Community & Economic Development Committee (ced) - Regular Meeting

This is the Community and Economic Development Committee meeting, and I am late, and I apologize. So can we, take the role, please?

Council member Casey? Here. Mulcahy? Here. Ortiz? Present. Kamay? Here. And Chair Foley? Here. Thank you.

Great. Sorry while I get settled here. We have, nothing on consent and nothing on the work plan. Let's move right into the committee reports. The first one is the Team San Jose annual annual performance audit, which we well, because it's annual, we hear it every year.

Joe, I think you're presenting. Welcome. With

Adrian Perez from my office, we're here to present our audit of Team San Jose's performance for fiscal year 2425. The since 2004 it didn't work. 2004, the San Jose McHenry Convention Center and several other city owned facilities have been operated on the city's behalf by Team San Jose. Additionally, since 02/2009, Team San Jose has operated the San Jose Convention and Visitors Bureau to promote tourism and provide services such as marketing, public relations, and convention sales and services. My office, under the terms of the management agreements between the city and Team San Jose, performs an annual performance audit to determine whether and how well Team San Jose met agreed upon performance targets that are the basis for a performance based fee from the city.

Under the terms of the agreement to operate the facilities, Team San Jose's annual performance is measured across five different performance areas. In '24 in fiscal year twenty four twenty five, Team San Jose met its weighted incentive fee scores and Convention of Israel Bureau performance targets. Specifically, Team San Jose exceeded its target in gross operating results, booked 133,500 hotel room nights exceeding the target of 117,000, had an estimated economic impact of nearly $95,000,000 which is greater than the target of $78,000,000 held five forty days of events at the cultural facilities, resulting in an occupancy rate of 97% and received 97% satisfaction ratings on its customer service surveys. Both of those exceeded their targets as well. As a result, Team San Jose met its weighted incentive fee targets and qualifies for the performance based fee of $300,000 as outlined in the agreement with the city.

We do not have any recommendations in the report, and because of that, there is not a written management response. Any feedback we received during the course of the work has been incorporated into the body of the report. I ask that you accept the report and cross reference to the January 13 meeting of the city council. We're happy to answer any questions, and representatives from team San Jose as well as from the office of economic development and cultural affairs are here to as well to answer questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you for the presentation. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

There's no public comment.

Okay. Then I'll move to the committee, council member Mulcahy.

Thank you, vice mayor. Thank you for the report, Joe and team. Just full disclosure, I'm the council liaison to team San Jose and a founding board member of the organization. And, you know, probably one of its, you know, more outspoken supporters and critic at time. But I said this at their board meeting last week.

I think a year ago, there was some real concern about Team San Jose performance and some of the considerations about their role. And I just want to sort of give the organization a lot of praise for how quickly they've responded to being an integral part of the way that we market the city. I mean, they're, you know, literally hand in glove right now with SJ 2026. And, you know, one of the things that we'd been doing as a board but also as an organization is really finding footing about what you compare yourselves to pre COVID. It was always going, you know, when we get back to pre COVID and pre COVID happened to be for this organization, the most successful year in the twenty plus year history of the organization.

And so, you know, it feels like while we still have some challenges with, you know, the the amount of hotel rooms and, you know, tech companies coming back to the fold. I just wanna sort of raise them up, having, you know, worked very hard to be a really relevant, important partner to the city of San Jose. And with that, I'll move to accept the fiscal year 2425 performance. Cross reference the January 15.

Great. Thank you.

Council meeting.

January 13.

Thirteenth council meeting.

I will take that friendly amendment. Thank

you. Council member Kamay.

Thank you so much and, thank you so much for the report. I think that, in the in past years, I, was one of the the critics and I think that team San Jose has has come a long way and has been able to do a lot more. I As we as we sort of go into 2026 and you know 2027 the next year and we're looking at the performance goals. I really think that we ought to think about, I know that we added the sports section to a lot of the things that we're doing next year. But as we move into our two hundred and fifty fifth year anniversary in 2027, I hope that I think being a 195% of achieving what they're doing, obviously you're doing really well, but I also wonder if we're not sort of like being modest and not being more aggressive in terms of these wonderful things are happening in 2026 and 2027.

And I'd like to stretch a little bit. And so as you think about the future, I think that you might want to consider stretching a little bit more as we go ahead and do really big things for both in 2026 and 2027 as we're looking at future performance goals because I think that certainly the trajectory is going in the right direction and I thank you for that. But I also think that there are good and big opportunities that we hope that we're able to do much better. So, thank you.

Thank you. This is the annual auditor's report. We will have team San Jose come and present, I think in our next CED meeting, their annual report that they do. They come CED or team San Jose comes twice and the auditor comes once. So those are fabulous comments to challenge them, but that's all part of our contract negotiation with them too, how the numbers are set and how we reach those goals, but good comments.

But as I as I look into, as we think about the next budget cycle and that's when the performance goals are set. I just wanted to plant that seed to be able to start thinking broader.

Great. Thank you. Seeing no other hands, let's vote. Great. Motion carries. Now we move on to, one of two focus areas that report to CED. The first is building more housing, and I assume we have some people stepping down for that.

Thank you chair Foley, Rosalyn Huynh.

And Rosalyn, thank

Deputy city manager. While the directors are coming, I'm actually going to kick off the presentation. And so this item provides the first semi annual update to the CED committee on the building more housing focused area. And our purpose today is to share what we are learning through doing the work while actually still building the infrastructure for a culture of learning. And I want to start today by thanking all of the staff, and many staff have been involved throughout our different departments.

And also wanna give a huge shout out really to our leader for both of these focus areas. She's working across city departments in a wonderful way, and that is Caitlin Kinney, assistant to the city manager. Next slide. I don't know who's doing the slides for me. Thank you so much.

So as you can see here, this is our agenda for the afternoon. We're going to speak about focus areas two point o and that evolution. We'll talk about how we're learning, and then at the end, we'll talk about what's next. So the next slide shows that most of our work, thank you, Eric, involves cultivating an organizational mindset of learning with the following key elements. We know that numbers alone don't really tell the full story.

We wanna get used to learning in public that builds trust, and retrospectives are a big part of our learning. And we know that progress requires a work environment that ensures our staff feel supported to test new approaches, to identify challenges early, and to learn openly. So with this new mindset, our staff were asking a lot more questions. And as we go through this process, and actually today, we invite the committee members to also ask questions about what we are seeing, what are we learning, perhaps are there opportunities for us to pivot as well. So this slide, is a review of our, process to date.

Some steps that we have taken in recent months include training on this new model, retrospectives on each of the specific projects, and republishing our published dashboards, which I'm very pleased to announce that were just went live this afternoon, and we invite the committee members to take a look at those. So at the September 30 city council meeting, we shared that the purpose of the logic models underpinning the focus area, they help us clarify how our work is intended to create impact by clearly aligning strategies with problems and articulating testable assumptions that we can learn from and adapt to. So this diagram represents the logic model framework that we use to organize each of the two focus areas. We first work to clearly articulate the long term goal we are trying to achieve for our community. Next, we identify the obstacles or problem areas that are within our organizational sphere of influence that are preventing us from reaching this long term goal.

And then for each problem area, we thought through near term goals that are clear, measurable, and realistic to implement within the fiscal year. So this slide, you can see our three priority areas for building more housing. There are land use policy and regulation, development services, and linking land and capital. And with that, I'm going to hand the presentation over to Chris Burton, director of planning building and code enforcement.

Thank you, Roselyn. Good afternoon, chair and committee members. Chris Burton, director of planning building code enforcement. So as Rosalyn mentioned, we're working across three priority areas. And within that we have 10 near term goals.

I'm going to go through the first two priority areas and then hand it over to Eric to cover the third. There's a lot here, so we'll probably skip through quite quickly. But happy to answer all your questions. So just to kind of set the tone, as we think about sort of the building more housing focus area, really what we're talking about is that long term goal of meeting the needs of our residents as it comes to housing, and doing so across all income levels. But ultimately, it's a conversation about helping drive market because the city doesn't build housing.

We, regulate it. We process it. We facilitate it. But we rely very much on the private markets to deliver on that housing. So as we think about our indicators in this area, what we're looking at is how housing units are moving through our process.

