you can do that? But what that means now is that this meeting is a bigger meeting and has the items that we delayed from two months ago. So, this meeting may last a little bit longer, but there's a lot of good information, and why don't we just jump right into it. The first report is Team San Jose Semiannual us Report. Great.

Hi, John. Are you kicking this off?

Good

afternoon. Good afternoon, and thank you Vice Mayor and committee for your time today. My name is John LaFortune, I'm the CEO of Team San Jose. And we're here today to present our fiscal year twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five performance measurements. And once again we had a very good year and I think best yet, we helped out our small businesses and our community as a whole more so this year than we have ever in the past.

So that's very positive. And so we will get to it. I know we have a ten minute time limit and there is a larger report that we submitted earlier. So if there's details that you need, they're in there, it's available. But we will get it started right away.

Thanks John.

Thank you John. Good afternoon. My name is Ehab Sabri. I'm the CFO of Team San Jose. I'm gonna to present the fiscal year twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five performance measures. And as you see on the screen, we have achieved all the goals for the fiscal year. I just want to highlight a couple of items here. They have significant variance. The gross operating results, we exceeded the goals by 3,500,000 and that was due to overage in NVIDIA GTC. And we had significant success financially and operationally for NVIDIA GTC in March 2025.

The good news is NVIDIA is coming back in March 2026 and we're super excited about that. We also had some canceled corporate events also contributed to the significant overage gross operating results. The second item I want to highlight is economic impact. We're up by $17,200,000 against gold. We're going to address that in the next slide.

Ben? Thank you, Ehab. For the record, Ben Roshke, Vice President of Research and Strategic Development. Good afternoon everybody. Just as a reminder, per our new contract we are also breaking out for the council the difference in economic impact between the theaters and the convention center so that you can start to see a trend line in terms of performance for both of those facilities.

Our overage this year that was significant was mostly due to convention center business. As Ehab mentioned, we've been partners for a long time with Nvidia GTC working over fifteen years on that conference but have seen incredible growth in the past couple of few years with it. And there was a very large increase in scope this year again. We also had several short term corporate pieces of businesses that were unbudgeted and booked within the year in June, which is an encouraging trend as we start to see a build up in that very important market segment for us. One other note to remind the council, we did change the formula with the new contract on the Theater EI, so we don't really have an apples to apples year over year comparison.

But as we move forward, you will start to see comparison and trend lines for theater performance as that normalizes with the new formula moving forward.

Good afternoon everybody. Good to be with you again. I'm Matthew Martinucci, Vice President of Sales and Destination Services. On our sales dashboard, numbers here are that the number of citywides is up significantly that we were able to book. You can see that we have booked 29 events with a 61% increase in those contracts year over year.

The interesting thing there is that the rooms represented by those, the 76131 are only up 8.5%, because the size size of the groups is smaller than they used to be. So, we're having to turn more groups to try to make up for that. For lead generation, and a lead is an opportunity that comes in from a variety of sources, We were able to book 12, we received twelve oh seven which is actually slightly down. That number was up until March and then all of a sudden started to decrease. And then the room represented is consistent with the above graph because it's a little over a million room nights, but that is a negative 19.2%.

There is a decimal missing there, so we apologize. So, even though the leads are down only 3.6%, the room nights represented is down 19.2%. And a citywide is 500 and more rooms, hotel rooms on peak night. That's how we define it.

In a previous meeting we were asked sort of a couple questions from the committee around sort of overall context for what we see from travel tourism as a whole. On an annual basis we partner with Tourism Economics to produce an economic impact study for the entire travel and tourism ecosystem in San Jose. These are done on calendar years. So to provide some just context of overall for the entire travel industry of which we are a primary driver, for 2024 our twenty one point two million visitors that we welcome to the city of San Jose generated about $3,700,000,000 in spending which is the equivalent of $7,500,000 per day. Our hospitality supports community supports about 5% of all jobs in San Jose.

That's 23,100. And really what we like to highlight is the state and local taxes generated from this economic activity. That's the equivalent of saving $131,300 dollars per San Jose household on the amount that they would need to contribute to make up that tax base if this travel activity didn't occur. Turn it back over to Matthew.

For key sales strategies and metrics, even though our job is to lay the best foundation that we can for several years into the future, we do have an acute focus on the twenty four months because that's the window where it matters the most to everybody. So, we're always looking at 2025 and 2026, and for this calendar year '25, we're equal to last year which wouldn't normally be a success except that we did have 11,000 room nights over the summer that were non repeatable. So, we've bridged that gap and always looking to add more to that. And then looking forward for next year, even when we factor in the mega events, we would be ahead of pace anyway. So, we're very pleased with that.

Part of that comes from doing more customer events than ever before. We have 67 on the calendar. In fact, we have two people right now on the road. One is in Tahoe and one is in Montauk, New York. And it seems pretty much every week somebody is going somewhere.

We measure show dates in the convention center just because it's one black and white measurable. And, we've seen a good increase in recent years. We had 63 of those in 02/2023, that increased to 74 last year and 93 this year. And the 93 this year is even after that big cancellation that we had last month. So we would have been at 97 show days this year without that cancellation.

We continue to focus on diversification of the industries, playing in some markets that we have not played pre COVID. And then we have some exciting new groups coming. I know a couple of you are aware of an announcement that was made last week. Imagine the SAP Center full of people standing on their feet cheering for somebody doing pull ups. So it's a sight to behold.

CrossFit announced that they're coming here this coming July, and that's just one of several. We have a group coming in next September that after thirteen years in Berlin decided that they wanted to come to the epicenter of AI. And so, we have a huge conference coming in September 2026, and there are several others. And then, you know, just to temper that slightly is there's a lot of uncertainty in the current economy. It does create some headwinds, but we're doing the best we can with what we can control.

Thank you. Sorry. For the record, Laura Schimelowski, Vice President, Marketing and Communications. Thank you for having us, honored to be here. An honor to be representing this performance in paid media. The first slide that you look at, and I'll just hit the highlights for the sake of time. You'll see that we actually focus on a very bottom of marketing funnel approach. This is all digital paid media so we get to count who sees the ad and then follow them through to conversion. So for the past six months this meant our ad advertising affected 23,000 hotel bookings which means about 74,000 rooms. That's in addition to everything Matthew did.

It also counts the revenue. Total revenue combined over the last three years has been $46,000,000 by this campaign. Again we try and keep it so that we're delivering about a $35 to $40 for every dollar this city invests. We also do a meetings paid media plan. This is to help Matthew and drive those leads he was talking about and continue a conversation with our meeting planners.

In the last six months our paid media campaign generated 5,200 meetings lead and 64 RFP completions. TSJ is also helping the great folks here who are doing SJ26 both in the city and from the sports authority side. We have worked with them and done a paid media campaign that launched last month. So we'll be able to report on that soon, it's going to run all year. We developed an asset kit for our partners and shared that.

We developed a media kit for all media who's interested in writing about San Jose and we're getting some pretty good media already. That's live on our site right now. We're working with Mr. Poach on his information center and helping him with design and content around that. Very pleased to announce a content magazine partnership to show the cultural side of San Jose during the whole year of 2026 and we're also working with our friends at the Downtown Association.

They are contracted to do a small business toolkit. We're gonna make sure it goes citywide into all the council districts. We are also helping work on the digital assets of course. We have an API that feeds all of our businesses to the SJ twenty six website that we worked with Tommy and Cycle to develop. We're doing a beautiful co op marketing partnership with the city's office of cultural affairs where we're leading creative direction, production, deployment and reporting of a digital ad strategy for 13 partners.

It's our great hope that by showing them how digital advertising works that they'll continue a legacy of more growth than they received in the past and these are the wonderful partners we'll be working with on that. Our email database continues to grow. Our meeting planner database continues to grow. Again these are people who opt in to receive information from us on San Jose. Our theaters database is also growing and I'm very pleased to announce that our sixty day calendar is becoming our first industry newsletter.

PR highlights were very good to us this year. For fiscal year twenty four and twenty five, Visit San Jose PR generated 58 pieces of coverage totaling over 1,000,000,000 reach and $2,500,000 in ad value. That's all earned media, that's editorial value. We also look for fun partnerships like this better than fun. This partnership with the San Jose Museum of Art turned the exterior of the convention center into an artist easel.

This was featured in last month's Vogue, both the convention center, the city of San Jose, and of course the Museum of Art. And I'm very very pleased to announce that San Jose Sour will be coming back right now as we speak. A small but agile group of people are in 10th Street shooting the next all the assets for this. Thank you. One last slide.

Thank you. In addition to the evolution that we're seeing with the sixty day calendar becoming the industry newsletter, we're keeping top of mind our outreach to small businesses. We've got our Director Community Engagement Nicole Donia who's our boots on the street with that effort every day. But we're really excited. We've got the upcoming next installation of our biannual Summit for Hospitality or TSJ Bash coming November 13. We'll be everything 2026 and really excited to also be partnering with the Office of Cultural Affairs on this to help talk about how the arts will play in 2026 as part of the programming as well. So that concludes our report, and we are open for any questions.

Wonderful. Thank you for that presentation. A lot to cover in a short time, and thank you for being concise. I appreciate that. Do we have any members of the com public who wish to speak?

No public comment.

Okay. Before I turn it over to council member Mulcahy, I just wanna thank you for your presentation, and I wanna give a personal thank you to Matthew. What he didn't mention is that he coordinated the sister cities director's meeting will be here in March too. It's a small group. It's about maybe 50, maybe a little bit more, we don't know.

Appreciate that you helped coordinate that and got the hotel rooms set aside for them at the, I think, I believe, the Signia. So thank you. And the Sister City program, when they come, we are taking a look at doing a panel on sports diplomacy, so we're hoping that we can get Tommy involved, John and others involved, because they're the when I had a meeting with them last week, they approached me and said, hey, CrossFit's coming to your area. I hadn't even heard yet. It had been released, but not to me, because I wasn't paying any attention, but they are excited around the country that CrossFit is coming, and we're gonna get a lot of people here.

So kudos to I know John and the team were probably really involved in making sure that we got CrossFit here. So it's it's really an exciting presentation that we have team San Jose here, and then we have twenty twenty six team here as well. So with that, I will turn it over to council member Mulcahy.

Thank you, vice mayor and team San Jose. Thanks for the report. Got a few questions for you, but I just wanted to first say that Rosalyn and I both for the committee's benefit serve as the liaisons to team San Jose and I think we do a good job at least one of us are always at the meetings maybe one and a half of us for the most part. And just I think it's an opportunity to kind of learn every time we go. And so just as an idea for Team San Jose, you guys do a good job of giving us the report in advance and then I know that you make yourself available for having conversation.

Just might be a good idea, a lot of this is industry speak, maybe pick one item each time and sort of give us a deep dive like what is the sort of the spend, what do you call it?

The estimated direct spend.

Yes, like and then now that you've broken it out for the theaters, I mean what is that parking and is it restaurants and is it dependent upon where somebody parks relative to what's available to them. So help us be better at understanding that information. Having lived with it for twenty something something years, I still have to always remind myself. Also want to say congrats because I think this is the first time I've seen us compare us in any way to the year of 1819. I think in the report you actually finally are able to say these are close to 'eighteen, 'nineteen numbers and I know that's been a very taboo thing because that was our greatest and biggest year ever and I'm hoping that that's a sign of more things to come in terms of our ability to be able to compare us to pre COVID numbers.

