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

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ALL RIGHT, GOOD AFTERNOON AND WELCOME TO THE PUBLIC SAFETY FINANCE AND STRATEGIC SUPPORT COMMITTEE MEETING. THIS IS OUR FIRST MEETING WITH ZOOM PUBLIC COMMENTS AVAILABLE AGAIN AND WE WELCOME THOSE JOINING US REMOTELY. IF YOU'RE ATTENDING IN PERSON AND WISH TO SPEAK, PLEASE COMPLETELY SPEAKER CARD, WHICH IS RIGHT THERE NEAR THE BOX, AND PLACE IT ONE IN THE DESIGNATED BOX AT THE BOTTOM OF THE COUNCIL CHAMBER. FOR THOSE JOINING REMOTELY, THE ZOOM LINK IS AVAILABLE ON THE AGENDA FOR TODAY'S MEETING. IF YOU ARE PARTICIPATING ONLINE AND WISH TO SPEAK, PLEASE USE THE ZOOM APPLICATION AND SELECT THE RAISE HAND. FEATURE OR PRESS STAR 9 IF YOU ARE ON TELEPHONE. SPEAKERS WILL BE CALLING ORDER. WHEN IT IS YOUR TURN, THE SECRETARY WILL ENABLE YOU TO SPEAK. and a notification will appear on the 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. Conducts that materially disrupt the meeting or interfere with other ability to participate may result in muting or removal as authorized by law. This meeting of the Public Safety, Finance, and Strategic Support Committee will now come to order. Can the clerk please roll call?

Tor Dios?

Here.

Casey, I think he's in the back. Mulcahy?

Here.

Vice Chair Comey absent and Chair Duan.

Here.

You have a quorum.

Thank you very much. So nothing on the consent calendar. We're going to have a report to committee is a item number one. It's a fourth quarter financial report for fiscal year 2025 and 2026. And that will be the presentation by Maria Oberg, the director. And we're ready when you are.

Thank you, Chair Doan, members of the committee, Maria Oberg, director of finance. So I am required by the investment policy to present to you the investment slides of the package you received for the fourth quarter financial reports. So the investment policy, we certify that our investments meet the requirements of the city's investment policy as well as California government code. We only invest in highly rated fixed income securities. The policy is reviewed annually, was last adopted by council on March 24th this year. and our external auditor also audits the program semi-annually for compliance. This year we were awarded the Investment Policy Certificate of Excellence by the Association of Public Treasurers of the United States and Canada, which is another sign that we are handling our investments according to all the rules. Our investment objectives are safety, liquidity, and yield in that order. We must ensure the principle of our capital, also ensure that we have the money available when we need it to make payments, and of course we want a market yield or rate of return. We make our quarterly reports available to the public in several different ways. They're online, they're in these committee agenda packets and also in the city council agenda packets. The portfolio as of June 30th this year was just a little over $3 billion with an earned interest yield of 4.127%. The weighted average maturity was 661 days. As you know, we are in the short end of the curve. Our fiscal year to date net income recognized was $109.2 million and we had no exceptions to the policy. The investments are diversified, as you can see from these graphs. Most of them are in U.S. agency securities, U.S. treasuries, but we also hold corporate notes and municipal bonds as well as other investment options. This slide shows them by fund. Of course, the general fund is the largest one with about $731 million, but the wastewater, airport, clean energy, and others are also quite substantial in size. Cash balances, I think the most important thing here or the most interesting thing here is, of course, the spikes you see in the general fund based on when property taxes are received. We do benchmark ourselves. We're not perfectly benchmarked, but we do benchmark ourselves to the state's investment pool or LAIF and also the Bank of America Merrill Lynch one to three year government index. And as you can see, we are the blue line here and we are inching slightly above the others. Our investment strategy continues to match known expenditures with suitable investments within the 24-month horizon. We do extend a portion of the portfolio beyond two years, whenever appropriate, to provide income and structure to the portfolio, and we maintain the diversification of the portfolio, and of course, we will continue to focus on the core objectives of safety, liquidity, and yield. And I did say that I was only going to present the investment slides, but I do have two updates that I think you would like to hear. The first one, I want to thank the Revenue Management Division, who are here, represented here, for their work on the Business Tax Amnesty Program. As you know, that is a program that's running from January this year through December this year. We projected in the budget that we would bring in net revenue of $2.9 million for the full year, excuse me. As of June 30th, we had already collected $2.15 million, so we have very high confidence that we will meet, perhaps even exceed, that target. I do also want to commend Fletcher Barnes, who is our new Deputy Director of Purchasing with me here in the box. The purchasing audit was done in September of 2025 by our internal auditor. He came up with eight recommendations. We completed two of those in December of 2025. We got five more done by June 2026, and we are currently finalizing the last one. We should have that signed and ready to go by the end of August. And I do want to also call out the assistance we got from the city manager's office, as well as the city attorney's office on the purchasing audit, especially Diana Yuen and Johnny Fan. They were super awesome thought partners. And with that, happy to hear any comments or answer any questions.

Well, thank you so much for the report. Do we have any public comment?

No public comment.

Thank you very much. I'm gonna go to Council Member Mulcahy.

Thank you, Chair. Maria, good to see you. Thanks for the report. I have a couple of questions. This is maybe just for my own edification. On the spikes on property tax, so property taxes due in December, April, So do we wait until that full collection before we get our distribution in September and June? How does that coalesce with the due dates for property tax?

