City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, it's 7:01 and I'm going to call this meeting of the San Leadro City Council to order. Today is Monday, April 6th. Today is Monday, April 6th, 2026. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So at this point in time, Madame Clerk, would you please take a role? Vice Mayor Viveros Walton, present.

Council member James Aguular, present. Council member Victor Aguular, present. Council member Fred Simon is absent. Council member Sua Bowen is absent. Council member Bolt here. And Mayor Gonzalez present. Thank you.

So tonight we have the appointment swearing in of uh our new member of the Arts, Culture, and Library Commission. So I'd like to move that item up to uh section six recognitions. In the interest of time, immediately following our other recognitions which include the oath of office for our district 2 council member, council member James Aguil Aguilar and the national autism awareness month proclamation. Any concerns about that? Seeing none, the city of San Leo conducts orderly meetings to fulfill its mandate, discriminatory statements, or conduct that would potentially violate the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and/or the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, California Penal Code sections 403 or 415 are per se disruptive to a meeting and will not be tolerated. Please see the city council handbook and city council meeting rules meeting rules of decorum for more information. Madame clerk, your announcement. If you would like to make a public comment during the meeting, you can do so in person or via Zoom. If you are present at the meeting, please complete a speaker card and submit it to the city clerk before the item is presented. If you wish to participate in public comment via Zoom, you can use the raise your hand tool when the item is called. During the public comment session, speakers will be invited to speak and will have a set time to share their comments. A countdown timer will appear for their convenience. And when the time is up, the microphone will be muted. All raised hands outside of public comment will be lowered to avoid confusion. Once public comment is opened, hands may be raised to speak. There will be a 30 minute window for public comments, which will take place under item 7, public comments, as per the published agenda. After this time is up, the council will proceed with the rest of the meeting's agenda. If you have not had the opportunity to speak during the initial

30 minute period, there will be another chance to do so after item 12, city council reports. Item three in our agenda is report and close session action taken. Was there any reportable action taken? No reportable action there. There was extensive discussion and guidance provided to legal counsel. At this point in time, we're going to move to the recognitions portion of our agenda and we'll begin with a swearing in of James Aguilar, City Council District 2. If you would come down to the front.

Thank you, Mayor. We will be also joined by Jennifer Broard who will be administering the oath of office to our incoming council member. Welcome.

Thank you. Uh will you raise your right hand? I do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. and the Constitution. If you don't mind, hold on just a second. So, we're going to do a pause because we can't hear you online. We can hear There you go. So, what we're going to do is we're going to share. We're gonna have two mics because we want everyone to who records this video and who downloads it and clips it and all that to have the full thing nice and clean. Raise your right hand. I do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States

that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic. against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I take this obligation freely That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.

May I, Mayor? Yes, you may have a minute to share your thoughts and excitement.

Thank you all for being here. I I see so many of the people that help cuz see I'm going to try not to cry. Um I see so many of the people who have helped build me into who I am today. um here in the audience and I genuinely appreciate your support. This has been an interesting journey in my life in which I started on the school board and now I'm here and all of you in the room are just are a very important part of my life and I appreciate you for spending the time to come here um and be a part of my journey. Um and I'm I'd be remiss to say that I'm excited for this. I'm excited for the opportunity that San Leandro has to move forward. And so that will only happen with you in partnership. And so I appreciate you all. Um, and I'm looking forward to what's to come. And I'm ready to get to work.

Okay. You can go ahead and leave that open, Madam Clerk, cuz I'm coming right on down because next we've got a proclamation to declare April as National Autism Awareness Month here in the city of San Leandro. And I think we've got Ron Shodipa. Welcome, welcome, welcome to our chambers. So I'm going to let you hold this on this side right here. If you can look, look at those people out here. And so this is our associate director from the regional center of the East Bay. For those of you that don't know, the regional center is uh the largest nonprofit here in the city of San Leandro and are responsible for distributing a significant amount of state money to organizations that support individuals. But I I won't steal all of her thunder because you'll get a moment at the at the end to share a few thoughts. Okay. So, let's just read through the proclamation very quickly. So whereas autism is a developmental disability characterized by atypical development in socialization, communication and behavior and whereas children typically display autism symptoms before turning 3 years old and often exhibit abnormalities in cognitive functioning, learning, attention and sensory processing. And whereas according to the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, a program funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, autism affects one in every 31 children in the United States and can affect anyone regardless of race, ethnicity, or

other socioeconomic factors. And whereas parents, relatives, caregivers of individuals with autism are commended for their dedication and sacrifice in providing for the special needs of individuals with autism. And whereas worker training programs that are tailored to the needs of autistic individuals are vital as people with autism can often serve as productive members of the workforce and exemplary members of the community, especially when given appropriate support, training, and early intervention services. And whereas the United States House and Senate both introduced concurrent resolutions on February 25th, 2008 recognizing the importance of autism awareness of the need to support individuals with autism and of the family members, teachers, and physicians and other professionals who care for individuals with autism. And whereas individuals with autism, like all others, should have the opportunity to realize their ambitions and lead rewarding lives. Now therefore, I Juwan Gonzalez, the third, mayor of the city of San Leandro, do hereby proclaim April 2026 as autism aware awareness month in the city of San Leandro as a symbol of our commitment to creating a culture of disability awareness and inclusion for all members in our community. Would you like to say a few words?

Thank you, Mayor uh Gonzalez. Uh thank you, City of San Leandro. Uh our organization, Regional Center of the East Bay, is one of 21 agencies statewide that's mandated to provide services for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And we are proud that we are based here and where our headquarters here in San Leandra. And this is the first time that we have been called upon to do this. So I commend you and thank you for uh doing this. Um our our uh population has grown whereas indiv before maybe 15 20 30 years ago the individuals we served um with autism were maybe a third or maybe a quarter of our population which right now in both counties Contraosta and Alama counties we serve about 29,000. Now it's about 70% of who we serve. So, we do know that it has grown and it's important that we all are aware so that individuals and families can get the support that they need. So, I thank you and thank you for all that you do. Did everybody get the pictures that they wanted? I just want to make sure.

Oh, one more. on the side. I say there we go. Whichever side you want.

Thank you so much. And then and now we will move uh take our item 10A which we moved to this section of the agenda. Uh madame clerk would you please briefly introduce this item. Thank you mayor. The item before you this evening is a motion to appoint Mike Bryant to fill the district 4 vacancy on the arts culture and library commission after council makes the appointment. Mr. Bryant is in attendance to receive the oath of office this evening. Perfect. Council member Simon. Yes. I'd like to move this item.

Perfect. Council member or Vice Mayor Vivotus Walton. Second. Okay. So, at this point in time, got a motion, a second. Any discussion? Because it's just a administrative minute order, we do not need public comment on this. That was available the last time when the nomination occurred. So, please move to vote at this time. We're experiencing a brief moment of technical difficulty. Uh, Council Member Aguular, James Aguular, may we have your vote, please? You can just vote verbally on the mic. Yes. That was a yes. Yes.

Thank you, sir. With that all votes are in and the motion carries. So to be to be clear with 60 correct

but if I if I can get ahead now clerk the vote carry 6 with Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Check. Check. Thank you. So, at this point in time, we will move to swear in Mr. Brant.

I Please state your name. I, Michael Bryan. Do you solemnly swear or affirm? I'm so sorry. Go ahead. Do you solemnly swear or affirm? Hold on, Miss uh Madame Clerk, can we get him a mic as well so that he can be heard online? We sure can. Mayor, thank you. Okay. Okay. No problem. I Please state your name. I, Michael Bryant, do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm

that I will support and defend that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies against all enemies foreign and domestic. foreign and domestic. that I will bear true faith and allegiance that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California and to the Constitution to the state of California. State of California, excuse me. That I take this obligation freely That I take this obligation freely

without any mental reservation without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion or purpose of evasion. and that I will well and faithfully discharge and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter the duties upon which I'm about to enter. Congratulations.

Thank you. At this point in time, we'll move on to item number five on our agenda, which is our consent calendar. Would anybody like to pull an item from the consent calendar? Council member Aguilar. I have nothing to pull, but I would like to uh move the consent calendar. Thank you, Council Member Aguular. Mayor, I'd like to second.

At this point in time, we will move to any comment, public comment on the consent calendar. Thank you, mayor. At this time, we've received one comment card and we have one hand raised online. Okay. Please proceed with a comment card.

Our in-person speaker is Robert Rburn. Tessy. Good evening, Mayor Gonzalez, council members, and welcome James Aguilar as our newest council member. My name is Robert Rburn. I'm BART director for district 4, which encompasses both San Leandro and Bayfair stations. I'm speaking tonight with regard to Bayfair and your grant application. I want to strongly support the affordable housing and sustainable communities grant for developing Bayfair apartments. I look forward to a solid partnership in this endeavor as we move through the coming years. Thank you very much.

Thank you, mayor. That concludes the comment cards we received in the room. So we will close public comment in person. Please move online where we open public comment. Our first online speaker is Alvaro Ramos. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes.

Okay. I wanted to comment on item 5e. Uh the affordable housing um that I don't know is is involves Pacific West. Um, I wanted to say that um I I didn't really find any details. Heck, I was trying to figure out where the lot was and I just wanted to emphasize that, you know, I think that I wouldn't want to just see housing. I would want to see mixeduse development that faces East 14th Street. Um, I mean, it's it's should be kind of obvious to most people that um, you know, having having some ground floor for business um, makes sense on that street given that it sort of has that downtown atmosphere. Um, but I yeah, I just don't want to see not just housing, but you know, a mix here, right? That that ideally would improve human traffic um, on East 14th. It's always felt um I guess it's the parking minimums that have really stunted um any sort of um possibilities that could have maybe have happened over these decades. Um and I I was looking at the Pacific West website. I don't know how good a representation their pictures are of their projects. Um, but I'm really um want to see more about maximizing density and um and not a suburban approach to um the architecture. I mean, um I've complained about suburbanism before and um I will continue to do so because I really think that um this is um this is generally what's holding back the city and um I think that more more of that more mixed use and high density

would be very helpful and um bring at least more human traffic on East 14th.

Thank you. The next speaker is Chris Urban Resife. Good evening. First, I'd like to acknowledge the Aloney people whose territory we occupy in San Leandro known as Hkin. Um, I'd like to um welcome Mr. James Aguilar uh to the city council and I'd like to wish um all of us in San Leandro to continue to walk in a good way and that we bring our city back vibrant and that hopefully we can now get to work. Oho. Thank you.

Thank you, mayor. That concludes our online commenters. So, we are closing public comment. I apologize. I missed a card earlier that was submitted timely for this item. Thank you. Then if you could, so we are done with online public comment. We'll come back and briefly reopen in-person public comment for this one card. Thank you, mayor. The in comment inperson commenter is Douglas Spalding.

