Neighborhood Services and Education Committee (nse) - Regular Meeting

And welcome to the neighborhood services and education committee. Tonight is our first meeting with zoom public comment available again. And we welcome those who are joining us remotely. If you are attending in person and wish to speak, please complete a speaker card and place it on one of the designated boxes at the bottom of the council chambers. For those joining remotely, the Zoom link is available on the agenda for tonight's meeting. If you are participating online and wish to speak, please use the Zoom application and select raise hand. or press star nine if you're on the telephone. Speakers will be called in order. When it is your turn, the city clerk or secretary will enable you to speak and a notification will appear on your screen letting you know that you may unmute and provide your comments. We appreciate everyone's participation and ask that speakers follow the meeting code of conduct so that all participants have an opportunity to be heard and the hearing can proceed smoothly. Conduct that materially disrupts the meeting or interferes with others' ability to participate may result in muting or removal as authorized by the law. Thank you so much. All right, that begins our meeting of the Neighborhood Services and Education Committee for Thursday, August 13th, 2026. That brings us to our first item, which is the consent calendar. Library and Education Commission Annual Report and Work Plan. Do we have a motion?

Move for approval. Second.

Oh, yeah. I'm so sorry. We've got to do roll call. Let's do roll call. My apologies.

Council Member Campos.

Present.

Candelas.

Casey.

Here.

Dwan. Here. Ortiz. Here. Present.

We have a quorum. Awesome. And then back to C, item one, which is library and education commission annual report and work plan. We have a motion and a second. We can call for the vote. Can we do a verbal vote? It came up. It came up for us. Okay. Motion passes. Thank you so much. That leads us to D, reports to committee, starting with item one, children and youth services master plan status report.

Good afternoon, Chair Ortiz and members of NSC. I am pleased to provide a brief update on our progress implementing the children youth services master plan 2.0. As council will recall, the master plan is our roadmap for creating a more coordinated system of services and opportunities for San Jose's children, youth, young adults, and families. With the 2.0 phase, we are moving from a broad planning framework towards a more focused, action-oriented strategy centered on measurable outcomes. Our work is organized around two overarching outcomes, meaningful and sustaining jobs and safe, clean, and connected communities. To help achieve those outcomes, we are focusing our efforts across three critical stages of a young person's development. Stage one is childcare access and kindergarten readiness. We want more children entering school ready to learn. Our initial measures include access to affordable childcare, kindergarten readiness, and developmental screenings. Stage two is third grade reading and chronic absenteeism. We know that early academic success and consistent school attendance are important indicators of future outcomes. We are working with our partners to establish baseline measures around reading proficiency, chronic absenteeism, and other conditions that may affect a young person's ability to succeed. Stage three is A to G preparedness and workforce development. Here our focus is ensuring that young people leave our systems with real opportunities. We will look at A to G completion, participation and completion of workforce programs, connections to employers, and young adults ages 18 to 24 who may be disconnected from education and employment. together these three stages create a continuum children enter school ready to learn students are reading and attending school and young people graduate prepared for college a career and civic life the second major area of progress is governance and partnerships the master plan cannot be implemented by the city alone we are establishing a master plan policy team that will meet quarterly and bring together leadership from the city county of santa clara san jose state university First Five, Philanthropy, and our demonstration site partners. We are also developing a workforce collaborative to bring partners together around workforce development goals. Underneath this governance structure, partners will take responsibility for specific pieces of the strategy. The county will help us address areas such as childcare, behavioral health, housing, and access to benefits. City departments will align programs including teen centers the San Jose Youth Empowerment Alliance work to future tutoring and early learning initiatives. First five will support family resource centers, our No Wrong Door infrastructure and data collection, San Jose State University will help strengthen college preparedness and pathways, and Sobrato Philanthropies will continue to be an important partner in evaluation, investment in our demonstration sites, and development of the workforce collaborative. This structure is important because the master plan is ultimately about systems change, not creating another standalone city program. Our goal is to better align the resources, expertise, and investment that already exists across San Jose and the County of Santa Clara around shared outcomes for children and families. There are also several immediate implementation priorities underway. We are determining the best use of the $250,000 identified for additional master plan planning and implementation work. We are completing contract amendments with our anchor community partners at the demonstration sites, beginning the process of establishing baseline data for our key indicators and preparing to convene the inaugural policy team meeting by December. The demonstration sites in Mayfair and Polkoway and Seven Trees and Santee will continue to be especially important. They allow us to test the no wrong door approach learn what coordinated service delivery looks like at the neighborhood level, measure results, and use those lessons to inform future implementation. As we move forward, our focus will remain on three things, alignment, accountability, and outcomes. We want partners aligned around a common strategy. We want clear accountability for the work, and most importantly, we want to be able to demonstrate that our collective investments are producing better outcomes for San Jose children, youth, and families. The next phase is about moving the master plan from plan to practice and ultimately from activities to measure results. Thank you, and that concludes my update.