It coalesces quite nicely. The county is a teeter county, which means that they provide us the full expected property taxes regardless of whether they have collected the money. So they will give us our full January distribution is the first one. It comes in four or five little spurts throughout, but January is the biggest one. We get a small one in December. We get another big one in April and then the main one in June. So yeah, but we do get the full amount and then the county takes the risk of anything they don't collect.

wow okay all right so um i don't know if you added the amnesty program discussion for me but you know i'm interested in it um congrats on the collections can you just quickly give us a sense of kind of how the amnesty works and i'll just tell you from my experience with uh are C bids and bids which rely heavily on us being good collectors of business tax because on those bills are the bid fees, not C bids because those go through property tax, but on the bids. And, you know, we got in this rhythm over the last 25 years of not being good collectors and then doing an amnesty program and be really proud of ourselves that we collected, right? And now we've got everybody back on the tax rolls. So, you know, that's, as you know, been my biggest concern with the amnesty because it was sort of like we cheer about the money we collected, but it should have been our money anyway. So just talk me through some of the changes you've made. And I'll stop there because I have another question on this.

Well, so I think a lot of it has been the pandemic was a problem for us in collecting. It was hard when we weren't all together in one place keeping track of what everyone was doing. We also had a lot of new businesses formed and started here in the city during the pandemic as people got laid off from their work or they decided to stay home with their children and started extra. So The amnesty program this year, we've really focused on education, not just for those who are new businesses, but also for those who are here already. Do I think there are some that will think, oh, you know, we do an amnesty program every three to four years. Maybe I'll wait until then to pay. That is human behavior, and I think that's going to be hard to educate away, but we will definitely try. But we are doing more. We're running things through the franchise tax board to make sure that, you know, Schedule C and S and whatever you file when you have your own company that we are cross-referencing them to so we can send out letters to those who are paying taxes in the state but not here. We're also better with things like outside work permits here at the city, for example. Sometimes that's a business. We are making sure that they are now making sure they have their business tax certificate as well. We haven't rolled it out in a big form yet, but we have started with the finance department, so we will keep rolling that out. But I think it really comes down to education. That's really what's going to be important. For the bid fees, and those are not part of the amnesty program. They have to pay those, regardless of whether they qualify for an amnesty program on the taxes. Those aren't city funds, so those we can't give amnesty, and I know we've had some questions on that, why those weren't waived. And the only thing we waive on the amnesty program are the late fees and fines that come from not having paid, so we always get the tax back.

Got it. So just to be clear, my frame of reference and some of the criticism I kind of wage in this goes way back before the pandemic. Probably nobody in your office had experience, but this goes back to the early 2000s when this was a perennial ongoing problem. So I appreciate the work that you've done. I know that you were hoping to have more people on the collection side and the software that you've referred to is that now in place that's what you're referencing the software but what about staffing wise I did get my the additional staff members started two weeks ago so yes we now have an extra body and that should yield results as well great so I have one request after you do this amnesty program I I would appreciate if you would pick you know, one prior amnesty where you may have data and just reflect how much better we've gotten with the amnesty program. I mean, to me, the less money that is left on the table that actually is coming through the amnesty is meaning that we're doing a better job collecting in the first place. but I think it would still be interesting to make sure we have a comparative analysis so that we can sort of really value that software investment and having those staff members on the front line making those collections in the first place.

Yeah, we can do that.

Great, thank you.

Of course.

Thank you, Councilmember Mulcahy. I don't have any questions. Thank you for the report, great work. I'm glad to hear that we got $106 million investment there. I'll move to accept the report.

Sorry about that, I forgot to do it. Second.

All right, let's vote. We got unanimous vote. I'm gonna go to the Employee Turnover Audit Report. The presentation will be Joe Royce, the City Auditor, Jitan Jhali Mandrikar, who is the Assistant City Auditor, and Michelle Mallory, Program Performance Auditor. We're ready whenever you are.

So good afternoon, Joroi City Auditor. I'm here with Michelle Mallari from our office to present our audit on employee turnover, better data and guidance on succession planning, can enhance workforce planning efforts, also in the box, Aram Kayumjan from the Human Resources Department. I want to first start with noting that this audit was conducted based on a council member request. The objective was to review turnover across departments and identify potential causes and strategies to mitigate negative impacts on turnover, including succession planning. The scope of the audit included non-sworn full-time staff in departments overseen by the city manager. It did not include council appointees or city council offices. So employee turnover is the rate that employees move out of an organization. Turnover can create opportunities to introduce new ideas within an organization as well as opportunities for existing staff to apply for open higher level positions. However, an organization that is unprepared for turnover can lose institutional knowledge or staffing needed to carry out services. and department representatives that we spoke with during the audit, excuse me, have described turnover leading to delayed projects, overtime for remaining staff, or gaps in knowledge in important areas. Citywide employee turnover for non-sworn staff has remained consistent in recent years, and the chart on the slide shows the city's annual turnover rate over four years for non-sworn staff. When removing fiscal year 21-22 for potential COVID-19 impacts on the workforce, the average annual turnover rate between fiscal year 22-23 and 24-25 with 6.5% excluding retirements and 8.7% including retirements. The city's target is for turnover including retirements to not exceed 10%. While the citywide non-sworn turnover generally hovered below 10%, turnover did vary across departments. I do want to note that departments are generally responsible for hiring, training, and other human resources functions within their individual departments, including managing turnover. The city's human resource department provides support to departments across these areas. We had two findings. The first finding is that better employee sentiment data can enhance the city's employee retention efforts. While employees may leave city employment for various reasons, the city has limited data on the drivers for staff separations. We found that collecting employee feedback throughout the employee life cycle can help the city better understand factors affecting employee engagement, satisfaction and turnover. And additional guidance is needed to help departments respond to staff feedback from stay and exit interviews and address potential causes of turnover. Lastly, the city last conducted an employee engagement survey in 2019. Department representatives reported using results from such surveys to identify areas of improvement in their departments. At this finding, we had two recommendations for the administration to provide guidance for conducting stay and exit interviews to city departments and considering reestablishing a citywide employee survey budget allowance. The second finding is that workforce analytics and succession planning guidance can help address staffing changes. Overall, departments reported using a variety of informal approaches to prepare for employee transitions, though practices vary across the city and are often constrained by available staffing or funding. We found that best practices emphasize that succession planning relies on proactively identifying positions at risk of turnover and preparing staff for future responsibilities before vacancies occur. While departments use several methods to prepare existing staff to take on critical positions, Implementation varies across the organization. Some departments did not know how to access information on retirement eligibility or did not calculate turnover as well. In this finding, we recommended that the Human Resource Department share workforce analytic tools with departments on a more regular basis and develop guidance on succession planning tools. The report has four recommendations to improve the city's workforce planning efforts I'd like to thank the Human Resources Department for their time and insight during the audit process. I ask that you accept the report and cross-reference to the September 22nd City Council meeting. Happy to answer any questions, but first I'll turn it over to Aram for the administration's response.