Thank you, mayor. I appreciate your grace. Hi, uh, council members. It's nice to be here in person for once, although it was a little hard. final two of the final four, but I haven't been here since the new countdown clock was installed and it kind of has the feel of it right over the mayor's head there. Uh I I had a few questions reading over the consent calendar items. Um so, uh I'll start with item 5C, which is nearly a $2 million item. And given um the our budget difficulties here in San Loreno, I wonder why we're spending so much money to adjust traffic lights. Um, I haven't detected a problem or traffic backing up in any intersections unless they're doing railroad work. Uh, so it's, you know, one of those things I wonder, is this something that could be delayed? Uh, item 5F. Um, I'm in favor of recycling, too. I have been a recycler since I had it as my college job. Um, but I hate to put out $215,000 worth of cans and watch them fill up with garbage, which is, you know, what happens not only in our schools, but in our public places as well. So, I'm wondering if there's any educational piece that's going to go with that to uh, you know, help people understand the importance of it. Um, there are places like Germany where recycling works very efficiently. That's cuz you get fined if you don't uh, don't sort correctly. my son would be out a lot of money doing that. Um I was surprised to find that there's such a thing as a pavement cut impact fee. Um and I'm wondering whether we currently have anything like that in place. I I I don't know any information about it, any more information about it, but I'd be be curious to know. Uh it makes sense to me that when you cut up the road that it doesn't last as long. And then finally, in terms of the your budget adjustments, you know, it's not much of an adjustment, less than a half a percent an adjustment. uh the revenues

and expenses wash out. Uh it's just the $7 million in transfers and I would like to be reminded what those are. Thank you. Your time has elapsed. Mayor, that concludes all of our comment cards.

Okay. So, with that, we'll close public comment. Um, just for the benefit of our public speaker on item 5C, this is related to I believe as director Maris is back there. I think this is ACTC funded specifically for when 880 shuts down and we run detours through the city. This was discussed at facilities and transportation a little bit ago. So, it's not general fund money that we're reallocating to time lights. is really how we deal when there is a a problem on 880 and we have external funding to make sure that the detours work effectively and don't disproportionately impact our residents. Um so with that, I'm going to come back to council to see if there's any further discussion. Seeing none, please vote. Apologies while I work this technical issue. Council member James Aguular, if we could have your vote by verbal, please.

Yes. Yes. Thank you. All votes are in. And the motion carries unanimously with uh six yeses and council member Bowen absent. Okay. So for today we don't have an item six anything to report. So we will move to public comment. It's time where public can address the council on items that are not already on our agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. Madame clerk, how many cards do we have today?

Mayor, we have received seven comment cards. Okay. So, what we'll do is we'll begin with public comment in person. The first three speakers are Jeff Kerry, Lynette Bailey, and Brian Rooney. Jeff Carrie, Lynette Bailey, and Brian Rooney. Yes. Uh I'm Jeff Kerry. Uh I'm a real estate person in San Leandro. We've been involved with the city for over for a long long time. I say a hundred years. Uh but anyway, uh the reason I'm here is we have a downtown parking area that's basically on the east side of East 14th Street. Anywhere from uh right across the the street from City Hall uh on the on the uh north side of the bridge all the way over to Dolores Avenue on the east side of East 14th Street. Uh that area has metered parking. uh the metered parking is not easily understood by the res by the people using that area. That area of East 14th Street is made up of small businesses. You have accountants. Uh you have uh uh you you have uh people that sell eyeglasses. You have people that uh that uh take care of pets. And they're all small business unit users.

uh we and those people rely on people coming in and dropping their and doing their business within a short period of time. They're there for a short period of time. They see their accountants, they see their eye doctor, they see their pet groomer or they they see someone someone else there and that area is now uh saturated with parking meters. Those parking meters uh are very tough to understand. If you want an education, just go down there and try to go ahead and use one of the parking meters. Uh I've been down there and uh when we park my car, I have to walk 70 ft to find a meter and the first question the meter asks me is what is my license plate number? So I have to turn around, go back to my car, write down my license number, come back and try to use it. But people are not happy with it. Uh,

thank you sir. Your time has elapsed. Uh, thank you sir. Your time has elapsed. Yes sir. The the next

the next three speakers. So, so one thing that you'll learn about me as the chair of this meeting is whether I agree with you or disagree with you, we don't have a lot of cheering and hoopla and all that kind of stuff in the chamber. So, we keep it very professional. So, that's just kind of a a first pass warning. How's that? If we can come on to our next speaker, please. The next three speakers are Lynette Bailey, Brian Rooney, and Ed Harris.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. Um, I am an accountant and a tax preparer and I am in the best building and I want to thank you for your time today. But um I'm here to speak about the impact of the paid parking in our best building. Since this change, I've seen a clear drop in customers. Many choosing to go elsewhere where parking is free and simple. A large portion of my customers are elderly. For them, it isn't about the cost. It's about the accessibility. Many struggle with the payment systems whether it's apps or kiosks and finding the process of confusing or overwhelming. As a result, they're not coming back. This pol this policy is unintentionally driving away vulnerable members of our community and hurting small businesses like mine. We believe a balanced solution is possible, one that supports both the city and the community. We ask for at least two hours for our customers to drop their tax uh information off to me and not go down and find a $50 ticket on their car, which by the way, they're asking me to pay because I didn't tell them because nobody told us it was going to be paid parking. We never got a notice or anything about it. So, I want to thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. The next three speakers are Brian Rooney, Ed Harris, and Mara Banks.

Hello. I'm here about the best building parking as well. We've been told that this is a zero sum game while the city is also facing a $2 million deficit. Yet the proposed solution seems to be charged for parking as a fix all. It isn't. Our city already carries one of the highest sales tax rates in the Bay Area. At some point, we have to acknowledge that we cannot tax and fee our way to prosperity. Increasing the financial burden on residences and businesses will not create a long-term stability. It risks driving away the very people that and enterprise that keep this city strong. Unless um businesses are the backbone for the community, when they are weighed down by raising sales tax, business license fees, state taxes, and excessive regulations, they begin to leave. And when they leave, they don't come back. We have we have seen the impact of these policies at the state level that many view as unfriendly to business. Policies that have to contributed to companies relocating or scaling back. We should not repeat those same mistakes locally. This city is proud with rich history and strong identity. We should be doing everything we can to support and retain our businesses, helping them grow and succeed. Because when that businesses succeed, the city succeeds. Now is the time for strong independent leadership. leadership that stands up for the local economy, learns from what hasn't worked elsewhere, and focus on sustainable solutions instead of short-term revenue fixes. That is why we oppose your parking restrictions on the best building parking lot. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Thank you. The next three speakers are Ed Harris, Mara Banks, and Bob Jones. Good evening, mayor, members of uh council. My name is Ed Harris. I'm a banker with Fremont Bank located at 1480 East 14th Street, corner of East 14th in Wana. I am not a city of San Leandro resident and I'm not speaking on behalf of Fremont Bank tonight, but I am somebody who has worked at that location for more than 11 years, shops in San Leandro, has a number of clients and friends who also frequent that area. And to reiterate some of the comments you've already heard, we're all um very stressed out and very disappointed by the changes to the parking situation. It's made it very difficult for my clients to park on the private surface lot that's located at the corner of East 14th in Wana. a number of other individuals who are trying to avoid getting uh ticketed on Wana uh who are uh not wanting to pay for parking in that area who are used to the 2meter uh zones that were there um are are using our lot and it's created a real burden for our customers for a number of my colleagues many of whom work in San Leandro and shop in San Leandro as well. I urge you folks to uh reconsider um the changes that were made to make it easier, more tenable for folks who are shopping in San Leandro, for folks who are living in San Leandro, for folks who work in San Leandro to be able to park and enjoy the San Leandro downtown area. To their credit, uh Deputy City Manager Engelbart and Cynthia Battenburg met with us within the past couple of weeks. We had very constructive conversation about uh things that we could do to me to ameliate the issue to make the situation better and I'm optimistic that going forward uh we can find a a more tenable solution. But again, I urge you to reconsider the situation that we're in currently. It's not sustainable. It's not good for residents of San Leandro

and for people who want to make San Leandro succeed. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you. The next three speakers are Marquita Banks, Bob Jones, and Douglas Spalding.

Hello. I'm here on behalf of most of the neighbors in my area. I currently live at Braftoft Towers, which is on Bra across the street from San Leandro High School. Um, I've kind of been getting the runaround over the last month about who to come to regarding the issue. Um, recently there has been some new no parking signs that has gone up all along Bra um from Monday through Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. once again including Saturday. Um, in that area there is three large apartment buildings and a nursing home. They have taken away all of our parking. One of the apartment buildings run from East 14th all the way over to Braftoft. So, for example, just last week, my son was homesick. I work from home sometimes. In our unit, in our building, we're only allowed one parking space per apartment building, per household. Um, it was a Saturday and my son got a ticket on a Saturday. Once again, he was homesick last week, so we had to take a chance on him getting another ticket, which is a little outrageous. I've spoken with um, city hall. City Hall is pointing to San Leandro High and they're asking for the signs to go up. I spoke with San Leandro Unified School District. They're saying it's not them um, that's asking for it. that is up to the city for this um to go up. It's very dangerous to even come home late on a Friday evening because we have to be up either at 6:00 in the morning to move your car by 7 um which there's still no parks cuz people are still asleep on Saturday mornings at 6:00. So all of our parking has been taken and I live where there's older

residents. So I told them I would come today to represent them to see how to get the ball rolling.

Thank you. Your time has elapsed. Our next three our next two speakers are Bob Jones and Douglas Spalding. Hello, I'm Bob Jones. I grew up in this town. I'm a real estate broker. I have an office on Waqen right next to East 14th. So all the space behind me walk to Estadillo now has the paid parking. One of my tenants is a chiropractor who says all his patients just are really upset about this paid parking. It's you go to the other side of East 14, you don't have paid parking. So why this is so anti- business at a $47 fee if you don't pay? I mean, the whole thing's absurd. We want to encourage business in this town. And uh what I see from the council was really an anti- business attitude. Just like for example, the rent control. Um, I've had owners with low interest rate loans, five-year fixed, and they kept their rent their rents low for their tenants. Now, the five-year fixed loans have gone and they've jacked the rates up 50%. Plus, the insurance rates have gone have skyrocketed. I do you have any clue about that? And um the states already got, you know, rental

rules. Why do you have to be so anti- business, anti-investment in San Leandro? It just makes no sense. Anyway, this part like to get rid of the parking fee if you can. I appreciate it. Thank you. Our last speaker card is from Douglas Spalding.