We talk about these three kind of key moments. The first being entitlement, so allowing somebody to work through what they can build. The second being their building permit issued, so that's really the construction phase, all the way through inspection to occupancy. And that's allowing us to kind of see in real time how that market is really performing and how we're seeing units move through that process. Obviously, as I mentioned, it's really about fostering a system that facilitates the production of housing and that works in partnerships with all of the organizations that work both in market rate and affordable housing.

So within problem area one, so this is sort of really around land use policy and regulation. Obviously, we all know that land use policy, especially around housing, is complex. It's been made significantly more complex in recent years as the state has become involved. But we still think we're really leading the way as a pro housing city within the state. We work closely with other major municipalities in the state of California and really are in line in driving sort of new housing policy that advances our goals.

There's there's still more that we can do. One of the key areas, in ensuring that we're delivering on this, is is working with, all of our partners to, get creative on how we facilitate more housing and how we think differently about our land use and policy approach. The way we're doing that in goal number one is we're continuing to look at our policy framework. So obviously we're pretty unique in San Jose in that our general plan includes a four year review process that allows us to take on some of these major objects and sort of policy issues and take a fresh look without doing a complete redo on the general plan. So we've kicked off that four year review process.

One of our key learnings and adjustments this time has been to use the Planning Commission as our task force to really drive that conversation. I think it's been a really interesting experience for us, having a body that has got a grounding in land use policy and has come up to the issues very quickly. So we're moving through quickly on that approach. The focus of this four year review is truly to look at housing and key issues in the general plan. It's really intended to lead up to the next housing element in 2031.

So as we look at those four major issues areas in the full year review, that's really keeping that all top of mind. The second goal in this priority area is continuing work around our ministerial permit process as we continue to expand that into the downtown. We recently approved our first city ministerial project that moved through our process incredibly effectively and efficiently. The key with the ministerial process is obviously it becomes statutorily exempt from CEQA. So not categorically exempt where there may be some reports required, it becomes statutorily exempt.

Now obviously there's a lot of work going on at the state level right now regarding AB 130 that's also looking at statutory exemptions. We still think there's benefit to our own process. There's additional conditions and requirements that are tied to some of the other processes that we believe they have the ability to impact and improve the availability of housing as it moves through. Second priority area is the opportunity to continue to work on our process. So obviously it's something that's talked about a lot and something that we're very aware of and something that we've been working on for a long time and kept it sort of very much in focus.

The highlight from this area is that we continue to exceed timelines. Our timeline our timeliness goals not timelines, our timeliness goals for multifamily residential building permits as they move through that process. A lot of this work has been driven by an enhanced process around affordable housing. So as we've needed to meet the critical funding timelines for major affordable developments, we've looked at how our interdepartmental teams work together and really sort of focused on streamlining that process and making it more effective. Although we work well across those teams and across the different departments, there's always the opportunity to continue to develop the way we work together.

Developers are unaware of some of the tools that are available for them to track projects, especially as we've continued to expand our technology offering. So we believe there's more work to be done there. And we believe that there's an opportunity to continue to communicate better across our process as we continue to focus on that time and its goal. Within this area, we have a number of different goals. Goal 2.1 is about analyzing options to report on development services timeliness across the pipeline and continue to bring this back.

It's a goal that's currently underway that we're continuing to work on this performance measure. What we hope to learn from this process is that we can offer a comprehensive evaluation of what information we currently provide and how that connects to our customers and provides them the transparency and the predictability in our process so they can manage their expectations relative to the work that we do in partnership. What that means is we're looking at a new way on how we can effectively evaluate our timeliness. I think the one thing that's really important to understand in the development review process is that there are so many different components and so many different aspects that it's hard to just look at it and say, well, this is how we're doing, to have a single indicator that provides an insight into how well we're effectively managing our process. We do publish standardized timelines across all of the development review partners.

And so we're looking at a new process that sort of measures timeliness in a manner of days added by the city. So understandably, we don't own the entire process when somebody tells you it took them a year to get a permit. We didn't have it for a whole year and then just gave it back approved. There's a back and forth. It's a relationship where we work with developers.

A project may get submitted back to the city two, three, four, even up to six, seven, eight times as we work through many of the issues that are there. So what we're trying to do is build a measure that allows us to look at that comprehensive process across all of the development service partners and say, how many days did we go beyond the expected timelines so we can give an indication of what impact we're having on housing development beyond sort of what we've published out there. So as you can see, there's a couple of example projects here. As I said, we've had enhanced process around many of the affordable projects. I just realized I'm on the wrong slide.

Wrong way. My apologies. Oh, I skipped over the wrong one. So let me just go to this one here. A number of so a number of examples that we're displaying. So as I said, we've had great success in modifying our process on the affordable side. And you can see we've actually reduced the anticipated number of days that we would see on this project. So the key line here is that second line that says days subtracted or added by the city compared to our project timelines. So in the three examples we've provided, we've come in under expectations. So we've moved faster than our published timelines.

Again, that's largely driven by that enhanced process. You can also see that on the two market rates, we are over. So we've added days to that process, fourteen days and thirty five days. But again, that's across all of those processes. When you look at the bottom line here, that looks at the total business days for the entire project.

So for the Seeley project, the Building A, we added fourteen days to a two seventy two day process. On the second one, on the Akeno, we added thirty five days to an almost two hundred day process. So this is a new way for us to measure this. In the past, when you've looked at some of the scorecards that we've presented to city council, they focused in on one particular part of the process, whether we're meeting our expectations on first comments or time to issuance. This is intended to give a general measure across the entire development review process so you can see how we do over time.

Goals two point two and two point three. So really the goal here again as we look at process improvements largely revolve around CEQUA. There's a considerable amount of work coming as a result of the changes to CEQA that have been put forward by the state, and we're still trying to really understand what those are. But there's still more work that we can do internally to improve our process. The first is looking at standard conditions of approval within the secret process.

That work is underway, and we'll be beginning outreach with the development community in January. Again, this is about bringing transparency and consistency so developers have insight going into the process and understand what conditions may be imposed. Secondly, goal 2.3 is to conduct an initial analysis of projects affected by AB 130. We have an initial screen. We've actually had projects come in that are looking to use AB 130 now.

Again, this provides a statutory exemption from the CEQA process for infill housing. There are additional requirements around some of these aspects that we're still sort of understanding. We believe there will be follow-up bills related to this as well. So it's a little bit of a shift in sand. So right now we're looking at the process and understanding those projects that are currently on the books.

Does it benefit them to transition their process into AB 130, or do they stick with the existing process if they're far enough through it? So that's work that's currently underway as well. Goal 2.4. So this is work around our fee estimator that's been an ongoing body of work to try and give additional transparency and visibility into the fees that are charged. Now this is really focused primarily on service fees.

So when we think about plan review fees and issuance fees, it will go into, as we branch into multifamily housing, it is going into looking at some of the other fees that are applicable as far as affordable housing, parks, and taxes. Obviously, so many of those fees, those major impact fees, are affected by what's the condition of the project, whether or not they're providing park space, whether they're providing affordable housing. So that varies. So we're really focused on the service fees that we provide. It's important noting that fees are probably one of the most complex parts of a complex business.

Largely, a cost recovery department across all of development services, we've broken down all of the tasks that we do on development projects on an hourly basis. And then the variability of different projects on different sites means that it gets very complex very quickly. So it's really hard to create a calculator that just says, oh, this is your project, these will be your fees. So the approach with the estimator is to demonstrate fees that have been charged to similar projects so we can give people a range. The reason that that's important is often when people are considering for large multifamily development kind of what the fees are going to be is early in their process when they're judging feasibility on the project.

So the intent is to give them more of that transparency. To give you a look into sort of how that is when they see it up close, this is an example of what the development fee estimator looks like. We're adding the new multifamily construction right now. We started this work with ADUs initially, and then we continued it with commercial and industrial tenant improvements. But it gives a range of projects that are very similar and gives a breakdown of the different fee amounts, looks at the total combined fee across everything and then breaks it down by the application fee, the issuance fee and then the fees coming from other departments as well.

And with that, I will hand it to Eric.

Thanks, Chris. So I'll just go through some brief slides here regarding linking land to capital, building on sort of the work we did last week on the cost of development study, better understanding some of the challenges to bringing more projects out of the ground and getting more units started. And so a lot of this work here is really focused on how do we address those challenges identified within the cost of development study and how do we bring this forward. And in an intentional way, knowing that the city has some limited capacity to really influence the projects on the market rate side as well as on the affordable side, knowing that some of the challenges exist outside of city control. And so this first provides just a quick update.