Good afternoon, Council Members. Aram Khayumjian, Director of Human Resources and Employee Relations. I want to thank the auditor for a very thoughtful... for a very thoughtful report that really took into account some of the nuances that we pointed out during our feedback sessions. I think the report, as the report finds, we have very healthy turnover rates. We don't want these rates to be too low because that means a stagnant organization that is not really growing or an organization that is aging at the same time and faces massive retirements in clusters. So we feel very comfortable with the numbers that our data shows. And as the report points out, it's about half of what some other public agencies and government agencies are experiencing. However, as the report points out, there's always room for improvement, whether in the realm of succession planning, or employee feedback through stay and exit interviews and therefore we are in agreement with all four recommendations and we feel quite confident given the work we've been doing in this realm so far that we will be able to complete all the recommendations in relatively quick order.

Thank you very much for the report. Do we have any public comments?

I see no hands up on Zoom or cards in person. Back to the committee.

All right, we're going to go to Council Member Tordillo.

Well, thank you, Joe and Aram, for the presentation. I think it's good to see that generally Our turnover is trending downwards, hopefully an indication that we're remaining a competitive place that is desirable to work. I did think that it was interesting that there seemed to be some difference in the trend lines between non-retirement data and the data including retirement. Do we have any early indication about what might be driving the differences in those trends, or is that something that we're hoping to kind of dig into more if we adopt some of the recommendations around additional exit interviews and employee engagement surveys?

Councilmember, I don't think the variance is so immense as to be a concern. To me, for an overall rate, anything in the 5 to 10 range is going to be entirely acceptable and healthy. And there's bound to be circumstances that will cause blips in the numbers, whether it's the economy, either expanding or contracting. So there are external factors that affect it, but we have not seen massive fluctuations to cause worry.

Sounds good. Well, thank you again for the report, and I will move acceptance of the report and cross-reference to the full council.

Second. Perfect. Let's vote. You got unanimous. So we go to item number three, my favorite department, which is the fire department fireworks ordinance work plan status report. Presentation will be Deputy Fire Chief Greg Toyer. It's quite a bit from...

Good afternoon, Chair, committee members, and staff. My name is Greg Tuyor, Deputy Fire Chief and Fire Marshal for the San Jose Fire Department. Today, I will be providing the 2026 Fireworks Ordinance Work Plan Update. But before I begin, I'd like to recognize my colleagues who are here today and the departments they represent. This year-round multi-department effort also includes the San Jose Police Department, represented today by Captain Steven Donahue, Code Enforcement, represented by Rachel Roberts, ITD represented by Namrata Batra Agrawal and Kia O'Hara, as well as this year we included the animal care and services team represented by Captain Jason Jenkins. Further strengthening the city's coordinator approach to addressing the impacts of illegal fireworks. With that, I'll walk you through the work completed this year and the results of our 4th of July enforcement and outreach efforts. Our strategy continues to center on three components, education and outreach, accessible reporting, and effective enforcement. For 2026, we built on lessons learned from prior campaigns. We used 2025 hotspot data to target advertising, education, and enforcement, rather than treating all areas of the city the same. We also focused on improving SJ311 customer service, improving awareness of fireworks, fireworks-related injuries and fires, and refining the unmanned aerial vehicle, UAVs, or drone enforcement program. The common theme is using better data and stronger coordination to put city resources where they can have the greatest impact. This timeline shows the campaign is not limited to the Fourth of July. At the conclusion of the 2025 holiday, the team began processing reports, issued warnings and citations, completed a lessons learned debrief, and began planning for 2026. We then conducted a Lunar New Year and TET outreach enforcement early on this year in January. In June, we expanded that outreach, held a press conference, promoted professional shows, and submitted a two-year FEMA fire prevention and safety grant application. And in July, we began and shifted our focus to drone enforcement, targeted neighborhood operations, and report processing. This slide shows that our campaign outreach was both multilingual and data-driven. We provided materials in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and traditional Chinese, and we coordinated a regional campaign with fire agencies throughout Santa Clara County. Using prior hotspot data, we placed four billboards and 12 multilingual bus shelter advertisements in higher activity areas. We also used social media, the city's firework page, community toolkits, libraries and community centers, and more than 60 radio advertisements. We also promoted the professional firework displays and drone shows. The goal is not simply to tell residents what they cannot do, but to provide safer alternatives for celebrating. Our fire department response during the Lunar New Year, the fire department responded to 14 firework-related incidents, including three fires, three medical emergencies, and eight smoke or noise complaints. During the 4th of July period, the number jumped to 69 fireworks-related incidents, 10 vegetation fires, 26 rubbish fires, 15 medical emergencies, 17 smoke or noise complaints, and we had one vehicle fire. While the overall incident count was below previous years, the increase to 15 medical calls reinforces that illegal fireworks remain a significant life safety issue. This video here demonstrates some of the footage that was taken by San Jose PD with the drones. And I'm gonna play that real quick now. There is audio.

