Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support Committee (psfss) - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

All right. Before we begin, I want to remind the Public Safety, Finance, and Strategic Support Committee members and members of the public to follow our code of conducts at meeting, this including commenting on specific agenda item only and addressing the full body. Public speaker will not engage in a conversation with the chair, council member, or staff. All members of the Public Safety, Finance, and Strategic Support Committee staff and the public are expected to refrain from abusive language. Repeated failure to comply with the code of conduct which will disturb, disrupt, or impede the orderly conduct of this meeting may result in a removal from the meeting. This meeting of the Public Safety, Finance, and Strategic Support Committee will now come to order. Can the clerk office please take a roll?

Tordillos?

Here.

Casey? Here. Mulcahy? Here. Vice Chair Comey? Here. Chair DeJuan?

Here.

Yabakoram?

Thank you very much. So we have the consent calendar. There's only one item, which is a third quarterly financial report. Is there any public comments?

No public comment.

Motion.

Move approval of the consent calendar. Second.

Thank you very much. Let's vote on that, please. there we go yet unanimous vote we're gonna go to our report to the committee City Council focus area status report increasing community safety that would be chief Dobson lieutenant Nathaniel Bennett Rick Scott which is the assistant director of DLT on Aurelia Bailey who is the division manager thank you

All right. Good afternoon, members of the committee. My name is Aurelia Bailey, and I am the division manager with Parks Recreation Neighborhood Services representing the San Jose Youth Empowerment Alliance. I have a great team presenting with me today. As Councilmember Dewan already mentioned, I have Assistant Fire Chief Dobson, Lieutenant Bennett from the San Jose Police Department, Assistant Director Rick Scott from the Department of Transportation. We are here to provide an update on the City Council Focus Area Status Report, Increasing Community Safety. Our purpose today is to share what we are learning through this work while continuing to build the infrastructure and culture that supports continuous learning and improvement. Today's agenda includes a brief overview of the focus area model approved by council, update of the increasing community safety focus area portfolio, and goals and discussion on next steps. As a reminder, the city focus areas are designed to elevate the issues that most significantly impact our community, placing them at the top of the city's strategic framework. These are among our most complex challenges requiring strong collaboration across departments and partners to drive meaningful progress. While departments continue to deliver core services and improve day-to-day operations, focus areas require a different approach, one centered on innovation, cross-functional coordination, and shared accountability. We are committed to learning in public, which means being transparent about both our progress and the areas where we are still refining our approach. This strengthens trust, accountability, and continuous improvement. Today, we will share progress to date along with a few areas where work remains underway. A key value in this work is building a culture of learning, one that helps us improve outcomes for the community. This includes the principles shown here. These are the kinds of conversations we are excited to continue through today's update and in future discussions. So now I will give you guys an update on increasing community safety focus area. This slide outlines the structure of the focus area, including our long-term goal, ensuring San Jose residents live in a community with responsive emergency services and safe streets and roads. To advance these goals, we have identified four key problem areas, emergency response, crisis response, crime reduction and traffic safety. Looking at our key indicator, there is encouraging progress to report. While there is still more work ahead, residents' perception of safety has improved. So in quarter three, year over year, data shows 11% more residents feel the city is safe, 12% more residents feel their neighborhood is safe, 3% more residents feel downtown is safe. With that, I'll hand it over to Assistant Fire Chief Dobson.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Chief Dobson, Assistant Chief Dobson with the San Jose Fire Department. As our community continues to grow and develop, emergency service continues to see year-over-year increase in overall call volumes. This slide presents data for priority one calls for police and fire. For police, a priority one call is arrival at a major crime in progress call in less than six minutes. For fire, a priority one call is a rival in less than eight minutes for lights and sirens calls that could be fires, rescues, or other significant hazards in EMS events. The overall data shows that response time compliance is largely stable despite increased in overall call volumes. For the police department, compliance is down slightly, 1% year over year, while priority one call volume has increased by 3%. The police department continues to focus on hiring more officers by launching a police academy this month and another scheduled for October 2026. They continue to seek creative ways to identify new candidates who represent our community by streamlining recruitment through an enhanced internal onboarding process and by partnering with federal programs such as Skill Bridge. For the fire department, compliance is down 1% year over year despite a 3% decrease in priority one call volume. While the San Jose Fire Department continues to maintain daily staffing of 190 sworn personnel, The department continues to focus on hiring with a new academy starting in July of this year and another tentatively scheduled for January of 2027. The department is also advancing operational efficiencies through our enhanced CAD to CAD or computer aided dispatch interface that focuses on information sharing between Santa Clara County and the San Jose Fire Department. which has the potential to improve triage rates and reduce abandoned calls, leading to better deployment outcomes. We are also working to implement closest unit dispatch, which assigns units based on proximity to calls rather than assigned station areas. And finally, community paramedicine, which focuses on chronic high users of the 911 systems. This has the potential to free up resources to respond to calls in an acute emergency nature. Looking at the long-term goals to enhance emergency response, this opportunity area includes five strategic goals to strengthen emergency response capabilities. Goal 1.1 for the police department's policy marketing and recruitment is marked as yellow, indicating needs attention. I have previously discussed the active steps that the police department is taking to advance this goal. including continuing to host police academies and partnering with organizations to identify new candidates who represent our community. Goal 1.2, titled Police Report Transcription Pilot, is complete. It concluded that the product tested was not sufficiently mature, but they have identified a more effective solution and are moving forward with a procurement process with the finance department. Goal 1.3, police patrol deployment projects is on track as the police department works on implementing the custody transport officer position. Goal 1.4, Fire Station 32 is identified as needs attention. Fire Station 32's proposed response area will serve an underserved and historically marginalized community. To meet the department's targeted budget direction, For fiscal year 26-27, 14 sworn positions for the opening of Station 32 are deferred to 2028. The Fire Department continues to identify budget-neutral ways to open Station 32, including following the June 7th Council direction to work with the City Manager's Office and Budget Office to apply for a safer grant for seven positions. If the grant application is accepted, The station could open as early as June of 2027. The SAVER grant, although, is a highly competitive program with limited funds across the entire United States. The fire department will continue to explore budget-neutral options to open Fire Station 32. Goal 1.5 was fire's closest unit dispatch is on track, although slightly being pushed back. We will be revising our completion date based on testing challenges identified. This item will change how calls are dispatched, moving to the closest unit rather than by station response areas. This is expected to improve response times. So the lessons learned. What we've learned is targeted recruitment strategies are producing positive results, but maintaining long-term staffing stability remains a key priority. Operational deployment changes are helping improve response times and resource utilization. Technology implementation efforts have advanced, however, and different long-term solutions will be required for report transcription objectives. Infrastructure and funding constraints continue to affect the pace and scope of service expansion and initiatives. And finally, The lessons learned will inform our future investments, deployment strategies, and operational planning. With that, I will pass this to Lieutenant Bennett.