Council member you don't mean 1819.

Oh, did I? No, I meant 08/20/1839,

they knew.

Just wondered how we were gonna go.

Pam, you and I are not that old for goodness sakes. All right, so 2018, 2019, right, pre COVID era has been really hard to compare ourselves to. Can you talk about lost business? I don't know who to go to, Matthew, you're hidden way back there in the corner, but what's our biggest challenge relative to why we're losing any business at all?

Thank you for that question because it is a very important one. On a national basis, the number one complaint of meeting planners is the cost of having meetings. The cost of everything. So, that might lend you to think that it would be number one here in San Jose, and in fact it's not even close. The number one reason by a factor of more than four to one of anything related to cost is the hotel package that we're able to offer.

Many groups groups would like to be in a small amount of hotels, and in San Jose that can be very hard for us to put together. So, to give you a context on this, for just the groups that wanted to come to San Jose in 2025. So, just this calendar year, we lost 170,000 room nights, which is equal, you mentioned twenty nineteen a minute ago, that equals the entire amount that Team San Jose booked into the city that arrived in 2019. So, think about that for a moment. We lost the entire year's worth of business only because of the hotel package that we were not able to meet the customers' needs on.

So that far and away is the number one reason that we lose business and cost is about less than a quarter of that.

But Can we dig into that a little bit more?

Yes. It's not just

the cost, It's everything else that it could be that they couldn't put that number of booked rooms that they needed, right, in a proximity to our building and our campus.

Correct. If for example, the demographic of a group can be very important here. So if you have a sales meeting, if you're a company that is launching a new product or doing some type of sales rally type meeting, you want everyone in the same location. You want them riding the elevators together. You want them saying, hey let's meet in the bar afterwards.

You don't want them getting on a bus, or having to walk a couple of blocks to their hotel. So, in some cases, it's not that we couldn't actually secure the block, it's just that it was undesirable compared to many other locations that are always building new hotels. Mean thousand room hotels, they pop up all over the place. And so, the market is changing as well, that it is becoming easier to move these meetings to other cities. But, that's the biggest thing for us is that even if somebody were to walk a couple of blocks, say to the De Anza, to the AC, they don't need to do that in many other cities.

They can just be in one building.

So what I'm hearing you say is we need more hotel rooms for one. Correct. And we need them proximate to the convention center.

Correct.

And but what I'm not hearing you say is in the meantime, what are the challenges for putting those hotel rooms together locally up, I mean we'll go back to twenty eighteen-nineteen, we had a very cohesive hotel community that was working with Team San Jose to put those rooms together. Do we still enjoy that same kind of camaraderie from one hotel to the next in terms of achieving that? I am putting you on the spot for a reason and I want you to be In

some cases, yes, but the cost, just like we mentioned that the cost to have a meeting has gone up, the cost to operate a hotel has gone up, right? And, to operate the convention center. But, hotels are in some cases being restrictive on their blocks so that they can yield off of the pressure that comes from that group coming. And so, we're trying very hard to, in fact we recently have had some ownership meetings asking for help in putting leverage on some of the properties that aren't, to use a word we use is cooperate, because everyone wants to benefit from the group that comes to the city, but there are varying degrees of willingness participate.

Wow, you are a pro. Well, if there's anything we can do to help to bring some pressure to, I know that you're working hard because it is a collegial group and people that are working at one hotel at some other point may have worked at another. But essentially, that 170,000 room loss, if we could get back even 20% of that with greater cooperation and controlled cost, that would be a huge achievement for us. Just a couple of quick ones here. Sixty day calendar, Laura, going to your newsletter, I mean that it's a fantastic resource.

It's so hard to read with all those dates that come up. So what are you doing there?

We're going to turn it into a true industry newsletter. Got it. And in this way we're not just pushing out an email, we'll be able see who opens it, who doesn't open, we'll be able to push it back. We'll be able to do heat maps, seeing what is interesting to them and what is not. We'll be able to make sure that all of the links work properly and easily and all this information too will be on the industry pages. It just gives us the opportunity to grow quicker, to market it in a different way and to gather intelligence from the people who are using it now.

So this, I don't know if this goes to generally speaking, we're all getting inquiries from the community around SJ-twenty 6. We'll ask the same question of Tommy and his group later. Who do we have them call? Because our offices have the toolkit that's been provided, but if somebody wants to talk to somebody live, who do they call?

It's a great question, thank you so much. Right now everything new as it happens goes up on our industry pages. That's become a portal for 2026 information. And just a quick pitch on that, we actually have table toppers and posters up there now for easy download and we'll be giving those away at bash too. There are emails listed there both marketing@SanJose.org, prsanjose dot org and infosanjose dot org. Currently no phone number other than the front desk. At your request I'd be happy to add one. Right now we're taking everything through email.

Okay. I think just knowing our small business community, email is really clumsy thing to get answers and I think at some point we're gonna need to offer live bodies for people to talk to. My time is running up, but just two things. You just mentioned Bash two. Has everybody on the city council been invited to come to Bash two, but more importantly to encourage restaurants and hospitality folks in their various districts to learn how they can participate with Team San Jose events year round?

Yes. So we all council members should have received the invitation for bash. And to your point, Nicole's day to day job is to make sure she is getting out into the different districts and all the different business associations to ensure that they're aware of what's happening. But I think to your point, know when John's meeting with council members and all of us, it helps to make sure we're asking

I'm sorry to interrupt you Ben. Would you make sure to reach out to every chief of staff at every district and make sure. That they know this is happening and this is an opportunity for some of their small businesses to come to learn how to plug in. To all the events that are coming into San Jose both. Convention center related and otherwise. And with that, I will move to approve the report. Second.

Thank you. Good questions. Moving on to council member Kameh.

Thank you so much. I'll be very brief because council member Mulcahy covered a lot. I think that if there are any, inroads that we can make to be able to assist, in, encouraging, greater cooperation, cooperation, I think that is certainly worth it. It really would make a great difference, especially for those who perhaps are not as cooperative. So just to let you know that there's a lot of support to be able to do that, to change that.

And you know change comes very slowly, but if you never start it never happens. So I I would put myself out there to also help assist in any way that I can. I just wanted to say thank you to the team. Know and thank you to John for always reaching out to our office for any questions, for any information or anything that we may have. And over the years, you know, I have noticed more information and different targeting, and and certainly I just I just wanna say how much I appreciate that very much. So thank you.

Thank you. Again, thank you for the presentation, and, thank you to council member Mulcahy for your expertise in this area, having served and founded team San Jose, been there for so long. You have the background and the history that none of us do, so your insight is really, really valuable. Thank you. With that, let's vote.

Just waiting on one more.

Peter's out.

Ortiz is in the back. Okay. And that motion passes unanimously.

Okay. Great. Moving on to the next item, which is the 2026 major event status report. Thank you. Who's leading us off?

Hi. I'm council member Foley.

Okay.

Welcome. Hello. Thank you for having us here today. We'd love to provide an overview of what's happening with s j twenty six. Roselyn, did you want to handle the slide?

Sure. Just a brief, very brief overview objectives that the team has for all of our events in 2026. Obviously, we wanna make sure that we are crafting and designing events for all of our residents as far as the millions of visitors who we expect coming, and we wanna make sure that by doing so that we're really highlighting San Jose as a premier destination for future sports and entertainment destinations, and then obviously we wanna make sure that we are maximizing our economic impact for the city and being sure that our businesses, particularly our small businesses throughout our city are are realizing that. We have shared before we've got several work stream items in the strategic plan, and I'm gonna turn it back over to Tommy to kick us off.

Great. Thank you. Huge effort first starting around branding right now. Since the last time we spoke to you, we've released the s g twenty six logo and look and feel. We did this at a big press announcement at the airport at the August.

You can see here we have the logo on some t shirts, some QR codes. We've released our email signature. There's an entire brand kit that's available for anybody to use within council members offices, city manager's office, and any non profits. We are trying to develop a sponsorship program and are licensing this logo out to for profit companies. We've already started to use the brand out in the community, you can see some of our new digital billboards are using the s j twenty six brand.

The airport has also started their marketing, can see here and a pull up banner that they have highlighting the ease of proximity between the airport and the local sports venues, and then you can see on the luggage carousels here they've already started to use some of the branding as well, as well as some other for further s j twenty marketing around the airport. So we're excited to already see the brand out in use in the community. What you'll see coming soon, our street pole banners are gonna go up, should be in the next couple of days if not at the November. We're really excited because the major sports properties are leaning into this as well, so not only will you see the SJ twenty six brand up on the street pole banners, but you'll also see the IP of here, the example is National Women's Soccer League Championship, so you'll see some of that that's happening. We think that that'll happen as well with the Super Bowl, March Madness in the NCAA, as well as the World Cup.

So it's exciting for us to have our brand up there alongside the major IP of these major sports events. We're looking at using a 100 street pole banners around downtown and so that'll be 200 SJ26 banners that'll go up. Some further branding and wayfinding efforts that are happening, we are in the process of having 10 new street signs put up around downtown. We just spoke this morning in our small working group on wayfinding imagine that we may put up a few more street bold sign banners around the Guadalupe River. We are in the process now of having sidewalk stencils put up.

We'll see how long those last if we need to redo each one of those for each one of sporting events, but we're to use sidewalk stencils for wayfinding. Transit banners will go up in particular a lot of dressing around Dear Don with the amount of traffic that's going to flow into that station. The stitching districts project has taken off and has its own timelines, but we're excited to see some of the initial work that's happening there. I think there's 99 sharks that are supposed to happen soon along Sharks Way in stitching districts. Our website has launched since the last time we talked.

That's going well for us. It's the best place to find all the latest information on what's happening with SJ twenty six. There was a question last time we were here about how many languages. We have that site in five different languages and I can go through those if you want but it is a multi language website. And then I'll turn it over to John Poach now from the Sports Authority.

We're in the process of very close to hopefully opening the visitor center. I was approved by city council, thank you, September 30. Received the keys October 2. Now we're just waiting for the contract to be signed through the city manager's office. We submitted all the paperwork and insurance. We've hired a design firm. We've done all the design and the build out is happening as we speak. The exterior branding will take a the theme of the SJ twenty six but without '26. Cause we want it to be evergreen. We also focus with branding of the partners who bring visitors to San Jose.

Such as Visit San Jose, BTA, Downtown Association, San Jose Mineta International Airport, San Jose State. So they all have kind of the small branding recognizing those who bring tourism and visitors to our downtown. The best thing about the visitor center is it's going be a one stop concierge for our hotels, restaurants, bars, retails retails in all 10 districts of San Jose. Within the visitor center, we built a podcast studio free of use, professional studio, anyone who wants to do a podcast emanating from downtown. We also built a community boardroom where any nonprofit can use that boardroom for free.