As we had mentioned, cost of development study last week really identified what is the areas of challenges for both market rate and affordable, where are some opportunities that through existing work that the team is doing where we could take advantage of pushing some of those letters. And then coming on January 27, where we're gonna have a host of opportunities to really get into the details as we bring forth updates to the IHO, the incentive programs, as well as a few other complementary initiatives to look at it as a package of public policy considerations for us to review. So first, on the market rate side, as found from the Cost of Development study, like obviously townhomes, stacked flats, those pencil out quite well. It is the towers and the more density projects that really have a challenge and where you're seeing sort of the scale of challenges. On the affordable housing side, there's been a lot of policy considerations over the past really emphasizing smaller units.

And the flip side of that is the challenge is that we spend a whole lot of money on a much smaller unit. So our overall cost structure comparative to other neighboring municipalities is much higher. And as we'll also consider coming on January 27, an expansion of the existing downtown incentive programs to look at ways to move forward with office to residential conversions and what are some targeted interventions there where the city can push a few levers to get some key projects, particularly within the downtown, to move forward. And so some other quick wins here just to go through briefly here, three point two and three point three. Obviously, the multifamily housing incentive program, which we brought forward in December, had pre underwritten four or five projects.

Those got into construction. So we're able to really see the impact incentive program, getting over 1,400 units into construction and over 200 of them being affordable units. And how do we learn to just evolve that program as well as make improvements, which you'll see come January 27, to the underwriting of certain other projects that we've done for the downtown incentive and then the next phase of the multifamily housing improvement program. And then for 3.4, where do we look at creating more preservation opportunities? I'll address this in upcoming sessions about some of our key strategies and tools that we will look to bring to the table for both market rate and affordable projects that will need some ongoing stabilization to preserve the units and open up new opportunities?

And then how do we continue to look and assess our ongoing sort of impacts around some of these investments that we have made? And then I'll flip it back to Roselyn to wrap up the presentation.

Thank you, Eric. So just, in summary, we just wanted to let you know what's ahead moving forward. So, obviously, the city council priority setting process starts at the the first of the year and then will be the initiation of city's annual budget process, with the passage in June. And that concludes staff presentation. Thank you so much.

Thank you. That's a lot of information and and very helpful, and it really comes on the after the completion of the study session we had last week regarding the cost of development and the different types and what pencils out and what what doesn't pencil out. So I look forward to the the all thing housing all things housing on January 27 to hear what staff recommendation's going to be on IHO, for example, incentives, and other other recommendations that you might make to help move the needle and get more construction going in, all parts of our our city. With that, let's turn to members of the public. Do we have anyone here who wish to speak?

Yes. We have two requests to speak. Lillian and Blair, please make your way down to the podium.

Vice mayor Foley and staff. On 3.4, which says provides alternative financing programs to to preserve housing at all income levels. And when I looked at that, I thought to myself, okay, what does it mean to preserve housing at all income levels? Does it mean low income, middle income, high income? How do you stabilize housing for people that are in it according to what is considered affordable?

Or how do you stabilize housing for people at different income levels when housing continues to rise in this city? So when you have your interdepartment teams discussing different issues on housing, affordable housing, and financing, how do you address 3.4? Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, Larry Beakman. A lot of information on that item, thank you. I listened to about half of the study session you had on December 8 on this subject. It was nice to hear, it was nice to be here today and just hear Chris Burton talking about transparency with fee issues and stuff. I've been here for ten years and there was just a nice familiarity with the subject matter that I don't quite have yet in San Diego that I'm trying to better learn.

And that They have really good ideas that their construction costs are much lower in San Diego. And they're working, they've developed an ADU guideline process in how they can be built well and within reasonable regulatory frameworks of the city. And that's just awesome thinking to me. They have a bit of trouble with the fee structure. I think you guys just have a bit more understanding how to talk about fee issues, and it's nice to hear and be around that.

For me, my biggest concerns are how, again, do we deal with low and extremely low and very low income housing concerns? I've heard you've been developing some shelter ideas, which have been helpful, but that has to be brought in with extremely low income housing also. And I've heard at the previous meeting on this that you are making those attempts. You are working on that. Thank you. To hear that language more regularly here in this process would be great. And that would be building our comprehensive whole. Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Thank you. Council member Ortiz.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I also want to thank staff for this presentation and just for the amount of work that has gone in to standing up the Focus Area Model two point o. I appreciate the clear effort that went into creating all of this infrastructure as well as the near term goal structure, all of which is set up to make better to set up to make us make better decisions and course correct as we continue to address this critical issue. All the items today presented felt really positive and it's encouraging to see the many forward looking initiatives that the city is prioritizing right now. These are important steps for modernizing our land use framework and improving our entire development pipeline.

But still a lot of what we worked on today seems like it's more focused on creating that infrastructure for improvements and not necessarily how we're going to get there. And so my main question is about our capacity to deliver. Given budget constraints, time constraints, we're anticipating next year, how confident are we that we can actually implement all of these initiatives at the pace and scale outlined?

Thank you councilmember. I think that's something that we're acutely aware of and constantly monitoring. Certainly with the land use goals, a lot of those things are work that we were anticipating. As you'll recall we've been in front of the CD committee with our policy work plan and how we're tracking against those projects. So we have a pretty good sense of where capacity sits relative to those projects.

I think with relation to how we're sort of working through processing, that's a great question. It's a balancing act. It's always a balancing act. Obviously we're largely fee funded. And so when development is slower which it is right now we have to be really cognizant of what resources we have.

And in fact there's usually a delay when development picks up and we have to hire people to come into positions that we're usually tracking behind. It's something that we try and kind of put some foresight to. It's something why we're looking across that whole pipeline so we can understand what's moving through the process at any given moment. But there's always a risk and we're always trying to balance that. I think part of the work that we're doing on really understanding what those impacts are is important so we can give that information to the committee, to the city council to understand sort of where we sit.

We know that this is where our staffing levels are at. And hopefully you'll see direct correlations to sort of what impact we're having on the development process. The other nuance that's in there that isn't always as immediately apparent is that we often need to prioritize around certain things. So as I mentioned, we've been prioritizing around affordable development getting through the building permit process. Now the reason we do that, and Eric could probably speak more eloquently to it, is that once they complete their entitlement process there's a very tight turnaround because of their funding requirements to actually pull a building permit.

And what we realized is in the past that was putting an increased amount of pressure on our process because know these are developments that we absolutely want to help. We certainly don't want to put them at risk of losing funding. So we needed to come up with a model that would support that and get them through the process quickly. It's a very intensive process. It takes a whole team from different departments different sub trades where we align them and we sort of ultimately say, know we make the developer accountable for their timeline and we say if you can meet your timeline we can meet ours.

And make sure that it fits within that window. The problem is is that dedicating resources towards those projects and pulls them away from others. And so where you see that time reduced on affordable you see that slight increase on market rate. And the same is true when we talk about different types of housing and different types of projects. So you know at times we will focus on affordable housing or even multi family projects or key economic development projects and that will have an impact somewhere else whether it's single family homeowners, whether it's other sort of types of development.

So that's a balance. It's a judgment call. It's sort of really managing closely to where the work is coming from, what the sort of pressures and timelines are, and how we then meet at least minimum levels of service for all of our customers to make sure that all projects are moving and hopefully not negatively impacting their outcomes.

And I would just add, so on the financing side, so what is presented in the plan are achievable goals. The challenge will be not its execution, but its effectiveness and impact because there's so many different levers that we don't control when we look at the financing of projects. There's ever increasing cost of financing now despite FMON CRE rates coming down, 10 treasury costs which is a real driver of mortgage rates and debt financing are screeching back up towards 5%. The cost of materials with ongoing tariff issues continues to arrive and premiums being added across the site. And then the ever increasing trending upward cost of land.

So as we look to size the various different programs that are levers we're going to produce, the challenge will always be getting the best underwriting we can to ensure that the target we're trying to hit and what we're going to push forward actually gets to effectiveness.

Great. Thank you. Appreciate both of those answers. And that was going to be my follow-up question, how are we going to be prioritizing and making trade offs if if needed. I don't know if either you are aware of an article that was just published this week in Strong Towns in regards to Oakland recently cutting like a big piece of red tape and expediting permits. Have you looked at what the city of Oakland is doing?