Thank you, Chief Dobson. Good afternoon, Chairman, committee members, and members of the public. My name is Lieutenant Bennett representing the police department. We move now to the crisis response problem area. This area focused on three priorities. improving coordination between 911 and 988, increasing community awareness of 988 services, and implementing the fire department's first responder fee program. We continue to exceed our target of 988 call transfers. During the third quarter, our communications center averaged roughly 100 transfers per month to 988 and trust, significantly above the established benchmark. This goal remains on track. Public awareness of 988 reached 32%, exceeding the 30% target established for this initiative in completing the overall objective of this goal. The first responder fee program launched in January and is now fully operational. Fire department staff continue refining implementation and evaluating long-term revenue performance, but the program itself has been successfully established. We've learned a few lessons from these efforts. First, integration between 911 and 988 is working well operationally. Our call takers continue to build more confidence in the process and are more likely to bring in 988 services earlier in calls. Coordination with county partners continues to improve through ongoing discussions and experience. Second, with respect to 988, sustained outreach was successful in raising and maintaining public awareness of the resource. We also learned that sustaining momentum in this area will be largely dependent on the county with operational and budget challenges. Finally, the first responder fee program is operational, but long-term revenue generation will depend heavily on frontline implementation and the department's ability to consistently gather the information needed to support their reimbursement efforts. Turning to crime reduction, the overall trend remains encouraging. Compared to the same period last year, crimes against persons remained essentially unchanged. Crimes against property declined by 10% and crimes against society declined by 12%. And looking at all quarters year over year, both crimes against persons and crimes against property have shown favorable trends over the last two years. The approach to this problem area includes five goals focused on technology, organized retail theft, diversion and recovery services, Proposition 36 implementation, and youth violence prevention. The Real-Time Intelligence Center has successfully achieved our ALPR deployment goal and continues making substantial progress on both public and private camera integration. The organized retail theft detail has greatly increased both the quantity and quality of criminal case submissions to the district attorney's office. The number of criminal referrals is expected to be near the established goal of 2,000 cases. The availability of the ORT program funds has been extended through the end of 2027. For the Mission Street Recovery Station, the goal to expand diversion opportunities for eligible individuals met with some program limitations due to county budget challenges. but a promising new avenue of expansion through the county's reentry resource center is currently being explored. With Proposition 36, the goal of monitoring implementation and identifying opportunities for advocacy is on track. The police department has implemented Proposition 36 operationally. The district attorney's office continues to share data with the city, and the city will be leading a cross-agency study mission on Prop 36 in the fall. Finally, the status of the goal for the Youth Empowerment Alliance to implement one new school intervention program site and two new neighborhood program demonstration sites is split. The Children and Youth Services Master Plan demonstration sites have launched and are providing neighborhood-based prevention and support services, while the school site portion of the goal is currently yellow. Several important lessons have emerged from these efforts. First, we've seen that expanding the public camera network within ARDIC The real-time information center is proceeding quickly, but community partnerships for technology are complex and are taking longer than anticipated to expand the private camera network. Even so, substantial progress has been made toward bringing event venues and major shopping centers on board with important technology. Second, organized retail theft investigations continue to demonstrate the value of focusing resources on repeat offenders and organized theft crews rather than isolated incidents. This type of work has strengthened cooperation and partnership with local retailers. Third, cross-system prevention and diversion work continues to require close coordination among multiple partners, including community organizations and the county. And finally, at council direction, the city's annual ALPR audit was completed during this reporting period by the IT department. The audit found no evidence of federal government access or other unauthorized access to city ALPR data. That concludes my portion of the presentation. Assistant Director Rick Scott of the Department of Transportation will finish our presentation.

Thank you, Lieutenant Bennett. Rick Scott, Assistant Director, Department of Transportation. Good afternoon, members of the committee. With respect to traffic safety, we saw a promising trend between FY24 and FY25 with a decrease of 20% in fatalities. Unfortunately, we've seen a return back to the prior year with a 13% increase year over year so far, which kind of puts us in line with where we have been in past years. We have an alarming trend towards the end of Q3 and the beginning of Q4 of increased DUI-related fatalities we've noticed around the city. So what we've done rapidly is work with our own police department to try to coordinate checkpoints, discuss this with the county and the sheriff's office to see what checkpoints were available there and made contact with CHP, who also verified that they're seeing an increase in DUI-related fatalities as well. On top of that, DOT has installed about 25 assets with changeable messages, including changeable message boards, our parking lots, parking meter areas, et cetera, to just warn people about the dangers of drinking and driving because it's an alarming uptick and we want to get ahead of it. We, as far as our metrics go, we've completed 100% of our transportation projects, we're on track to complete 100% of the transportation projects planned for this fiscal year. There's about 65 total planned, 52 of those were completed in Q3 and the rest are on track to be done this year, by the end of the year. And then our second metric, our goal two, is automated speed enforcement and traffic enforcement. As you may have all heard, the red light running cameras are online and we're getting a lot of citations, about 5,500 citations so far in six months. So very promising on the behavior modification there. Our number one intersection is Bascom Camden. I think that's of interest to folks on this board. And we are working diligently to get our automated speed enforcement camera program up and running. On our end, we've completed all the elements we need to. We're just on the final leg of negotiating the contract with the vendor. We are doing some things on our end to expedite this work so that it can be ready when the contract is signed. For example, you will notice on the ground floor there's a customer service center that will be where the permitting center is where people will come and be able to do their tickets. We've already coordinated that work with the Department of Public Works. We're also working with the permitting vendor and others to start getting the infrastructure ready for installation when we have the final agreement signed with our vendor. So we still believe we're on track to have these installed and operational in September. And we are definitely, this is the thing that keeps us up and we are making sure to keep progress on. Lessons learned for us in the traffic safety area is infrastructure focused traffic safety projects, we're delivering them relatively quickly. We are seeing that technology-based traffic enforcement is very promising and has a lot of applications to possibly modify behavior. And again, we're trying to get that out there as much as we can. And the recent spike in DUI traffic fatalities showed we needed to take kind of more immediate action than waiting for lagging indicators like more crashes to occur. So that's why we've been reaching out to partners and including looking at this as a public health issue and dealing with the county public health department. We're exploring a lot of avenues to try to tackle this issue before it gets any worse. So what's next for the focus area and the upcoming fiscal year? You've already seen the manager's budget addendum that discussed the work plan and the focus area framework. The June budget message was adopted. So this is all moving forward. In fall of 2026, the administration will bring forward the annual report to the city council providing progress and lessons learned on all the items we discussed today. And then December is another periodic update where each respective committee will receive a status update on the progress, lessons learned, et cetera. So with that, we're all here ready to answer your questions. Thank you for your time.