Thank you. Um, while I disagree with Mr. Jones on the rent control ordinance through the chair, I'd just like to thank him for taking care of the eucalyptus trees on his side of the creek. Uh, but I'm here to to speak to the disturbing stories that have been on the news the last week. And mayor, I appreciate your statement uh clarifying that an investigation had been made into this troubling incident whereby an individual was not arrested, but uh taken into custody and then driven to the neighboring city of Oakland and dumped off seven miles from where he's picked up. So, um I I don't have any more information about it, but but I assume in the comments that that there was a consequence uh as a result investigation. And it would note that the commanding officer in the incident no longer works for the SOPD. So maybe I'm reading too much between lines or not. I I'm not so concerned about the hit and run. Um I've done that before too and not realized it. Uh but um to me it's much to do about not much and um I assume the insurance companies would will uh will sort it out. But what I do want to draw your attention to is the source of these two stories. And I would be very leery of Sergeant Michael Olivera, uh, longtime president of the San Leandro PD, uh, POA. Uh, this is the same playbook they used to jettison our former chief, Abdul Piden. And my fear is that now they're going after our current chief. And of course, there's plenty of comments in social media like, well, what about the chief? What about the chief? What about the chief? I'm here to stand for the chief unless until we have a lot more information uh that implicates her in some way, but it seems like she's doing exactly what she needs to do. And um I'm sorry that uh you know, channel 7 day and noise picked it up, but they like to do that because it you know gets ratings and sinks

progressive people everywhere. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. That concludes the comment cards we've received. So we will close public comment in person and we will move online. We currently have four hands raised and the first speaker is Jenny Chang. Hello. Can you all hear me? Yes.

Hi. I'm Jenny Chang. I'm a longtime resident of Sanendra, 43 years to be exact. I'm just wanted to chime in and offer my congratulations to James Agalar uh for being the uh district two the new district 2 council member. I just hope and wish um James the best and hope that he can work together with the rest of the council in um getting district 2 on the right track. Um it's going to be a lot of work um but I believe um he'll be able to do it. That's it. Um have a good evening. Thank you. The next speaker is Melissa Wong.

Uh hello. Hello.

Oh, I'm sorry. I I didn't see a note. Okay. Um thank you very much. Uh good evening. I appreciate the earlier uh comment because I was going to duplicate that, but I have a little bit more. Okay. So, um I'm a member of the board. Uh, I'm a board member of the Washington Homeowners Association. So, I also want to welcome the newest council member to the council, council member James Aguular. Um, congratulations. Although we are District 4, we of course look forward to your contribution and um, so far I like your enthusiasm and your energy. Um, and um, I think um, uh, everything's going to work out well. uh and I hope that um the council will uh uh work together and move forward. Um I was encouraged by the number of applicants and appreciate each person who applied. So I hope that uh they um will continue to apply where there's an opportunity. It was a thorough process and I thought it was very fair. Okay, on to a separate and um different note. I wanted to give a shout out to the Manor Library. Um, I'm always an advocate of the library, in particular the Mano Library because that's in my neighborhood. Um, in this case, they have two volunteers, Kit and Sky Woo, who have been teaching Chinese Mandarin as a second language in the library on Wednesdays. The mayor and council member Simon, have also attended. I encourage um, everyone, not only council, but um, anyone who's interested in learning a little um, a little bit more about the Chinese culture. They not only teach Chinese culture but they have interactive and interesting activities. So I want to acknowledge them but in particular I want to thank the library for having um this um ongoing um course and I welcome anybody to join. Thank you so much.

Thank you. The next speaker is Bernard Ashcraft. Yes. Uh Bernard Ashgrant, 31year resident of San Leandro and a civil rights activist. I'm here to speak on behalf of many people including the big tent. We now know that an effort is being made to get rid of our police chief Angela Everett. But you also bumped it up to another level where you're trying to also push out our city manager which we will not stand for. And I'm here to let you know that misdemeanor vehicle accident that was happened is not a felony. And we know also that San Leandro has been known as a sundown city, not wanting black folks here after dark. Well, that policy is still been activated. and we the people are going to stand up and we're going to fight for a sunsign city where there's an open policy for everyone regardless of race, regardless of ethnicity. We know that the POA and others now are using the old Republican MAGA playbook to get rid of top black employees. We will not stand for it and we want to put you on notice that we will fight you forever and we will go to wherever court we need to to stop this madness. I hereby suggest that you knock it off and turn the city into a sunsign

city. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Carol Habbercos. Hello. Can you hear me now? Yes.

Oh, hi. Good evening, uh, mayor and city council. I want to congratulate James Aguilar for his, um, a a seat, new seat. He's in my district, District 2. So, I'm really happy about that. The other thing I want to bring up is I'm very concerned about the um the story about the homeless man being dumped. I've been reading a lot about it. I feel that um it needs to be investigated. It seems like the report wasn't completed. Apparently, this police uh handcuffed a homeless man and then dumped him and then apparently laughed about it. So, I feel like um there wasn't a thorough investigation that I saw and it seems like there's a lot of missing pieces to this and I think it's very very serious for our city in uh for our city to be handling people that are in in need. I have worked in a nonprofit many years with many um people who needed help and we would never ever dump somebody and then laugh about it. that is just really really um shameful. So I hope it is investigated. I would like to know more about it. I think the public needs to know and to make sure it doesn't happen again. Um thank you very much.

Thank you. The next speaker is San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.

Hello everybody. Good evening. It's Emily Grego, uh, CEO of the San Leandro Chamber of Commerce. First, um, foremost, James Aguular. Congratulations. Happy to see your appointment. And we certainly look forward to having an ally in your district, a business ally in your district as I don't really think that we had one in the past. So, um, looking forward to that. I also want to speak on the parking situation. I, we, the chamber has been advocating behind the scenes. uh regarding the parking situation and we've talked to a couple of different department heads and had discussions and I will say that we've generally been in favor of some parking because we have also seen the opposite happen where people park in the free parking for hours and hours and hours on end and then they don't leave. And so we've saw that being fixed over at Pelton Plaza when there were meters that um you know customers were able to cycle through the parking once there was meters installed. But I do understand that that best building parking lot is somewhat unique and I also understand that we want to encourage people to park in the parking garage but there's a lot to be happening in the parking garage and trust to be earned so that people feel safe to park there meaning employees long term so that the um customer parking is available. But I I hope that you all are listening to everybody's feedback and I'm also offering our feedback via email um regarding the meetings that I've had. So I think that there's more to this and more conversations to be had and especially when there's free parking right across the street. I do see the point that it's kind of hard to justify um paid parking on the other side. So there's a lot to be worked out and figured out and we're here to be part of the solution. So happy to continue the

conversations and get something that works for business. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. There are no more raised hands online.

So, at this point in time, we'll close public comment and come back into the chambers for our next item. At this point, time we do we'll move to item eight, which is public hearings, but we don't have any scheduled for today. And similarly for presentations, you know, just one quick thought about public comment. Um, so when items are not agendaized, we are prohibited by the Brown Act from discussing them in response. So we can't respond to your concerns in this forum today, but we have taken note and a number of us have taken notes so we can discuss with city management. So just be on standby, be aware that we are hearing your concerns.

Okay. question is are you going to get back to us or what's you should anticipate further discussion in outreach both directly and through um the folks that you've been chatting with already. So at this point in time we'll move on to our next agenda item. But thank you for coming today to share your concerns. So we will move to item 10. I see it as a 10B. Is that a typo?

Oh we move 10 A to the top. Thank you. uh 10B. So 10B is a uh a resolution that I have put forward. I raised this at the council agenda setting two years ago and in particular the the problem that's being addressed here is that all of our residents in San Leandro are being defaulted to the most expensive form of electricity. uh in contrast to cities uh other cities in Alama County, our residents have lower median income as was pointed out during the rent control discussion. What I have what I'm proposing here is that we focus on defaulting people to the cheaper power and then if they want to they can upscale and pay a higher price voluntarily. We know that a number of our residents are born in foreign countries. They have English as their second language and navigating systems to opt up and opt out and all that change is just something as a practical matter. That's not something that they can do. Originally, we had forced folks into the more expensive power approximately 5 years ago because um the AVA community power for bright choice was not so clean. Over the last five years that has changed materially n it's approximately 95 between 90 and 95% carbon free GHG free today. So uh what I have proposed is that we default people into the less expensive power which is pretty dogone GHD free. It's not completely GHD free. Uh part of what I have done in touching base with the community have spoken with a number of environmental advocacy folks to just get their vibe. Is this something that's okay given the trade-offs? Because ultimately I have described this as a as an equitable outcome. That's economic

equity is the way that I'm framing it. But I'm happy to answer any questions and then if you don't have any questions, we'll go to public comment and then come back for any remaining discussion. Not seeing any questions. I'm going to go to public comment on this item. Mayor, we have not received any comment cards and there is one hand raised online. Okay. So, we will open and close public comment in person and we will open now public comment online. Our first online speaker is Alvaro Ramos.

Can you hear me? Yes.

Okay. So I think my concern is uh the increased price of oil due to the oil shock which I'm talking about affecting the cost of transportation production and not just as a a fuel in the bright choice mix um as sort of something that could be happening in the background. We're not feeling the full effects of oil shock but they should be expected to hit us in full swing this year. And I mean, these are the consequences of overspending on defense and bad decisions on United States foreign policy. I think renewable 100 is the way to bypass the negative effects of that situation. Solar and wind minimize the effects of an oil shock because they're least dependent on it and they've also become uh competitive to the other energy sources right now. China is way ahead in the United States on green energy. And the United States is the least prepared country to deal with an oil shock because of our oil dependency. I mean, if anyone here remembers the oil shocks of the 1970s, I think now would be the time to talk about it because I didn't experience that, but maybe some folks here have. I'm also concerned about uh greenwashing of uh Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant energy which does run on a nuclear fision and as far as I know that creates uranium waste and it sits on the coast and drums and there's no proper waste facility to deposit it and then and that's because there's no recycling upgrade to the nuclear power plant probably because it's expensive to do it and then hydroelectric power is unsustainable. I mean, one only need look at the Oruroville dam spillway that failed in 2017 and then the state of California had to go and fix that one. Uh, there's no effort here to tackle Pacific Gas and Electric's greed. Privatized energy utilities are the problem. It's the

hundreds of dollars for PG& and households keep cutting back again and again and again. Thank you, sir. Your time has elapsed. Our next speaker is a phone number. It appears it starts with 134 and ends in 941. You can unmute yourself. So, hi. Can you hear me? This is Jenny Madson. Yes.

And I I don't have a working microphone on a computer anymore. So, I got given a phone number today to call in. And this this whole issue with Bright Choice and Renewable 100 is very close to my heart. When I could not afford it, I signed up for Ava Energy. It is the closest I will ever come to a Green New Deal in my lifetime. And when I was finally able to sign up for Renewable 100, it was worth it. Even though PG Gen is now charging me three times more for delivery than they are for the electricity that I use through AVA. I'm still going to hang on to my renewable 100, but I understand the mayor's thought process on this and I know there are a lot of people who just don't know the difference between they don't know what this is at all. and let's push them to something that'll save them a few cents because with the latest change in PG& bills where they're charging low income low users a huge I mean my my PG& bill tripled because of what I'm paying now for delivery and I'm still willing to do it and I still think it's a good idea. So I ask you to vote yes on it.