It's going be an open space, open for all. We set up a programming space for up to 60 guests with a stage for presenters. That's also offered for free of any of our downtown or any of the City of San Jose partners. And most exciting on the sports side, we'll have a sports merchandise store for only San Jose teams. San Jose Giants, San Jose Earthquakes, BayFC, San Jose Sharks, San Jose Barracuda, and the Spartans. And we'll have a San Jose made apparel as well. Now we have the sporting events come in. We'll make it a superstore. Part of the reason why they want to come to San Jose the way we work with them. I don't like pop ups in tents.

I want them to be in bricks and mortars. So they'll have an example, the NWSL. We'll have a superstore within the visitor center. So we'll take a local team merch out. Put the special event whether it's a Super Bowl or NCAA or World Cup. So that's for the visitor center. As far as events that we have done to get in preparation for SHA twenty six, with about a three week notice, we're able to host the Valkyries. WNBA playoff game, wildly successful event. Event. So much thanks to obviously Shark Sports and Entertainment and Visit San Jose for the heavy lifting that we had to do.

We hosted Sports Authority and SJ twenty six block parties. So you had the block party on Barack Obama Way as well as San Pedro Square where we did a watch party with a DJ as well. Just to get the footprint, you know, the fans an idea of what these are going to be all about. We're able to really do a great job of flexing our marketing power through Visit San Jose and the mayor's office and the sports authority. We had tremendous media coverage for the Valkyrie playoff game. So we made a SAP Center Valhalla for one night. It was pretty exciting. First time I'm the in sports business my whole life, I didn't see one visiting team jersey at the game. I've never seen that before. So it was pretty exciting.

Next slide. We just completed the rock and roll races. I can't thank council members in District 6 and District 2 and District 3. You know we do a 13 mile half marathon. And we know it's inconvenienced for people even though we sent multiple mailers out. But we have to close streets for 13 miles. Our OCA department for permitting is beyond spectacular. And then PDSEU officers outstanding. This was the most successful race we've had in our fifteen years I've been doing this. We had 10,000 runners.

Our goal is to get it up to 15 to 20 where we should be pre pandemic. But we had over 10,000 runners and we were broken down and cleaned up by 1PM. We've never been done before 5PM. We had a high emphasis on this because of the Little Italy Festival the same day later in that day. So we tried to make sure that we had the routes cleaned. But the event was a tremendous success. The plaza never looked better. And OCA was absolutely outstanding with that. And then we led right into the Shark's Way. You know the pregame ceremony kicking off the Shark season.

Be able to do the dedication as the first part of the stitching of districts was extremely exciting to celebrate the city's investment in the SAP Center. And actually have our owner, Hassel Plotner, join our two council members, Tore Diosen, Mocay, and Mayor Mahan to do the street dedication. So it was a pretty special night to be able to do that as a little tease of what's to come in our partnership with the Sharks. We have a huge event coming up, the National Women's Soccer League Championships. It's a series of events.

November 19 is the NWSL award show. It's actually going be at the Civic Auditorium, not the Montgomery Theater. And that's internationally televised. They have mega celebrities that will actually be the host. I can't tell you who they are. That was the NDA. But that's going be internationally televised and it's going to be first class. The next day is a media day at the Civic. And then we do a skills contest. That's the top players in the league. We'll be at San Jose State Soccer Complex. We're limited to only 3,000 seats, so that will sell out. We're targeting all the youth girls soccer leagues in the area thanks to the help from BFC, and that will sell out. On the twenty second is the FanFest. It's also the day of the championship.

Championship. Bit of a challenge, but thanks to Shark Sports and Entertainment. The fan fest will be at Creekside from twelve to four. If you know, the sharks dropped the puck that Saturday at 4PM. A very rare Saturday 4PM game. But I had to make these arrangements in in May May and and June June and and the the NHL NHL schedule schedule didn't come out till July. But we made sure that we'll be out of there by four and the fans we have shuttle buses and VTA and Caltrain taking them to PayPal Park for a five p. M. Game. So we have a lot coming up. We will have a VIP reception hosted by the sports authority in the city of San Jose, which all the council members will receive an invite welcoming the NWSL championships here on Thursday November 20. And earlier that morning we'll have a flag raising of the NWSL championship flag.

Thanks John. Just switching gears back into SJ 26 specific activities. You know one of the things that's happened with these sporting events is they become so cost prohibitive that the average person can't go and there's flat out just not enough tickets. And so we think that that's a bad look for the community and so we want to make sure that everybody has in the community an experience where they feel like they've had a Super Bowl experience, they've had a March Madness experience, and they've had a World Cup experience. And the SJ Game Changers program is an extension of this.

And so what we're working on with SJ Game Changers is to bring athletes into schools, boys and girls clubs, libraries to teach the values and principles of being an athlete. So these are time management skills, how to set and achieve goals, how to persevere. We're looking to layer into the existing programs with our local sports team, so Sharks, Barracudas, San Jose Giants, San Jose State University, All these different great sports teams that go into the community and speak. We want them to also speak about everything that's going to happen with SJ twenty six to have a layer of sort of athletes and sports related to the big sporting activities that are coming. And also get people excited about SJ twenty six.

We have an exciting piece that really relates to what we are here in San Jose which is the capital of technology. And so we'll have a mobile application that will launch here in the next two months. And this will give us a continuous engagement loop with the community. And so once the athletes go in and speak at boys and girls clubs, schools, libraries, places like that, the kids can go home, they can have a parent download the app, the kids can then go in and complete quizzes, they can level up, they can earn badges, and we're hoping that they can even win tickets and merchandise to the sporting events. But this is something that we're really excited about. It's a chance for us to educate the community and get people excited about SJ twenty six and something that we hope to continue on after 2026.

Thank you Tommy. My name is Carrie Adams Hapner,

I'm the director of the office of cultural affairs.

It's a pleasure to be here with you today to share some updates on our art installations and neighborhood activations occurring in 2026. Just very briefly, did want to mention that one of our streams of work was around policy, and I'm also very pleased to say that that stream of work has been completed. So we're done, we brought to you the policy that's been approved, so we're very happy about implementing it now. In June, the Office of Cultural Affairs held a community meeting with our arts sector, and we had over 120 people attend. It was a great opportunity for us to share what we had planned, and also to get their input on some of those activities and what are the things that they had envisioned.

And not surprisingly, one of the key message points that we received was the importance of ensuring that our local artists and our local arts community could be involved. So I'm here to provide an update about that with you. Beginning in January, we're going to have two City Hall art exhibits that are gonna be sports themed with the theme of hometown heroes. So out here in this corridor, which is one of our gallery spaces, you're going to see four very large vinyl murals, all sports themed by four local artists. Also, on some of the screens that you see at City Hall, we're going to be activating those screens again, and we're gonna be showcasing digital photography of local photographers, all again with this with this sports related theme of hometown heroes.

So with that exhibition, we're gonna have 46 submissions. So we're very, very thrilled about the ability to commission and have and

showcase the work of our local artists as part

of this major year. Beginning in January, on January 31, we're going to have a major art installation here at City Hall, and it's not your typical art installation, it's what the artist Elizabeth Turk describes as a social sculpture. So you are all cordially invited, and we would love to have your constituents come and participate. It's a free event, and every participant does receive an illuminated umbrella, and the umbrellas will have a constellation design on the top. And what Elizabeth Turk does is that she documents the social interactions amongst people as they are enjoying and playing with this umbrella.

It's a bit of a happening, if you will. And to kick the night off, she has commissioned San Jose Taigo to do a performance as they are starting the event. So again, we're just emphasizing our local culture as part of these events. I'm also very excited to share that we'll be working with two professors from San Jose State University on some art projects and installations, a projection mapping project on the side of SAP as part of March Madness, and they are engaging their students as part of this, so it's a really great opportunity to build the bench and give students a great professional experience. Also, we are going to be expanding our City Dance series.

City Dance in 2026 will be occurring the night before a FIFA match. So we're gonna be scaling different types of activations with the larger activations or larger concerts and then also something more community oriented the night before FIFA. And again, we're gonna be engaging our local talent both with dance instructors as well as the musical groups that are gonna be performing. And I will say, again, all these events are free, so everybody is welcome to attend. And one of the ways we're going to approach City Dance, for example, is we're going to curate the genres according to the participating FIFA team.

So let's say Mexico is playing, then there's a good chance we might be featuring salsa. And finally, a very important point is that we want to ensure that there's opportunities activations in neighborhood business districts including soccer clinics, concert series, and watch parties. Next. So in terms of local business preparation, as Laura pointed out in the previous presentation, Team San Jose is actively promoting how different businesses can get engaged citywide. So they are doing their industry email newsletters or table toppers that they described previously, and they're doing their bashes.

So again, that's a biannual hospitality or summit of hospitality, is that right? And that will be on November 13. So one of the things we're very deliberately doing is inviting cross sectors to participate in this bash, because we want to make sure that they have opportunity to network and also potentially collaborate. As they're preparing for '26, we want to make sure that our businesses are well informed, they know how to prepare, and if needed they can staff up accordingly. And as Laura also mentioned, Downtown Association as well as the Chamber of Commerce are developing a business toolkit that we're going to be promoting.

Also there will be some door to door outreach. So that will also be available at the Bash on November 13. So again, if you can help get the word out so that businesses in your districts can participate, we greatly appreciate that. Thank you.

Excuse me. Good afternoon. I'm Ray Reardon, the director of the office of emergency management, the city manager's office. So one of the key elements is people moving between locations. We wanted to set up a work group committee that really focused on sidewalks, roadways.

We want to make sure the pathway between all the events is safe. So looking at the roads, the sidewalks, etcetera. And in that work group committee, it's a cross sector public works, Department of of Housing, Code Enforcement, Fire, PD, OEDCA and PRNS. So there's a number of agencies or departments giving feedback as to what we see assessing and mapping out where the challenges are. Proactive work on an infrastructure improvement plan with priorities and timing to make sure they're ready in time and to provide support to unsheltered residents.

On the next slide, our major focus in the city of San Jose is to make sure we have significant public safety actions taking place to make sure that the area is safe. We're paying attention to concerns. So we've been working closely with Super Bowl and World Cup public safety. Each one of the eight both FIFA and NFL have their own safety and support networks. So they work closely with us on security, engagements, timing, everything from shuttles to operations to keep the team safe before in between competitions or before competitions.

Our coordination meetings, we had one even this morning, includes federal, state, county, local government and private companies are involved with all the Super Bowl planning. So we have a regular cadence of communication with those organizations as we get closer, how we interact with each other, expectations are. Along with police and fire OEM has been closely engaged with actual FBI and the NFL and FIFA on specific concerns of security etcetera. The Human Trafficking Task Force which is led by DA's office has reached out and has established a stronger relationship with us to have regular training. I was at a training on September 27.

We had representatives of police there, PBC E. We had other departments who are very much engaged with us already doing trainings ahead of time. And we also have engaged the airport to make sure their staff, they've informed us that they will have their staff and all vendors trained on signs of human trafficking. We've had an extended series of trainings that we actually started almost a year ago. When we had at least 10 representatives in the city at each of these training sessions and committed around one hundred and twenty thousand hours of training engagement, making sure that we're prepared for this event.