I've not seen that article specifically. I've not heard of anything out of Oakland. We do typically follow what other cities are doing. I meet with my peers in other major cities. Lisa Joyner, our building official also meets with other building officials, throughout all the other major cities in California. So, we'll definitely follow-up and find out what they have going on.

Okay. Great. Happy to send you the article as well. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Casey.

Thank you, madam chair. Chris, on the pipeline timelines, what type of staff or tech investment is required so we're not doing manual pulls for information?

So there is additional investment we need to do around our system and just sort of building the reports. Think right now we're trying to ensure that we have alignment across all of the development services partners. If I tell you one sort of building permit project, in fact one of the examples, when you look in the permit sort of system which is called Amanda for all of the different folders associated with that project. There's over 30 folders across you know the multiple different departments that work on it. And they all use different sort of nomenclature or statuses.

And so what we're trying to do is sort of find some alignment so we could pull consistent reports from technology. In the meantime we have an analyst position in PBC that is it was an ad delete from another position to really focus on how we look across our whole development pipeline and really understand all of those different areas. It's a position that we only recently filled. It is supporting this work right now on kind of a manual basis as we continue to do the alignment between the departments and then ultimately we can make the changes to technology to automate a lot of this.

Okay. You kind of alluded to it, but is there a standard repeatable KPI process that we're considering for the end to end pipeline process that you'll come back to that we can review?

I think part of the challenge on just standardizing is just the volume and diversity of development that we're dealing with. Obviously for the reports here we're looking at multi family projects 20 units or above. And even that alone is a pretty diverse subset. And when you look at the sort of complexities and the differentiation between different projects to sort of really kind of standardize that improvement process, It's something that we do look at. And as the development services partners which is those core partners are planning building public works and fire as the permitting agencies. But then we're supported by housing parks and a number of other departments as well. We're sort of consistently looking for those opportunities. It's not one that we've discovered yet, but we'll continue to keep working on it.

I mean we don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. There's no one in The United States that's cracked this nut or even gotten any better at it?

Not that I've seen. Not that I'm aware of. I think what we're trying to do is strive to come to a sort of days added measure. I've not seen it done elsewhere. But as we dig into this work we actually see that there's a ton of benefit to that. Beyond what you see in just those line items. It's giving us the ability to look internally and sort of use those retrospectives across a number of projects to understand what happened. So like I said when we look at the sort of the project that had forty five days added there were eight rounds of submittal on that project. So it gives us that opportunity to turn around and say okay what drove that? What caused that issue?

Is it on our side? Did new requirements come up which is something we always try and avoid? Is there something that the developer missed that we can educate them on or inform them on earlier? So what are the things that we can do to really compress that timeline? Because the one thing that affects any project timeline across any process whether it's planning, building, fire or public works is the number of resubmittals. As soon as you resubmittal you're into another cycle. So we're always looking at that process, looking at past projects so we can do those reflections and understand where we can improve.

Doesn't really answer my question though.

So indirect answer, not that I've seen.

Okay. Right on. Going to the AB 130, what is you touched on it but it wasn't clear to me, the decision framework to decide whether you're going to use the city's process versus the state's streamlining process.

So again the city's process is really focused on a ministerial. So the state process AB 130 is about streamlining just the CEQA process. So obviously there's a tremendous advantage to projects being able to use that. There are some additional requirements around tribal consultation that does sort of impact the timeline for individual projects. And we're still sort of working to fully understand how that will lay out over time. The advantage of the city's process is not just CEQA. It also moves you through a non public hearing process. Right. So it's combined. It doesn't have those requirements around tribal consultation.

There's much more we can do with that. So we started to roll that out in growth areas and approved urban villages. We did do our first project in District 1. It was successful. It was a really straightforward process. Think the developer appreciated the clarity. It's quick. It's still not as quick as we'd love it. Obviously I think that project had multiple rounds of review again. I think there were three rounds so that stretches it out over I think seven or eight months end to end. But it takes out a lot of that uncertainty around the secret process and around the public hearing process. So that's really the opportunity we're looking at to expand.

And staff makes that decision. The applicant can't decide which one they want.

I mean we consult with the applicant on that. If it's I mean if somebody wanted to go to a public hearing process we'd happily take

them to it.

Right on. Awesome. Thank you.

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

Yes, ma'am. Motion to accept the report.

Second.

Great. Seeing no other hands, let's vote. Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. I really look forward to January 27 where we really have a lot more detail and things to support or not. We'll see. Thank you. Hopefully to move development forward. Okay. Next item is the last item on our agenda, and that is the second focus group that comes to CED, which is growing our economy. Roselyn, I think you're gonna kick this one off too. Thank you, chair. I am.

And since I've already provided much of the background in terms of our work on focus areas two point o. I will skip those slides and just jump right into a summary of how we're organized to grow our economy for this focus area. I'm gonna start on slide five. Thank you, Caitlin. So this slide shows a summary of how we're organized for the logic model for the growing our economy focus area.

Our work is grounded in our long long term goal to cultivate an ecosystem for thriving businesses businesses and resident prosperity. We have four problem areas, which are business development and workforce preparedness, infrastructure readiness, downtown and neighborhood business district investment, and sports and entertainment district development. And each of these three problem areas contain both near term, long term goals for this fiscal year. So in the next slide, again, the work is modeled in five community indicators, which we aspire to influence for the long term. They include jobs, revenue, downtown vibrancy, small businesses, and income inequality.

As a major innovation hub, San Jose operates within a region marked by high demand and competitiveness. External conditions, including housing and construction costs, regulatory mandates, and broader economic trends affect these, investment decisions. Still, the city remains focused on advancing growth and opportunity. The way we are meeting the moment is to emphasize our comparative advantages to inform business engagements, prepare our workforce, and drive infrastructure readiness opportunities to grow employment and jobs for our residents. Downtown and neighborhood business district investments will advance community placemaking activities and sports and entertainment district formation planning.

Now I'm gonna turn the presentation over to Jen Baker, our director of the city manager's office of economic development and cultural affairs.

Alright. Good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. Jen Beck Baker, director of the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs. Here to follow our housing colleagues who were presenting four problem areas across 10 goals, we have four focus areas across 23 goals to try to run through together this afternoon. So I'll kick us off, looking at, business development and workforce preparedness.

As a broad overarching statement, we're seeing continued interest in activity across some key sectors. And so the team is engaged in learning about these sectors and figuring out how and where we can lean into them accordingly. In 2025, 2026 so far, we've seen 1,300 jobs created and across a handful of different industries. So we'll continue to work on how those industries and jobs and opportunity are manifesting in our processes. So in goal one and goal two, we have engaged employers to connect them creating jobs and customized business outreach activities with priority sectors.

So where we're seeing particular interest is in AI analytics, GPUs and CPUs, server systems, robotics, and really where AI meets the physical environment. Some of those interactions are being facilitated through the StartUp AI initiative and then otherwise through industry outreach. For Goal 1.2, one of the areas where we saw a big win this year and where I would like to see us continue to develop our outreach is that our business development team was present at SemiCon West. Here we go. Thank you, Kaelin.

Click and speak at the same time. SemiCon West in Phoenix, Arizona. So this is the first time in a number of years that the BD team has participated in outreach outbound campaign that required a little bit of travel and collaboration with Go Biz in the state of California to really put San Jose and Silicon Valley out in front of other peer industry leaders. So I think when you're part of a community that is really good at something and known for something, stretching that muscle and really focusing on outward business attraction is something that we have to continue to recycle and reinvest in. So I mentioned some of the priority sectors, but through participation with industry events is where we're creating leads, where we're creating a follow-up loop and business facilitation.

So business facilitation for us, and this is kind of a meld between Goal one and Goal two or one point one and one point two, can take place in a lot of different ways. So for example, as part of our participation in semi and semicon west through industry circles, we're meeting companies. We're learning on the ground from them where they're facing challenges with their growth and where we can help from the Citi aspect to accelerate that growth and make sure that they decide that they want to build their business here. And sometimes what that looks like is finding a Citi tool. Sometimes it is interdepartmental collaboration where a company may be experiencing a slow up in realizing their built environment and we can reach across departments and understand what the big if there is a challenge and what that challenge looks like and how we can commit to a timeline so that industry can predictably grow.