Well, thank you so much for the presentation. Do we have any public comments?

No public comment.

Well, just want to make sure get the message across from our residents that our police department continue to be, we continue to be the number one safest city, large city in the nation. And we really, really appreciate your hard work with the less amount of resource that you have. And of course, our fire department is top notch compared to Northern California. But in the meantime, We still have a lot of room for improvement. I do have a few questions for Assistant Chief Dobson. I know we're applying for the SAFER grant, and you said it might be difficult. What are we doing to make sure that our congressmen out there like Zoloft, Grangemi, Panetta, Sam Licato and Ro Khanna to understand our needs for that $7.1 million safer grant.

Chair, if you don't mind, I'll go ahead and answer. Sure. We are working with our IGR team to help with those sorts of things. So this is on the council agenda for Tuesday, the safer grant memo. As soon as council approves it, we will start working with them and also with the union local 230 to make sure that we have all of different partners aware of the importance of this for the city.

Thank you, and I would like for the CMO to work with our council members and our emeritus. I think if all of us put in a letter of recommendation as a body, as a whole, I think our congressmen will recognize that a little bit more, and I know my office is drafting a letter right now.

Absolutely. We'll make sure IGR does that as well.

Thank you. Regarding the first responder fees, have we mobilized that and what is our revenue and what our anticipation in the next year or so?

Thank you very much for the question. So right now the first responder fee is implemented. We're in the process of collecting fees and actually going back a minimum of six months to try and see if we can gather as much fees as possible. It is very reliant on our crews getting accurate information and billing information regarding a a number of where we are right now. I do not have that data available, but as we finish the fiscal year, I'm hoping that I can share that information with this group.

Thank you. Does our crew out there have a, I know they're on their tablet, should be able to collect all the information that is needed in order to build the insurance company

Yes, they have that functionality right now. They can take actual pictures of the information that is necessary, whether that be an insurance card, a driver's license. They can have all of that information so that they can get accurate billing. Sometimes it's challenging. Somebody may be incapacitated or may not have accurate information with them. So that's where it presents a challenge. But for the most part, we were able to gather that information.

Well, thank you. And our goal is, this is for Lieutenant Bennett, our goal is to go from 25% to 30% to educate our resident regarding the 988 system. What is your mechanism and how are you going to implement that in order to raise that percentage?

I can take that, Chair. So Eric Jensen, the city manager's office. We've been partnering with our communications office departments like the fire department, the police department, and also our partners at the county in behavioral health services department to do things like flyering, resource cards, digital media. We've sent out digital media toolkits to our neighborhood associations to build awareness and raise the profile of the services available through 988. And so that's how we've been able to see some of those increases. Beyond that, the state has done a significant amount of outreach as well to build awareness as well.

Thank you. Jennifer, I have a question for you regarding Proposition 36. I know that our IGR team is working with our legislature to get more funding toward Proposition 36. Do we know as our existing governor is looking at putting more funding into Prop 36?

Not that I'm aware of. Eric, do you have any knowledge of that?

We can, I believe that there was, there is some money in the governor's, in the revisor at some point along the way. I think we'll have to look up that information. We can share it with your office. But it's just setting an expectation. It's not kind of what most jurisdictions would consider fully funding Proposition 36.

Thank you.

And just to let you know that the red light camera actually working where they're at. And I have several constituent, you know, text me and said, what is this letter? Do I have to pay? I go, well, you're lucky. It stated, you know, it's just a warning. And I said, just don't don't run red lights. So hopefully when we get those completion, you know, when when we'll be able to complete all thirty three.

Red light cameras. Yeah, so there's four red light cameras. That's what we're approved for right now, council member. And we have a report due in January to describe the progress that we've made. And it'll probably be pretty favorable. The 33 locations you're referring to are the automated speed enforcement cameras that are going to be installed hopefully in September or by operational installed by September. And that is we got approval for more so we can move them around as needed. But that's the timeline for that.

Well, thank you again. I appreciate all of your hard work to keep our city safe. Now I'm going to go to Councilmember Tordillo.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, staff, for the presentation. I think a lot of great updates here. I think the one that caught my eye right off the bat was just the public's perceptions of safety downtown, citywide, in individual neighborhoods, all trending in the right direction. Thanks in large part to all of your work, so thank you. Also good to see us exceeding our goals on both the awareness amongst the public of 988, but also our effectiveness in actually diverting more of our call volumes over there. Hopefully those trends continue and it helps us to kind of be more effective in utilizing our minimal resources. And also good to see the progress on traffic safety, both with the red light pilot up, being on track for expanding the speed cameras, getting those operational in september and having all of our traffic safety projects delivered on time i think the data in terms of the actual incidents and fatalities unfortunately shows there more work to do but good to see that we are at least on track with the projects that we have planned the one question i had was on goal 1.4 for fire station 32 i was wondering if you could just speak a little bit more to why we graded this as needs attention as opposed to off track given that you know we had the goal of opening in june you know council collectively has made some decisions that has made that not possible so it seems like it would be fair to grade it as off track so just curious if you could speak to that a little bit

I'll take the first part and then let Chief Dobson add on anything there. So we published this memo before the June budget message was released, where the administration had at least published an MBA that created an option for the council to consider along the way. And so I think we would agree with you that at this point, kind of following that decision, we're off track and pursuing other strategies like the safer grant to open that. So Chief, anything you want to add?