We're making sure that we include partners such as VTA which is going to be valuable to us for all transportation engagement and all the support to both the game and getting to our events that were planned in the city of San Jose. And lastly as we recognized the events of last week, we are engaging on establishing immigration enforcement program. So we're aware of those going on and actions that we will take. We are working with the police department and other organizations to make sure that is in departments within the city to make that we're all engaged and understanding what our role is, what we can do. The city attorney's office and then is to make sure that we're not getting in the way of the operations and having challenges there.

So we have a team effort going on all that.

Thank you Ray. Shifting gears into the big fan fest that we're planning in Downtown San Jose and across San Jose for all the major sports events. We spoke last time a lot about what we're doing, we're continuing to execute on this strategy, so major headlining concerts in Downtown San Jose across the days that major sporting event action is happening either here in San Jose or in the surrounding communities. We are in the process now of locking down the major headlining talent. I'd say that process is going very very well and we hope to have the announcements out starting in the next two to four weeks.

We still continue to plan for a 100 plus watch parties, the most of those watch parties are related to World Cup where the majority of the games are, but that process is going very well from both execution perspective on the technological side, as well as the rights management side of things. We continue to work on drone shows and projection mapping, so there's evening entertainment to feature San Jose, but also get the community out and tell the stories of the diversity and culture of San Jose through projection mapping and drone shows. So overall the idea is huge fan fest downtown to bring the foot traffic in from San Jose, the surrounding communities even around the globe, and really create that feeling so that anybody can have a Super Bowl, March Madness or World Cup experience here in San Jose without actually having to go to one of the sporting events. So that is the end of our slides for today and love to open up for questions and comments.

Great. Thank you so much for the presentation. It's almost here. A year ago when we started planning, it seemed so far away, but it's really just around the corner, and it's getting really exciting. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

No public comment.

Thank you. Then I'll turn to council member Ortiz.

I wanna thank you staff for that report. It's definitely exciting to see the progress that has been made especially around partnerships, marketing and community engagement. So have a few questions in regards to how the work connects connects back to local participation as well as neighborhood readiness. I wanted to I wanted to ask, can you clarify how the contracting out for the the watch parties, the the fan fests and the concerts that you mentioned, how that's being handled? Are these opportunities going to be distributed among local event producers or neighborhood groups or are they being managed through a single wide contractor and how did that What did that process look like?

Was it equitable? How do we make sure that we're using local event providers in contrast to outside vendors?

Focus is local. You know, it's I do sporting events here every year and I wanna work with folks who are local, who know the landscape of the city, know who to call, know how the prep process is, have a working relation with PD, office emergency services, fire and health. So with that being said, we had a group, I think it was four local event producers all present to us earlier in City Hall here about how they would help execute the programming. So I can let Tommy talk to it in more detail. But what I am proud is that we are using all San Jose based local event producers.

To give a few more specifics on that, the contracting process happens through the sports authority and not directly through the city. We are seeking to have everybody be local who's involved in the process and are trying to spread out all the different projects that we have across as many different local vendors as we possibly can.

I appreciate that. Can we define local? I guess is that like an individual that has a business in the city of San Jose? Like how are we making sure that you know this is getting out? I know you said four, that doesn't really seem too competitive. Like how do we make sure it's not insiders getting these opportunities and that everyone has a shot?

One thing we it's not so much insiders is that who has been successful in running events in San Jose within the standards of the city. So for the Super Bowl, it's an event that's well known within the city of San Jose. They promoted the Fisher concert that was in front of City Hall. So they understood the footprint and the landscape and the needs within that. And so obviously they're a logical choice moving for the Super Bowl weekend because that's the exact same footprint we're gonna use.

What we did for the Valkyrie's basketball game, we used another local event producer who has done the block parties and concerts at Discovery Meadow and the plaza throughout downtown. So that was a small event to make sure that footprint worked, worked within the operating framework. And so that was the second producer. Rock and roll, I've been using Philco for fifteen years. He's just an incredible troubleshooter. I use him for a number of events. And so he's part of that process as well. That's just three for just three of the events that we have coming up that we're using that are all local.

Okay.

I don't know if I want give the names cause

No that's fine. You don't have the

We're finalizing term sheets.

No worries. Just wanted

I promise you they're local.

Great.

Glad they're local. I just wanted I've just received feedback from the community that it's been, you know, a process and some of this seems a little esoteric that it it's not necessarily written out and presented to the community. And I just some individuals based off of relationships that they have may have more access to you than those and you know historically city processes they go through bids and so I'm just trying to see what is the process for groups that you know make what may work with us in our neighborhoods to access some of these meaningful life changing opportunities. So yeah, I'm gonna be watching that and so you did mention four and so is it gonna be just a select amount of contracts or is there gonna be ongoing opportunities? Just so that when I have conversations with partners I can relay that to them.

Well in addition to downtown we're also working with Community Strong.

Okay.

And so all the events won't just be downtown. They're going be in different districts San Jose. And then we are also sharing vendors, thoughts, and potential funders with the community strong group as well. So an example, we may have a funder that might be category exclusive for downtown. But it doesn't mean they're category exclusive if we use them in different districts of San Jose. So we are working with Community Strong to spread out the footprint of the events and activations.

But would those be like for these events, right, those are mostly funded by your organization with these outside you're working with Community Strong, would they be responsible for doing their own fundraising and you guys just kind of pass them like or give them the opportunity to do it under the banner or what would that look like?

Community Strong had a program in place. And so we're helping them with leads and then when we can help with passing it we have a prospect right now we're working with where we can help we'll pass them on through them. We have been working with Nathan and his group and matter of fact we meet with them almost once a month.

Okay. All right. Appreciate that. It's important to me to make sure as I said, I'm not saying any specific person is an insider but people, some certain individuals who may work with some of your partners like you said, you mentioned Fischer, you mentioned block parties, they may have a existing relationship with your organization. And it's important to me that women, event planners of color, and individuals who are doing work on the ground level who may be from San Jose because I don't know if the individual you're talking about is actually from San Jose, and may may have a more connection to the pulse of what's going on in the city.

I think I think there are a variety of different leaders that I'd like to see gain access to these to these opportunities and I just hope that that point is being is being stressed. In the report it mentions that the staff is finalizing a strategy with partners as you mentioned with Community Strong Downtown Association, the chamber, Team San Jose, as well as with neighborhood business districts in delivering community focused activations. Do we know when that council district strategy or neighborhood specific strategy is expected to be finalized and when that may be available for our council offices to provide impact or input or feedback to?

I think it's always going to be an ongoing process and some of that is really related to the fact that this really started around World Cup watch parties and there's still not finalization in terms of what will be allowed. We recently got I would say more formalized rules from FIFA on what those watch parties look like. It's also a function of what other events happen. There's potential for other major events happening here in San Jose that we may have access to tickets to and our endeavor is to give those out into the different districts in particular around diversity and the disadvantaged. So I think we can give you the outline structure of what we want to do, but it's always going to be an iterative process based upon what sort of new events come into the community and what new access we have to tools that we can give people more access to these sporting events.

Okay. Thank you.

And council member, if if I could just add, Roselyn Huey, deputy city manager. We are very interested obviously in working with all of the council members in hosting a variety of activations and events in your districts, and we're having conversations with with some of you now. We're committed to meet with you regularly, so if it means we need to set up some regular cadence of meeting with you to make sure you understand what things are coming down the pike, how how plans are being formulated, we are definitely happy to do that. I'll also note that we are scheduled to present at the small business advisory committee in December, and so we know that that body is made up a number of small businesses, all local San Jose, and we wanna make sure that we have them fully connected into the process.

Well just thank you for that Roselyn, I look forward to that, I serve liaison on that committee alongside council member Kameh. But do we know if is there going to be like a strategy that we could see in relation to like the neighborhood business districts that we could give feedback on?

In terms of the neighborhood business districts, we've really relied on community strong strategies to do that. We can try to come back to you with a more formalized plan, but again I think it's always going to be something that's in constant evolution.

Great, so you're relying on them, are they getting any support from you guys to do that?

We plan we plan to support them and we've tried to send companies to them that we think would help support them and we do plan to financially support them as well.

Great. Thank you for that. Know I know Nathan, he's working with all our business association and all of our districts. I just don't want this to be like you handle this and you know we're not giving them support. I appreciate that. And final question, know my time is running out. Regarding the FIFA World Cup Small Business Opportunity Workshop that occurred on October 21, Can you share how outreach for that event was conducted especially to our local small businesses in our districts?

I'm happy to take this.

We're talking about last week.

Yes, the one last week. So council member that that event was actually hosted by Verizon in connection with the Bay Area host committee. Our staff were invited to participate. I think John Poach were you there presenting as well, but it wasn't a staff event that it was originated from staff, It was hosted by the the host committee.

So nobody here had anything to do with the planning of that or?

What it was is Verizon was hosting those in each of their 11 World Cup cities in USA. And so they reached out to us. We recommended downtown. And actually Tommy presented with two other panelists. Ruth Chiquetta with the Bay Area Host Committee. And I'm blank on the last panelist. And Verizon said it was our highest attended of the 11 US cities hosting a World Cup. And they plan on doing another one in January because of the success of the turnout.

Thank you. Appreciate that. I think that's where I was going with this. When the next one is gonna be occurring, I greatly would appreciate having a heads up. I think I found out about that the Friday before through an email. I understand it wasn't city staff role to do outreach for that but I definitely would like to make sure that our business associations and event organizers are being invited. You know I'll be honest with you, a lot of event organizers businesses have kinda come up come up to me saying that they don't necessarily feel included. I'm glad that Community Strong Strategies, is now at the table, but I I hope that, the transparency is increased as this process moves forward.

And council member, I would like to share that in coordination with Verizon and as information about the agenda was coming to bear, our team and and Carlos was able to amplify and they saw a dramatic uptick in subscription to the event as a result of SJ economy efforts to amplify.

Anything else?

No, that's fine. Okay.

Council member Kamay.

Thank you so much for the information and report. And you know, I'm I'm very excited about the visitor center. And I just wanted to, know a little bit more in terms of how, the community and others will know about it. I think it's fantastic that you're gonna have a podcast area, boardroom and other, know, to invite the community to be a part of this. But I'm just wondering how, you plan to disseminate information out to others who may want to participate.

We're leaning heavily in our partnership with Visit San Jose.

Okay.

And with Laura, she's been terrific so far in the planning. We built a rather robust database between VISTA San Jose, San Jose Moneta International Airport, our council partners, sports authority. So mainly it's gonna be with Laura. We're also gonna be contacting she's gonna be visiting at the site tomorrow with me on how we promote the 10 districts of San Jose to get her thoughts. And then from there, she's gonna reach out to each of the council members about potential of displays for each of the 10 districts within the visitor center.

Oh, that's excellent. I'm very excited about that. I mean I think it's about time. So I look forward to engaging and participating in that and letting others know about it. Is it gonna be sort of first come first serve kind of thing or have you figured that out in terms of of allowing people to use the facility and and all of that? Because I imagine it's gonna be quite a demand.

I I hope there's gonna be quite a demand. I like your optimism.

Yeah.

But I mean, my staff will be in the building Monday through Friday, 9AM to 5PM. We'll be open from ten to five. Oh. With the goal of being open on the weekends, ten to five as well. We're doing an internship program at San Jose State Hospitality. We'll provide tuition stipends for every 50 shifts worked. So they get actual work in concierge and put in theory into practice.