Thank you so much, staff, for their presentation. Now we're going to open it up to see if there are any public comments.

There is no public comment in person or virtually. Awesome. Thank you so much.

All right, we have one comment and question from Council Member Campos.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, staff, for that report. And I am very excited for this next phase of the Children Youth Master Plan 2.0 version. I wanted to ask for an update from the memo passed last December 9th. Item two requests for options to ensure widespread access to referral software licenses in alignment with the no wrong door approach and improve referral data systems and data sharing. So can we get an update on that data sharing with the county?

DEFINITELY. THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTION, COUNCILMEMBER. SO WHEN WE INITIALLY LAUNCHED A YEAR AGO, WE REALLY THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO NEED TO PURCHASE SOME TYPE OF DATA SYSTEM AND LICENSING FOR OUR DEMONSTRATION SITES TO USE. AS WE'VE BEEN DOING MORE ON THE GROUND WORK AND WORKING WITH THOSE DEMONSTRATION SITES, THEY ALREADY HAVE TWO REALLY GOOD DATA SYSTEMS THAT THEY USE. that will allow us to do referrals, do warm handoffs. They already share data back with the county because both of our demonstration sites also work with DFCS and their data systems meet HIPAA compliance and other confidentiality requirements. So our goal is to continue to support them and scale up those systems in the ways that they need. We're looking at providing funding so they can buy additional modules that will also continue to help them with those warm handoff and tracking outcomes. Additionally, Sobrato Philanthropies, through the funding that they're giving them for the evaluation portion of the agreement, for the evaluation portion of our demonstration sites, have also built in additional data collections, so we're able to use that to evaluate kind of the outcomes and where we're going with this. What we've really tried to focus our efforts is making sure that we bridge the school districts back to the demonstration sites to make sure that they're getting that data that they need that shares back and forth and making sure if there's other departments in the county where they need to have data and making sure that those data sharing agreements are established between our demonstration sites and that organization and not have the city as the middleman.

Yeah, I appreciate that update and do wanna share my concern for not following through on the data sharing and sticking to the status quo of the systems that we have being good enough because it wouldn't have been a recommendation if there wasn't some value in trying to break the silos between the city and the data that we're collecting and really transforming the way that we are communicating and collaborating with the county on you know on the children youth master plan and through this data sharing request so we can continue the conversation offline because I'd like to better understand why sticking to the status quo is better for our community than trying to force this new stronger working relationship with the county in terms of how we're sharing data and more closer to real time so that we can have less barriers in how we are meeting the needs of our community because data sharing is definitely one of those barriers that's presented and it's why it was explicitly requested in the memo because it's something that we need to work together to address. So I wanted to uplift that and with that I will pass this item.

Motion.

Or yeah, I'll motion to pass the item.

Thank you. Or accept the report. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much. Does this need to be referenced or no? We're good. No? All right. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you. Any other comments? I see no other comments. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote, please. Thank you so much. Motion passes. Thank you. All right, that leads us to D2, Beautify SJ Neighborhood Blight Reduction Status Report.

Okay. Okay. Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. I am Olympia Williams, Deputy Director for the Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services Department. Joining me today are Paul Pereira, BeautifySJ Division Manager, and Hilda Morales, Blight Reduction Program Manager. We are pleased to present BeautifySJ's fiscal year 2526 Neighborhood Blight Reduction Annual Report. This year's results demonstrate that our coordinated approach is making a measurable difference across San Jose. Beautify SJ removed 23.6 million pounds of trash and debris, including 14 million pounds through illegal dumping response and neighborhood litter removal. Importantly, overall tonnage declined compared to the prior year, an encouraging indication that our prevention, education, enforcement, and cleanup strategies are working. We also eradicated 2.8 million square feet of graffiti, an 11.4% increase, while gang-related hate and offensive graffiti did decline. Through stronger coordination with code enforcement, the city attorney's office, and the police department, we referred 568 illegal dumping cases for enforcement, a 580% increase over the previous year. Our camera locations experienced an average 34% reduction in illegal dumping and the fixed dumpster day pilot produced an average 38% reduction in work orders within the four participating neighborhoods. Our success is also rooted in community partnership. Volunteers contributed more than 40,000 service hours, a 36% increase, And Beautify SJ secured nearly $924,000 through grants, reimbursements, sponsorships, and collaborative agreements that expanded our impact while offsetting city costs. These outcomes reinforce an important lesson. Lasting neighborhood improvement requires more than removing blight after it occurs. That is why Beautify SJ is evolving from its original three E's of education, eradication, and enforcement, to include a fourth E, engagement. Together, these four pillars provide a more sustainable strategy for creating cleaner, safer, and more vibrant neighborhoods. I will now turn the presentation over to Paul Pereira.