In my tenure here, I've, been contacted by a handful of companies who are seeking to realize their growth and we've been able to engage on behalf of the BD team and corporate outreach. Goal 1.3 is really looking at the methodology for how we're counting the difference between retention, expansion and business attraction. So before our team counts anything as a win, we want to make sure that we've had a fundamental role in helping to achieve the output of that win. So whether that is jobs creation, an accelerated permitting process, an expanded footprint and eventually an expanded tax base, we're making sure that we are logging, that we're defining what the pivotal moments are to achieve, that win and how our team was instrumental in moving something forward. And that could also be through outbound outreach where we generated our own lead and we're able to see that to cultivation.

This is really complimentary to the target and focusing efforts also. Kaelin's going to click so I can talk and read. So our reflections on methodology also help us focus in on where we can be effective with the industry outreach. So if the majority of our work in any moment in time is retention or expansion, how can we organize some team energy towards facilitating those processes. And then at the same time, zoom back and see what the market environment is telling us and where we can otherwise work on business attraction or refocus our efforts there.

We are working on procuring some tools, some software tools that will help us specifically with the business attraction. And those will also likely help us be able to define and account for our methodology and outreach. Goals 1.4, one point five and one point six are grounded in workforce preparedness. So council put before us the task of, working to pilot workforce opportunities for unstably housed residents. To date, you can see the statistics, 69 unstably housed clients have enrolled in the pilot workforce development program, and there's an ongoing, case management partnership with community based organizations to help us continue to pursue that goal.

One finding and one reflection is that the majority of clients enrolling are opportunity youth aged 18 to 24. Goal one point five and one point six, or we'll go to one point five first, intends to launch trainings and training modules for AI related skills. So we hear a lot from industry that people who are outside of industry or not currently employed, when they do reenter industry, they need to have a baseline of AI literacy. And so the Work2Future team has collaborated and leaned into growing their skills training opportunities with 50 new related trainings launched and 31 clients enrolled so far. So we're making good headwind towards that goal and engaging with clients in new skill sets.

Goal 1.6 is looking at how we as an organization are using AI tools internally. So how are we assessing job matching opportunities, success rates and longevity, and workforce pathway building through AI tools and how we're monitoring our efforts. So we're on track to be implementing some new inward facing AI improvement tools by March 2026. Focus area or goal two is infrastructure readiness. And if you look at our industrial vacancy rate, we have sustained as a city a very low industrial vacancy rate over the course of recent years.

And so the more infrastructure we have ready, the more we're able to accommodate, industry and industrial land use cases in particular. So infrastructure readiness is particularly important. And the city in the summertime had the amazing announcement of the PGE Power Agreement and the opportunity to build energy infrastructure out. Just that announcement in and of itself yielded a ton of interest from community and that translates into goals 2.1, two point two and two point three. So goal 2.1 is that three data centers or large energy projects should receive permanent power from PGE by 2026.

Goal 2.2 signals that there should be additional two additional data center projects in the pipeline for review by 2026, June 2026, and five new data center large energy projects in the planning and entitlement phase by June 2026. So you'll see in the sort of stoplight system, we have a yellow and a green and a yellow respectively. And part of this retrospective and logic model learning process invites us to understand really why that's happening, right? There's a lot of interest in power. And really, it's examining the capabilities of the companies who would like to have power.

It's acknowledging that there is a lot of speculation and speculative positioning for investment to actually realize companies to be able to consume that power. So what we've seen is that there are 19 data centers and large energy projects in the development pipeline as of September 2025. And that is in the pipeline, a subset of a larger body of interested parties with whom the team has been working to really understand the breadth of their capabilities and sort of the seriousness of the inquiry. Three out of 17 data center and large energy projects have progressed to a next stage between June and September. So that's a strong sign, all things data center industry included.

And, what that looks like in terms of tax projected tax revenue for the city in 2026 and 2027 is about $2,100,000, through those three projects that would be reinvested in, our ability to grow a budget. Goal 2.4 looks at standing up the regional wastewater facility activation and staging development for that site. So we were pleased to bring to council on November 18 the authorization, which you approved, for staff to negotiate and execute an exclusive negotiating agreement with Prologis to see, 159 acres of the regional wastewater facility entering into a negotiation for planning phases to operationalize that site. So that was a great step forward and one we will look to be a strong steward of as we close out this year and start the next year. 2.5, which is complementary, is realizing, the LS Power utility permit by June 2026.

As we engage in that process, we'll be looking to bring a memo and resolution to council, but we're still on track to, see those permits advanced. I understand that the CPUC will be looking at a decision a little bit later, closer to March. Heading back to downtown and neighborhood districts, this is an area where we will see council, particularly briefed and needing to engage because for each business improvement district that we bring to council, there are four separate actions. So we're particularly excited in this quarter to be presenting to you, the Alameda Business District Business Improvement District bid and the Alum Rock Santa Clara Business Improvement District. You'll be, be reviewing those through your memo tomorrow.

We've seen an uptick in downtown foot traffic. We've seen an uptick in sales receipts in downtown, which has been, has been positive. We wanna see that trajectory continue. And continuing to empower the business districts and to lean into our, downtown manager role will help facilitate that activity. We're also continuing to gauge in place making efforts and seeing a trend in summertime convention center activities, which I know you've been briefed out on through Team San Jose and otherwise.

3.1, three point two and three point three goals all look continue to look at downtown business opportunities. Three companies so far have engaged in utilizing the downtown office leasing incentive program since October. We're continuing to work to try to identify companies who are hungry for office space and and wanna be located downtown. There have been a couple new lease renewal commitments secured, two specifically, and three additional business attraction, opportunities that have landed in San Jose through Lucid Motors, Papillon Claro, and VTA's security office. There were three placemaking initiatives also completed and three ongoing and then a host of twenty twenty six major sporting events that will be a driver for bringing people to the community and really representing the best that San Jose can put forward.

And our downtown manager has recently engaged in some walking tours where, over the course of years and most recently, there is a positive perception of change about in downtown. And so we wanna see that continue and would like to see through Christmas in the Park and other activities how perception and activation of downtown can grow and how we can improve those experiences. There were a couple of learnings to highlight. One is the removal of some of the insurance, some of the more onerous insurance requirements in the downtown leasing incentive program. So we're hoping that that will, will invite more interest, but that includes, free parking for a certain percentage of square footage leased and also, a a, fee relief for new businesses and engaged in the downtown footprint.

For goals 3.4, three point five and three point six, we're really looking at neighborhood districts and shared prosperity and placemaking. So I perhaps preempted this a little bit with my announcements on the bids and otherwise business district in downtown activation when I was speaking to slide one. But we will look forward to bringing the two bid, bid administrative processes to you tomorrow, for Alum Rock and the Alameda Business District, or business corridors, business districts to be. And then I'm happy to share that the Small Business Advisory Committee has recently evaluated an approach to two business start up or two business grant opportunities, one for start ups and one for neighborhoods that will launch in January 2026. So those are exciting things for our business small business community to be looking forward to.

We'll continue to do outreach to neighborhood and and business districts. We acknowledge that not all of the districts across the city have business improvement districts or necessarily business associations that have the same level of capacity to engage. And so part of the exercise that our small business team works on is building capacity so that our community organizations can reach a milestone of being able to organize as a district and be a magnet for community engagement for retail and place making experience. So capacity building also should be part of the win and part of what we acknowledge both in our learnings, but as an output of of staff invested time. Moving on to, goal four, which is sport and entertainment district planning.

Just on the acknowledgment that, and council's direction for staff to engage in sport and entertainment district planning, there has been a flurry of inquiry and curiosity across community and across perspective developers and perspective partners. So, just the very mention, and our direction to be looking into what an entertainment district could look like in our midst, has created, some strong interest. I think the excitement is that there's an opportunity to invest in a new facility or a group of facilities that create an economy for us and grow on the strong support for sports and entertainment that already exists here. And in building out an economy or exploring that opportunity for growth, you know, that can be a catalytic momentum builder for downtown and more broadly for San Jose. What that's looked like in terms of process, we have goal 4.1 and goal 4.2 looking at two different explorations of potential ways forward and potential venue venues of focus.

4.1 is team investment in and consultant investment in what a sports and entertainment district can look like in downtown. Some of the inputs into that process have included staff and council members going to Atlanta on a study trip to see a really strong sports and entertainment district realized in another geography. And bringing that information and that concept back to San Jose for our own distillation of what we think could work here and what different interest areas are. There have been a few work group sessions hosted, with primary stakeholders, including the Sharks, with council's investment in the AMA with the Sharks. They're a primary stakeholder, with whom we want to be grounded and want to be inviting ideas and concepts as we think about what a broader district could look like here.