Yeah, I would just say we look at this as a deferred project, not so much that it's shut down, not going to happen. Based on our fiscal year 26-27 budget, we have deferred that opening until 2028. And then we're looking at options that may open it in the 27-year calendar year time.

Thank you for all of those details. It makes sense if the memo was published before the budget vote, why we opted to go this way. I do think it's just important that we hold all of ourselves accountable, and given that the council had an option on the table, we decided not to move forward with it for a variety of reasons. I think important that that is reflected in terms of how we're grading our own progress on these sorts of things. But again, I appreciate the report from you all, so I will move acceptance of the status report.

Second.

Thank you. I'm gonna go to Council Member Kamei.

Thank you so much for the presentation, and thank you for the progress. I think when you have a new sort of format of how you measure things, and sometimes you never know, but I think that it's showing that we're going in the right direction, and so thank you for that, and thank you to your staffs for making it happen. because we don't do this in isolation. I also like to see that the 988 community education is moving in the right direction. I kind of don't know, you know, in terms of an area of measurement. I guess starting from zero, it's better to know something than nothing. But, you know, it shows that it's complete, so I'm assuming you achieve the 30%? Is that right?

Correct. We've met the 30% threshold for that.

Okay. Okay. So for future years, you know, are you thinking, oh, we're going to go to 35, we're going to go to 50? You know, it's hard to say, you know, like... what is considered good. I mean, we started with zero, so I think that it's good. But I also think that it would be helpful to know at what point in time do you think that it's, like everybody knows about it. Just like many, many years ago when you didn't wear seatbelts, and now no one would think about not wearing a seatbelt. Well, maybe some, but. You know, it's one of those automatic things so that people would know about it, just like 911. So I just wonder how long does it take? You know, people say that it takes 17 iterations before, you know, people remember that, oh, yeah, it's this way, not that way. And going to changing behavior, I got to say those red light cameras really do it. As our chair has said, people call you, hey, what is this? And you're right. It's sort of a reminder that you shouldn't be doing that. But I think our progress is in the right direction. So it's something to think about. I don't know what the correct answer is because all of this is very new to us. I'm really happy that it is sort of being picked up in terms of people knowing and understanding the 988 as well as knowing that you shouldn't run a red light. I mean, that's kind of the obvious, You know, people are people. And then we hear about it. When does the actual fine start? Because then that's when we're really going to all hear about it.

For ASC, it, I believe, starts 90 days after the installation of the, I can double check, but I think that's when it will start. So soon, soon, right?

Because I know that we had a, you know, sort of like this test period.

For red light cameras, the fines have started for the red light cameras. Oh, so automatic. Red light cameras, they're getting fines. They're getting tickets, so they've got to deal with the court. For ASC, which are the speed cameras that are coming in, that's going to have a warm-up period like red light cameras did. Okay. It's going to be a little bit.

All right, all right, because I know that from time to time people do call our offices and say, I did not, and they did. So thank you. It's been a lot of progress, and I just appreciate all the work.

Thank you, Council Member Kamei. I got one last question. I know that the DUI traffic fatality has climbed. What are we doing about it? Do we have a kind of diversion program where we kind of downtown when people out drinking on Thursday, Friday, perhaps even Saturday, kind of checkpoints like we used to prior to 2010?

So let me start, and then I'm guessing my friend from the police department will help. But as we kind of discussed, the first step is like these changeable message boards we've got all over. So that, you know, who knows if that's going to be impactful or not, but ultimately it's better than doing nothing. You know, don't drink and drive is basically the message we're putting out there. across all of our digital assets that we've got. So again, that's four changeable message boards. You see we like the trailers. We've got our parking lots. We can put that message on in our parking meters. About 25 areas throughout the city. Eric has convened a conversation between DOT, some partners with PD, and County Public Health to kind of try to figure out what's going on, what they're seeing in the hospitals, kind of to look at this as a public health issue. We've also reached out to CHP to kind of see what they're experiencing and how we can collaborate in the future. And I know our police department has, I think you guys fund it with a grant, a couple of checkpoints that you've done recently. And I heard Eric whispering something. I don't know if there's another thing you wanted to add.

Yes, thank you for the question. So there are the checkpoints that occur regularly, and we are trying to coordinate with CHP and other agencies in the area, not necessarily to work together on the same checkpoint, but to make sure that we are accounting for each other's checkpoints and finding the most effective times and places to place ours. So we're trying to up the effectiveness of each of our checkpoints, and then we also have... The public messaging with each of those checkpoints, they're messaged publicly through social media. They're not secret, so there is a deterrent effect. And then we also are accelerating our diversion and looking to get people into treatment when they are arrested for first time DUI offenses through Mission Street Recovery Station and services that they offer.

I believe the San Jose Police Department will leverage the free advertisement for the seat on those electronic billboards that don't drink and drive. That would be helpful.

Yes, Department of Transportation has been putting a lot of those up around the city.

Fantastic. Thank you again. And I want to congratulate Assistant Chief Dobson and also Deputy Chief Zuniga on your new promotion.

With that, let's vote.

That is unanimous. We're missing one. There we go. Thank you very much. Let's see, the next item on the agenda will be the wildfire prevention and preparedness status report. That'll be Assistant Chief Dobson and Captain Ibarra.

Chair, we also have Deputy Chief Aaron Fryler.

Oh, well, welcome Deputy Chief Fryler.