Thank you. Thank you, mayor. That concludes all raised hands online. Okay. So, we'll close public comment and come back to council member for any further discussion or questions that you may still have. Okay. Seeing none, I will move the item. Do I have a second? Council member Bolt. Second.

Okay. So, there's a motion by Gonzalez, a second by Bolt. Seeing no further discussion, please vote. All votes are in and the motion carries unanimously with six yeses and council member Bowen absent.

Moving to item 10 C. Uh we have a presentation regarding a potential future revenue measure. We've got Deputy City Manager Eric Engelbart introducing this item. All right. Well, good evening, Mayor and Council. Appreciate the opportunity to be with you tonight to revisit our ongoing dialogue we've been having related to pursuit of a potential revenue measure that could potentially appear on the upcoming November 2026 ballot. Tonight, we'll be hearing some survey results as well as a related request from staff to authorize additional funding associated with community outreach efforts and related next steps. Just a reminder uh for how we got here tonight, you may recall back in February of last year at the special uh annual count council planning session, the council directed staff to explore potential revenue measures that could appear on the November 26 ballot. Uh then in June, as part of the 20 FY2627 budget adoption process, staff proposed, including a $500,000 allocation to explore the viability of such a measure. Council did not include the funding in the adopted budget, though council did concurrently direct staff to return to the council once year end fund balance estimates were available. Those estimates were subsequently provided. Then on December 1st of last year, uh the council did consider survey work. Uh though the item did not pass and was was reconsidered on December 15th, at which time council did direct staff to proceed forth exploring

a potential measure including conducting community outreach and as well as uh conducting a feasibility survey, also known as a scientific community survey. Uh then you'll recall just about a month and a half ago on February 17th uh we presented to you all uh various revenue measure types and ultimately you all directed staff to proceed three of them uh for testing purposes right now through that scientific survey which I'll get into in a few moments. This slide and the next two ones should look familiar to you. Um similar ones to this were presented just like six weeks ago at that February 17th meeting. Just a quick overview of this for folks um who may not have an opportunity to see this or those in the audience. A little refresher. Um business license tax, as you recall, we already have one in place. It's currently based on a flat rate um based on business type and number of employees. Uh over the past or in the FY2425, we received about $6.9 million in general fund revenue from that existing tax. With that said, uh our structure, um there's a number of other structures that we're seeing as regular practices throughout here in Alama County and is becoming more typical uh through a business license tax modification effort. And the more typical structure we're seeing nowadays is a gross receipts model. And taking for an example a rate of a dollar and a quarter per thousand uh thousand dollars of gross annual receipts could potentially net the city about anywhere between 3.8 donate to $4.3 million annually. Of course, with such a modernization as well lends the opportunity to consolidate various business types, make a more streamlined, less confusing tax structure as well as also incorporate some uh market reductions in the annual tax rate for small businesses here in San Leandro. Uh also worth noting though of course like many taxes it isn't

inextricably linked to the broader macro economy and so there is some volatility there with the es and flows of the market cycle. Um the such tax also is only requires a simple 50% plus one approval. Um, and although we could not prior to this effort identify any polling data that have been conducted here in San Leon on this effort, in a few moments you'll be hearing from Brian Godby, our consulting services partner, who will be providing an overview of the recent polling data that was just derived from the survey work that just took place. Um, next up, as you remember, we talked about parcel taxes. Uh, city does not currently assess any parcel taxes, though there are other agencies here in Alama County that do. Um, and in our part of our analysis of that tax, recall there's different ways of structuring a parcel tax, including a per parcel rate or also a a square footage rate. And as part of our testing effort, part of that scientific survey work you're about to hear about from Brian, uh, you'll hear we we split sampled different structures of that. Notably though, of course, these taxes ultimately be per state law require a two-third supermajority in order to pass. And then last up, we have the vacancy tax. We covered that in detail at the last discussion in February. You'll recall Oakland is the only city municipality here in United States we could identify with such an attacks fully in place. And we also discussed that although Burke the city of Berkeley currently has such attacks technically in place. Uh it is facing um some potential legal hurdles or jeopardy in the future. Unclear how long a tax will remain in place there. Uh, as we noted, the administration of the tax is highly complex, requires an appeals process, and a lot of the revenue that's derived from it will be offset by the additional staff that are needed to administer it. Um, notably since last time, this is new information, we actually through additional research and legal evaluation of it. We believe it actually does require a twothird supermajority to pass, not a simple

majority as noted last time. And we did test this both in 2020 which uh through an informal polling that tested out of a little over 61% and you'll hear more about the the latest from Brian. And with that I will now turn things over to him who is joining us via Zoom.

Uh great. Uh thank you Eric and uh good evening members of the council. Uh I'm pleased to be here this evening and uh let's jump right in. Uh and next slide please. Uh great. Uh so uh this is just a brief overview about the survey. Uh obviously uh we've worked with the city in the past and we've looked at some of these issues uh as well uh previously and we'll see that as we go through the the data. Uh the survey began with a questions to test the perception of city's provision of services and management of taxpayer funds. We then turned to a hypothetical uh parcel tax and business license tax measure. We did what's called a split sample. So within the sample, we had two random samples and one group got the parcel tax and one group got the business license tax. We do that because if you say, "What do you think about a parcel tax and then a business license tax or vice versa?" The second one always does worse. So, it's important to split that and get as clean a read as possible. Uh, in addition to the ballot questions that you'll see in a moment, we looked at a variety of things we might spend the money on and ranked the respondent priorities. We tested both informational positive arguments and critical statements uh on the support and then we looked at the um respondents forecast for the direction of the economy in the fall. Uh, of course the data uh and the survey is based on a wealth of demographic and behavioral characteristics that we use uh to uh segment the sample up front and then validated on the back end to make

sure that is representative of the city of San Leandro. Uh next slide please. The next slide gets a little bit more into the methodology. Uh data collection was phone and online. Uh yes, there are still a few people who answer landline uh calls to participate in a survey. More obviously from cell phones. Uh but the ma vast majority is from a text or an email invitation to do an online survey. Uh the universe was likely November 2026 voters. We were in the field uh March 9th through the 19th. Uh the average phone survey was 25 minutes long. That's still the way we measure length of a survey. Uh and then the sample size was 600. Uh our goal was 600 rather and we completed 607 which gives us a margin of error for the um overall survey where we're not splitting the sample of 3.94 but the ballot question splits are plus or minus 5.6. Next slide please. So the next slide is that initial uh satisfaction with city services and uh when you add the very favorable and somewhat favorable together here our top bar is the current survey you see 59% have a favorable uh view of city services. Uh 21% somewhat unfavorable and only nine% very unfavorable. There's also about 10% in round numbers that don't know. When you compare that to the survey that we did for the November 2024 voters, it was actually conducted in June, but the universe was November. Uh you can see that it's at 56% when we add the variance somewhat together. Uh and so, you know, that's a nominal increase. is not statistically significant, but it's going the direction we would expect

it to, and it's what we've seen re repeatedly throughout the Bay Area as the further we get from the pandemic, uh, favorability on these kinds of measures improves. Uh, next slide, please. Uh, the next slide is the favorability of the job the city is doing to effectively manage public funds. Uh, this is always lower for every city because there's a larger don't know. Uh and that's also common uh in throughout the Bay Area. Uh so again adding the vary and somewhat favorables together, you see we're at 43% favorable total uh versus 41% in 2024. So again, uh a small increase, but it's certainly going the right direction. Uh next slide, please. So the next slide is the first of the two ballot questions that we tested throughout the survey. Uh and you can see the wording on the right hand side of the slide. This is the parcel tax measure. Uh the wording conforms to the statewide legal requirements. It can't exceed 75 words. It has to have a tax rate uh which is uh $95 per parcel. It has to have a term which is until ended by voters. Uh, and then it has to show how much uh it would raise annually, about $6.9 million. Uh, some of the other things are up to the council if they want to put those in, annual adjustments, uh, independent oversight, those sorts of things. And then you see a bulleted list of the things that we thought from previous surveys might still be the best items to include in the 75 words. Understanding that we only get 75 words. So, by definition, it is just a highle summary. there can be a lot more detail in the full text of the measure. So, we presented this item to them. We then uh asked definitely yes, probably yes, probably no, definitely no, don't know. Uh and you can see when

we add the probably and definitely yes together, we're at 53%. Uh as Eric mentioned earlier, a parcel tax requires a super majority of uh 66.7 in round numbers. Uh and you know, this has got a long way to go. Uh next slide please. The next slide and again just to reinforce this was the other part of the split sample. So this is the two are separate. Uh you either got one or the other. Uh again,

excuse me. The wording is in the right hand side of the slide. uh and it has all the components that make it legal uh and meet the statewide requirements uh for a business license tax. Uh and then again when we add the definitely and probably together you see we're at 63% in round numbers. This requires a 50 plus one majority. So obviously we've got a cushion there. Next slide please. Uh the next couple slides I'm going to go through quickly in deference to the council's time. Uh but in these questions, this is a list of all the things we might spend the money on. There's some split sampling going on here as well, and that's why the bars are different colors, but not to dwell on that. Uh the point is to present these in a random order and figure out which things are the priority uh for the voters uh for the proceeds from either one of these measures. Uh at the top of this list, you see repair potholes and maintain streets. Uh it's 1.09 09 on our intensity scale, which is how we rank them, and 77% at least somewhat more likely to support the measure. So that's very important to to the residents. Maintain public safety infrastructure to ensure rapid emergency response is second. Uh and then third in our top tier, which each tier is statistically tied within it, but different than the one below it. Uh we the third item repair and maintain critical public safety infrastructure to ensure rapid emergency medical and fire response uh at 71%. So again with the margin of error you can see how those are grouped together. Uh in our second tier we have provide updated life-saving uh fire and police equipment, maintain park infrastructure and use services maintain emergency and disaster preparedness. Maintain neighborhood police patrols. Enhance senior and youth programs. all

in the mid mid to highish 60s. Uh so those are uh are really solid for a simple majority threshold, but for 2/3 they're right at the 2/3 threshold. Uh next slide, please. And the next slide continues that second grouping uh with provide violence, drug, gang prevention to maintain school safety, maare and maintain parks and recreation facilities, uh provide services to reduce homelessness. uh again in the mid to low 60s now. Certainly good for a simple majority measure, but for a twothirds measure uh they're not reaching that level. Uh then we're into tier three and these items while important obviously uh and we don't want to diminish that uh but they're just not the priorities that the first slide was. Uh next slide please. And so the next slide switches gears a little bit. Instead of what we're going to spend the money on, we're now talking about factual statements that are essentially positive in nature, but they're things that people need to know about the measure. Methodology is largely the same. Uh, as we just discussed, uh, large businesses and corporations will pay their fair share, so homeowners don't shoulder the entire cost of repairing uh, and keeping potholes safe. Uh that's certainly true for the and you can see the split sampling here that's true for the business license tax. Uh then we have under the measure large corporations and major commercial businesses not small businesses uh single out will pay the largest tax amounts. That's for the entire sample. Uh the measure ensures that businesses pay their fair share. Uh measure requires strict fiscal accountability protections including financial audits and public disclosure. uh and then large property owners will pay their fair share. Uh so homeowners don't shoulder the entire cost. And