Thank you, Olympia. Good afternoon, council members. I'm Paul Pereira, division manager for Beautify San Jose. Engagement is the fourth E building on enforcement, education and eradication to create sustainable resident and business driven approaches to reducing neighborhood blight and strengthening trust in local government. Neighborhood leadership and civic engagement increased significantly in fiscal year 2526 through quarterly neighborhood association forums and a new monthly leadership workshop series, which averaged more than 51 people per session and covered topics such as city services, budgeting, grants, litter cleanups, and code enforcement. The neighborhood engagement team strengthened organizational capacity across San Jose, completing the development of nine Project HOPE neighborhoods, partnering with 72 neighborhood associations and community groups, and helping establish two new neighborhood associations. The third annual Citywide Neighborhoods Conference reached a record 350 participants in October of last year, bringing together neighborhood leaders, resident city staff, and community partners to share resources, celebrate accomplishments, strengthen partnerships, and promote civic pride. Beautify SJ grants continue to directly support community-led neighborhood improvement projects. In cycle seven, more than $388,000 was awarded to 93 groups supporting cleanups, dumpster days, national night out events, beautification projects, and community celebrations. Beautify SJ expanded our engagement in schools through our environmental school stewardship program, expanding to six schools in five different council districts to engage 2,222 students. Beautify SJ staff conduct youth-focused activities around the environment and anti-litter campaigns, then follow up with activation of the youth and their parents through organized litter pickup events at and around the school campuses. Over 1,100 hours were contributed by our students and their families in these litter pickup events that are designed to turn our young residents into stewards of their community through action. Council established the Blight Enforcement Working Group as part of previous budget actions. This group has allowed the city to advance our work around the enforcement part of our blight reduction strategy. Beautify SJA works together with the city manager's office code enforcement, SJPD, the environmental services department, the district attorney, and county investigators to collaborate and coordinate work around understanding how and where taking enforcement action can amplify the work we do. Beautify SJ worked with PD and code enforcement to refer 568 cases for follow-up, a 580% increase. This resulted in 148 warning letters being sent out and 104 citations issued by code enforcement. Just over $250,000 in fines were issued as part of the 104 citations issued, and just under $75,000 in fines have been paid to date. SJPD has also worked with Beautify SJ to investigate and take action around graffiti. SJPD issued 191 search warrants for graffiti vandalism, identified 70 suspects, and made 15 arrests. Part of our efforts to deter illegal dumping, reduce blight, and simultaneously beautify San Jose can be seen in the successful and noticeable gateways and deterrent projects located at nine gateway interchange areas and two high profile corridors throughout San Jose. Beautify SJ coordinated the planned expansion of these gateways and corridors escalating the timing so that gateways were improved and expanded in early 2026 ahead of many major events in San Jose and in alignment with San Jose 26 events and activities. Over 220 plants and more than 5,000 cubic yards of wood chips and mulch were added to our gateways as part of this effort. I'll now turn the presentation over to Hilda Morales.

Thank you, Paul.

Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. I am Hilda Morales, program manager for the Blight Reduction and Neighborhood Engagement Programs for BeautifySJ. While our staff do their part every day to beautify San Jose, we recognize that lasting and sustainable change happens when residents are engaged and feel a sense of ownership and pride in their communities. Over the past year, 20,477 residents engaged in BeautifySJ's efforts, contributing more than 40,000 volunteer hours to help improve their community. Together, those volunteer hours help remove more than 595,000 pounds of litter and debris from neighborhood and public spaces throughout San Jose. The value of those hours represents approximately $1.4 million in contributions to our city. Another important part of this work is making sure residents know about BSJ, and more importantly, how they can get involved. Our communication team continuously updates the BeautifySJ webpage, which has received 10,281 visits from 8,497 unique visitors over the past year. Increasing Beautify's visibility in our neighborhood is also accomplished through yard signs and A-frame signage. These tools help residents recognize the work happening in their communities and connect them with opportunities to participate. Alongside resident engagement, our city teams remain hard at work every day providing the essential services that keep San Jose clean, safe, and welcoming. Over the past year, GPC, our graffiti vendor, and our city team completed more than 36,000 graffiti work orders and removed approximately 2.8 million square feet of graffiti throughout San Jose. This represents an 11% increase over the previous year. Much of this increase can be attributed to special projects associated with Destinations 2026 and SJ26 event readiness. In early November, BeautifySJ formed an event readiness team to provide targeted support focused on blight reduction, encampment management, and beautification in preparation for events like Super Bowl 60, NVIDIA, the Global Technology Conference, NCAA, FIFA World Cup, and many other events that are bringing increased attention and visitors to San Jose. As these events were taking place, BSJ teams removed more than 429,000 square feet of gang-related hate and offensive graffiti, a 2.9 decrease from the previous year. When we look at the cumulative impact of this work, the scale is significant. Over the past five years, Beautify SJ has eradicated nearly 14 million square feet of graffiti across San Jose. These numbers represent much more than square footage. Every removal helps restore public spaces, improve the appearance of the neighborhoods, and reinforce our commitment to caring for our city, both for the residents who call San Jose home and for the visitors we welcome. While we continue to make progress through our citywide graffiti abatement efforts, the data also shows that graffiti on private property is an area where additional support is needed. Despite ongoing education and outreach around graffiti prevention, reporting procedures, and best practices for private property business owners, Beautify SJ experienced a 3.1 increase in graffiti reported on private property during this fiscal year. In total, 11,036 incidents of graffiti on private property were reported. In response to this trend, Beautify SJ staff expanded outreach and engagement efforts to better support property owners and businesses, particularly as we saw that graffiti occurring on private property and inter-jurisdictional properties. As a part of our work in the coming year and in response to MBA 9, BSJ will pilot a fee-for-service graffiti removal program. Through this pilot, participating businesses and property owners will have the option to pay for graffiti removal services that include color matching and provide them with a more convenient and timely way to restore their property. By helping facilitate faster removal, BSJ can better support our business community, improve the appearance of our commercial corridors and neighborhoods, and continue to work together to discourage repeated vandalism. In addition to graffiti abatement, another core component of BSJ's work is responding to illegal dumping throughout our city. Illegal dumping continues to be one of the most visible quality of life challenges, and our teams remain focused on responding quickly while addressing the significant volume of material being left in our community and public spaces. Over the past year, BSJ completed more than 30,000 illegal dumping work orders across San Jose. Even with that volume, our teams maintained an average response time of 2.8 days, meeting our response rate at 84% of the time. During this fiscal year alone, the crews removed more than or almost 11 million pounds of trash and debris from throughout the city. When we look at the impact over a long period of time, the scale becomes even clearer. Over the previous five years, BSJ has collected more than 42 million pounds of illegal dump material and has completed nearly 130,000 work orders. These numbers illustrate the tremendous amount of work that our teams are doing every single day, but they also reinforce why we push the education, the enforcement, and the engagement part of our strategy. As I mentioned on a previous slide, our goal is to not only respond to illegal dumping, but also to help prevent it by providing residents with convenient and more accessible options for disposal. Through our neighborhood beautification program, also known as the Dumpster Day, BSJ hosted 165 events this fiscal year, an 8% increase from the previous year. In addition, as directed by the Mayor's March budget message and approved by the City Council, we piloted four fixed Dumpster Day sites at Seven Trees, Mayfair Park, Bacesto Park, and Starbird. These locations were strategically selected based on community need, illegal dumping activity, and geographic accessibility. Most notably, these areas... saw an average of a 38.9% reduction in illegal dumping work orders, highlighting the impact that convenience, reliable disposal options can have on reducing illegal dumping. With that, I'll turn it back over to Paul. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Hilda. BeautifySJ's encampment management program is now integrated into the annual neighborhood blight reduction report, providing a more comprehensive perspective of the city's cleaning up our neighborhoods efforts. 2,470 encampment abatements were completed last fiscal year, a 133.24% increase, while debris removal declined 5.5% indicating our encampments are generally being addressed earlier and remaining smaller. Trash services increased 3% to 7,466. Bio-waste collection services increased 2.69% to 2,676. And bio-waste removed tonnage increased 27.22%. THERAPEUTIC SERVICES ENGAGEMENTS INCREASED 32.87%, SUPPORTING CONNECTIONS TO HOUSING, OPIOID OVERDOSE AWARENESS AND DISTRIBUTION OF NARCAN KITS, SHELTER AND SUPPORTIVE SERVICES. OUR GOOD NEIGHBOR GUIDELINES WERE UPDATED AND REDISTRIBUTED. STAFF PROMOTE THESE STANDARDS FOR ENCAMPMENT SIZE, PUBLIC RIGHT-OF-WAY ACCESS, WEEKLY TRASH COLLECTION, BIOHAZARD CONTAINMENT AND ACCEPTANCE OF AVAILABLE SHELTER AND HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES. The city now protects 32.43 miles of creek and river corridors, including 29.9 current miles and 2.44 upcoming no encampment zone miles, along with designated areas surrounding emergency interim housing sites. Through monitoring, education, enforcement, outreach, and coordinated services, Beautify SJ continues to protect clean, safe public spaces while treating people experiencing homelessness with dignity and respect, providing a balanced approach to encampment cleanup services. BeautifySJ is looking forward while looking back. We are constantly evaluating and reevaluating our progress and our strategies through data mining, examining our service delivery dashboards, routes and services, and ground truthing what the data shows with staff and service provider field visits and work. We recognize that there has been a substantial reduction in the number of large encampments. The implementation adherence to the code of conduct has reduced the number of encampments, the size of these encampments, and the impacts to the overall community. We saw this trend and adjusted our work to bring some work in-house, reduce reliance on vendors, and optimize our fleet to create efficiencies for the teams and the work that we do. We also saw and continue to see the trend of encampment shifting and impacting agencies we work with. BeautifySJ has coordinated multiple interagency agreements to seek reimbursement for work we do and for these adjoining agencies. Looking forward while looking back has given BeautifySJ the opportunity to optimize, achieving over $6 million in ongoing savings and being reimbursed or granted nearly $1 million in interagency funding to offset costs. This will help maximize staff, maximize vendors, and stretch every public dollar that we have. BeautifySJ will be celebrating our 10th anniversary in February 2027. This milestone allows us an opportunity to reflect on what we have done over the past decade. BeautifySJ has been granted the license to take risks, try out new ideas, fail and learn, and grow and succeed. We are proud to have developed new and innovative concepts such as cash for trash, RVP3, no encampment zones, field-based therapeutic specialists placed at encampments, illegal dumping cameras, environmental school stewardship, interagency collaborations, and other efforts now seen as best practices that municipalities and agencies are emulating across the country. On behalf of BeautifySJ's team, we would like to thank you for your support of these efforts to continue to clean up our neighborhoods and improve the quality of life for our community. We also are looking forward to this current year and additional opportunities for further collaboration as resourced through the manager's budget addenda and budget documents. Alignment with other departments around a graffiti for service concept, as Hilda mentioned, stronger coordination with the Environmental Services Department, and Beautify SJ on illegal dumping and the resources around blight reduction teams for weekend work in District 5 and for additional cleanup work in the Buena Vista neighborhood and West San Carlos Street areas will allow us to serve our community better as we continue to beautify San Jose. I'll now turn it back over to Olympia.