Good afternoon, Chair, member and staff of the Public Safety Finance Strategic Support Committee. I am Captain Anthony Ibarra with Assistant Chief James Dobson and Deputy Chief of Fire Operations Aaron Freiler speaking on behalf of the San Jose Fire Department. The San Jose Fire Department is here today to fill a commitment made to this committee. In May of 2025, the department presented the 2025 San Jose wildfire planning and preparedness study session to the mayor and the city council. At that time, we committed to returning in the spring of 2026 with a full update on our wildland fire preparedness and mitigation activities. That update is the memo before you, and this presentation is its summary. One year later, With January 2025 as our backdrop, the Palisades and Eaton fires burned more than 21,000 acres, destroyed over 16,000 structures, and claimed over 30 lives. The urgency behind that commitment could not be more clear. What happened in Los Angeles County is a preview of what is possible anywhere fire meets the urban edge. San Jose faces that same risk, and this department has taken that seriously. This afternoon, I will walk you through six areas. Our hazard context and risk mapping, operational readiness, regional collaboration, technology and firewise community growth, community outreach, and where we go from here. This slide shows where the hazard lives in our city. The San Jose Wildland Urban Interface sits largely within the state responsibility areas, land where CAL FIRE holds primary authority for wildfire prevention and suppression. The state fire marshal designates three severity zones, moderate, high, and very high, based on fuel load, terrain, and historical fire weather. The local response fire hazard severity zone mapping was completed in late 2023 and went into effect in April of 2024. And on June 17th of last year, the city council took direct action by adopting ordinance number 31213, the WUI boundary establishment ordinance. San Jose formally defined its WUI to include all moderate, high, and very high fire severity zones. The outcome of that action is concrete. New construction and defensible space within those zones must now comply with Ordinance Number 3-1199, which adopted the California Wildland Urban Interface Code for the City of San Jose. These two ordinances together represent the City's formal acknowledgement that wildfire risk land is a public safety issue, not just an operational one. This map reflects calendar years 2022 through 2026, where vegetation fires have actually occurred within our response area. The data tells a clear story. The highest concentration of vegetation fire activity falls along the US 101, I-680, and I-880 corridors from downtown eastward towards Alum Rock and the Capitol Expressway interchange. Elevated activity also appears near Story Road and in the South San Jose area, adjacent to the east foothills. The key finding on this slide deserves to be stated plainly. Encampment activity, transportation corridors, and unmaintained parcels are creating compounding fire risk in highly urbanized areas, not only forested hillsides. The WUI is not just a geographical problem, it's an also urban conditions problem that shapes how we deploy and it shapes how we focus our outreach. The department's primary operational framework for vegetation fires is the Tactical Integrated Emergency Response Model, the TIER. It uses three escalating levels to rapidly scale suppression resources to match the size and complexity of any fire event. In 2025, we updated this model. The change is significant. Rather than relying on pre-designated wildland companies, we now dispatch closest available units. The result is the total tier response time has been cut by nearly half. In the critical early attack phase, when the first minutes determine whether the fire is contained or grows, that speed is the difference between a manageable incident and a major event. Under the revised model, A Tier 1 response now includes seven units, five suppression companies, and two battalion chiefs. That aligns directly with the resource levels that we apply to structure fires and other high-risk incidents. Specialized apparatus such as our Type 3 four-wheel drive engines and our 2,000-gallon water tenders are kept positioned in the WUI areas, not pulled into routine urban and creek fires. This keeps our most capable wildland resources where they're most needed. Tier two and tier three build on that base, adding battalion chiefs, engine tenders, the Santa Clara County Wildland Task Force, a full county mutual aid activation as incidents escalate. The framework gives us a scalable pre-planned response for any vegetation fire scenario in the city. Effective wildland response in the city of San Jose cannot be accomplished by the fire department alone. Our operational relationships with Cal Fire's Santa Clara unit and the Santa Clara County Fire Department are formalized through annual operating plans, through the operating plan, mutual threat zone agreements, and the California Fire and Rescue Mutual Aid System. These frameworks define how agencies coordinate when fire crosses jurisdictional lines. And in the WUI, it often does. Within the city, we coordinate actively with the Department of Transportation, Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services, Weed Abatement, and Planning and Code Enforcement. Because wildfire risk reduction is not the fire department's only problem, I'm sorry, because of wildfire risk reduction is not a fire department problem alone. It requires alignment across land management, code compliance, and right-of-way maintenance. As directed in fiscal year 2526 budget message, we have also initiated discussions with San Jose State University's wildfire interdisciplinary research on how AI powered fuel mapping tools and aerial surveillance technology may be used to improve situational awareness across San Jose's WUI. Genesis Protect. As approved in fiscal year 2526 operating budget, the departments received ongoing funding to continue to use Genesis Protect, our evacuation and management software platform. Genesis provides real-time notification, public status updates, and multi-agency coordination supporting during emergencies. It is free for residents to download and we promote it at all of our community events. It's practical, It's a practical, life-saving tool for WUI neighborhoods, and the budget commitment ensures it stays available. FireWise USA. One of the most meaningful measures of genuine community preparedness is the FireWise USA recognition, a program administered by the National Fire Protection Association Recognition requires residents to collaboratively assess their wildfire hazards, develop a community action plan, and invest in mitigation activities. When we appeared before this committee's predecessor body last year, San Jose had one firewise community. Today we have three. The Madero-Crothers Road and the Rancho San Vincente communities Both achieved recognition following the 2025 study, joining the villages which completed its recognition in 2024. Three additional communities are completing their applications. That growth from one to three with more on the way reflects direct resident engagement and shared ownership of the fire safety at the neighborhood level. That's how resilient communities are built. Over the past year, the department has significantly expanded its direct community engagement in the WUI areas. In partnership with the City Manager's Office of Emergency Management, we've delivered 10 presentations to neighborhood associations and community centers across multiple council districts, including Almaden Valley, Santa Teresa, Berryessa, the Elm Rock community, and the Mayfair, Evergreen, Southside, Camden, and Almaden community centers. These presentations are consistent and direct. Wildfire risk, defensible space requirements, home hardening, and evacuation planning delivered so that residents across the city receive the same accurate, actionable information regardless of where they live. At The Villages, a 1,200 acre senior living community, we hosted a series of fireside chats as part of the Cal Chiefs WUI risk reduction program. This format allowed for open, community-based conversation in a high-risk WUI area, tailored specifically to the residents who live there. In the Suncrest neighborhood, we partnered directly with the American Red Cross and the Santa Clara County Fire Safe Council to deliver personalized preparedness education, go-kid assembly, emergency alert enrollment, family communication plans, and evacuation route identification. door to door in one of the city's most vulnerable WUI communities. Through FEMA's 2023 Fire Prevention and Safety Grant Program, the department launched the WUI Wildfire Risk Reduction Education Campaign. I'm honored to share that this campaign has received the 2026 Award of Distinction from the California Association of Public Information Officials, earning the second highest rating in the communications or marketing plans and campaign in the in-house category. This recognition reflects the department's continued commitment to public safety through innovative, community-focused outreach aimed at reducing wildfire risk across San Jose's most vulnerable neighborhoods. Under this campaign, frontline personnel conducted visual risk assessments at nearly 7,000 homes across the city's highest risk neighborhoods. We developed multilingual materials, brochures, door hangers, digital advertisements, and community presentation materials covering go kit assembly, defensible space, home hardening, emergency alert enrollment, family communication planning, and evacuation route identification. Phase one of the campaign, assessment and education of all residents in the moderate, high, and very high fire severity zones is nearly complete. Phase two, currently in development, establishes a formal WUI inspection program. Education and outreach first, followed by a structured pathway towards compliance. As we develop the phase two inspection program, We're also monitoring state legislative landscape closely. Assembly Bill 1455 establishes new WUI building and safety requirements. Senate Bill 504 advances wildfire risk reduction and defensible space standards. And the Governor's Executive Order N1825 requires ember resistant zone within five feet of structures with rulemaking currently in progress. We are tracking all three and we are positioning the department to incorporate these requirements into our inspection program as they take effect. We respectfully request that the committee accepts the status report on the fire department's effort to prevent and prepare for wildland events in the city's wildland urban interface. Should the committee wish to direct annual updates, we would welcome the opportunity to incorporate the status of our wildland fire preparedness and mitigation efforts into the department's operations annual report. In closing, the work described in this memo represents a department that has moved from an awareness to action. Since the 2025 study session, we have strengthened our operational posture, deepened our regional partnerships, expanded our community outreach advanced award and award-winning public education campaign and grown our network of fire resilient neighborhoods from one firewise community to three with more on the way chair members and staff the the 2026 fire season is upon us and the department is ready i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have and thank you for your time