again, we're testing different wording of the same idea. Uh and but they really tested at the same level. And all of these are in the high to low 70s. Uh so again for either a twothirds measure, they do exceed the two/irds, but they far exceed it for a simple majority measure. Uh next slide, please. This question was continued. Uh it was certainly a longer one. Uh and um this is the remainder of the top tier. Uh and that is the measure will give Sanander local control. Another accountability measure. Uh requires citizens uh independent citizens oversight. Yet another accountability component. Uh the measure is more than the San Leandro has more than 509 miles of streets. Uh and this measure will help repair those. And then finally uh ending tier one. We need to fix potholes in the neighborhoods and prevent accidents and damage to cars etc. And we're into tier two and now we are at the 2/3 threshold. So these things for parcel tax aren't as helpful. And next slide please. Uh and as you can see here, we you start at that twothirds level and we then go down uh into the low 60s, which for the simple majority business license tax is certainly uh good information, but for a twothirds parcel tax, it's just not there. And next slide. So the next set of questions, we switch gears and we look at the other side of the coin. These are the negative statements. Now, not only are each of these question sets randomized internally, but half of the respondents got the positiveformational statements first, half got the critical statements, and then the other set. And we do that because we don't know how people will wind up hearing about the measure uh in the real world. And so, we're kind of randomizing it to make it u make it a

little more fair on both sides uh at the top of this list. And the higher it is, the worse it is. So this first item is the measure approve. If this measure approves a permanent tax that will continue forever, taxes should include an end date so that voters can determine if they still are still needed in the future. That's 66% at least somewhat more likely to vote no. Uh with continued high inflation rates, tariffs, gas prices, grocery prices, etc. uh at virtually the same level. The city has increased real estate taxes, sales taxes, and utility taxes. Now, they want to do it again. Uh voters are facing uh a Bay Area regional transportation tax for BART. Um and and this new city tax, we can't afford all these new taxes. Uh city can't be trusted, uh is lower down the list. Um and then this is just another property tax that places burdens on homeowners. That's of course asked only of the parcel tax. And the measure uh is a new tax on local businesses, which is business license tax, and it'll make them hard to maintain jobs in the city of San Leandro at 56%. So that's getting closer to that simple majority threshold. So clearly not as strong as the top of the list, um but still over the simple majority threshold. Something to be aware of. Uh next slide, please. So this question set two was a longer one. Uh here you see the remainder of uh tier uh um oops sorry uh that was it for the critical statement. Sorry. Um and now we come back to our ballot questions a second time. Again this is split sample A the hypothetical support for the partial tax measure. uh the bar on top is the first test at 53 with the positive information and even in the face of the negative we get up to

56 but again this requires a twothird supermajority so it is not um going to be successful in all likelihood um next slide is still u split sample A but is a different version of the parcel tax Uh so instead of the $95 tax rate, uh this is 6 cents per parcel per square foot. Um and this one doesn't do as well. Uh when we add the definitely and probably together we're only at 50%. So people like the flat rate. They like knowing how much they're going to have to pay rather than having to do the math uh figuring out the square foot uh rate. Next slide, please. So uh the next uh question is the other split. So this is the other half of the sample and this is the business license and again we started at 62.6 uh and then after the information we again go up and this time we're at 64.7 nearly 65% in round numbers. Certainly 15 points above the simple majority threshold gives us a nice cushion even with the margin of error. Uh and like the parcel tax, next slide, we had an alternative which in this case isn't a different rate on the business license tax, but is the vacancy uh tax that Eric talked about at the beginning. Uh and you can see the wording again here. This one uh assuming it's a simple majority measure as Eric and uh no sorry uh it was a simple majority we thought but then we found out it's a twothirds. So this is at 61% and you can see that we're uh we're we're not reaching the the 2/3 threshold.

And then last question or second to last question two more sorry uh the this is uh the AB1416 list. Uh and what that means is every election, every registar can decide whether they want to include people um on the ballot, the actual ballot that are supporters and opponents. Um so in this case, we're testing uh the people that might be those supporters and opponents to see, you know, which ones are most important uh for either side of the coin. Uh at the top of the list you see firefighters, local small business owners, then police officers, chamber of commerce, uh county alam county taxpayers association, uh the mayor and council. Uh and then next slide please. And the next slide is our final question. This was that forecast on the economy that we talked about. Uh if you focus on the burgundy portion of it, that's the people that think it's going to be worse. Uh again, November this year is at the top bar and it's 54%. Uh think it's going to be worse in the fall. Uh in November of 24 that was just 39%. Uh so it has gone up significantly uh with all of the uh economic trials that have uh happened since the survey in 24. It's not surprising. Uh and we see this pattern virtually everywhere. and 54% is about the middle of the pack. Uh we've seen it in the Bay Area as high as 64. Uh and probably as low as 46. Uh so you're kind of grouped with most of the cities in the Bay Area that we've done this same question for. So that's the data that I have for this evening. Um I can turn it back to Eric.

Okay. Well, thank you so much, Brian. Uh just to wrap things up here, we appreciate all that uh insightful information that Brian just shared in terms of just next steps as well as covering an outreach plan. So based on council direction tonight and and to the extent the council does authorize additional funding as part of the staff recommendation we'll get to in a few moments staff is prepared to commence with community outreach and that could include examples such as things you see on the sub bullets there community listening sessions with those interested parties and local stakeholders. Uh distribution of community outreach andformational flyers. We could also do some additional non-scientific survey work through our communications team as well as onlineformational messaging and we would also be prepared to if so directed by you all to to return to council uh in maybe the June or July time frame with a proposed ballot package for adoption which would then elevate it to the to the November ballot. Um, so just to summarize in conclusion, our recommendation from the staff level is that that the council direct staff to proceed forward with the community outreach and engagement efforts associated with the business license tax in particular. And that recommendation is based on the uh polling results information that just that Brian just outlined for us. And then related to that is also a request to adopt the resolution that's included in the packet tonight which is if adopted would appropriate up to $185,000 to conduct community outreach efforts. I would also note and as shared stated in the staff report we of course as always given our budget circumstances we'll do everything to constrain costs and to the extent we don't spend that 185,000 we will of course leave our goal would be to leave money on the table and to restore it to fund balance. uh and then that could be channeled through an existing contract. And that concludes our presentation. And then I would note that we do still have Brian Godby on the on the call for more technical questions

related to the polling results. And we also have Miy Moss from Clifford Moss available on the line as well. And that would wrap things up. Happy to answer your questions. Thank you so much. I think what we're going to do is we're going to take public comment on this item and they'll come back for questions and discussion. Mayor, we have received one comment card from in the room and we have two hands raised online. Please proceed in person. Our inperson comment card is from Sarah Bailey.

Thank you. Welcome council member Aguilar. You may be the only person on the dis who doesn't know how strongly I support investment in city infrastructure. A few weeks ago, I asked the mayor and council to undertake a ballot measure that supports road repair and public safety. I told the council then that I thought these two things were what people in San Leandro cared about the most. Please vote all of you as city staff recommends to continue community outreach about a measure that would modify the business license fee. I want to point out that it actually lowers the fee for most small businesses. It requires only 50% plus one to pass just like the uh citizenled measure. Um, Cro, Congress would call that one a Christmas tree bill with shiny ornaments or a specific infrastructure project selected in a cynical effort to induce support. This one wouldn't tie the hands of professional city staff in public works and engineering. They prioritize projects by their own intricate scoring system that's based on the city's named value system, not by popular vote. Please vote now with city staff's recommendation. I'll help get out the word any way I can. Thank you.

Thank you, mayor. That concludes the comment cards from when the room. So, we'll close public comment in person. Please move online. Our first online speaker is Douglas Spalding.

Well, hello from the virtual land. Um, let's go. Business tax. Uh, it's no secret this the city needs money and so I'm I'm right now putting it out in April. No fooling. The people of San Leandro need to support this measure. Not only does the city need to move forward, but then when it's on the ballot, the people of San Leandro need to vote for this money. Um, I'm interested in the vacancy tax. It seems like we're a little ways away from that. Maybe that requires some some work, you know, a few years down the road. What would be interesting to know is um uh how would this stack up against the citizens measure that's anticipated that you know it would also be on the ballot. Does that does that draw votes away from that? Is it possible that both measures would pass? I don't know. Uh I I appreciate the citizens efforts. I would support the measure except that it doesn't conform to the the city's uh well publicized priority list of capital to improvement projects which as uh Sarah Bailey just pointed out is you know determined through a through a very um rigorous uh rubric and uh in contrast the the projects on the citizens list are uh are designed to just get votes from every one of the districts. uh in fact there it's antithetical to the priority list because these are projects that didn't rank so highly on the priority list. So in essence they leapfrog all of the work that was done by uh our professionals and the city of public works and under the guidance of um director Marisus. Uh to me that is undemocratic. Uh, I would venture to say it's it's unethical. Um, and as much as I, you know, I think there's more money coming

that way, I I have to say vote against that one. Vote for the business tax. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Alvaro Ramos. Can you hear me? Yes.

Okay. So I uh wanted to maybe one of your presenters can uh provide some more information on the age of your participants and the demographics of the sample collected. I noticed that landlines were a minority of what was in the sample, which is probably a good thing because that means, you know, senior citizens is is not the majority maybe, but we still need to know more about that because, you know, how do we know that the data is representative of the city population? And I'm also thinking about, you know, communication, um, you know, within the business license tax. I think I saw some language thrown around about simplifying. And I'm just wondering, is that flat taxes? Are we talking about removing tax tears? And you know, those are things that have to be, you know, talked about. I mean, I don't know if a parcel tax would pass or not. Um, maybe if you made the the period of time less, like less than 30 years. Um, but the polling showed there wasn't sufficient support. And I think there's a lot of unanswered questions around the vacant property tax. Um I I mean it I remember from the last presentation it kind of felt like it was more about you know empty housing but I don't know if that also is about like empty storefronts like for businesses or is it going to it could be both. And then of course there was the concern of uh legal disputes with that one. Um, you know, I think the the one thing that, you know, I I that really irks me is that, you know, based on the the the what I had learned about the city's budget that police is like onethird of that. And so, if one penny goes to the police, I would just vote no quite quite literally if it was funds for the police. You just can't have guns and butter. And I agree with Sarah Bailey on infrastructure needs, but I also think there needs to be uh rep prioritization of funds. Just as a reminder, taxes are a tool for steering the economy to stability and limiting excess demand to control inflation. And that's what the

federal budget failed to do when Congress passed tax cuts.