Wow.

So Professor Yan at San Jose Hospitality has been terrific with that. So I hope we had that issue, but we will have a scheduling format.

Wonderful. Well, I look forward to it, and thank you so much for the information. The other issue I wanted to bring up is public safety. So thank you Ray for bringing that up. You know, in in my community, because of certain events that have happened recently, there's certainly a concern about whether or not people will feel safe enough to come out to some of the events.

And, I understand that there's going to be a small business tool kit, that is going to be available. I know that, the office of social and racial equity does have a toolkit to inform and let people people know what they should do, what they can't do, what, you know, some of the protocols necessary. So I I just want to emphasize how important that is for small business small business owners to know that knowing your rights in certain situations and that we are in fact taking precautions to be able to make all of the events safe for everyone. So I'm glad to hear it and I know Ray you and I spoke earlier and and with Jen in terms of what I hope to be more information. The more information education that that we can translate or give to our community to let them know, no, we want all of these events to be safe and we wanna ensure that people do not feel threatened by coming out to events.

Because, you know, if you don't have people coming out then, you know, it's gonna be a pretty, you know, skinny event. So I think that sending that message out is going to be, I think, critically important because I know that many people have decided to stay home, because they don't feel safe. So, keep that sort of front and center. I would like to move acceptance of the major event status report and cross reference it to the city council regular meeting of November 18. Second. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Council member Mulcahy.

Thank you. I won't be long. Thanks for the report. Appreciate all the variables you covered today. Some of the questions got answered by Ray in terms of our preparedness.

So thanks for that. Having been in the kind of event business over the years, you sort of until it happens, you get lots of questions about when is this going to happen, when is that going to happen. But I don't want us to ignore it, right. So the thing that think a point. Start delivering some things that are gonna be happening, I think it would be really helpful.

It's one thing to say that the actual sporting event is happening, but I think it's the other things around it that everybody is both excited about, but also maybe what you're hearing about sort of questioning. And I think because of that, there's this, you know, how do I fit into it piece that we just don't have great answers for at the moment. So I just would really encourage us to whatever we do have to start kind of drum beating this thing as best we can. Did I see s j 26 on the new orange barrel media billboards downtown? Oh my god.

I said it. I broke my own rule. Digital signage downtown.

You did? We did.

So one of the things I was saying is just having gotten back from Atlanta was the first thing I saw at the hotel was the FIFA banner. So I'm so excited to see that we're starting to roll out some of that. Will we expect to see any more of that type of signage, some of the partnerships on buildings that I think we sort of approved here at City Council a while ago and maybe policy you were talking about

before?

We do anticipate seeing much more signage to happen around town. There's a mixture if you talk about super graphics and the new ordinance that we have. And so there's how we can use super graphics on public buildings and we have some ideas around that and we have some exciting things coming that I think are going look great and build a lot of pride for the city. There's things that can happen on private buildings and we are really excited for that from a number of perspectives. One, we think it's going to be a big economic driver.

So these these private businesses have the potential potentially to essentially sell advertising on the outside of their buildings. That's also going to bring in the IP of the major sports events and that's going to have a knock on effect of branding and excitement for the big sporting events coming through to the city. And so we expect some pretty robust things that are happening with SuperGraphics. We can't speak specifically to those things right now, but they're in the works and we're excited about what's going to happen. Again we think it's not only going to be good for the city in terms of branding and excitement, it's going to be an economic driver as well.

So for our small business community, I know we have the toolkit and you know you heard me ask the question earlier about I think we need a live body to be able to answer people's questions. But one of the other thing that occurs to me is this idea that this sort of feels untouchable for small business folks. If we have examples of businesses that we know are doing things, an example of a watch party, an example of something that they're doing to activate. If we could use those examples in our communication tools, that might help people get creative. Not everybody is a great producer.

You know, some people are just trying to, you know, make sure they've got staff for the day at their restaurants or or bars. But if there are examples of things that we can sort of show people, hey, this is something that x y z business is doing, be a promotion for XYZ business, but also might be an inspiration for the other one. So again, I know that that's just more work, but this is part of what we're trying to do is people to see how they're gonna fit in to this next year and a half. So I think that would be important. Thank you.

You. Really good point. That really plays into the questions that I have, and that is a lot of our emphasis is in Downtown San Jose and activating downtown. So, the benefit, the economic benefit will be felt primarily in the Downtown San Jose area, but not necessarily in District 9. So how does District 9 get involved?

How do the small businesses in District 9 become aware, get activated, participate in the visitor center, participate in the fan fest. I love the idea of having an eye, examples of how other small businesses are doing this, because that may just stimulate creativity in our other districts. So, how are we going to embrace those districts like mine, like others that don't have an organized business district per se, but has a lot of small business activity to benefit economically for what's going to happen in 2026? Because that's what they're thinking about. This is great, but I'm not gonna benefit from it.

I'd say the easiest and first way is the toolkit that will be going out to the different businesses. So that is being led by the downtown association, but we're leaning into the database that the chamber has to disseminate that toolkit throughout all the different businesses that are in San Jose. Watch parties are one of the easiest possible ways and to what council member Mulcahy said, I do think in that we should start looking at all the different ways that we see businesses activating in that and then as we push our communications out, send that out to all the different businesses throughout San Jose to do replication and iteration.

Okay that would that would be helpful. So when you talk about the the chamber's database, are they just looking at members of the chamber who's going to get the information, the toolkit?

It's not, I wouldn't say we're looking at just the chamber members, we're looking at how can we find the widest possible group of people to send the communications to. So it's not exclusive to those, but we want to not only use the downtown association member list, chambers list, and any other list we can find to disseminate information.

Okay, great. We don't want to forget those outlying districts. Can

just add and again put in

a plug for the bash that's going to

be happening on November 13, Visit San Jose's very intentionally, wanting this to be a citywide event. So you will all receive, and your chiefs of staff will all receive an invitation if they haven't already. If you could really help get the word out and get it to your constituents, to your business owners, because we really wanna make that a citywide success.

Great. Thank you. Seeing no other hands, let's vote.

That motion passes unanimously.

Great. Thank you for the presentation. Exciting things coming. Next is the citywide planning activities semiannual status report. Who's taking the lead over there?

Am. Don't be shy. Let's jump right in.

Thank you. Good afternoon Ruth Gueto, Principal Planner. I'm here with Martina Davis, Division Manager Jared Ferguson, Principal Planner Manera Sandier, Deputy Director and Chris Burton, Director to present our citywide annual status report. The citywide team is planning divisions long range team. We're made up of five separate groups, five teams of 16 active planners with with one vacancy and one team member on leave.

We work on general plan analytics, the housing element, housing policies, urban village, and other special projects. The citywide teams work plan is a multi year plan through 2031 and includes work committed through the housing element six cycle and the end date of this work plan is the completion and adoption of the next housing element. In the near term, we're working to implement various policies and programs in the sixth cycle, the general plan four year review as well as budget priorities for this current fiscal year. Looking forward, we have the tri elements update, the seven cycle housing element update and then twenty six-twenty seven budget priorities as well. This slide presents the team's capacity and hours for projects by fiscal year.

Our current project capacity is at 18,740 hours. This is again with that one vacancy and one team member that's currently on leave. The orange portion of these charts represent state mandated work like implementing the six cycle housing element and implementing any new state law changes. The blue represents city priorities like transit oriented communities, TOC implementation and the downtown ministerial ordinance. The current fiscal year is at 21,473, so we are a bit over committed and this trend continues through fiscal year twenty seventwenty eight.

In the following slides we'll highlight key projects and also share how we propose to address this imbalance in committed hours and available capacity. One of the major projects if not the major sort of focus for our team is the general plan four year review. And this work is going to help us us successfully implement the six cycle housing element and prepare us for the seventh cycle. Our goal overall is to increase residential capacity. Staff will also present policies to implement small multifamily and changes to how we plan urban villages in general.

This work will take significant staff resources and funding and it also has required shifts in our work plan such as pausing the Coyote corridor study until it's budgeted in the future. We've combined the Saratoga environmental analysis sequel with the four year review, so it will come along with us which we will come back to counsel with the final determination for the four year review in the 2027. And this that will delay the adoption of the Saratoga urban village plan. The four year review was also going to delay the tri elements, safety, open space and environmental justice element work that we started last year but had to put on pause for this effort. So the four year review, just a recap here what we are sorry, wrong slide.

In addition to the scope of work that I presented earlier in terms of increasing residential capacity, we also received direction from the City Council through the fiscal year twenty five-twenty six budget to achieve three other policy outcomes, eliminating ground floor commercial requirements for housing developments that are not on vibrant business corridors, expanding growth areas to where there is current market demand for housing and employment except in those areas with imitacable vehicle miles traveled impacts and also expanding homeownership by densifying downtown.

Thank you Ruth. So now I'm going to talk about the work we are doing around Metropolitan Transportation Commission's transit oriented community Policy. This is a policy adopted by MTC last revised in 2023 that calls for cities to adopt a number of policies related to land use, parking, affordable housing, displacement and station access. The goal is this policy is to have cities kind of really forward policies that enhance transit ridership and transit uses. There are 54 station areas in San Jose that would subject to compliance with this policy and they are tying discretionary funding such as the OBAG one variant government grant in the future to compliance with the policy.

So as I mentioned 54 does put a lot of work on the city earlier this year. We did apply and received approval of a grant. We received the maximum $1,200,000 that will really help fund us completing our analysis on our existing compliance and then coming up with a plan for compliance. That is actually going to counsel accepting that grant would be going to counsel tomorrow. So we have shared with this committee in the past that we have had some concerns around some of these density requirements that's for this team probably the biggest body of work under this policy.

And I want to let you know that just broadly there are conversations haven't been in MTC around what does compliance look like timeline for compliance and starting to recognize that cities who are making progress should not be penalized. So there was a workshop with MTC members earlier this week. The commission received a lot of feedback from jurisdictions and others. And so I think those conversations around compliance is going to continue and if you ask me I think it's going in a positive direction. So now I'll highlight the other items we have in our current fiscal year work plan.

In progress we have three urban village plans, the Five Wounds Urban Village plan. This one we are completing the draft environmental impact report and draft plan. We plan to have it for circulation in December with a completion of April 2026. For the Elamrock East Urban Village, this is tied to grant funding that does expire in June and we are still on track for that. We have completed our first round of outreach.

I'll share we definitely didn't have as much participation as we were hoping. So we are going to look and see what we can do to get a little bit more participation or just more feedback on this first round and then kind of rethink a strategy for the next round for that urban village. That urban village is an interesting one in that the city is actually not planning for a lot more housing in that area. However the state is between several bills AB twenty eleven SB six and now SB 79 the state has unlocked residential potential in just about every property within that village. And so we're going to focus this plan on really identifying those community priorities and creating objective standards around those developments allowed by the state actually primarily.

This will be the first kind of urban village we're taking that angle and we're hoping it's successful so that kind of regardless of what the state does we still have a policy document that we can use to try to get these developments to kind of recognize the community's desires. For the Saratoga urban village plan we have done two rounds of outreach. We are really in the the deep kind of technical analysis stage at this point. As Ruth mentioned, the adoption of the plan is being moved out because we're combining the environmental clearance with the four year review. But we are continuing to work on that plan and we'll have I think some more community touch points in early next year.