Thank you, Paul and Hilda, for the presentation, and thank you to our city council members, our city department partners, interjurisdictional partners, community organizations, neighborhood associations, schools, volunteers, and the entire BeautifySJ team. The progress highlighted today is a result of a truly citywide effort. While we are proud of these results, we also recognize that significant challenges remain. Illegal dumping and graffiti continue to create persistent impacts in neighborhoods across the city, and we are seeing more blight shift onto private and inter-jurisdictional properties, where the city's authority and ability to respond are limited. Aging equipment, lengthy fleet procurement timelines, and continued high service demands also affect our capacity to respond as quickly and proactively as we would like. These challenges reinforce the need to remain focused on prevention, accountability, strong partnerships, and the strategic use of limited resources. As we move forward, we will build on this year's successes by expanding our use of technology and targeted enforcement, strengthening coordination between the free junk pickup and illegal dumping response, launching the private property graffiti fee-for-service pilot, and continuing to grow neighborhood and business association engagement. We will also continue optimizing our operations, pursuing external funding, and working with property owners and other partners to address areas where responsibility and jurisdiction intersect. As BeautifySJ approaches its 10th anniversary in February 2027, Our focus is not only on celebrating a decade of progress, but also on honestly assessing where gaps remain, preserving the progress we have made, and preparing for the next decade of service. We remain committed to working alongside our residents and partners to keep San Jose clean, safe, welcoming, and vibrant for everyone who lives, works, and visits our city. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you so much for the engaging presentation. That leads us to public comment.

There is no public comment in person or virtually.

Awesome, thank you so much. This leads to comments and questions from the committee. And I'm gonna go to Vice Chair Duan.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Beautify San Jose and the PRNS to help keeping our city clean. The 24.5 million pounds within a year, that's just absolutely incredible. If you compare, that would be 8,300 cars that weigh around 3,000 pounds each. and then your 2.5 million square feet of removing the graffiti, that's 2.5 million square feet, that equate to 474 miles long, five foot wide of graffiti that you guys are removing. If I have a hat on, I'd say I took my hat off to you. But I'm in awe with the incredible work that you do, but I still do have a few questions. You know, with the 12 cameras, I understand that 32% decrease. I didn't, maybe I missed it, but how many did we prosecute for illegal dumping?

Councilmember, there were, one moment, sorry. There were 104 citations issued. 568 cases were sent to code. Of that, 104 were sent citations, and it was about $250,000 in fines that were issued.

Fantastic, we will have a little more funding for Beautify San Jose to keep our city clean. And I know that even though there is some cuts to Beautify San Jose, if this trend continue, almost every year we see that you guys, we are picking up more garbage and we decrease a lot of graffiti, this trend continue. Do you foresee that with the funding that you have? Would it be sustainable as it? garbage increase and so is graffiti Thank you for the question councilmember.