Thank you. Your time has elapsed. The next speaker is a phone number ending beginning in 134 and ending in 941. So, hi. This is Jenny Madson again. And I used to have a landline in San Leandro, but AT&T took it away. It's like they take away many of them. So, now I have a cell phone, a crummy cell phone, but 341 is the new 510. I was told I could not get a 510 phone number. So, that said, that's enough in introduction. I feel very strongly about the business tax in all the cities in California and I've lived in a few particularly in the Bay Area. Everyone is struggling to maintain their infrastructure. They haven't been able to do it ever since Prop 13 passed. And what Prop 13 did was give businesses the same low tax rate. So most of these cities only get 20% like St. Leandra only get 20% of their operating budget off of parcel taxes. That is not the way to go. And I think the business tax license is a good idea. I live in the industrial part of town. I drive past big warehouses all the time. San Leandro was for many, many, many years the home of big square footage with hardly any employee businesses. And I think the city is missing that these these businesses are not supporting the infrastructure. They're driving on the streets. They're dealing with they're

using the city infrastructure and they need to pay for it. So, I feel pretty strongly about this and thank you for listening to me again. Thank you. The next speaker is San Leandro Chamber of Commerce.

Hi everybody. Emily Grego, San Leandro Chamber of Commerce. So, this is um what I was talking about at one of the last meetings. Every topic that seems to come up here at city council is always about the business community and then the business community has some challenges and we've got to, you know, do a lot of advocating to to get the help that they need. So, it's just it's a frustrating place to be. You know, our membership does consist of really small businesses and some of the larger businesses. So, um, and not everybody does reside in San Leandro, but their businesses are here, so they don't always have, you know, a vote in this. I would just like to ask for more outreach to the community. Um, I would like to also get some more information out to our members. Perhaps they feel like maybe this is a good thing to keep the the city moving forward. I doubt it, but you know, I wish that an economic plan was really just focused on about how to grow businesses and not just always taxing them. So, if we could find some balance there and get Bayfair up and running with some really great support and some businesses around there and we could figure out the shoreline and get a business in the shoreline, which doesn't seem to be happening, that would be fantastic. But, you know, I don't know. there doesn't seem to be a huge focus on just growing the local businesses and inviting new ones in for a real strong focus of, you know, 10 years. Instead, they get taxed a lot. But, you know, I would just like to ask that there's more outreach so that we can find out how um the business community is is um feeling about this. Thanks.

Thank you, Mayor. There are no more hands raised online. So, we close public comment online and come back to council members for questions, discussion, deliberation. We'll begin with Council Member Bolt.

Yes. Thank you for the presentation. Um, couple of things pop out to me. Potholes, potholes, potholes. It's It's no wonder that's where we're always at. um flat rate. That's that was interesting to understand the difference there. So, thank you for that. Um and then the other one on slide 23 where it said the least important people to hear from is us. That stuck out to me. Um I do have a question about when I said us, the mayor and the city council. Um they aren't going to uh sway any votes in this. Uh but slide 18 that was uh reasons for a no vote correct like at the top it was

that's correct. Okay. All right. And then so the way I'm reading this in D that means that means that 66% are at least somewhat more likely to vote no. If there's not a timeline, if they hear that argument, that's right. If so, so if they hear the argument that we have zero timeline, you threw out 30, we'll just go with that. If we don't put a timeline, a sunset on this tax, they're more likely to vote no.

That's correct. Right. A as an individual item. And the reality of course is that they look at the positives and the negatives not in isolation but together and that's why we asked the second ballot test. Um so while you see that uh some of our positives are much higher. Uh some of these negatives sort of offset that. And in both cases the parcel tax and the business license tax we got an incremental increase from the first test. uh which suggests that the positives are outweighing the negatives. Even though some of the negatives are strong, some of the positives are equally and actually more stronger.

Understood. Yeah. I I mean I don't I was just Is that something typical that you're seeing in the other cities that you do this as well? Because I I hadn't pinned that down in other areas. Yeah. the the to simplify it, the forever tax uh is almost always the top argument against any municipal measure. And when we're discussing D, we're talking about a business license tax. Correct.

Um, no, that's the entire sample. Burgundy, uh, is it was asked of everybody. Sample A, the green bars are the parcel tax and the blue bars, sample B are the business license tax. Oh, okay. All right. That makes a little more sense. Okay. I confused that in my brain and I was interested to hear that. So, thank you. And that's that's my questions. Next, we'll come to I see another questions here. Um, I do have a couple of questions myself. So, I I noticed that some of these are Well, maybe I should frame it as a question. Is there a material difference between So, just take the slide that we're on right now. Is there a material difference between 1.14 and 1.0? Is that something that's exciting to me? Does that really matter or all of these are basically statistically the same?

Uh, the difference between 1.14 and 1.04 is not statistically significant. uh it needs to be a 0.2 difference or or greater uh either direction up or down uh for it really to be statistically significant. And you can see that when you look at not getting into the margin of error for the different splits here, but 66 plus or minus means you got to be 56 or in reality more uh below 56 for it to be statistically significant because that 5% margin of error is plus or minus. Um so that means you need a 10% differential from high to low uh for it to be significant. So everything on slide 18 uh is essentially tied from a statistical perspective. There are of course numeric differences and at the end of the day if we're looking at the positives or the uh features that we might spend the money on you've got to come up with an order you know when we're putting together a measure and so using the order even though it is not statistically significant has been our rule of thumb for 30 years.

Okay. Second, second question. When we think about critical statements and you're going to do all of this outreach potentially that we're being asked to consider funding is the outreach to drill down into these critical statements or is it for another purpose? the outreach and I'll let Bonnie comment on this as well, but uh from a survey perspective, uh the it's not the critical statements that drive uh the outreach messaging. It's what are the top things people want to spend the money on and what are those uhformational statements. They're all factually correct uh that uh are at the top of the list. And so that would this would be on slide 15. Uh so it's the top four or five at most that we want to focus theformational messaging on rather than trying to debate back and forth with the critical statements.

Okay. So just if you can drill down into that, are you saying that because we have now slide 15 up on the screen, right? Are you saying that that outreach is to amplify awareness of these? Well, it's to amplify the awareness of factual components of the measures. Yes. So elaborate. It's not to advocate. It is not to advocate. It is to explain the what the measures do and how they do it. So elaborate. So just, you know, we're going to go spend potentially $200,000 give me a an example in a day of what you're doing. Bonnie, you want to

Okay, happy to do that. And even Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. Bonnie Moss with Clifford Moss. Um the the way I look at the poll is that this research helps us by simulating the real conditions in an actual election window should a measure go to the ballot. So that's why we we we strive to understand both the positiveformational messages and the negative informationational messages. But as we go out to tell the city's story, we have a responsibility to tell that story accurately with facts and information. Um and also using this research to help inform that conversation. And of course, our goal is to elevate the exchange that happens with the community. And we do that through opinion leader work, uh whether it's meetings, stakeholder meetings, town hall meetings, uh individual one-on-one conversations. We do it with direct mail. We do it with digital. We do it with um uh thoughtprovoking uh invitations to weigh in and ask the community uh to give us feedback whether online or in a response return uh card back to us. But by doing that, we find that um we get good information. Um, it is not unlike the poll, but let's remember the poll was with 607 people, not thousands who live in the community. And we also uh get to hear what the

community is really favoring in all of these different situations that I've just described. So that's perfect. So just to make sure that I'm understanding. So if I'm right now we're looking at slide 15 letter C which is number number uh the second item at 1.31. So if I'm understanding you correctly you will meet with groups of folks and as part of those meetings you'll say well as part of this measure large corporations and major commercial businesses not small businesses or single family homeowners will pay the largest tax amounts. Tell me about what you think about that. And it's in their verbalization that you will be learning. Yes. More about this. Okay. Thank you.

At this point in time, I'm going to come to council member Simon, please. Questions. Two questions for you. Uh the first one is on this business or this license tax. The amount of revenue um isn't very much. There's like four to six million annually, something like that. 4.3 million additional in addition to what you currently,

right? But just comparing that to what our needs are in the city, which are vastly in excess of that. What is our our plan? I mean, sounds like this is a viable solution. It's just not enough money. Have we thought about you know, what will this really do to help us out of our infrastructure to deal with our infrastructure needs?

I'm I'm happy to comment here. Um, good evening, council member. Um, the the environment that you have described just now is reflective of what most cities are struggling with. there will never be a measure that solves all of their uh challenges and problems and meets all of their needs in one measure. And so most cities, and San Leandro fits this profile as well, simply need to go out for a measure, do what they say they're going to do, earn the support from the community, um perform and keep their promises that were um suggested in the measure and then go back out for another measure and leverage that more. um we just simply do not see a lot of measures or a lot of communities who are willing to do one mega measure in a community um to meet every need in one fell swoop. We just don't see it.

Thank you. And my second question has to do with the vacancy tax and it looks attractive from the polling like it would pass if we proposed it. However, it looks complex like we it would be difficult to administer. So, I'm curious. I mean, we can get the support for it, it looks like, and it makes a lot of sense because it brings in money and it it removes blight from the community. Two things it takes care of. Is there a way that we can even if we don't have the solution right now how to administer it but we can get approval for it and we will figure this out how to administer it.

Ryan, do you want to comment on that? Yeah, from a polling perspective we get 61%. We need 2/3 uh and the margin of error is plus or minus uh six in this case. So, we could be at 59. We could also be at 60 uh 67. Uh it's unlikely we're at 67. Uh in most of these revenue measures that we go put on the ballot, we're within the margin of error on election day, but it's usually on the downside. So, I would say that the vacancy tax is actually not viable at the twothirds level. If it could be a simple majority measure, it's a different story.

Okay. I I hear you. I'm looking at an older slide. My my bad. No, no worries. Thank you. At this point, we will come to Vice Mayor.

Thank you to the team who put all of this together. Um I definitely see our input in the um presentation. Um I have a question regarding I'm just looking ahead in the funding horizon and um the question is if this were to go to the ballot assuming best case scenario the voters approve when does this actually hit the books in terms of fiscal year? Bonnie feel, excuse me, Brian or Bonnie, feel free to chime in. But my understanding on the implementation timeline for the uh business license tax is after the once the vote has taken place and it's affirmed through the official election results um and the council has accepted those results that that is that is sufficient authorization to implement.

That's correct, I would say. And but the parcel tax is a little bit different. The parcel tax has to be placed on the tax roles. So you can't start collecting that as soon because the county assessor has got to put it on the tax bill for fiscal 27 28 not 2627. That would take longer for a partial tax.