This is a real-time aerial monitoring of illegal firework activity.

resources to where they were the operation resulted in six citations if you see illegal Report enforcement works best with the community's help because a safer San Jose starts with all of us.

Sorry for that feedback. Was that me? Okay. So that was that leads me into my police slide where I want to emphasize that police received 82 fireworks related calls during Lunar New Year and 450 during the 4th of July reporting period. A major operational change this year we just saw was the use of drones. For 2026, we concentrated drone resources on the evening of the 4th of July when active activity is more sustained. We selected five fire stations to launch. Sorry. We selected five fire stations in the city to use as launch sites and staging and use them to combine with combined hotspot information from police, fire, code enforcement, and SJ311. The coordinated effort allowed inspectors to communicate with drone operators in real time, confirm locations, identify missing information, and begin preparing cases more efficiently instead of waiting for evidence to move through multiple hands. We also conducted a coordinated operation in an area with historically significant firework activity to preserve emergency access. Although SJ311 remains the City's primary reporting mechanism for illegal fireworks, the dedicated fireworks hotline provides residents with an additional reporting option. During the 4th of July reporting period, the dedicated fireworks hotline received 139 calls, including 52 that were transferred for after-hours assistance. Based on resident feedback, one of our major efforts this This spring was to improve the SJ311 reporting process and give residents clear expectations on how firework complaints are reviewed and addressed. We added a pre-report information screen explaining that SJ311 is a non-emergency reporting service and does not generate an immediate police or fire response. Emergencies should continue to be reported through 911. We also clarified that SJ311 fireworks reports may take several weeks to review and that enforcement actions required registered account along with actionable photos and video evidence. In addition, we strengthened the requirement required acknowledgements, separated photo and video uploads with clearer examples, and updated confirmation screens and emails so residents better understand what to expect after submitting a report. Together, these changes make the reporting process more transparent while also improving the quality of information and evidence available for our enforcement. For Lunar New Year, SJ311 received 38 reports. Those resulted in 11 warnings, one citation, and 26 reports that were used for hotspot data. For the 4th of July period, 522 reports were submitted, 80 warnings were issued, and 426 reports were obtained for hotspot information. helping us identify where recurring activity is happening and where to focus future education and enforcement. Through these efforts, Code Enforcement has been able to issue seven citations. This year, Animal Care and Services joined the team because fireworks impacts extend beyond traditional fire and law enforcement concerns. Animal Care increased public education about keeping pets secure and adding an additional animal control officer on overtime for the holiday. From July 4th through July 6th, Animal Care responded to seven emergency incidents involving stray or displaced dogs, including two dogs that were struck by vehicles, four aggressive dog incidents, and they also received 19 stray dog reports. In the two days following the 4th of July, nine animals were received at the ACS facility. That gives us another measurable way to demonstrate the broader community impact of fireworks and helps us tailor future messaging to pet owners. This slide emphasizes the improvements we did as far as our fine adjustments and the social ordinance, host ordinance. The previous amount was $25 and council feedback indicated that that was not a meaningful deterrent. FIRE, CODE ENFORCEMENT, AND CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE REVIEWED PENALTIES IN JURISDICTIONS THROUGHOUT CALIFORNIA AND FOUND THAT NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS USED $500 FOR SPECTATOR FINES. STAFF RECOMMENDED THE SAME AMOUNT FOR SAN JOSE, AND THE COUNCIL APPROVED THE INCREASE IN DECEMBER OF 2025. THE $500 SPECTATOR FINE IS NOW IN EFFECT, AND WE WILL EVALUATE CITATION ACTIVITY AND ITS EFFECTIVENESS AS WE GAIN EXPERIENCE UNDER THE NEW PENALTY STRUCTURE. TAKING THIS Together, this year's accomplishments show how the program continues to mature. We implemented the $500 spectrified, refined our drone deployment, embedded code enforcement directly with police drone teams, and improved SJ311. We also added the animal care services. These initiatives connect education, resident reporting, technology, field operations enforcement into a more coordinated system. Where we go from here, And looking forward to 2027, we will continue to target multilingual education, regional coordination, and grant pursuits, and use the 311 hotspot data. The fire department has already submitted for a two-year FEMA fire prevention safety grant to enhance our education campaign, and that application remains under review. We will also evaluate the effectiveness of the $500 spectator fine, further refine joint deployment based on this year's results, and expand real-time coordination between fire, police, and code enforcement. We will continue to coordinate enhanced state penalties for dangerous fireworks, which can reach up to $100,000 and include potential incarceration. This concludes the 2026 update, and we're open for questions.

Thank you for the report. Do we have any public comments?

I see no hands up on Zoom or cards in person. Back to the committee.

We're going to go to Council Member Torreos.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, staff, for the presentation. I know probably everyone up on this desk gets a lot of calls kind of during Lunar New Year and Fourth of July around illegal fireworks, and I know there were several hot spots just downtown this year that seemed maybe worse than previous years. I was curious about one thing on slide seven under the police call volume and enforcement. It mentions zero criminal citations during Lunar New Year and then in progress for 4th of July. Do we have a sense of whether any criminal citations were issued over 4th of July?

I'll let Captain Donahue from San Jose PD answer.

Hi, Captain Steve Donahue, San Jose PD. The criminal citations that we would be issuing for this, they're primarily handled by code enforcement in after the fact citations for those administrative sites. Criminally in the field, if we had teams that went out and encountered people firing fireworks, firing them off, then we could do those in the field, but we did not have any this year.