Was interesting to me that this is two separate studies, right, the entertainment district as a concept and exploration and then the convention center as its own standalone concept and expansion opportunity. And with the city's ownership of the convention center land, it makes sense that we would look at that in a separate tranche. So staff is excited to receive readouts from the consulting teams on each of those studies as we close out the year. When we do receive that feedback, we'll need a bit of time to synthesize the studies, to evaluate some of the opportunities and data sets, and then present to you some of our learnings. 4.1, and this is a nice milestone for community, is the advancement of administrative guidelines for entertainment zones.

So we do have activated entertainment zones and they're a little bit tiny on your slide, but you can see the eight different zones for which we have activation. There was a nice milestone and adjustment to this entertainment zone policy through which the state of California and their liquor license policy was clarified. So there is a barrier, a potential barrier removed to temporary outdoor alcohol sales, which enables our entertainment zone activations. So we'll be looking to promote and launch opportunities for community to stand up their own entertainment zone activations and do that with our Office of Cultural Affairs so we can make sure that safe and permitted events are inviting community participation. Four point four and four point five look across eight cultural Let's see here.

So four point four and four point five are looking at the ways that we're activating special events in 2025 and 2026. Staff has already facilitated hundreds of events this year, 64% of our annual goal of four eighty five event days. Some of those events include city dance, rock and roll marathon, Viva Calle, some of the ones that are multi d events that that you would recognize. And there are additional events that were very specifically curated and designed for to be in parallel with the SJ twenty six activations. So, City Dance will be back, and a number of other opportunities, for community to come out through city sponsored events and activations.

And you can see on the slide what some of those art and culture interactive installations will look like. Let's see here. With that, I think 23 goals is a lot to humbly, through in roughly twenty minutes. And there are a lot more details, particularly around the SJ-twenty six activations that I'm happy to dive into. But it looks like we have one more, which is, external partners and economic impact for major sporting events, and a goal of capturing activity through SJ-twenty six.

So we're working with partners on quantifying what SJ-twenty six yield and investment will look like. Happy to see that the teams have now been named for FIFA World Cup and some other milestones around which communities can start to build some momentum. And we will continue to work and refine both with the datasets we believe will be coming out of the Bay Area Host Committee and then, information that we know we can glean, from our Downtown Association and also from Team San Jose to be measuring the impact of the 2026 investments. So with that, 23 goals in a flyby, and happy to, to respond to thoughts and questions.

Thank you. That's a lot. Twenty three twenty three goals. There's a lot going on to build our, improve our economic status in the city and how we're going to improve and support small businesses and development and infrastructure. It's, the first focus group we saw today on housing and development fits nicely with the development or the focus group of, improving economic development within the city.

They they go hand in hand. We build more, we lower the cost of housing, we bring more people here, and we can activate more spaces. With that, let's go to members of the public. Do we have anybody who's wished to speak?

Yes. Blair, please make your way down to the podium.

Hi, thank you. Blair Beekman. Thanks a lot for this item. Downtown issues were talked about. There's been a lot of good talk at San Jose's downtown. It's had good revitalization lately. Congratulations on that effort. I'm not so much for the pavilion in St. James Park as other people. I hope it can be looked at possibly as part of its choices right now to look for another location if possible.

But an overall congratulations in what just how we're trying to get by and make it through to the next stages of our lives. I think in 2027 or so, we're all hopeful what can be developing by then. I hope we are looking at new economic models and bringing back concepts from pre COVID days that we're just starting to talk about more. Just more than just a system of tax and spend on people. And that if we start building social programs that the everyday community has to then pay taxes for those programs.

We can be creating different models towards that future that people can be taken care of and they don't have to suffer for it, which is kind of the one two of our lives. Good luck how we can work on such things. Hope you can be doing good work with San Diego, talking with them, always keeping in contact. They mention you guys sometimes. And I just see good connections in how in working on issues, working around the same issues. And thanks for your time.

Back to the committee.

Did you have a a comment too? Yes. Can you fill out a card and then come on down? You have two minutes.

Which color?

The yellow. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you come and comment and then you can fill out your card as you were as you leave? No. Come over here to the microphone and go ahead and and make your statement and then fill out the card.

Good afternoon. I'm a little nervous. My name is Daniel Rita. I have a company's name called Daniel Rita's Beauty Intoxication. I was featured on NBC about ten years ago, ten years and a month ago for Bay Area Proud.

We had a lot of controversy that happened over the past ten years. For example, I was sliced three times while defending somebody at a photoshoot doing Stoli Vodka. And we had a lot of different beneficial situations that happened coming out of like how the previous comment was with COVID. I'm trying to get my stuff back together. Doing Daniel Rita's Beauty Intoxication, had a background with tech, part of the Mastercard building here on North 3rd Street, 152 with the church that's also there, which also went for my T Mobile phone number which ended with 0520.

I was arrested on the first of the month. And I had with Uber and with my last name being Rita with taxi service with auto automobiles partway of Disney. We had had stuff that wound up going through tech like me being Daniel Rita's Beauty Intoxication with the tie again with being Joe Biden on this microphone. And I'm not just trying to be two turntables in a microphone or being on the episode of Season two Season two Episode seven of Looking in Berkeley. I'm trying to get my stuff back together.

I'm tired of not having a voice within the system and it's being played as it's a karaoke situation where it's been before he cheats and I got sliced three times. They're also doing, illegal injections as well as putting into a bondage situation. My salon would be Bishop's right here as part of way of me being an adult.

Thank thank you. That's your time. Just this is more actually, your comments were more for open forum than for this particular topic. I Yeah. I'm sorry. We don't actually engage in conversation during the public forum time, but if you could turn into a card to to the clerk, then someone can get in touch with you. With that, I'm going to turn to my colleagues, council member Casey.

Thank you. Thank you, vice mayor. Just had a question, point of clarification for that was slide 12, I think it was. It said that there were 19 data centers, and it said three of 17 data centers. I was just wondering what the discrepancy was there with the explanation.

I think, and I can invite my colleague Erica to come down and differentiate, but I believe it has to do with data centers versus data center and large load.

Hi, good afternoon. Erica Grafoe, Assistant to the City Manager in the Office of Economic Development. The reason why is because we had 17 at the June and then by the September we had 19.

Okay. Yes. Thank

So three of

the 17 that we started in June, by the time we got to September, three of the 17 had progressed. By the September, we had two new More.

Okay. Right on. Thank you. That's it for me.

Okay. Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you, madam chair. I want to thank staff for this thorough presentation and for the work you're doing to position our city as a long, term economic growth area, especially as we prepare for the major opportunities coming in 2026. With that being said, do have a few questions with a focus on how these efforts translate into tangible equitable benefits for our local neighborhoods and small businesses. I appreciate the work to position our city competitively for data centres as well as large energy products, but these developments can also be resource intensive and don't always translate into broad job creation. As these projects move forward, what community benefit expectations such as workforce pipelines, local hiring or neighborhood investments are being considered so these projects deliver value beyond projected tax revenue?

Well, connecting workforce to any of our business attraction projects is an important priority. Our Work2Future team has a really strong track record of being able to connect people into training programs and introduce them into longer term workforce pathways across industries. So I think as we continue to see industry growth, continue to engage in workforce, that, the opportunity to introduce someone into a job, where they can grow skills, where they can grow a career, and find that be a livable wage and beyond livable wage career, is stronger as we grow stronger industry.

Is there conversations, I think you mentioned what 19 or potentially 19 data centers that are going through the pipeline. Are there conversations in regards to where these employees are going to come? Can we have conversations in regards to connecting these organizations with Work2Future?

There are. So as part of the uture train up program and the AI training programs that are being stood up, I think there's both the build out of facilities, which creates near term construction jobs, which we're working on being able to measure. And that can be across a number of skills and traded skills, traded people skills and then bridging across to traded sector, where actual AI and facility engagement skills are necessary. So I think it's there's a matrix of transcending from building out a facility, and then having the complimentary workforce, to be able to activate a facility. And when I say facility, I'm not data centers tend to produce fewer jobs.

But in the ecosystem surrounding data centers are any number of jobs that can be created across advanced manufacturing, app development and other opportunities where workforce skills building is necessary.