So let me just clarify my question. Um I was specifically and I'm sorry to not make it clear. I was specifically asking regarding um the business license tax um because there was talk about streamlining the business license tax which means kind of there's implementation time on the back end. So again the question is if a business license tax were to be approved by the voters um do we have an estimated fiscal year or when it would actually hit the books? What I would say is typically our standard protocol here is business license tax invoices go out in January time frame. Um and that's when they would go out. So presumably also typical certification deadlines for elections is well prior to that you know after the election November election as to whether or not we would be able to implement that prior by that January outgoing. I would think so. I I think if I may, I think we would begin to see the revenue start coming in in fiscal year, this next fiscal year, right? It would start coming in in January, February, you know, and then throughout uh I think we would really see the the effects of a full year the following.

Okay. So, we just to be clear, we're looking at a um I'm just thinking about looking ahead what's before us in terms of council decisions on the budget. Really, it would be a nominal increase to the fiscal year. So, we're looking at at the current fisc at the upcoming fiscal year. Um so we're we're we're looking at the same kind of variables in terms of that decision. Um my other question was regarding um the citizen a possible citizen uh proposal and its interaction with this. Um, has that been part of the analysis in terms of what if both of them are voted positively, if both of them pass? I guess we don't know what they're doing. So,

no. Okay. Thank Thank you very the citizen initiative staff is not involved in it. Okay. I'm just wondering if that having that on the ballot at the same time would change our what our uh probability looks like in terms of passing it. I mean, it it sounds like the business license tax has a lot of kind of leeway and a lot of slack, so to speak. Um I'm just worried that if there's two that folks might just be like no to everything. Um so

my my analysis of that and again as Eric said you know we we're not privy to the citizens initiative but to the extent that it is a propertybased tax um I think it's similar to the parcel tax that we tested here. Now, this was a parcel tax that the city would sponsor in the survey, but it only got 56% in round numbers, second test with a 6% margin of error. So, it could easily be below a 49% threshold. The business license tax of course got 65% with a 6% margin of error. It's at 59. Uh, so it has a cushion. I would say, and Bonnie could comment on this too, confusion is our enemy. uh and confusion will result in both measures being getting less than we are looking at here if they were on the ballot at the same time. I think that means a property tax type measure probably fails and we could probably if we do our job the business license tax could be successful because it just has a bigger cushion.

Thank you. I agree with that. Council member Aguilar. Uh, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Steph, for that presentation. My question is with regards to the business license tax. Um, for every what is it 1.25 for every thousand dollar of gross receipts? Did we did we toy around with increasing that number of 1.5 um to see to try to maximize? I'm just trying to understand how did we come up with that 1.25 numbers.

Thank you, council member. I can I can share with you uh some of the background on this. We we're aware as always we're always looking at what other adjacent and other cities neighboring jurisdictions here in the East Bay and in Alama County are doing. Uh the city of Union City uh in a recent election cycle just went through a similar exercise with a business license tax modernization. And so the structure that's before us here uh largely mirrors that one. Although I would share that that rate in Union City is actually slightly lower. I believe there's is like was it a dollar? A dollar per thousand square foot. Uh I'm sorry a dollar per thousand of gross annual receipts in Union City which when you do the math that that marketkedly reduces that figure of additional revenue we're seeking. And so it was kind of a balancing to see, you know, we certainly mirroring the structure made sense because Union City has a a well- tested model in terms of the structure needed to recognize though we also needed a measure in order to make the juice worth the squeeze a larger rate. Um, and this 3.8 8 to $4.3 million would also make a market beneficial impact to the city's general fund bottom line and also helping to mitigate our ongoing structural deficit and then also again providing you know potentially more funds annual funds to provide the important services that our community members rely upon.

Got it. Thank you. And and with regards to the the vacancy tax, I know we don't have any financial numbers. Um, do we have some sort of ballpark estimate what this could potentially I mean the numbers are, you know, with the margin of error, it may or may not pass. Um, but with the revenue estimates not presently available, do we have like a a ballpark figure as to what this could potentially bring in? We did and we you know in order to have done the survey work uh they had to in the question to make it a valid question had to include a dollar amount. Uh and so we did that based on um based on uh uh the experience in Oakland. Um and and you know acknowledging that if we were to go down this route, we would certainly engage an expert in this area, spend the money to to get the the you know, a more accurate projection, but we based it on the, you know, a comparison to the number of parcels, assumed the same vacancy rate uh in Oakland to what we have here, and then extrapolated to to uh the amount shown. And and the other piece I'd add on to what does uh deputy city manager Clawson just shared knowing that the per state law the ballot language just talks about how much total revenue it's going to derive in a given year but it's not taking this number is not taking into account all the costs of what I call basically overhead which is unique with this tax because we literally would have to hire staff to administer it have to have that appeals process identification of the parcels a notification process and the business or or any property owner has the ability contest it and say no no no I'm not actually vacant for X Y or Z reason identify reasons that are eligible and then provide a hearing officer if they want to appeal that decision so there's quite a lot to that for contexts in

Oakland I think they have three and a half FTE administering their program now on a net basis Oakland is still it is still a net revenue generator for the city of Oakland but one has to basically this $3 million you have to take that with a pretty heavy grain of salt knowing that a good chunk of that is going to be basically offset by the cost of administration of the tax and that's what's just comp makes this particular tax more complicated than than all the others. Yeah, thank you for that explanation. Um I think those are those are my questions. Thank you, Council Member Aguular.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation this evening. I want to drill back into methodology a little bit adjacent to Mayor Gonzalez. Um so on slide eight, just to throw that up there real quick. Um, I think an important statistic that matters to me, at least in how I see this presentation, how I see the data that you've presented, um, is something that's in the footnote that I don't see on here. Can you tell me a little bit about this age spread of those 607 folks? I mean, historically 18 to 25 is a group that doesn't turn out as much as at least we're seeing climb a little bit, but with the reality that San Leandre residents, at least the voting population is an older population. So I just want to get a good idea on the spread of age in in your methodology.

Yeah, sure. Uh good question. Uh just at an overall level, the sample is stratified and then weighted uh based on uh 14 different variables including gender, age, ethnicity, uh presence of children, uh education, homeowner status, um and um let's see uh as well as um individual party, household party, uh gender composition, voting frequency, uh as well as city council district which is really important because that's geographic but to answer your question directly uh it is weighted to the likely voter universe by age 18 to 29 is 10% and I'm rounding 30 to 39 is 16% 40 to 49 is 15% 50 to 64 is 26% uh and 65 plus is 33%

and I'll just add that one of the reasons why we appreciate Godby research is they put so much attention on creating a mirror image of who we expect to turn out in a November election here in this case. So it matches like a mirror uh the demographics that of who votes in San Leandro. Fantastic. Thank you. That was my one question. Thank you. At this point, we go to council member Simon.

Yeah, I wanted to follow up on the vacancy tax again. Um, similar to council member Aguilar, and I understand the numbers don't look positive based upon that slide, 61% compared to the two-thirds that are necessary. But my what I really like about it, and I heard it from my colleagues before, is it just cleans up cleans up our city. We have a lot of blight in our city and this is not just bringing in money but it's it's helping to improve the look of our city which can help us in so many other ways. So my question is if we if we did move forward with a business license tax if we went for this one at the same time even though the cushion wasn't there or it did it didn't look very likely. What would we have to lose if we're already going out for a measure if we went with one that had so much benefit to our city?

I'm happy to comment on that um by simply saying we are in a very turbulent economic and political environment. And that's one of the reasons why we are um recommending the um early listening and pre-electoral conversation so we can certainly have that conversation in the pre-electoral window. Uh, one of the risks of um public agencies putting on more than one measure that are sponsored by that public agency is that voters may um misinterpret um the measure and say, "Wow, they're just they want to go for it all, so we're not in the mood for that and we're voting no on everything." that can happen in this environment. So we would say if there is interest still in both understanding where the numbers lie today that we would really be including that in part of the conversation with voters and community prior to coming back to you with a final final recommendation. I mean, we want to listen and we want to share with you the council what we've heard, but there is some risk to doing that.

Thank you. Yeah, I do see the risk. I hear it. Um, I mean, I do see the business license tax where it would get a lot of support because it's not impacting the normal voter, it's impacting the business, so they'll likely vote for it because it doesn't impact them. And I can see the vacant vacancy tax in the same way where they don't have a vacancy vacant property so they'll probably vote for it. I'm just trying to I see a parallel in those two and I don't see it in your numbers up there just in how someone would think through this.

Brian, what do you think? Yeah, I think that um you're correct that there is a similarity between the 65% we got on the second test of the business license and the 61 for the vacancy, but again the thresholds are what it's all about. The business license is a 50 plus one. So it's a 15 point cushion. The vacancy tax is a 2/3. So, it's got a a six point six and a half point def a five six point deficit. So, I just don't think you're gonna even though voters average voter doesn't pay a vacancy tax, we're not going to move the needle six points to get it over the hurry. It's just not going to happen.

Okay. I just I mean I see that the theme here is just cleaning up our city and I and I would really hope we would get more support from our community. I mean your numbers aren't showing it, but um I really um hope that these wouldn't tear each other apart and neither would pass. But we're in need of money. We really are. And I'm concerned we're not going for enough. Thank you. Coming to vice mayor. Um, I don't have any more questions or comments. I actually wanted to move forward with a rec with a motion, but I I know Please do.

I didn't know if you wanted to have some. All right. I'd like to make a motion to direct staff to proceed with community outreach and engagement efforts associated with exploring the viability of a business license tax modernization and adopt a resolution that appropriates up to 185,000 to conduct community outreach and authorizing an amendment to the existing consulting services agreement with Clifford Moss. Council member Aguilar. I'll second.

Okay. So we have a motion from council me from vice mayor vet Walton and a second by council member Aguilad. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, please vote. All votes are in and the motion carries unanimous unanimously with six yeses and council member Bowen absent. Okay. At this point in time, we will take a 10-minute recess for our 9:00 hour and we will be back at uh 10 minutes from now per the timer on the clerk's clock. So, we're officially in recess.

Okay. So, having exhausted our break, we are back and the time that we were coming back on the record is 9:19. At this point in time, we move to item 10D, a a discussion to consider restorative justice mediation for the council. And council member Simon, you have the floor. Thank you.