Okay. I'm curious if you could maybe elaborate more, and this could be for either Code or SJPD, just on what we might be doing to kind of further refine the enforcement side of things. I think just looking at the data here between 450 police calls for service but no citations, and then on slide 9, 522 online reports but only six citations from PBCE for 4th of July, just what we might be able to do to get the citation volume up and hopefully add an additional deterrent effect in future years.

Do you want to go or do you want me? OK. So here's some things that we're doing at the police department. Basically, one of the things we found for the downtown area especially is tall buildings are an issue. So we had line of sight issues with our drones. We did apply for a line of sight waiver from the FAA. Unfortunately, we did not get that in time for the 4th of July, probably due to FIFA being in town, and they didn't issue any line of sight waivers at the time. So that meant that we had to visually see every one of our drones from the launch point. Being on the top of fire stations is great, but they're not tall, multi-story structures. So what ends up happening is the officers and the code enforcement personnel on the top of the building can only see the drone a certain distance away, they're able to do it within that radius, which is why we had fewer sites that we were able to see. In the future, we're hoping that we're gonna get that line of sight waiver from the FAA, and then that will allow us to go out in a further radius. The second thing is going off of taller buildings, right? Third is as our true drone technology develops, we get more drones in the city, and they can fly further, fly faster, fly longer. Those will help us get more locations. One thing that was key this year was the partnership with code enforcement and having them come out and be on site with us. We had the communication on site between the drone pilot and the code enforcement inspector at the same time, whereas in years past, we didn't have that. So we'd have to write a report about it. It would get shipped over. It would take weeks. This was much faster, much more efficient, and that partnership with code was key.

Thank you. To speak on behalf of code, so I think that's the critical question we're wrestling with every year. We've learned after being at this for some years now that we really did need to find new ways as city staff to really increase our ability to do good quality enforcement on this. He was just mentioning that partnership with the police department. I think the drone piece is really going to be what we need to focus on going forward. To issue a citation based on a community's report, we need three pieces of information, and it is hard to get that information as we've seen. So I think continuing to focus on the drone program using each year as an opportunity to learn and make it better each time, you'll only see that citation number increase.

Thank you, I'm glad to hear that we have a plan in place to both kind of continue to leverage technology, focus on interdepartmental coordination, and I think in future years also excited to have maybe some closer collaboration between our council offices and both SJPD and codes, and sometimes we get kind of a couple days heads up as these hotspots start to emerge in certain neighborhoods, and maybe we can do a better job of passing that information along to you all to aid in your enforcement efforts. But with that, happy to move acceptance of the status report.

Thank you. I'm going to take my privilege here and ask a few questions before we go to Council Member Kamei. Are you planning to extend this enforcement also towards New Year?

Yes, that is actually the plan. So we did have enforcement for Tet, and are you talking about... No, no, we're talking about just a regular New Year... So in the past, we haven't seen, Rachel, is that different?

Well, go ahead.

No, as far as my experience in the fire department, we've seen more of an issue during the Tet New Year versus our traditional New Year. So if we are going to enforce that, I'd have to work with our partners both with code and PD to extend that. But Rachel, you had a comment?

Yeah, I was just going to add that we do, you know, we expanded the reporting period to be around several years ago so you can report fireworks at any time so so those firework reporting tools are always open and available for uh... new year and the lunar new year as far as you know bringing in the drone program i'd have to ask donahue to comment on that because it really is a resource question uh... you know we're very very limited resources to support any of these efforts. And most of the time, we're pulling staff from other responsibilities to staff this. So the reporting is always there. We're always going to be issuing the citations, reviewing the reports. But I'll let Donnie comment on the drone piece.

Yeah, so as you mentioned, it is a staffing issue. For the 4th of July, for example, we only had three people volunteer to come in and work overtime for this. People want to be home barbecuing, right? It's the 4th of July. So for the most part, not a lot of people want to work overtime on that day. And I'd imagine New Year's probably going to be pretty close to the same problem that we have. We tasked four additional people, so we had a total of seven drone operators this year. We pulled them off of their midnight shift from working patrol to do this enforcement, so they weren't deployed on the street for the first four hours of their shift. That depletes patrol resources as we do it, but it was during an overlap period, so we balanced the needs of the public, but also the needs of the city to be able to do this. In the future, we're going to continue to balance those needs and do the staffing as best we can. We always ask for volunteers for overtime, but on holidays that's kind of tough.

I would hope that we get some federal funding in order to help us with the enforcement. My next question for you is, the TED Festival, how do you enforce but yet still be what you call cultural sensitivity?

So over the past few years, before I became the fire marshal, I was also the captain of the Bureau of Fire Prevention. In that position, special events was under my purview. So what we would require is a permit and promote for a licensed fireworks vendor to have a show at somewhere in, typically in your district is where we would have those promoted shows. And then I understand that would get carried past carried on past the show having that cultural sensitivity is is part of what the san jose fire department and police department try and enforce or but when it comes to illegal fireworks we do have to to have a line that we stand in and at least confiscate or find people that are using them illegally

Thank you. I know that it costs pretty expensive to get a permit. I believe it's like $1,500 from the fire department, and you have to hire a pyrotechnic person. That's true. That could go up to thousands of dollars. Now, for residents who believe to chase away the bad spirit, is there a process where they can file a small permit just to have just a firecracker versus...

up in the air type of fireworks currently there's not so the fire code defines anything even up to sparklers as illegal and that we need to enforce on all right well thank you very much i'm going to go to councilmember comey

Thank you for the presentation. I want to applaud you on the collaboration. I think it's great to be able to bring others to help in this issue. So I think that doing that in the future is something that I think will be tremendously beneficial. I wanted to talk about the drone program, and I know it's a collaboration and it's very small. I was just wondering, it seems to me that you get more information. I understand you mentioned that it's hard to get someone, especially on a holiday, to be able to come out and do overtime and all of that. But I think that I don't know if you are able to use other professionals or whatever, because you've got to know how to fly these drones. So I was wondering if there were any other alternatives that would be at your disposal.