What we're hoping is that this year we've added our fourth e which is engagement We really want to lean into that and kind of couple it with our education eradication enforcement and doing more engagement and working with residents and to help them understand the impacts of illegal dumping, the cost of illegal dumping, and how they can get rid of something that they no longer want. We actually have a free junk pickup program. We're also leaning in with our business and business associations around graffiti to help them not just respond to graffiti, but how to prevent it. We really want to lean into that over the next 12 to 18 months because we think that's what's going to really help us stabilize our budget and the services that we provide.

Thank you. And then with the 25 transit ads, 50 bus back ads, and 12 weeks ad runs, what is the total cost for all the ads? And should we take that money and put it into more versus add more resource to clean up the city?

So for those bus ads, I believe the cost was about $14,000 to do that. But what that really helped us do was really kind of drive more volunteers. When we have more people who get engaged with us as a volunteer, it actually allows us to better educate folks. And that's what we feel as part of our engagement, really drive down the need to continue to add additional investments into blight reduction.

thank you just one quick last question here how does beautify san jose ensure that equitable across the city uh with their services right especially like district seven district five We encumber quite a bit of our unsheltered residents and illegal dumping. So I'm constantly obviously texting you and sending email for resources to clean up this type of mess that we have. How do you make sure it's fair and equitable for our city?

Thank you for the question, Council Member. So what we've done is we've designed a system to make sure that we don't just rely on 311 and what people report. That's part of what we do, but the bulk of our work and efforts are really focused on proactive work. We map the city on a regular basis, on a quarterly basis to understand where's the illegal dumping, where's the graffiti. We understand folks may not always report it, whether or not they could call us, email us, et cetera. So we try to proactively go out, focus our efforts to eradicate blight, also to proactively educate people around blight you saw when we when we select our schools those are usually the schools in the neighborhoods that are most impacted and typically have low a low reporting rate right so we really focus our efforts there because we know that those are the areas that if we don't get to it quickly things tend to pile up right so it's a balance of proactive and reactive response and not just depending on folks who may have access to the app

Thank you, especially the underserved community. Sometimes you see so much blight, you kind of get used to it, you forget to report. But on the other hand is that a lot of these illegal dumping, including graffitis and garbage from our unsheltered resident onto private properties. What can we do, what kind of policy can we implement that would give Beautify San Jose a little bit more latitude to deal with these situation?

Thank you for the question. So we have a blight enforcement working group that is led by our deputy city manager, Angel Rios. And we're looking at all of these different best practices from other cities, lessons learned, and really trying and looking at different innovative approaches. I will tell you that's been our number one thing from our businesses and residential property that the blight has shifted. We also see it. We know that just reporting it to code doesn't really address it. So over the next quarter, we're really going to look at some different strategies and approaches that we can take to support both our small businesses, because they're having the most impact, that may also provide additional authority to city staff so that we're able to help them address it.

Well, I look forward to see the additional policy changes. And please keep me in the loop with that. With that, I move to accept the report.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Vice Chair Duan. I also got a few questions and comments. First off, I just really want to thank staff for their presentation and their hard work, honestly, around the clock. I know that I'm constantly emailing you guys probably a couple times a day, probably at all hours of the day as I drive through my district and identify, you know, blight and encampments and so I know that District 5 relies heavily on BeautifySJ. As my colleague was mentioning, we have some districts that are overwhelmingly impacted by blight and illegal dumping. I know that the work that you do is vital to my district. Just a few comments based off of what the Vice Chair was saying. You had mentioned that we're For this past cycle, we counted 104 citations. How does that measure up in regards to our last cycle? Are we increasing the amount of citations or the amount of individuals we've been able to hold accountable?

Councilmember, we... We have some very dedicated staff who care greatly about the community and they have been doing a phenomenal job of following up. The previous year we had only issued 17 citations and overall the amount of cases referred to code enforcement increased 580% in large part because of the amazing work that some of our staff are doing in combination with PD. We've really strengthened our partnership with the Real Time Intelligence Center and PD in following up.