May I Councilmember, sorry, I apologize. If I just may May

close that?

Manuel Caneda, Deputy City Manager. If I'm going to ask Erica to come down as well, I do want to note that each of these projects when you look at 2019, there are different stages of development, some are way ahead than other ones. I do want to highlight though that as part of our agreement with PG and E, we also have an item related to workforce development. I was hoping Erica could add some detail to that.

There is a

factor of workforce development, but you also talked about community benefits?

Sure, if you could touch on both.

Yes, so as we know data centers, they're not really a jobs play. Really it's a revenue generator for the city and it doesn't take a lot of expenditures. So what we see as one of the benefits of data centers is really the utility taxes that we get. So the city makes about 5% on gross receipts for energy bills, and data centers use a lot of energy. And so for a given data center fully ramped up, the city could be generating between 3 and 6 or more million dollars of annual general fund unrestricted general fund every year.

And so while that's maybe not your kind of typical community benefit, we see that as an opportunity to reinvest in things like public safety and libraries and parks and roads and all of those things.

Appreciate that. What about the aspect of the job? So obviously we're going to have to build these data centers and that also involves a workforce. How are we going to make sure that young people that are interested in the trades, whether it's looking at apprenticeship programs or local hire aspects of these projects, how are we going to keep that money? Because I think a lot of times when cities talk about economic development, they leave out the whole point of creating these jobs for local individuals in order to keep the finances and money local.

And so are we having since it's 19 different ones, I know they're not all in the same package, but what are we doing to make sure that as we change the trajectory of our city to exploring and incentivizing more data centers that more residents are able to benefit?

Yeah. I mean, I think construction jobs in general are good for the trades. And I'll maybe even take it a little bit further. The data centers obviously are attracting good high paying union jobs. But if we also take a step back and we think about the electrical infrastructure that's then required to be built in order to serve those data centers.

You're talking about transmission lines and distribution lines and substations, all of those really great electrician jobs. So when we kind of take it back to when we brought this new partnership with PG and E to council in March, you may remember that IBEW spoke very much in favor of this partnership, because with a closer partnership with PG and E, that's more data centers being built, that's more electrical infrastructure being built, and that means more jobs for those types of jobs for those types of workers.

Okay. Appreciate that answer. I'm specifically interested in how we make sure that these jobs are coming from local places as well as if there is avenues for apprenticeships, I'll take those conversations offline. But I get the greater picture of making sure obviously I'm one of the main advocates for union jobs, understand that. But I also want to make sure that like local youth can get these job skills trainings as well-to-do these type of projects. I appreciate that.

I'll just add, as Manuel mentioned, in our agreement with PG and E we do have a section about workforce development. In fact we just had a meeting with Work 2Future and some folks from economic development as well as with PG and E to see where we might be able to bring more resources to bear. There's a whole Power Pathways program that the city partners with PG and E on in that vein as well.

That's great. Thank you. Appreciate that. On Slide 19, staff note plans to promote entertainment zones as a tool for community led events and to conduct outreach and education. How will the staff, city staff work with respective council offices for each entertainment zone to coordinate that outreach? Specifically, how will you ensure us as council offices are looped in early to do outreach at the neighborhood level?

Well, staff invites a fluid dialogue with all of our council members. And so if there is a community, inertia or ideas, that a district and a community would like to see reflected in an entertainment zone activation, certainly let us know. Our special events team is really eager to see this tool and this opportunity deployed across the city. And SJ26 paints a great landscape for us to be able to do that. And I'm happy to connect you and your staff to team members and or, connect community members maybe reaching out to you, they may be reaching out to us to permit an event, which they're doing, regularly and with good consistency on a daily or weekly basis.

So as those opportunities arise, this is definitely a tool that we will be, briefing people out on so that they're aware of the full capacity of, entertainment zones as an opportunity.

I appreciate that. And you mentioned 2026, obviously there's going to be a lot of discussions regarding watch parties in various different areas. Is the city and I know that there has been funds raised in partnership with the Sports Authority and I know Tommy has been working on that as well. Is there going to be real funds allocated for doing these watch parties in other areas outside of downtown?

Councilmember, I'm happy to jump in to answer that question. We are absolutely committed to helping activations throughout the city. Obviously, downtown is a big focus. All of our visitors are going to be primarily there. But we know that residents in neighborhoods, in our neighborhood business districts also want to see some events. And so we've previously committed a portion of that funding to work with Nathan Uch and his team and the Directors Alliance, SJ, on transferring some of that funding to them to help them with the activations that are being planned. So the short answer is yes.

Do we know how much?

I cannot give you a definitive amount right now, but, we are happy to keep you and and really the full council informed on our progress and what that funding commitment will be.

I hear hear what you're saying, Rose, and absolutely I think downtown is, you know, the destination place where everyone's going. But people will also go where, you know, if you build it, they will come. And if we're not gonna be intentional as a city to say like, we're putting this funding aside for this area. We're going to put this funding aside. Okay, this group is doing this work.

All right, the city is going to back it with this list of amount of resources. Then those events will never come to fruition. And it's really honestly, this is we're talking about 2026, but it's next month. And if we don't have some of these events, the vision of them starting to materialize, that opportunity is going to leave us. So I'm hoping that in the next coming weeks we could start having some tangible conversations, concrete numbers in order to properly move forward.

I see my lights blinking. I guess the last one I would say is in regards to our business improvement districts, that's obviously one's coming in from my district next actually this week I believe. We're going to be voting on that. And I think it's going to be coming back a few different times as Victor mentioned. I think getting it started, the Business Improvement District getting it started, that's one thing.

But also we have to understand these are a lot of these business owners, especially if it's not a PBID, right, this is a Business Improvement District. These are individuals who twenty four hours a day are running their business. Now they're going to have to run or I'm not sure what this entails, but oversee a bid. Is the city providing any sort of training or support for these business associations that are starting these? Because what I would hate is we get a bid started and then I don't know business owners start fighting over money or I don't know what else whatever could happen and then it falls through. So what are our thoughts on that?

Well business districts don't happen by accident. So there is quite a bit of capacity building that goes into what the organism can look like. So there's a chemistry of a number of businesses engaging that helps make us believe that it's viable and through numbers and engagements by district participants, there can be shared ownership and I think that shared ownership creates a ton of empowerment for business owners, not all of whom have the extra bandwidth to always contribute to the direction, but through their own community networks, through their colleagues, maybe it's through their next door business neighbor who is engaged in the district, wanting to bring legitimacy to the business improvement district process, has been the result of a lot of capacity building on the ground, both by our staff but through our contracted partners who have facilitated the capacity building along the way. And there are some communities who are not quite there, in being able to realize the district. So the ones that are coming to the table in the near term are really ones that have been invested in and have grown that capacity, which we'll want to see continue to support.

And the inertia behind those districts also is self fulfilling. So now they'll have an instrument and a mechanism whereby they can decide, through their budget and through their planning how they want to reinvest in the community in ways that hopefully help them grow their business so that they can focus on the aspects of it that are most important to them.

Appreciate that. I appreciate that provided context. I'm aware of the business association in my district because I co founded it. And so I know the work that's been done. Nathan Ulrich has been doing a great job, but then I also know that that contract is going to run out pretty soon.

And so unless and I haven't heard, I don't know if there's been discussion, but I don't know if we're going continue to renew those contracts. Personally I think we should, but I know funding is always there. And so I don't want to just go into a place where, alright everything's set up, Nathan or whoever the consultant is takes a step back and then things don't seem to go out the way we had planned for it to come to fruition. And I'm only asking this because businesses are coming to me saying, especially the ones in my district, okay, we're going get this bid, but we need more training. There's asking for more training about how to manage that. Who knows, if Nathan is going to provide a toolkit or some sort of training on that, great. But that conversation needs to be done.

And that's Thank a great lead in. Staff is working both on a business toolkit and a guide for, the business districts, to help them, with essentially a map and a pathway to continued success.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Kamay.

Thank you. A lot has already been said, so I'm just going to follow-up on something that council member Ortiz asked about regarding funds or if any are going to be outside of downtown. And obviously the focus is downtown and we all understand that. Now I'm curious to know whether it's gonna be Nathan or this director's alliance that's gonna determine who's gonna get what and where. Because I know that in my area, over by the Catawat Winchester area, the Winchester Row Group, right, was being asked for money, not for money to be coming their way. So I'm just curious as to who's going to determine that and when it's going to be determined because we're already in December, pretty much gone. So I'm just curious.