And I did already talk about community transit oriented communities. We have a number of items going for the housing elements implementation. A big one that will be coming to council later this year is the Senate Bill nine expansion. We're looking at updating the Senate Bill nine standards and expanding the allowances to historic properties and properties in the R2 zone. That includes some other items that are both maintenance updates as well as items, housing element action items actually.

We do have a requirement to amend our group home standards and update our density bonus ordinance. So that's all being combined. So that one's actually hitting three housing element action items at once. We are also working on updating our reasonable accommodation zoning process. That's when someone needs essentially an exception from our zoning standards due to needs of a disability covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

We do need to streamline that process. We are going to update our standard permit conditions and our permit findings as well and then we are working on the second phase of North San Jose housing overlays. For work that will be done within this or starting within this fiscal haven't started yet. We are going to kick off our downtown ministerial ordinance kind of technical work. This one we have the policy largely figured out.

It's really more an exercise of updating that downtown strategy AIR and we are going to be entering in a consultant with excuse me, a contract with the CEQUA consultant within the next couple of months to get that moving. So we can bring that back to council as soon as possible. We are going working on the digital way finding ordinance. Right now we are working with the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs to determine the exact process and timeline. We are looking at going with the model that we learned from other jurisdictions that really led with the procurement process and sort of had that ordinance kind of go with it.

We think that will really greatly streamline it. So we're just working to figure out exactly how we get that across the finish line. I mentioned Senate Bill 79 that's probably the biggest piece of land use legislation adopted this year. What that does is that allows higher density housing in a half a mile of transit stations and there's a pretty close overlap as you can imagine between that and transit oriented communities compliance. It's largely the same station areas.

So right now what we're doing is we are doing a deep dive analysis and we'll be having an informational memo for the council and the public early next year. We do already know that there is a need for a zoning update. We have the ability to protect our industrial land in North San Jose and Edenvale. That is something we would have to incorporate into our zoning ordinance. And so as part of that we're also looking at just the breadth of legislation signed this year to see if there is anything else we'll to include and address.

Top of my head I think there's one where daycare centers and mixed use buildings have to be permitted. So just cleanup items like that. And then in the budget, the council gave us primarily Department of Transportation but I'll mention it because we are part of this. Some funding to study a potential transportation impact fee in the Saratoga area. So we'll be assisting Department of Transportation with that next year.

Thanks Martina. So this is a tentative look at our work plan for the next fiscal year. We'll continue our work on a general plan for your review and in that next stage of work that will be a focus on refinement of the policy that comes out of the task force process, and then initiation of the environmental review portion of the review of the work that Ruth mentioned. And as a part of that environmental work will include the necessary analysis for the Saratoga Urban Village. And for new items, we'll be looking at restarting our work on the tri elements, and once the general plan team is able to move on from our four year review work, so this is as Ruth mentioned updating our open space safety elements general plan and working on the new environmental justice element.

This spring and then continuing into next year we anticipate restarting work on update to the to council policy six dash 30 that's our PBC outreach policy. And then there was a budget referral this year around eliminating the downtown employment area overlay, and then we plan to move to the zoning amendments around vape and smoke shops, and I should note that this is separate from the moratorium work that's currently underway. And then we also have continued work around creating new urban village plans beyond those currently underway for unplanned villages, and we also have a body of work around completing the planning of our neighborhood villages through one planning effort. We are looking at the initial policy work to enable us to do this through the general plan for your review. So as I mentioned, the work plan for the twenty six-twenty seven fiscal year is tentative at this point.

As we start to look at the next fiscal year, our current workload puts us well over our committed capacity in the next fiscal year. The black line here represents our team back at full capacity. We currently have one supervisor that will be returning from leave later this fiscal year, and then we will be recruiting soon to fill one vacancy on the housing team. Even with this added capacity or return to full capacity, our workload entering the next fiscal year will need to be prioritized and some work will need to shift into the next fiscal year. With our current capacity and workload being over this fiscal year, we may also have some work that slips into the next fiscal year.

But this is something we'll continue to evaluate as we progress through the fiscal year. So continuing into the next calendar year through the rest of this fiscal year, we plan to return in February and at our next update to this committee we'll provide an updated assessment of our current workload for the fiscal year and then take an initial look at the prioritization of our work going into the next fiscal year to provide context as we start the budget process. Any new work or trade offs could be assessed and prioritized by the council through the budget process. And that concludes our presentation. Thanks.

Wonderful. Thank you for the presentation. Council member Kamay.

Thank you so much. Busy busy busy. And on top of that you have to deal with SB 79, so even busier. You know I wanted to go back to your slide on workload by fiscal year 11, slide 11. You know it sort of like seems to me that well you know if you didn't get it done this year you just push it out a little bit.

But it sort of I think doesn't tell the whole story in that the reason why it is under the dotted line is because it's sort of unanticipated of what you're gonna do for those following years. I mean that drop off is so dramatic it looks like, oh well you're not gonna have anything to do in those years anyway. So you know, so I think I think that as you're you're looking at this, you may want to think about how to superimpose a more realistic of the work that you anticipate doing. Because I think that what happens is that you have a very good idea in terms of your capacity now, what you're working on now, and what you hope to do in the next fiscal year. But if you were to, I bet, if you were to go back and look at how your workload has been over the last ten years, you will not see those drops.

Right? And so I think that this sort of leads me as a council member to believe, oh you know, maybe you won't get it get to it next year, but oh look at you don't have anything to do the following year. Know, come on. You know, let's put it on the docket. So I think I think that a more realistic picture would be, you know historically this is what it's been and this is what we think it's going to be.

And given that every year we have I mean look at look at how much on the state mandates. You know, that's not gonna get smaller. So so I think that we need to figure out, you know, as that state mandate gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it's gonna crush our priorities, you know, honestly. And so I think that that there needs to be some recognition that there are only so many hours in the day. Honestly.

Honestly. And that you know, yes we can defer things for one year or two years but over time this is not sustainable. And we gotta do something about it before it crushes everything in terms of, I mean look at where our priorities are, right? So I I just I just offer that as an observation that we need to look at it from a different angle and perhaps think about what has been, I mean even in the last five years, what has been the trend? And if the trend has been more and more, we know it's more.

What's to say that it's not gonna be, right? So I think that that is something that I think we need to take into consideration because of course we want to obey the law, but you know this is this is ridiculous. Look at how much more state mandate is and look at where our priorities are. You know, we're getting squished down to the nothing. So I I just think that we need to be mindful of that and know that this cannot continue to go on or else it's gonna, like, really, put a huge dent in what we as a city consider priorities.

With that, I would like to move acceptance of the semiannual status report on citywide planning activities.

Second.

Thank you. Council member Casey.

Thank you. Yeah. I'm unclear about what's the methodology you guys are using here. You've got fully staffed. I'm assuming that's in terms of individuals and full time work. So that's the baseline for available hours. But what's unclear to me is how are you ascribing ten thousand hours for example to state mandated stuff? And if we're let me make a global comment. I'm concerned that we're not doing anything to become more efficient and applying any technological advances that may be available to us and there's some assumptions in here that we're gonna do things in terms of status quo the way we've always done it. So I I haven't seen or heard anything that's gonna optimize the hours available to us to accomplish more.

And one of the common refrains I get when I talk to your department is when I suggest something, well, what do you want us to take off the table? Well, I want you to do it all and figure out a way to be more efficient with the time that you have allotted. So where are the optimization opportunities and the efficiency opportunities that you guys are pursuing?

I can start and perhaps Director Burton can add. So, we're certainly looking at the AI upskilling program and finding opportunities to use AI to help with some of the analysis and take out some of the busy work like reformatting reports and data. So that is certainly on the horizon. We have had staff members from the citywide team go to the upskilling cohort and get trained on using AI. They're actually setting up agents and starting to creatively incorporate AI into graphic production as well as report production.

The other thing we're looking at is I know consultants was a big topic in one of our council meetings, but really identifying areas and scoping our projects not just for the consultants but also for staff so that we can clearly articulate what are the hours going to look like for future projects. Director Burton, would you like to?

Yeah, let me jump in. It's a great question, council member. I think what you're seeing is a move towards optimization. I can tell you how these types of projects were looked at in the past as we worked through them, which was just an estimate based on what we thought the work would look like. So now we're actually moving into a performance management model where we're scoping projects more accurately based on the information we have on past projects, on how long it takes us, how much time we're committing, and then tracking that on an ongoing basis based on what our staff has available, the tracking hours spent on individual projects.

So the idea is that we can scope any project. But ultimately, and we would love to do it all, ultimately there's only so many hours in the day. And to be able to give counsel the opportunity to prioritize, we need to give you the information to make those decisions. Right? And so essentially that's absolutely what we're trying to do is give you that clarity on how long these things are taking.

Now as we do that we'll continue to look into why they take so long and if there are opportunities to optimize around that. As you know one of the biggest challenges quite often with these bigger policy projects is we are out there working with the community a lot, and we tend to sort of have prioritized the importance of public engagement, which adds a lot of time to a lot of these processes. When we look at technology, we wanna be able to talk about that in the context of ours. When we talk about community meetings, we wanna be able to talk about that. It's not just the one hour we spend with the community.

It's the logistics planning. It's the response. It's updating web presence to ensure that the community has access to all that information. So that's exactly how we're looking at it. It's, really driving towards more of a consultant model with our policy team. In the past, they've just kind of existed and council's given them direction and a long list of things you'd like to get done. And so now we're trying to take a much more proactive approach so we can give you that information.

I appreciate that. I'm still not hearing how we're strategically planning to graduate out of contemplating what we can do to actual metrics and benchmarks that we're striving to achieve?

Can you clarify that for me as far as what you see as benchmarks?

In terms of we have the allotted hours that we have available to us, the actual output. Are we actually monitoring our output to see the year to year we're becoming more productive with the hours that we have available? And you had mentioned and I appreciate the AIH and some of these technological opportunities that are becoming available. I just don't want us to consider and analyze and still status quo maintains. I wanna forcefully push ourselves to be extremely productive particularly in this department because this drives so much of the economic development that we're relying on for our city.

The more productive you guys are, the more opportunities we have to raise revenue through our general fund. So I think this is a profit center for us as a city potentially and it should be. And I don't know that we're really aggressively optimizing for optimization. I don't know that we're really pushing our foot on the gas. I appreciate again, this seems to be contemplating doing stuff. I just don't know that we're holding ourselves accountable to actually aggressively come out with some real positive benchmarks.

Yeah. I think it's a valid concern. Obviously, this is something that we started to implement probably about a year ago. It's taken some time to get it into place. Because of the nature of the work, you know, it will take a little bit time for us to be able to give you a better solid answer around that. Typically, the types of things and and this is part of the challenge with those charts is many of the projects that you'll see on this work plan span over the course of a year, if not longer. Right? You think about the work we're doing around the four year review, that's a compressed scope and we're aiming to get it done in twelve months. We look at the CEQA analysis and, the housing element that will come after those, and we're already planning into 2031. So I think absolutely a valid point.