I really appreciate that. I know Olympia and I had talked extensively about the need to streamline some of these beautify cases to code enforcement because at the end of the day, the city is just going to be chasing trash and cleaning up the city when in reality, some of these property owners needed to make sure, especially our multifamily units and some of our trailer parks in my district. A lot of them, unfortunately, are big culprits. And so if we are not bringing them to the table, we are essentially subsidizing their bad habits. So really want to pat you guys on the back for that, because that's how we're going to systemically address these type of issues. And then education and engagement. I also just want to touch on that. I just went up to Seattle and Portland and Washington for the July break. And I was there in the downtown. And I actually witnessed somebody litter. And a business owner came out of their business and literally tore the guy's head off and said, what are you doing littering? To them, it was the worst crime in the world. And that just goes to show. education, engagement, and honestly, we need a culture change here in the city of San Jose. Too many people have been like only focused about themselves. They only see about an individual and not really prioritizing the environment. And so I know that it can be done, but it's something that, it's not something easy. You know, we can't just snap our fingers. It needs to start with the youth, you know, in the schools. It goes back to, you know, that old commercial when I was young, keep a clean jean and all-star stand and all. all that type of stuff, that level of, that's like good propaganda. You know, we want people to compete with each other and make sure that we have a clean San Jose. And unfortunately, you know, not enough individuals take ownership of this city. And so I really, it's system change work. And so it's not just about cleaning up and worrying about the trash of today. We've got to make sure that the litterers or the culprits of tomorrow never take part in that crime. Also wanted to touch on something I'm really excited about, which was the fixed dumpster day pilot at Mayfair. It was also in a few other places, but nearly a 73 reduction in illegal dumping. That is significant. That goes to show, unfortunately, a lot of times it is our residents, our very own residents who are some of the culprits in doing this significant illegal dumping. But what it also shows is that you know, if a city, in a perfect world, if we are able to provide these type of services that are more convenient, that are, you know, extremely accessible, that we can address a majority of this illegal dumping. And so I want to touch on that. And I have a question. I'm glad we did that pilot. I think we learned a lot from that pilot. But how do we plan to, how do we plan to, use this information? What are we gonna do to change our practices as a city based on what we learned?

Thank you for the question, Chair. One of the things that we have really learned with the fixed dumpster pilot is, The messaging has to be a combination of the carrot and the stick. And when our staff worked very closely with ESD to, they go canvassing about a week to a week and a half prior to the fixed dumpster day. But the messaging is both, if you do illegal dumping, it's a $10,000 fine. And by the way, here's the right way to get rid of your stuff. You can either do call for the junk pickup service, or here's a free dumpster day that is in your neighborhood. We found the greatest success in that messaging because people understand there's a wrong way to do it and a right way to do it. Very similar to what you said about the propaganda campaign. And that was very, very effective. We're happy to report that we're continuing the fixed dumpster pilot to four additional locations in the next six months. We're continuing Mayfair because it was so popular. Some weekends we were filling five dumpsters So we're continuing it in Mayfair and three other locations. For how long? Through December.

Oh wow, that's actually amazing. I guess I have a follow-up question and you guys maybe have already figured this out, right? But I'm sure if we could analyze how much it costs to do these fixed dumpsters and compare it to how much it costs to send out our workers after every single one that's reported, right? Have we compared how much it is to be reactive to how much it costs our city to be reactive to do these one-offs in comparison to just having these big events? Is there any cost saving with that?

Thank you for the question, Councilmember. So we have not done an analysis, but I can just tell you by knowing the numbers that it's cheaper for us to have fixed dumpster sites in areas throughout the city where people can easily access them, right? Because if we can get a third of the folks in a community to use the dumpster, it's cheaper than us having to send a truck out, load it up, take it where it needs to go, pay for disposal. So it's something we're looking at. Some of our challenges just, you know, will we have a fixed dumpster site? We got to have staff out there, right? We don't have to have as much staff, but we still got to at least have it staffed. So we make sure that inappropriate things aren't being dumped into the dumpsters.

Yeah, no, no, no, that makes sense. And yeah, you're right. Some things can't be dumped and, you know, e-waste and all that type of stuff. So I totally understand. Were you going to say something, Angel? No?

Yeah well what I was going to add to what Olympia and staff are mentioning is that we're definitely seeing some real good traction in terms of the dumpster days and I think that's a really you know at some point there is a greater economies of scale when we do it that way. The thing that we're trying to really hone in on is kind of the bad actors, right, who aren't the ones that are going to show up early and stand in line and get in line for a dumpster. And then another thing that we've been finding is in terms of our, you know, some of our dump locations, they're getting a lot pickier about what they're accepting, you know, in terms of like tile and demolition facilities. And so and in addition to that, price increases, especially around neighboring areas. Right. So we could have like free junk pickup and things like that. But if a neighboring communities, that's not the case. And there's increased cost in terms of dump. That's having an adverse impact. So we're also trying to troubleshoot those things. Those are a little tougher to get get a handle on. BUT WE'RE TRYING TO LOOK AT THE TOTALITY OF THIS ISSUE. THE ONE GOOD THING THAT WE'RE SEEING, AND YOU CAN SEE IT IN THIS REPORT, IS THAT THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THE COLLECTION OF ILLEGAL DUMPING IS STARTING TO KIND OF GO IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, RIGHT? WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THOSE AREAS WHERE WE'RE PROACTIVELY GOING OUT THERE AND FINDING SPECIFIC AREAS. We're going to keep working on this. There's definitely the, as Paul said, kind of a little bit of the chicken and the egg here. We're really doing a deep dive on enforcement efforts. And I think we're going to have to kind of couple that with when we do some major bust, really do a big public education campaign to kind of show how somebody, you know, just. got hit with a ten thousand dollar fine and you know begin to see like oh wait a minute you can actually you know yeah yeah so so yeah so it's definitely a moving target uh but definitely real proud of this staff that that just uh yeah you know just continues to kind of you know move the needle on this issue yeah i share my my kudos um as well this is very innovative and you know we can't just continue to do the same thing without trying new things that's the definition of