Well, thank you for the presentation. Do we have any public comments?

No public comment.

Thank you. I appreciate all your hard work there, Captain Mabara. I do have a few questions. On page three, US 101, I-680 and I-880 corridor. It's right in the center of the city of San Jose, but yet we get quite a bit of fire there. Is there, through investigation, what are the causes of those fires?

Thank you, Chair. James Dobson, Assistant Chief of the San Jose Fire Department. We don't have the specific data regarding what the causes of those fires are, but they're of mixed nature. They're everything from your cigarette butt being thrown out the window to encampment fires, to vehicle fires that contribute to vegetation fires. So it's a full mix, but we do investigate anyone that does not have a determined origin and cause with our arson unit.

Thank you for that answer. Do we collaborate with the Santa Clara Valley Water District in order to reduce the grass fuel that really close to a lot of our residents?

Thank you for the question, Chair. Yes, so we do have a relationship with Santa Clara Valley Water, who is responsible for several of our waterways. So typically what we do is we will collaborate with them several times a year. When we do receive complaints with people who are walking along the trail and identify that there are issues associated with vegetation management, we have direct contacts with the Santa Clara Valley Water and we work in unison with them to address the vegetation management concerns.

i would hope that we don't wait until the the residents um you know address the concerns i think valley water or at least with our fire department should be actively looking at these fuel and looking at way to reduce them because anytime you walk on those trail there's tons to tons of areas that can identify be identified with heavy fuel and

Chair that to that point there are coordination, not only with valley water district, but with city resources. Where we've identified paths and parkways there is some city responsibility to, and we do coordinate with those same agencies when we identify any sort of vegetation that needs to be addressed.

I appreciate that. And do we use our drones program in order to identify the high fuel area within the WUI, which is the Wildland Urban Interface, or the SRA area?

So as far as our drone, we have a drone committed to our urban search and rescue team as well as our hazardous incident team that will respond to hazardous materials releases and other related responses. We do utilize them for certain other types of events to provide an eye in the sky, but currently we're not utilizing them for fuels mitigation. This is where we are looking for collaboration and coordination with the San Jose State's program to help us in identifying those. They have different technologies on their drones than we do on ours that can advance that.

Thank you and then last question here on the executive order and 18 dash 25 so can you elaborate on the ember resistant zone within the five feet of the structures, so that way our resident who listened to this can kind of get a clear understanding.

Yeah, so the California Department of Forestry is tasked with coming up with the regulatory requirements for that. They're identifying an area within five feet of a structure where you will not have any combustible materials. They're identifying certain plants that all have to be removed from those areas. and providing a pathway where education is the first part of it and then followed by enforcement. Right now there is a draft proposal as far as what's come out from the California Department of Forestry. It is not implemented yet, but that's what we're trying to prepare for. Hopefully that answers your question.

Thank you, and I think for our resident out there the the hundred feet Clearance it would be an optimal Defense for you for your home. Well. Thank you so much. I'm gonna go to councilmember Kamei

Thank you so much, and thank you for the presentation. Our chair brings up a good question regarding the Valley Water District, because in many of the areas, we're sort of connected. And I know many, many years ago, Director Dick Santos made sure that the water district provided a tender, a water tender. And I don't know if that's still the case, it's been many years. But Santa Teresa Water Treatment Plant is right next to the very edge in Almaden. Penitentia Water Treatment Plant is right there next to the edge near the Diablo Mountain Range. And so to me, it would make a lot of sense. They're right on our borders. And even just those two facilities can provide additional help. So I think that I really like your interagency coordination and cooperation, but they have another interest as well because of their facilities that are I mean, they're right on the border there, right adjacent, Penitentia and Santa Teresa. So I would think that there would be at least some way of being able to ensure good cooperation or providing a water tender can be extremely helpful, especially when they could get to the location faster. And the water district does have a interest because all of the sediment goes into the creeks eventually. So I think that that may be something that I hope continues to work and operate. Thank you so much for this information. I think that it's a lot of good, good information. And I was thinking you've done a lot of presentations and I was thinking, even though District 1 doesn't find itself in a high zone area, I think it's good for residents to know and understand what we're doing in terms of fire safety. So I may reach out. to get some information so that our residents are well-informed. We're next to Saratoga and Campbell and, you know, you think, oh, well, it's not going to happen here. But, you know, you don't know. You don't know, right? So it's always good to know. So with that, I'd like to accept the status report and thank you for your presentation.