Glad you asked that, Councilmember. Yeah, as a matter of fact, that's something we looked at exploring this year and in future years. There are drone companies that will come out and fly and take footage for us. There's a cost to it, so it has to be done through a budget request, through the normal budget process. But to do that, you know, you could get a company to come out, fly and capture all that drone footage on their own. And we spoke to several companies to kind of look at that this year to see if that's even a possibility, how much it would cost, would it have to go out to RFP, all that kind of stuff. So we're developing that, but we haven't come up with any final proposal or anything. That's something we are going to look at for the budget process stuff.

Okay, yeah, I think at least looking at alternatives, because if you get zero people who want to do it, obviously that's not going to work. And I'm glad that you sort of split the shift to be able to have coverage. That was very smart. But I would like to see more drones used. I think that it really has better coverage. And in terms of the taller buildings, I mean, our building here is very tall. I don't know if it's a D3 sort of area that you can cover, but I think that your starting to look at these things is tremendously beneficial. I wanted to ask a question about the citations. These are all administrative citations, so they take a little bit longer. Is there any way of streamlining it so that it doesn't have to go through all of the processes and stuff like that?

Thank you for the question. So I think we're moving as fast as we can. I think it really comes down to the volume that we're having to work through. So we're taking in reports through the 311 online reporting tool. And then we're also getting the videos and reports from PD. And then, as I was saying earlier, we don't have dedicated staff. So I'm pulling a supervisor. I'm pulling my support staff off of their day-to-day complaint and take responsibilities to go methodically through each of these reports. I think we've gotten much faster at it. You know, it used to take us, you know, four to six weeks. I think we're getting it done in, you know, two to three weeks from, like, when the reports come in to, like, issuance. But there's always a little bit of follow-up we need to do just because, you know, it's not a perfect science and sometimes the video, you know, we've got to look at a few times or things aren't, geotagging's not matching up. And, you know, so there's some of those procedural things that have to happen before we can issue a citation. For the most part, I think we're getting better at it. I think the only way to be more efficient would be to add more people to do the processing.

Okay. And it usually takes, you said, three to four weeks?

Well, it used to take us four to six weeks. Now it's more like two to three weeks. But that's from review, sending it, drafting up, you know, because we have to pull property owner information, we have to pull Get the address, add in the citing sections, and then it goes. We have to input information into the finance department's database, and then we have to actually produce the document and then mail it. And so from beginning to end, it takes several weeks for the volume that we're processing.

Maybe you could use AI in this. Yeah. Bringing some of those information pieces that are already existing? Anyway, just something to think about.

Yeah, I mean, it definitely, I think you'll see improvements when our new code enforcement case management system comes online, because as we call the systems from 1998, and it's pulling data straight from Amanda, it's pulling data from the county, but there's still a lot of manual processes that we do have to do.

And when is that going to happen?

You will be hearing about that very soon, but we'll be providing an update on where we're at with that very soon.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Kamei. I'm going to go to Council Member Mulcahy.

Thank you, Chair. I turned off my light, but Captain Donahue, you sort of raised something that kind of sparked my interest. When you talked about that third-party drone program and you know needed a budget request i think if you did that it would certainly need to come with you know what the value proposition is if we're not arresting people and finding them and collecting fines today you know those are pretty dynamic and cool photos we take but if we're not using them to arrest people and find people you know what's the point so i think what's the return on that investment of the drone program third party i think i'd be interested in knowing what are we going to get in return absolutely that would be a cost analysis that we would put into the budget proposal as we present it so

and don't quote me on these numbers so let's say hypothetically it costs five thousand dollars to have a drone operator and we get a thousand dollar for a single fine they'd have to find it they're you know get five good videos to be able to issue five funds to pay for that cost right but there's other benefits of it right knowing that being able to put it out on social media use it as a deterrent you know tell people hey you know There's going to be a lot more drones operating this year. That kind of thing is going to deter more people from using it, too. So that's a cost we can't weigh in the cost of sending them out.

Yeah, good point. And then, Deputy Chief, just a question. When you were talking earlier about 311, I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm just trying to clarify what I heard. that people go to 311 to report, but I think what you said is you'd rather them be calling 911 in an emergency, not going to 311. Did I hear that right?

That was part of the messaging is that 311 is a non-emergency service and that you do have an emergency to use the 911 system.

So if somebody goes to 311 now and tries to report illegal fireworks and whatnot, and it's in the moment, you know, it's like when you call... I don't know, a medical facility and says, if this is an emergency, hang up and call 911. Does 311 do that? Like if somebody's reporting one of those incidents, does it proactively respond and say, we'd rather you call 911? And if not, that would be something that we should be talking to IT about as we're changing the technology and the responsiveness of 311.

I agree and I do have ITD here with me maybe they could answer the question with Namrata and Kia.

I don't know if they, I think we could just get on the record that I think that that would be something to proactively work towards. I don't want to drag anybody down here to try to spot. Oh, hi. Oh, you're hiding back there.

I'm back here. Hi, Kia O'Hara, SJ301. But you understood the question, right? Yes, I did. Yes, we do have that. It's already set up for all of our phone calls. It gives them an alert that if it's ever an emergency to hang up and call 911. That's for all of the calls that come through 311.