I think as we look at this work, you know, we're really prioritizing three things. So it's it's inputs, right, and the resources that we're using. It's outputs. So to your point, what actually gets done, what our staff is spending the time on, and then outcomes, right? So what do we see as a result of that work?

It's a little bit different from our development review work where we are measuring the time spent within projects on a regular basis, especially given the shifting nature of the work that's occurring. So when you look at that first those first two columns, right, somewhere close to 80% of our work is suddenly being dictated by the state of California and it's changing every six months. And so part of that is we're constantly playing catch up. So it's not it's not the set same of the same set of variables that we're dealing with each time. And so all we can look at is as we scope these projects, we're looking for those commonality and tasks and make sure that we're continuing to improve and get more productive over time.

So we won't have the data yet, but that's exactly the model we're currently working to. Certainly not contemplating it. It's in action. We're working towards it. We just don't have the ability to demonstrate the outcomes at this point.

I appreciate that. I just know that we'll be watching and anticipating and encouraging, prodding and begging for more efficiency.

Thank you.

Would expect no less.

Thank you for that comment, council member Casey. So it's not just about thinking about what we're going to do. It's actually implementing and doing it. And, you know, bureaucracy the thinking about it takes a long time, the implementation takes even longer. So I'd love to see us get closer to, okay, we thought about it, now we're just gonna do it and jump in and do it. Council Member Mulcahy.

Thank you. I appreciated the question about the methodology because I do think you know for those of us coming into the public sector having been in the private sector to sort of feel like you're gonna be able to value every kind of project down to the hour. To me it's based on the benchmarking you're doing, you've got some folks that probably work faster than others. It's just human nature. So it's still a little bit sort of hard for me to get my arms around the methodology piece of it.

But one of the things Chris that struck me was what you just said about 80% of your work is now dictated by the state. I mean is that arc like really five years. I mean it's really accelerated in the last three but I mean if you looked at the five year impact of what the state and let's be real state legislature and our governor has has done. What's that cost to us as a city is that quantifiable you don't need to answer it at the moment I didn't prepare anybody for this. But I am very curious just so that.

At a cocktail party you can have that conversation because that's where you can really say to somebody who's making these decisions. Do you realize the impact of decisions you're making and what it's doing at a local level to limit our capacity to do the things the city actually wants to do? Is that a quantifiable number in your mind?

Yeah absolutely and I'd happily follow-up with the exact number. I think that the way to think about it and, you know, I I say five years because, we started the work around the housing crisis work plan in 2018. It really sort of got going, but, it's really around 1920 where we started to see state legislation around these issues. But the way to think about it is when we we did the general plan, we knew we had a lot of policy work to implement our current general plan back in 2011. Back I want to say it's roughly 2015, 2016, we updated what was called our general plan update fee.

So it's a percentage fee that's charged across all development projects in planning and in building, right, that pays into Fund two thirty nine that supports the vast majority of our policy work. And the intent was is that that would allow us to grow the capacity on this team. It used to be a lot smaller than 16. And that would give us that capacity to be able to do urban village plans, to do work on North San Jose, to do work on downtown, to get ahead of these issues so we could deliver and make development much more easy throughout the city. Since that time, as you can see, the the money that was dedicated to those resources, 80% of that is now set aside to deal with these state issues. And so I'll happily get you the correct number. Yeah.

Thank you very much. Alright. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no no other hands, let's vote.

That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Next, we have our economic development activities semiannual status report. Probably a lot going on.

Saludos to the committee and members of the public. My name is Carlos Velasquez and I'm the Public Information Manager for the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs. I'll be sharing an overview of our office's notable accomplishments, announcements, and events related to economic development for the last six months. Our corporate outreach team has been active these past six months focused on one of the city's key goals, growing jobs and revenue. Since May, the team has organized or attended more than a 120 meetings and events like those that you can see on the slide, connecting with major employers, manufacturers, AI companies, and real estate professionals to attract new development.

They've been showcasing San Jose's strengths, our innovation ecosystem, diverse industries, available land, energy and infrastructure initiatives, and strong talent pipeline. At SemiCon West in Arizona, our booth presence with state partners generated over 80 new leads in the semiconductor and microelectronics sectors, including companies looking to grow in San Jose. In addition, working with the mayor's office, we launched startup incentive grant program awarding 175,000 to early stage AI startups looking to, locating in San Jose. In August, we celebrated the four recipients of the grant. I'd like to share a small video clip that introduces the winners and why they chose San Jose as their home.

At Satellite, we are connecting satellites in orbit using software. I think the grant of the services will put them to good use, but I think beyond that, giving us a home is is is great. It's a good feeling. We work with Medicaid and Medicare systems to reach their hard to engage patients that are high risk. I think San Jose as a city is very versatile and gives you kind of a

dynamic balance. San Jose has always been known, right, as the center of innovation. I love the place.

There's something magical about it. I cannot really describe it.

It's sunny. San Francisco is so cold.

I really foresee San Jose being our long term headquarter here. And, hopefully, it'll help us spin up offices and and be the be the next big company and be in that skyline one day.

In July, we marked a major win towards the thriving business districts with the formation of the Alameda Community Benefit Improvement District which will bring an estimated $327,000 annually to support cleaner streets, stronger businesses, and a more vibrant corridor. We're working with local business associations to form four new business improvement districts this year, including in Storey Road, East Village, and the Alum Rock Santa Clara Corridor. In regards to individual businesses, we recently released data showing a record number of new food businesses in San Jose over the past three years, highlighting the city's growing reputation as a culinary destination. Two thirds of these new cafes, restaurants, and mobile food businesses open in diverse neighborhoods like Japantown, Calle Willow, Alum Rock, Willow Glen and Little Saigon. We also highlighted our small business ally program which supported a record 3,000 entrepreneurs last fiscal year, helping them navigate through permits to open their doors faster.

It's no surprise then that we celebrated 13 ribbon cuttings these last six months across seven neighborhood business districts. All of these districts will be featured in our upcoming holiday shop local campaign, part of a collaborative effort with Team San Jose and business associations to showcase San Jose as the Bay Area's holiday destination. Our office's special events team supports more than 130 organizers each year, helping them navigate city services like traffic control, street closures, and public space use so their events run safely and smoothly. This summer, as you can see on this slide, they helped facilitate more than 227 outdoor event days citywide, drawing more than 750,000 people. One of those events was the Lake Cunningham fourth of July celebration.

When a fireworks fire threatened its cancellation, the team quickly pivoted to a drone show securing FAA approval in record time. The events team all has also led the development of the city's new entertainment zone ordinance, allowing for the sale and outdoor consumption of alcohol in designated zones during permitted events. Its successful test along Post Street during Silicon Valley Pride in August showed how this tool can support businesses and boost our arts, sports, and entertainment scene through 2026 and beyond. And speaking of the arts, from zines, photographs, stories, artworks and more, our five creative ambassadors, Julie Cardenas, Matt Casey, Jessica Gutierrez and Miguel Ossuna inspired creativity across the city through more than 25 events. Their year long projects will be showcased in a group exhibitioning exhibition opening November at Citadel Art Gallery.

This summer, our workforce development team led the San Jose Works program giving paid work experience to 345 San Jose youth ages 14 to 18. Participants, many from the Youth Empowerment Alliance, worked with employers like Roku, Create TV, the Boys and Girls Club, and several city departments. In August, we hosted a manufacturing and healthcare job fair at the Mexican Heritage Plaza connecting over 500 job seekers with employers such as Gardner Health Services and Olympus. Next up is our November job fair at San Jose City College plus two new training programs that prepare residents for the well paid jobs of the future. One of these is the Bay Area Medical Academy, allowing for 17 San Jose residents to earn certifications, including as medical assistant, as well as externships with Kaiser, Sutter Health, and Stanford.

We're also helping recruit for a year long semiconductor apprenticeship with Western Digital and Foothill Foothill College. Applications close November 26 and people can visit worktofuture.org for more information and to apply and we'll be sure to share information to your offices as well. And for downtown, since our last update in April, we've made progress towards making downtown the heart of Silicon Valley's arts, sports, and entertainment scene. In July, we joined the San Jose Downtown Association to celebrate a nearly $800,000 beautification project along Santa Clara Street, adding murals, new lighting, and refreshed and creative storefronts. Post Street's transformation into a pedestrian walkway inspired a new street mural, Romance, by local artist Danny Feliz Hansen, a vibrant addition to the LGBTQ centered community district.

Our staff was proud to volunteer to help paint the mural. And thanks to the Downtown Association, Community District, Children's Discovery Museum, and Curatus for fostering the creation of the mural. We're also six months into the return of the downtown Farmers Market happening every Wednesday at Hammer Theatre Plaza. They've averaged over 500 visitors weekly and feature up to 18 vendors offering fruits, vegetables, and prepared food. Together, these efforts are boosting foot traffic, supporting small businesses, and building pride in our downtown.

And finally, in the last six months, we welcomed new members to the team. Along with our new director, Jen Baker, we welcomed Michael Lomio as the city's downtown manager and Erica Garofo as lead for large load energy customer development, as well as a new cohort of interns from Cristo Rey San Jose and Santa Clara University's Leve School of Business. Their collective experience, energy, and leadership will help advance the office and city's long term goal of cultivating an ecosystem of thriving businesses and resident prosperity. This concludes our report. Happy to answer any questions from the committee.

Thank you for the presentation. I know it was a busy busy six months. Council member Kamait. I could ask for public comment, but I don't see anyone up there for public comment. Would you like to confirm that there's no public?

We have no public comment.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much for your work. It's always exciting to see how all of the activities, everything that's going on. And you know I was a little bit curious in terms of you do a lot of business engagement especially what I consider you know like the sort of grassroots of who is in small businesses and all of that. And I was just curious as to whether or not there's a cross pollinization of some of our previous reports earlier today in terms of disseminating some of that information sort of at the ground level.

Because I think that, you know, what I heard earlier is that yes they're relying on like the San Jose chamber and others, but they they may necessarily not cover as much territory really as what you cover. Because you really I I find that your reach is much more expansive throughout San Jose. Right? And so I'm just wondering if there's a way to be able to utilize that network that you have where I think that in terms of if they're not getting the information through other channels that at least, you know, getting it out through your your channels, it covers the city more broadly. At least that's what I have seen.

I have seen that you engage in every single district all over the place and so I'm just wondering if that is something that can be considered.

Yeah. Thank you for the question. Know last year was a real beginning of a formal partnership in terms of collaborative marketing with Team San Jose. We really began that during the holiday period where we were really kind of collaborating a lot more with a lot of the stories about new businesses, corridors, events and activities that we, our team were informed about, we were passing along to Team San Jose and those in turn were translated into newsletter spot spotlights that Team San Jose did, collaborative, we worked together on earned media opportunities. And so I think in the last year we've begun really working in-depth with Team San Jose to make sure that we're communicating with them and making sure that our marketing really incorporates a lot of the work that our small business outreach team is doing and making sure that we're amplifying that not only through our channels here within the city but also through Team San Jose's.