Thank you very much. I just got a last question. I know that we have a. What is the stat on fires that being caused by our encampments?

So for the 22 to 26 period, unhoused related vegetation fires was 2660 events. Many of those were isolated to specific areas. I will say that this is a fuel problem rather than a person problem. If the fuel's not there, then these fires don't happen. So real focusing on mitigation of removal of fuels is a top priority for us.

I totally agree with you. And the last recent fire right there off of Singleton, there's quite a bit of fuel there surrounded by our residents. So there's a lot of concern out there. And we'll get the public works or PRNS actually to mitigate some of that stuff. So, well, thank you so much for your work and let's vote. That's unanimous. And then thank you. Now I'd like to welcome our next advancing equity through cultural and practice annual report. The presentation will be presented by Zuma Maciel, the director. Lydia Bustamante, which is the assistant to city manager. Mia Hernandez will be senior executive analyst. And Sheila Sanchez will be the assistant to the city manager as well. Whenever you're ready. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair, members of the committee and members of the public. My name is Sulma Maciel, director of the city manager's office of racial equity. I am joined by my colleagues, which thank you, chair, you've already introduced. So we are here to present our annual report. We're so pleased to share with you the progress that we've made in advancing equity, accessibility, inclusion and belonging across city operations but more importantly, in partnership with our community. This work reflects a growing commitment across departments to embed equity in how we serve residents every day. And we are proud of what we've accomplished together and excited about the strong foundation that we've built for the future. So, as a reminder, our mission is not simple to deliver, but simple to remember, which is to embed a racial and social equity practice and to embody a culture that sustains it. We do that by way of a three... three-way approach. The first one is around the racial and social equity, which builds and sustains the city's equity infrastructure through a variety of trainings, coaching, and a lot of the things that we delineated in this report. It's working primarily within the city infrastructure, but also engaging with community. The disability accessibility advances inclusion by removing barriers, challenging ableism, and centering disabled community leadership. And in the third unit, we have the inclusion and belonging to strengthen trust, inclusion, and connection for all, especially immigrants and newcomers. And while we have three units, we view the work intersectionally, meaning we acknowledge how the overlapping identities like race, gender, class, ability, and others are included and involved in the way that we approach the work and deliver the work. So you'll hear from my colleagues the highlights, just highlights of our collective accomplishments. And so now I'm going to turn it over to Mia Hernandez, who's been the Acting Racial and Social Equity Manager.

Hello, good afternoon. My name is Mia Hernandez. Thank you so much for kicking us off. I'm super proud to share a little bit of what our year looked like by the numbers. You'll see here that we are proud to share we have trained over 700 employees across the city and various departments. Those trainings ranged from safe site protocol trainings, digital accessibility, Community engagement, the CSJ way, inclusive leadership, and budgeting for equity, just to name a few. You'll see that is how we are mostly activating our theory of change normalized, various ways to have learning sessions for all of our city staff to be on the same page, what does equity look like in our city? 24 of our departments across the city have active racial and social equity action plans, and that is a way that we organize our racial and social equity work across the city to have very distinct objectives, action items, and performance measures that are related to racial and social equity across the work that we do. You'll also see that in activating those action plans, 236 of those action items were actually accomplished. Those range from various community engagement efforts such as the general plan four year review outreach in which you can see folks that participated in the community engagement training then went on to activate that method and we're actually able to engage over 800 community members in the process. Through these different arms, you'll see the normalized, organized, and operationalized. That theory of change leads us to very real impacts of the city. Most importantly and most exciting, you'll see that our city of San Jose was recently designated a four-star rating for certified welcoming. You can also see these efforts throughout our city engagement, and you'll learn a little bit more about what that looks like in action from my colleague, Lydia Bustamante, who is our inclusion and belonging manager.

Hi again. Nice to see you guys. My name is Lidia Bustamante. I work on the Inclusion and Belonging portfolio. This year our focus was helping departments move from intention to implementation. We supported city staff with the tools, the training, technical assistance needed to embed equity into everyday decision-making, from leadership development and accessibility coordination to community engagement, budgeting, and policy development. What that looks like in practice, in real life within the department's work, using equity impact analyses in budget proposals, engaging residents more intentionally, and building accessibility and inclusion into actually how services are designed and delivered every day. These efforts help ensure that equity is not just a value that we talk about. It's not just a theory, but it's a practice that increasingly shapes how the city operates. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sheila Hernandez, I'm sorry, Sheila Sanchez, our Disability Affairs Officer, to share how this work is strengthening community trust, access, and belonging.

Great. Thank you, Lydia. Hello, everyone. Sheila Sanchez. Super excited to be here, my first committee meeting. We are especially proud of the progress made in strengthening trust, accessibility, and belonging across our community. One of the major accomplishments this year, as mentioned, was the successful implementation of the five-year Welcoming San Jose Plan 3.0. Through coordination with 37 stakeholders and fulfillment of 80 certification criteria, San Jose demonstrated its continued commitment to inclusion and belonging, earning a four-star certified welcoming designation and maintaining the status as a certified welcoming city. Additionally, we strengthened immigrant inclusion and community safety by expanding immigrant legal services and outreach, supporting the rapid response network and emergency response infrastructure, and strengthening the understanding and implementation of safe site protocols across city facilities. Lastly, efforts to enhance disability inclusion and accessibility included expanding digital accessibility tools and staff training. strengthening coordination across departments, and starting work on a disability affairs strategic framework to ensure residents with disabilities can more fully participate in our city programs and services. These achievements reflect the department's commitment to including community needs and decision-making to improve services and deliver more equitable outcomes for all residents. Back to you, Zoma.