But I think what I heard the Deputy Chief saying is that people aren't distinguishing that they should be calling 911, right? I think what I'm saying is these are on several days, not every day of the year when these things are happening. So if we're prepared knowing that we're gonna get firework related 311 contributions that we are prepared to respond immediately because it's coming through by email right that hey if this if you're calling the 311 about or if you're sending us a message to 311 about fireworks and it's an emergency call 9-1-1 is that a little different way of asking the question jennifer i'd look at you grabbing your button over there so to

Two clarifying questions. Captain Donahue, is that kind of the messaging you want from the police department about fireworks that they call 911 or 311? I'm not sure that messaging is consistent. And then just after that, fireworks enforcement is part of our customer service transformation? Is that part of the 311? Okay. So if someone could speak a little bit about that, that would be great.

I want to see these two arm wrestle over whether or not you want 911.

We think you should call fire, always. For emergency calls, if there is a fire or someone's injured by fireworks, that's a 911 call. Outside of that, just people setting them off is not a 911 call. That's 311. That's how we're going to record it. We don't respond in the field to fireworks calls. Our department members are so busy that night that they are going call to call to call all night long for violence, for crime, and we can't be interrupting those 911 calls with fireworks calls. So that's why we've put all the fireworks eggs into the 311 basket, right? And then they get the deferral message, hey, if this is an emergency, call 911.

It may be just me. I'm still feeling like there's a gap in what we're asking people to do. We don't need to beat the dead horse here, but I still think there's a gap. Yeah, Rachel.

I was just going to piggyback on what Jennifer said. Fireworks is being looked at as part of the customer transformation work that's happening. They've looked at our workflows across all the departments, and that will remain ongoing. So we'll be sure to raise that if it hasn't already been looked at. But just to... to emphasize what Donahue shares that we have a disclaimer right at the top of the 311 app when you log in for firework reporting that says if this is an emergency, you need to call 911. And then if you don't think so, you proceed, right? And then from Kia's comments, the same thing happens if you call the phone line. So the hope is that they would recognize they're in the wrong place if it is a true emergency, but that we don't inundate 911 with you know, non-emergency calls.

Okay, I get that. Thank you.

And just to confirm, as part of that customer service transformation, we will definitely look at that issue.

Cool.

All right. Well, thank you for the report. Let's vote. We have unanimous decision. Now we're going to go to... CITY MANAGER OFFICE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT WORK PLAN PRIORITY ANNUAL REPORT. THE PRESENTATION WILL BE BY RAY REARDON, THE DIRECTOR, AND ALVIN GELANG, THE ASSISTANT TO THE CITY MANAGER OFFICE.

All right, we're ready. Good afternoon, committee chair, committee members, staff, and members of the public attending in person or on Zoom. My name is Ray Reardon. I'm the director of the Office of Emergency Management. And today we're here to present to you the OEM, the Office of Emergency Management's Work Plan Priorities and Annual Report. I'm joined today by, with... Alvin Galang, Assistant City Manager in our office. So before I hand it off to Alvin to carry on the presentation, I'd like to remind you what the Office of Emergency Management's vision and mission are. We envision a resilient city. While we will continue to do what we While we will continue to do what we can to prevent and mitigate the effects and results of any emergency or disaster, we will always do our best to ensure that the city will stay resilient and build forward better. OEM's mission is to lead the emergency management organization in planning for, responding to, and recovering from an emergency. And the three P's or core principles of the office are to protect life, property, and the environment. preserve livelihoods and value all of what we protect, and preserve through the challenges of disasters and emergencies. Now I'll turn it over to Alvin for the rest of the presentation.

Thank you, Ray. Good afternoon, everyone. As mentioned over the next few minutes, we will cover a few key results of the previous fiscal year and upcoming priorities of this current fiscal year under each of OEM's four program objectives, which are... The city has a plan to tackle any emergency. Residents, businesses and employees are ready to take action and able to answer a call to action. The public trust the city to provide vital information and response is optimized through technology. The city has a plan to tackle any emergency. In fiscal year 2025-26, the Emergency Management Organization responded to a total of six incidents and events that included both natural and human-caused emergencies, as well as the two large major sporting events, Super Bowl LX and the 2026 FIFA World Cup. After more than a year and a half's work in training, preparation, and exercise, the City of San Jose's Emergency Management Organization put all of those efforts into play, and as a result, there were no significantly major incidents that occurred during either event. In the coming fiscal year, the Office of Emergency Management will add specific emergency plans that will enhance the emergency and disaster readiness of the city. We will work with our partners to prepare for the potentially stronger El Nino weather events. And we will begin early conversations to prepare for the events that will come with the 2028 Summer Olympics. Residents, businesses and employees are ready to take action and able to answer a call to action. This past fiscal year saw 208 new community emergency response team or CERT members complete their training and graduate from the program, bringing the total number of CERT members throughout the city to over 1,700. You may notice a familiar face or two in the photo. We also reached nearly 3,000 community members through participating in community events and conducting our personal emergency preparedness presentations. In fiscal year 2026-27, OEM will continue to work with new and existing partners to promote emergency preparedness through additional outreach, interactive presentations, and utilization of the different CERT training formats, which in particular should bring our total CERT membership past the 2,000 mark. The public trusts the city to provide vital information. The Office of Emergency Management plays a key role in providing what could potentially be lifesaving information and education to the public. This past fiscal year, OEM coordinated with Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services and the Housing Department to ensure that our most vulnerable residents were aware of services available to them during the inclement weather events. Also, on a professional development side, Karen Truong, one of OEM's emergency management analysts, submitted a workshop proposal and was chosen to present at the 2025 California Emergency Services Association Conference in Long Beach. For fiscal year 2026-27, OEM will continue or will explore additional interdepartmental partnerships and other communications channels to continue delivery of vital information, including a sustained focus on racial and social equity and community members with access and functional needs. Response is optimized through technology. For almost 40 years, the city of San Jose has been known as the capital of Silicon Valley, and in fiscal year 2025-26, OEM has continued to embrace that moniker. We have utilized technology to assist with maintaining smooth EOC operations, exploring possibilities with San Jose State University student interns, and building our abilities and capabilities with the city's AI upskilling program. This coming fiscal year, we'll continue to have technology work for us through operational preparedness of our EOC, operational enhancement of our preparedness and response efforts through the Ladris platform, and through our efforts in working towards emergency management accreditation program or EMAP accreditation. And this concludes our presentation. Both Ray and I are available to address any questions the committee may have. Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation. Do we have any public comments?