Thank you council members. So moving forward in terms of activations in our neighborhood, so to your point, Super Bowl is here. Yeah. All of our neighborhood activations and all of our planning we had focused for FIFA World Cup, which now that we know what teams will be playing in the city, we have now the opportunity to do some better planning around those countries, the cultures, the themes. So that work will now start in earnest.

We will continue to work with Community Strong Strategies and the alliance because it's our understanding that they've been formed and very they've been very active and shared their desire to actually lead those activations in the neighborhood business districts. The grants will likely be made to those business improvement districts directly.

But who's gonna determine which ones? Because I don't imagine it's going to be a lot of money for outside of the downtown area. And if there's just not that clarity to me to say that, oh yes, we have this pot of money. We're going to invest it in maybe four places. I don't know. I'm just making that up. Right? And you know like who's gonna determine that? Are they gonna determine that? Are you gonna determine that? Who's gonna determine that? Right? Because I think that these are public dollars, and if it's if it's up to Nathan and the directors alliance, you know, they're asking us for money. Right? So I'm just a little bit curious as to how it's all gonna happen.

Very good question. You know, council member, we are going to work with the willing. We're gonna just you know, that's pretty what we're gonna be working with, meeting with those organizations, those business improvement districts that express the most interest and are very well organized and have the partners that they need as well to actually plan and execute those activations. I'm not saying it's a perfect process by No. Judging the imagination, but first and foremost is finding out who has capacity and who is very willing and interested in working with us. I guess guess happy

to I guess the definite let me let me finish. Mhmm. I guess the definition of working with us can be a little bit sort of too vague for me. Because when when the directors alliance goes to a neighborhood association and is asking for money, not saying, hey we bring these resources, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, whatever. Right? It's like if you want in $15,000. So my my you know like my question is, well how is that the city helping the neighborhoods. Right? I

I

I to me it doesn't it's not clear to me. And I think that if they're making the determination, they're doing the outreach, we should know. We should know what exactly are they asking as partners. So I just put that out there as something that is coming up very, very quickly. And if they're gonna determine it, I'd like to know.

Yeah. Absolutely. We are very interested in working with each council member in developing these activations with all of the neighborhood partners who are interested.

Notwithstanding the monetary investment, which I know is important and that people have an interest in, on the staff side of things, what we've done is accumulated a set of tools whereby we hope that not, that the events that take place across San Jose are not just ones that the city has said, there's going to be an activation here, there's going to be an activation there. But we would love to invite community members who are interested in hosting a neighborhood or a community event. Not all events are watch parties, although some of them will be very good and fun, but there could be all sorts of activations around youth sports or other community interests or some of the countries who are coming to town and visit. And so we have a toolkit, we have branding materials through Team San Jose and otherwise, whereby our business community and neighborhoods, notwithstanding a city financial investment can really grab hold of these tools. And our events team is happy to help community members stand up the activations and engagements that really all help us as San Jose celebrate sports and entertainment and all of the amazing visitors who will be coming to town.

I guess I'm going to have to take this offline because I understand the resources that you're providing. The question that I have is similar to what council member Ortiz had originally asked about supporting the small businesses. Right? Some of them are not as sophisticated as some of the ones who've been around for a long time. And therefore, they're trying to figure out how they can be a part of this wonderful thing, right.

And if Nathan and the Directors Alliance are the only ones who are going to be out there doing this thing, I wanna know what are they doing, what are they offering, and what's gonna happen. Because right now all I know is that they're asking, hey you want a watch party? It's gonna cost you $15,000. And to me that's you know for a small you know sort of startup, that's not good. That's not good.

And so and so I don't wanna wait until you know I someone figures out, oh you know they're gonna determine who they're gonna work with or how they're gonna work or whatever. I think I think there needs to be clarity and if they're in charge I wanna know. Because it's not, to me it's just, it's like there are those who are gonna be left behind because they don't know how to you know sort of manage all of this. And so to be inclusive I think, yeah it's great working with the council offices, but I also think there needs to be clarity as to what the heck are they doing.

I don't disagree with what, is being said, but I'm not sure CED with this focus group is this is the conversation right now. This is a 2026 budget item that you're discussing and should come when we're discussing 2026 sporting events. And I think this comes to CED win in another two months maybe? I

think our next status report will be April, so it'll be in advance of FIFA World Cup. Okay.

Very good. I mean the the point is well taken. Some of us don't have business districts and and we're not sure how we're going to benefit from a watch party. So the conversation is important. I'm just not sure it gets to the the economic development part of this focus group as it wasn't heavily vested on 2026, but it's it's an important conversation. So, I'm not sure the vehicle for continuing it on, but if I could have a motion to accept this report.

Motion to accept.

Is there a second? Second. Then, let's vote. Thank you. So, that concludes our general our our regular meeting. We now turn to open forum. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

Yes. Lillian, Blair, and Daniel, please make your way down to the podium.

I'm just I'm just here to comment on Roma Dawson who passed away recently, and she was, the chair of the housing commission. And mister Mulcahy is shaking his head. I did not know her personally, but when I watched the housing commission, there was a gentleman on there. I think he was the vice chair, and he almost cried over it. So I know that housing is very, very important in this city. I'm a senior. I'm on affordable housing, which is a misnomer, as you know. And I'm just here to comment on the passing of miss Roma Dawson. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

So so, yeah, I also am a part of badpuppy.com, which is an adult entertainment website. We have a flag that's in Bishop's. As I was telling you before, I was doing beauty Daniel Rita's beauty intoxication. So the website got turned down. They or they took it down, about twenty years ago, but it's still being promoted.

And over at Santa Cruz, we had Show Your Pride. It was like a gay days over at Great America event without Kelly Rowland on stage doing the Gavin, equal rights for marriage back in 2007 when when equal rights for marriage and and commitment was being, displayed. So I've had this situation. I was on Cobb Mountain. My grandfather, William Costa, passed away.

I used to work over at Ferry Street Station in, in Martinez underneath an Angie Martinez contract, which by the g spot or yeah. Where is it? Where where Golf, gas station is down the street, there's the notorious, it's on Union. It's on Union. There's, like, a mural on the wall on the brick.

It's with notorious b I g and Angie Martinez, and my nickname is also Bucky. So it's like, hey, Buck. I don't want I just wanna move some things, like in the lyric. So everyone's been wanting to move and try and do a Cha Cha Slide and not giving me my opportunity for me to do a court appearance for my property, my my d three, my my data, my tech, what I went to school for, and what I've had to do for a sacrifice of the creed of the American rights, the American dream. So on October or on August 1, I got injected.

They had my tech piece, which went for the property where I'm staying at outside. My last name is Rita, the church. NBC, Hoosier, take me to church. My lover's got humor. She's left at a funeral.

Thank you. Your time is up. Next speaker.

Hi. Blair Beakman. Thanks for the meeting today. I thought of, worker rights advocacy for the previous speaker. He sounds like he's needing those kind of services, and maybe that can point him in the direction he needs, worker rights advocacy. And counseling services can help show that direction, I think, also to mention. There's, you know, just a church right across the street from San Jose State as an idea. They're really good, by the way, that that church place. It was on eighth or ninth or so. I wanted to mention three items, hopefully, today.

One is you had a committee meeting, a special study session a week ago or so on addressing neighborhood violence issues in San Jose. It was with a tandem with the county, and it was nice. I don't know if that was planned before the shooting incidents that happened at the mall in the Santana Row area. The it's at the Westfair Mall. I can't remember its name.

But what concerned me at that time was that there was a stampede of people who left because of the gun violence. And I think it's been noted that we worried about the stampede. How do we talk to ourselves about how to be adults and have decorum during such a process? It's difficult, but good luck in those efforts. I wanted to mention the importance of working towards tech accountability and the important concept that we have so much additional tech right now, we can actually reduce the amount of tech and still have the same amount of public safety health in local public neighborhoods.

Believe it or not. Good luck on how to work on that. And to conclude, the Bay UASI meeting, just concluded last week. I'm going to try to be positive. It's important to be open to what they, want to be planning for the future and waiting for current federal funding dollars.

Thank you. Back to the committee.

Thank you. That concludes our meeting. See you in February is our next meeting. Have a nice holiday.