As we look ahead, we are focused on building on this momentum and the strong foundation that has been built over the last five years, and we will continue supporting departments in implementing equity practices, strengthening community-centered engagement towards a place of belonging, and advancing disability inclusion through the development of a disability affairs strategic framework. Our goal is to deepen the impact of this work so that equity, accessibility, and belonging continue to shape how we serve our residents and strengthen our city. The progress highlighted today reflects the dedication of many city staff, community partners, and residents working together toward a more equitable, inclusive San Jose. And finally, I want to provide, I need to acknowledge the city council who's been steadfast leaders in this space. We wouldn't be here today and providing this annual report if you did not all hold line. And I'm happy to report that because we have a strong foundation and a very committed city leadership, we have a workforce that is leaning in. We have members of the workforce who are just very curious and still learning. But the bottom line is that we are embedding this. And this is part of the culture. It is part of the language. And so whether I'm here or not, and as many of you know, I will be retiring. So go easy on me today. It's my very last council committee meeting. The work will continue. The work is in a very good place, and we have phenomenal leaders. My colleagues who are sitting to the left of me, we have Betty up in the audience, and we have Chris Harris and Andrea Tronc-Aguiar, who couldn't be here today. A strong team of people who will continue to shepherd the work forward and a leadership the city manager's office who paves the way and of course city leaders like you all who maintain the doors open for this kind of work to happen so at this moment we welcome your questions we look forward to continuing this work together thank you for your partnership thank you for your support throughout the years and respectfully ask that the committee to accept this annual report

First of all, thank you for your presentation and congratulations on your retirement. Thank you. I'm sure you can continue to do incredible work. Do we have any public comments?

No public comment.

All right, well thank you. So we as council care about our immigrant community and JUST RECENTLY WE VOTED TO SUPPORT THE MAYOR BUDGET MESSAGE TO A MILLION DOLLARS TO HELP EXPAND THE LEGAL SERVICES AND OUTREACH, INCLUDING THE RAPID RESPONSE INFRASTRUCTURES. safe safe site protocols and then we also I'm not sure did we join with the county in in what you call deterring or federal to open that site in Gilroy do you happen to know anything about that

I'm going to hand it over to my colleague, Lydia. First we'll address the item on the $1 million, which we did implement. There's some information in the report on some of the outputs and outcomes of the investment this year, which will likely, which will continue in the same forms in terms of the three categories that we fund, which is in alignment with the County of Santa Clara around education and outreach, emergency response and strengthening legal support. So moving forward, we'll continue to coordinate with the County.

But do you want to take it from here?

Any more you want to add? All right. So the only things you didn't already address was probably the county and the South County site. So the California Attorney General and the Santa Clara County Office County Council has released a press release within the last couple of weeks that they've now filed. And so the city of San Jose is watching the issue very closely and collaborating with our partners at Santa Clara County as well, as well as leading in a working group with other local jurisdictions across Santa Clara County related to the Immigrant Protection and Empowerment Network where we're sharing information and coordinating public messaging to make sure that all of our local residents across the county are getting accurate information and that we're always being responsive to people's inquiries. So we'll continue to keep our finger on the pulse as things continue to evolve over the course of the case.

We'll keep our finger crossed that our Attorney General and the county will create an injunction to stop that movement. And... I know that my office continue to work with Santa Clara University to educate not only workers' rights, but also the rights of our residents. And I know the city of San Jose have done quite a bit of outreach. How do we get more education out there to our residents? it would help take away some of that fear that we continue to support our immigrant, not only through the education and through the protection of rapid response and expansion of the legal service. Any particular program where we continue to grow on that?

Yeah, that's why it's so important to continue the investment within the $1 million to ensure that education and outreach continues as an effort through our Immigrant Protection and Empowerment Network as well as the Rapid Response Network. But we also have invested so many in ensuring that the Rapid Response Network is creating materials and assets that are in multiple languages beyond English and Spanish so that more residents of San Jose from our diverse immigrant communities understand that these resources are for them. So that's a very intentional effort that we invested in this year.

Thank you. And I've heard this, maybe it's correct or not correct, that 50% of the deportation in the County of Santa Clara involve Asian Americans. And if so, I think we need to do a little bit more outreach on that end so that way we can educate all of our residents of their rights and these legal services that would help them if some type of involvement with ICE.

Yeah, I don't know if that's an accurate data point, I'm not aware, but we agree that more people need to learn about the Rapid Response Network and the resources available.

All right, well, thank you very much. Continue the great work that you do to protect our citizens and our immigrants. And I'll pass over to our council member, Kamei.

Thank you so much. Thank you for your work and the presentation. I'm so proud of the work that you and your team do. It's been incredible. This is my fourth year here at the city and just to see year after year how it's developed. creating the welcoming city and that's what we are a welcoming city I'm very proud of that I was very proud to learn about the safe site protocols and this was before other agencies or entities started doing that and and I would share the information with others so that we're all educated and prepared. I thought that was wonderful. Your goal to really provide accessibility at multiple levels for all, regardless, I think has been phenomenal. So I want to say thank you. We're going to miss you. You have left a wonderful team with a strong foundation. I know they'll do really well. I want to say congratulations on your retirement, but I also want to say that this is not goodbye, but see you later, and hopefully you'll find ways of being engaged with different community things, and hopefully we'll see you again. So thank you for that, and with that, I would move to accept the annual report.

Thank you for your comments. We're going to go to Council Member Torres.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, staff, for the amazing presentation. I was just curious. Great to hear about the four-star certified welcoming achievement here. Curious if we're doing anything to pursue the five-star certification. I was glancing through the differences in the criteria, and I imagine we're already hitting a number of the things outlined there, so just curious if that's in the roadmap.

That's such a great question, Council Member. I think reflecting back, we thought we should have gone for the fifth. I think we're getting so close that we probably could have gotten there. And so in three years when we have to go for recertification, you can bet that we're going to aim for the five.

Sounds good. Glad to hear that. Just wanted to echo the comments that have already been made, thanking you for your many years of service here and all of the work you've done. I think you've set a really good foundation for the entire team to carry this work forward in the future. So thank you. My pleasure. That's it.

Thank you so much. Let's vote.

Missing one. Oh, there we go.

Unanimous. And open forum.

No public comment.

Meeting adjourned.