Yeah. And I think that as we're looking at what's gonna happen with Super Bowl and FIFA and all of that. I know that there are many many small businesses who want just a little sliver of the pie. Right? And but but there's no sort of like connections there to really kind of figure out, oh well, know like how am I going to pay fee to be able to have a party or to host something or whatever.

So And I think that if if there's a way of bringing whatever information we have on on these big events, on these major events to some of the small businesses in terms of you may want to look at this, you may I I think that just relying on one channel is not enough. People need to get their information in multiple ways and sometimes you have to kinda repeat it. So as we get closer and closer to some of these major events, I think that because you are, or at least I understand that you are very very connected on the grassroots level, to me it's very helpful to also disseminate information and the small business toolkit would be great to be able to push out to people in case they didn't get it from somewhere else, right? Because I think that everyone wants participate in opportunity but not everyone knows about it. So that that I think is a suggestion that that I think would be very very helpful.

And with that I'd like to accept the verbal semi annual status report.

Thank you. Council member Mulcahy.

Thank you. Thanks for the report. Just a couple of things, Carlos, you mentioned about the partnership with cross marketing and partnership with Team San Jose. I mean believe it or not, you guys on the inside, now I'm on the inside may not realize how many barriers the city puts up for those kinds of things to happen and a founding member of team San Jose. The fact that that somebody in this building is saying that out loud that that's working is really.

Great to hear. Should n't it taken so long, so I'm super glad to hear that that's a commitment that the city is making to be partnering there. So thanks for saying that out loud. I guess the other thing I would ask Jen since, you know, I think I can still say I'm new in town, it's nine months, but you are really new, but you've also got a lot of experience. What do you have any early observations that you want to share with the committee here? Not to put you on the spot, but I will. But anything that's jumping out to you like opportunities for growth, opportunities for improvement?

Well I truly see vis a vis SJ-twenty six that every community member can play a role in being welcoming and that includes our small business community members. So what are the tools and processes that can help them best prepare. I know there's been a lot of feedback from last Thursday's event that was hosted from Verizon about some of the subject matter and us being able to peel that open that much more to ask our partners to organize some panels and tools and then also for us to be able to amplify. I've seen through the roundtables that our team has hosted whether that is the manufacturers roundtable, the hoteliers roundtable and our small business advisory committee that there is a ton of community eagerness to engage. So it's a matter of us standing up some of the tools that can help them also get the word out and mobilize all of us as a community to put a best foot forward and welcome.

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great and I don't know what part of the year that was, but I've been here nine months we've done 23. Just our district alone and that's you know there's a lot going on which is great and it's not necessarily compared to anybody else. I'm making the point because every single district has grand openings happening on a regular basis. And I think the Office of Economic Development needs to do a better job of partnering with the districts to amplify it. You've got a lot of people that we reach in our district newsletter and social media and everything else.

But I know you have a lot more and we could be doing better for our small businesses if the Office of Economic Development was partnering with council offices to be there and if you can't be there to make sure that you're amplifying the work that we're doing there and that is not happening. Thank you.

Good point. Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you so much for your presentation. Just really quickly since you're here for a semi annual status report, I wanted to know if we're hearing from the community any feedback regarding impact on our small businesses due to the immigration enforcement activity. Are we having small business owners reach out to the office of economic development? What is the if if the department is, but what what is the department doing to provide support? Because I I meet with small businesses on the regular.

Many of them are telling me that they're seeing 30 to 40% decrease in their overall income because people aren't leaving their homes. So I don't know if this is top of mind for you but we have a large Latino population in the city of San Jose across the city and if they're not feeling comfortable going to Calle Willow or you know the East Side or wherever then our small businesses are going to be impacted. So do we have any information about that and what is our department doing whether already doing or planning to do to support these businesses during this time?

We don't have any quantitative data about business sales losses owing to some of the ongoing activity. But on an anecdotal level we're hearing from across the council members that inquiries are being received. One of the pieces of information that OEDCA put out in July was a small business employer and broad employer guide for how to manage workplaces and employer interactions vis a vis some of the enforcement activities in and across the nation. So that is a tool we can readily refer you to. With regards to helping companies who are navigating an absence of sales, we don't have an instant response for that.

I hope you can maybe just take that back to the office and think about that. A lot of people think these are like cut and dry or this only affects the immigrant community but they forget that we rely on that population for a lot of the sales and economic impact in this city which is why I've been very aggressive on introducing policy. And I guess the next one and I know that I already introduced you to Casey Hill from the county but we know that November, in the November we're gonna be seeing cuts to snap. And that's gonna be, you know, East San Jose already struggles from food deserts and then our small businesses rely on those type of government subsidies. So are we looking at how we can support those type of businesses during this time?

We've reached out directly to the county and are also activating across different partners like Second Harvest to know where there are food resources that can reach community members who are in need. With regard to grocers who stand to be impacted indirectly because people are not purchasing through their stores with SNAP benefits. We're coordinating a list for the County of licensed grocers of a certain size that would be most significantly impacted and trying to figure out from there what does that body of stores look like.

Great, thank you. I appreciate that initial work. It's just an example of how politics at the federal level are impacting us on local level and it will impact our local neighborhood business corridors and local economies. So, know, while we address the most present pressing needs, you know, like making sure residents, you know, have support who are being targeted, I don't want to lose sight of the many entrepreneurs and small who will also be impacted. Thank you.

Thank you. I've long been frustrated with access to small business information in my district. When we're asked when I've asked for information about small businesses, I get this long list that's actually quite difficult to navigate, but isn't really narrowed to small businesses. Includes anyone with a business license. And that could be someone who holds a trust, and they're operating as a trustee of their trust.

So I'm wondering how we can get a better handle on the list of businesses that are new and coming into our area. To council member Mulcahy's point, we hear randomly about small businesses coming into our area, yet each small business, they're not all getting business licenses, we acknowledge that, but some of them are doing work on their units to get them ready to occupy. So, there's a permit process, or they're applying for a business license. We, some how, we ought to be more in the loop of that information instead of just saying, oh look, Sports Basement just moved into my neighborhood, to pick an example, and then having them randomly randomly reach out to us so that I can go there and be there for ribbon cutting. So, I think it's an opportunity that we're missing to showcase these businesses.

Now, sports basement's not a huge business. I mean, it's not a huge company. It's there's a couple of them in in the area, but it's it's thriving, and we wanna showcase them.

Way better than the grocery

Uh-huh. Sorry.

Way better than the grocery store.

Well, yeah. Well, of course. And it's it thrives. It's thriving. But the point is we wanna be present. We wanna connect with our businesses, but we don't have boots on the ground that can really identify all of the new businesses coming in. So how can we do that? How can your office help us?

Well, there are a couple of tools that are coming online both for new businesses and some tools that we'll be activating around for existing businesses for change events that we can help notify across the districts. I've been apprised that finance is working on some intake tools so that when a company files their permit or they file for a business certificate that we would be able to discern a little bit better the type of business, the timeline and the opportunity for engagement proactively. On the business retention side, one of the activities our team is currently operationalizing operationalizing is running lease expiration horizons and so knowing X months out when a company's lease is due to expire so that we can engage with them as part of our BRE team and corporate outreach and see how things are going and see if they're expanding, if they're contracting, what are the ways that we can engage to make sure that they renew a lease and realize their opportunity for growth in San Jose.

I love that idea because how often have we heard lately that there is this business we thought was really strong and they're closing tomorrow. If but yet, if we knew well, Rottelli Rottella's a good example. We didn't know until the day before or Rottles, sorry, Rotelos. Rolati, see? And I would eat I would go there regularly, but we didn't know they were closing until the day before when it was made public.

But if we knew ahead of time, we might be able to get people over there a little bit more. We might in our district or in the downtown area, wherever. So, I think having an idea of their lease or that information that you're talking about, Jen, is real could be helpful and could help us make a business assist a business not necessarily thrive, but at least survive, so that they're not making the decision to close. We want business we want small businesses to stay open. It's how small business owners are entrepreneurs.

They wanna control their their destiny. There are a lot of costs that make it prohibitive for them to sometimes stay open, but we want to benefit them and help them in any way we can. So I like that thinking. Thank you.

And I would share that we're under recruitment for a team member who can help us capture data and slice and dice it in some different ways that I think will be district serving. We have one corporate outreach officer that is working the BRE beat that is a permanent FTE and we have one who we hope to have renewed come July.

Great. Thank you. Obviously this report is important. It's not just an update of what's happening in the city of San Jose. It's how can we do more? How can we be more successful? How can we help our businesses be more successful? Appreciate it. George, council member Casey.

I like George better. Thank you, vice mayor. Yeah, that data analysis part is big. Like you mentioned the lease thing, presumably that's just going be with the larger corporate companies that you guys are going to track when their leases are due. You're not going to do that for the mom and pops and the retail shops throughout our districts.

And one of the challenges I've had in my district and working with the Office of Economic development is getting any usable information about the businesses in my district. Apparently you guys are unable to correlate or call it in any logical manner that you can get it to us individually in terms of our district. So that's a challenge. And so I'm wondering you said you're going get someone, mean we have AI tools I'm assuming, I mean if I could just get for example business licenses at non residential locations where I could identify retail businesses or folks that actually have brick and mortar shops like I don't know that you guys have that readily available and it's a shame that it's not readily available because we would really like to reach out to our individual business owners and see what we can do. They're oftentimes busy working and taking care of their business and unaware of some of the political things that are going on that are going to impact their business.

I'm sure they'd like to be involved and we'd like to proactively get them involved, but not having any of that information available to us kind of hamstrings us.

Well we can certainly coordinate with you on what would be deemed to be most useful and that might vary a little bit across districts, but for any company that has a business tax certificate we coordinate with the finance department to help narrow the funnel of data.

Well I've asked for that information I've never been able to receive it. I don't know if the rest of you guys have had that relationship or that situation.

I said.

Yeah.

As I said the list is unwieldy.

Right. I had to go business to business.

Individually and check-in. Yeah. And so I guess you know the center of innovation and the fact that we're San Jose and the idea that our office of economic development can't get us that usable information is a challenge and it's frustrating.

I mean it seems I'm not technologically savvy, but this seems like a spreadsheet issue. If you when you when you apply for a business license or renew your business license, you're sending in a payment and it and it goes with the form. If the form said, is it brick and mortar or you know, ask some more questions, then when it's entered into the system you could have, yeah, it's a brick and mortar business or they work out of their house. Then you know, okay, I only want businesses that are brick and mortar. I don't want anything that's a single family or that's a residential listing. I don't know. You got the message.

Yeah.

Thank you. Anything else?

It sounds like there's some interdepartmental work that we can try to do on information input as it's coming into the city versus retroactively trying to call from broader lists. And we're undertaking that activity also when it comes to real estate and city owned assets where in our current tool when we run a query we get all 13,000 plus city owned assets which could include a drainage ditch or a railroad frontage and is not necessarily the easiest searchable yet for property that has high value add opportunity. So a couple of different lanes in my first couple weeks here that are becoming evident for tools that we can develop together.

Great. Wonderful. Thank you very much. I think that's we've exhausted the question. Let's vote.

That motion passes unanimously.

Great. Thank you. That concludes our regular meeting. I don't see anyone up there for public comment, so this meeting stands adjourned.