I see no hands up on Zoom or cards in person. Back to the committee.

Thank you very much. Thank you to our emergency management team. We've done an incredible job in the Super Bowl and FIFA. And I hope that, I think the next event might be the expanded El Nino that we must be prepared for. I don't have any question, but I'll go to Council Member Kamei.

Thank you so much. I wanted to thank you for all of the coordination and all of the work. A year ago, we weren't as confident, at least some of us were not as confident, maybe you were confident, that we would be able to pull off such big events in 2026 as we have. So I just want to say thank you. I know that it took a lot of coordination. It took a lot of scenario planning and all of that. We have more to come in the future with the Summer Olympics and what have you, but we can do it. We can do it. So I just wanted to say thank you for all of the work that was put in there. I'm particularly very interested in ensuring that our residents are also involved. So that's why when Councilmember Casey said he was going to do a thousand certs. I thought, oh my gosh, I have a teeny weeny little bit in my district. I signed up myself because I figured, hey, if I'm going to ask other people to do it, I should be able to do it. uh and uh and so you know i i i've taken on uh council member casey's challenge i uh challenge the remainder of the council to also be prepared uh and i think it's a very good thing it really is i mean i just you know you never think it's going to happen We don't want it to happen, but when it does, it really is sort of wonderful to be prepared and to have your family be prepared. If at least having your family know what's gonna happen in an emergency, I think that goes a long way, right? Then you could go out to your neighbors and your other family members and what have you. So with that, I want to move acceptance of the annual report and say thank you. And please let the team know that we appreciate all of the work that they do.

I believe we have an online person with their hands up.

Did you want to let them speak? I know they raised their hand after we moved on.

Go ahead, let them speak.

That's okay? Okay. As a reminder, speakers must comply with the city's code of conduct for public meetings. Please direct comments to the body, limit remarks to the agenda item, and observe the item limit. Conduct that materially disrupts the meeting or interferes with others' ability to participate may result in muting or removal as authorized by law. If you are participating by telephone, press star nine to raise your hand. And caller 9507. You have one minute, thank you.

Hi, I actually wanted to talk about item one first, but I thought I was waiting for this open forum.

Please raise your hand for open forum and we can give them a chance then. Did you want to do that?

All right, we'll wait until open forum. So again, I just want to say thank you. I do help out with CERT program, teaching the fire extinguisher. And do you have a stat for how many residents in each particular district?

Councilmember, we don't have the latest statistics, but we will be sure to share that with the group.

Yeah, because we want to know who's got more certified residents. And that way we can balance out throughout the city. And I believe maybe District 7 might have the numbers. But anyway, thank you.

I'm going to go to Council Member McKay. so george and i ran at the same time and i i think the one um thing i remember on the cert program having met with you know because d6 has a pretty strong showing um was that there was a concern that the city hadn't really embraced our community becoming CERT members. I don't remember specifically the criticism. I remember we've talked about it, Ray. Are you feeling like the community recognizes that San Jose is all about CERT now? Can we thank Casey for that? Or is that some posture that you guys are communicating out there to the community broadly?

Well, we participate in a lot of, a great question, Ray Reardon, Director of the Office of Emergency Management. We do a lot of outreach, and when we do that outreach, we do encourage folks to sign up for the CERT program, how long it takes, et cetera. We've come up with different ways of delivering so they can do it all online, and then come do a physical process so they can demonstrate their skill sets. We do a lot of work with that, and we also work with nonprofit organizations like the San Jose Neighborhood CERT Program, and they do a lot of outreach. Every weekend, they're out doing some outreach within their community and their districts to encourage people to join.

Thanks. Thank you, Council Member Mulcahy. We're going to go to Council Member Casey.

Just a short plug. I want to thank Ray and his team. We had our inaugural CERT 5K family run a couple months ago and we're gonna have it next year as well. So I encourage all of you to come along and join or have one of your districts as well.

Last question, what is the number of certify that we're shooting for for a population of a million people?

Good question. In the city of Los Angeles where the program started in 1985, they have 10% of their population that they've identified as being trained. We're shooting first for the 1% and then push it up as much as we can to the 10% over time.

That's a huge number. And therefore, we need some federal funding to support that amount of certified. Well, thank you so much. Let's vote.

we have unanimous decision and let's open forum we have one hand up on zoom caller 9507 you will have one minute to speak thank you you're muted uh hi uh

So I want to very quickly talk about the item one you know I I have much longer than a minute, but I really wanted to express my. i'm in district one just to be clear, so I want to express my disgust with the direction of San Jose taking on surveillance. i'm talking specifically about the city's plans for these 490 lprs 1020 public safety cameras 1000 private network cameras. all being integrated into this real-time intelligence center. Approximately 300 cameras from a major outdoor shopping mall, expansion of the Connect San Jose to more private retailers, automated license plate cameras, and a 33 automated speed enforcement program. I wholeheartedly oppose to this entire direction. I honestly have a very busy life. I don't want to have to spend all my time to come to these meetings, read through city memoranda, procurement documents, et cetera. I shouldn't have to have an automated watch list just to catch these kinds of committee meetings that are trying to propose additional surveillance beyond what has already been asked about. I shouldn't have to monitor the.

That's your time back to the committee.

Well, meeting adjourned. There we go.