insanity i remember four years ago when we first joined the the council i was pushing i think the city of santa clara did like they pick like one day or of the month and they put all their stuff there and i was like oh let's do this uh like a proactive approach and this seems to be like something in that same vein that's more proactive focused in our maybe not every neighborhood needs this but like finding the pockets that do um and then offering and i think also you're right we need to have make it accessible, making sure these dumpster days are accessible, but also make sure there's hard consequences for those who do illegal dumping. So thank you for that. A few more questions, sorry. On the private property graffiti fee-for-service program, I think that's great, especially as it relates to gang-related graffiti. I just, you know, out of concern for, you know, small businesses or maybe like mom-and-shop property owners, not the big ones, you know, the ones like on Alum Rock or Story Road or Center and stuff like that, what does the fee look like? Are we confident that businesses will be able to you know, afford the fee? What does, like, is there opportunities to cure for some of these businesses? What is the, like, if it's an area with, you know, that's like a low income, is there subsidies? What are those conversations going to look like?

Those are great questions council member because this is a pilot we're going to test all of those things we're going to talk to the businesses about does this seem to be too costly does it need to be lower do we need to have subsidies what do we need to exclude gang graffiti in the city still say we'll just take that down and we just want you to pay for other graffiti so those are the things that we plan to learn through this pilot and then we have to report back to council there's a couple different strategies that other large cities in the United States use we want to test out this strategy

and see what the outcomes look like and then look at some of our other partner large cities and some of the things that they're doing to reduce and address graffiti on private property wonderful i appreciate that and you know i know all property owners are different we got some good acting ones and we got some some bad acting ones that we continue to um you know have to you know use utilize code enforcement and other other other resources i just want to make sure that you know the the mom and pop shop has some options before you know they're dinged or or, you know, accrue a large fine or something like that. And it sounds like that we are going to be working with those who may need that help. So I really appreciate that. And then finally, on the Beautify SJ neighborhood grants, I just wanted to ask, I know I'm not going to get big into it, but as you know, we had a lot of outreach from neighborhood associations. What type of rubric or factors were used when determining which neighborhood association or organization received the funding?

So I will start with this council member that we are blessed in our city to have nearly 200 neighborhood associations. And that's a great, that's a good thing. So that means we have more people that are engaged and civically engaged. Our challenge is we just don't have enough funding for all of those that want to be funded. So there's a couple things we look at. We really try to focus on areas where we have the most blight or we need the most engagement, right? We have a lot of blight in the neighborhood. Our goal is really to clean areas up, to clean up and do beautification and really to focus on those neighborhoods first because we oftentimes find that they don't have other resources or other ways to get funding. funding for their neighborhood association. We're also looking at this year, we just had a community meeting on August 11th with our neighborhood associations to say, here's some different options we can look at knowing that we just don't have a lot of money in the budget for that to get their feedback as well. But our goal is really with these dollars to focus on those areas that have the most blight and the most impacted. And really those vulnerable communities, smaller communities that may not have a very strong neighborhood association, have some that can raise a lot of dollars and they're okay. And then we have some that they just, people are working, they don't have the ability, they're not natural fundraisers and those things. But over the next six months, we'll really be looking at how we structure this so that we can definitely fund more of our neighborhood associations, but those that are most vulnerable. I'll also tell you the city manager's office, this is one of their priorities. So we're looking at how we realign the program so that we can stretch every dollar that we grant.

Quick follow-up question on that. Was there an average of how much each grant was? Were they all the same amount?

They're typically about $5,000.

Have we thought about... And I'm not saying this is the answer, just speaking out loud. Have we thought about maybe reducing it to 2,500 so that we could give more organizations a grant?

Yes, we are looking at all of those options.

OK. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that. I trust in your leadership. Just wanted to brainstorm with you really quickly. Vice Chair DeJuan.

Thank you, I just got a quick statement. In your messaging or your advertisement, you said thank you very much for the $250,000 donation from the illegal dumper. And you got another 500 in the dock or whatever it is to get him stopped doing illegal dumping. That would be funny messaging, but it'll get the message across.

That's all. Thank you, Vice Chair. And I think we had a motion and a second, so we could go forward and move with a vote.

Motion passes.

Awesome. Thank you so much. This leads us to our final item, open forum. Members of the public are invited to speak on any item that does not appear on today's agenda, and that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the committee.

There is no public comment in person or virtually.

Oh, okay then. That brings us to adjournment. Thank you so much, everyone.

Thank you.