Um, I wanted to bring this item forward. Uh, this was in the middle of the discipline hearings that we were having. Um, and we heard this from the public, too. how restorative justice mediation would be a good way to help resolve issues early on and um resolve them more effectively. And just wanted to read something here about restorative justice mediation. What it does, it helps restore gaps in empathy, trust, and respect between professionals and those they deal with in the workplace and calls calls attention to the need for more strategic and practical ways of addressing interpersonal conflict. Restorative justice is an evidence-based practice commonly used in education and criminal justice contexts that focuses on bringing individuals with ongoing f conflict or tension into direct mediation focusing on the seeming seemingly illusionary idea of closure. Restorative justice forges through discussions of how people impact one another with an eye towards recognizing and tending to wounds that have arisen. Restorative justice mediation focuses on accountability, healing, and preventive prevention as part of the iterative an inter iterative process. So that's kind of a concept in a nutshell of what it's about. And there are different groups throughout the Bay Area that provide this type of mediation training. Um, in Berkeley, there's there's at least two of them, agencies that provide this type of mediation. And one thing that I think or actually total of three things that I recommend we do as a city or as a council, one is that we implement this rhetoric justice mediation, but we imple implement it in the process of updating our discipline

policy because they go hand in hand. You have to have um the restorative justice u melded into that discipline policy. Uh but those two take staff time and they take cost. So I recognize that and we just had a workshop looking at cost savings and this did not rise to the level the discipline policy. But the third thing I think we can do and I'd like to move this item tonight u which doesn't require cost is to take down the online discipline items that have been up some of them for two years now. um and the items of interest under the city clerk's page, items 1, four, and five. Um because those items do not lend to us moving forward. Okay. So, just very quickly on the last item, I'm going to come to city attorney because I don't think that's agendaized. I don't think we can talk about that today, but I'm just going to get a read from city attorney.

That's correct. That's not agendaized, but the council could provide direction to agendaize it for a future meeting. Okay. Thank you. So, just if you don't mind, I've got three things. You said there were three points. One is to uh possibly implement restorative justice mediation uh during a discipline policy update. And then I had this last item. What was your number two item? Well, the first was the council agreeing that restorative justice mediation is needed. Got it. Thank you.

The second is it's needed. However, it must be implemented as part of the discipline policy. That's number two. And the third is I'll make that motion for us to discuss that later. Perfect. Thank you. I appreciate the clarification. Other questions for council member Simon? Okay, I'll ask one other I'll ask one other quick question. Um, the distinction between restorative justice mediation and just mediation.

I don't have a direct answer for that. Okay. Uh, vice mayor, please. Uh, yes, thank you. Um, that actually does was part of my question because it's my and I don't have that in front of me, but it's my understanding that um part of the disciplinary process does involve some sort of mediation on behalf of the mayor. Am I misreading that? Am I misremembering? I can bring people together to have a discussion. And I can have individual conversations with people.

Right. Right. Um Okay. So it's not So it's mediation but not restorative mediation because restorative Okay. I I understand. Um I um I don't have questions. I have comments. So this is the time for questions. Any other questions at this time before going to public comment? Okay. Seeing none, let's take public comment. Okay. Council member Aguilad, please.

Yeah, just talking more about this and thinking about it. So, uh the considering restorative justice mediation for the council, my question is how how would this be I think Vice Mayor Vet Wilson had mentioned, but how would this be handled? Is this going to be through a third party or is this uh for the mayor to kind of get involved in um or hire a consultant? May I answer that? Please proceed. Thank you.

Yes, there's I've been doing some research online and there's several agencies in Berkeley that run this and have done it for a number of years. UC Berkeley in particular does it for Berkeley. Um but there's some other agencies that do it and they have training that they advertise immediation for other agencies or corporate corporate different companies. So I would recommend we would outsource that when the need arise. Okay. Thank you. That's my question.

Council member Bolt. I think you just answered my question, but this would only be in a scenario where it's council member to council member uh and and at that point we would look to hire outside staff to do remediation.

Please proceed. Yes. And this would be part of a tool bucket we have to use. Not guaranteed we're going there, but this is something, you know, we can vote on as a council and say, "Hey, why don't we try this method first before something else?" Yes. Okay. Okay, at this point we'll come to council member Agular.

So I don't know if this is a question for council member Simon or um mayor, you can help me direct my question. Um but my thought for right now because I have other thoughts is around this idea of having that third party mediator is my question is do we as a council take ownership over the decision on who that person is or what does that look like? I just want to throw that out into the air because that could also take some time for discussion. That could also take an extended uh um conversation beyond when and where and the details. That's that's something that concerns me about this is who is it that's running the the process and so I know you have suggestions I know you have an idea of who that might be but my concern is where how does that process happen? So first of few questions I think I have for now

if you could just go ahead and leave your mic on it'll be okay. Thank you. Yeah, I would say when we're updating the discipline policy, uh, this is something that we could flush out and perhaps we could have someone on call every year, every two years that we have vetted different companies and they're ready to go uh if we need them. Is that the only question? Okay, perfect. Coming back to Vice Mayor.

Thank you. Um, I I guess I'm I was under the assumption that this was that the restorative justice mediation based on the background on the um on the background on the um on meeting central. It is specific to the investigation and the subsequent disciplinary hearing. It was specific to that process. What I'm hearing now is more of that. It's not related to that, but just to have something on deck in the future. So I'm I'm confused because the the background is is is specific to that whole cycle of events and subsequent disciplinary hearing and action. Can you clarify if this is a time and point mediation or what are you proposing is to not do mediation regarding to that specific it's not an isn't it but more of a anyway to that situation or are are you saying that's no longer the case? You just want to have someone on deck or an organization on deck to mediate future conflicts that arise? Uh yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards is future. Um I think if the council so chooses, we can do this for the past incidents that have occurred. We can do that. Uh but I see more value in the staff time that we've got. It's pretty stretched thin. Um that will could help us resolve future issues more effectively than we have done in this past one.

Okay. Um so if what we're looking at then is um the scope has now changed um and we as a council then um want to have a um a a restorative justice mediation approach or philosophy towards conflict resolution. I believe that should go to rules committee. I I because I if if it is to be included in terms of our our official approach that we want to take to conflict mediation um as it stands right now there's not enough there there for me to to to do that because that means we have to submit an RFP have organizations or folks who specialize in this submit the RFP I mean it staff time. It's theft time to do the work to get someone on deck just in case something else comes up. Um I I'm not there yet.

So before going into too much commentary, what I'd like to do is take quick public comment and then come back for council members to share their um their views on this. Mayor, we have not received any comment cards in the room. However, there are two hands raised online. Okay, I think we are receiving one in the room. So, let's proceed online first. Our first online speaker is Douglas Spalding.

Well, hello dear friends. Uh I I've been advocating for a restorative approach to um issues that have uh been ongoing on the council now for more than a year. Uh to respond to the question of how does restorative med how is restorative mediation distinct from mediation? Mediation I think of as a negotiation. Uh, for example, me um uh med uh negotiating with my ex about how much I'm going to pay her to buy her off of my title. Restorative mediation focuses on harms that are done. uh it's more akin to truth and reconciliation which has been done successfully on big big scales but I think can also be done on uh on the scale of just a city council. Uh I don't think of this as a process that is between two or more council members. I think of as a process that is among all of you as a council. In other words, all of you are sitting in the circle and contributing and expressing all of the harms that you've felt and really trying to hear what the harms that have been done to other people. Uh it turns out that council member Aguilar probably is the the best uh trained among you in conflict resolution of this type. But but he shouldn't do it, nor should the mayor. It should be a third party. I think you need it for the current circumstances. And I would counsel you to give it a try and try it and see if you like it and if it's effective and then if it's effective then maybe think about adopting it into your uh you know crimes and consequences uh city council rules and whatnot. Um I think the first step is that someone else in addition to uh council member Simon needs to call up and get more information. And I know

there's a a concern about closed session, private process, and you can't do this in open session. Thank you. Thank you. Your time has elapsed. Our next speaker online is Bob Bailey.

Hello. Um council um mayor at all. Um I'm speaking on this in part because I have a background in mediation. past president of two community uh based um mediation organizations both in Berkeley and San Francisco. Um first of all I think it's should be clear that it's a it requires third party neutral to mediate. Um so you're on the right track there. I think the idea of mediating as a group frankly is not what restorative justice mediation is usually designed for. It's to when there's a a claim of harm caused by one individual to another. Um then the idea is to bring in the third party. And what makes it restorative justice? It's it's about healing and trying to repair the harm. That means preconditions for entering into any kind of uh restorative justice mediation requires that it be voluntary for both parties, that it be confidential, that it be respectful. But prime what particularly important is that it's about the party who has been accused of producing the harm has to accept responsibility for the impact of their actions. Not having to you know it's not about whether they intended the harm or not but they have to accept responsibility for the impact of their behavior. And then the intent of the mediation is to seek a remedy that um addresses that harm. Um so I hope that's helpful. I I would think it does make sense if you do change your um disability process procedures for the council that this be one of the options available for the parties involved. Thank you.

Thank you, mayor. There are no more hands raised online. So, we'll close online public comment. We will open inperson public comment. We've received one comment card from Jeff. Thank you, council members. Um, I'm going to speak to Fred directly. I don't think you've pre presented something that's worth consideration. It's vapid. I'm going to ask you. I'm sorry to be rude, but we try not to direct specific comments to specific people. If you wouldn't mind addressing the body. This Thank you.

proposal has been presented without any supporting evidence.

The part that Fred presented today appeared to be nearly word for word Google AI for those three terms together. Um, I don't I think the questions that are asked by the council members here support the idea that there's just no information. This is a really vapid presentation. Frankly, I think it's to evade responsibility. That's all I have to say. Thank you, mayor. There are no more comment cards.

So, we will close public comment in person and we'll come back to council members for discussion. If there's any kind of motion, you know, I'll certainly look to to council to initiate a suggestion. Council member Simon, we begin with you. Well, first I'll make a motion for future discussion to take down the on online discipline items from the items of interest website. Council member Aguiler, I'll second.

And next, as far as the

So, we're going to take that motion. Right. We've got a motion on the floor. Uh, we've got a motion by council member Simon to adjust the information on the website under I believe it's called items of interest. Is that correct? Okay. Um, so what questions, if any, do council members have for council member Simon? Okay. At this point in time, council uh vice mayor, please. Um, so this is for future discussion. Um, was there a submittal of any kind of background information on this?

Did it follow our process? I want to come to city manager. Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, vice mayor. Uh, this item is coming as a question to the council within a different item. So there is no previous process that is required for the council to consider agendaizing this question on a future item.

Okay. Um I I'm not supportive of it just pure on process. Uh there's a a a format and a process that we follow if we want to have something agendaized. Submit a proposal, send it to the city manager, and then we talk about it at the end of the meeting. and then if we have the votes to do that. Um I don't think this is the right process. It's two totally different things. Um so I'm I I I just I'm not supportive of it just based on process and and and how it's being presented kind of nested in between another issue that's not that is not necessarily related. I I'm I'm going to come to the city attorney because how how is this related to the topic of restorative justice mediation because it seems to be that otherwise you can agendaize you can offer emotion on any topic. So I'm just trying to get the nexus to restorative justice mediation. I would probably defer to council member on on how he views the nexus. Um in terms of this particular process, you know, it um it seems to fall outside the council's typical procedure. Um I will just note that there can't really be any substantive discussion on the substance of the request to agendaize. It's just procedural. So I'll my comments for that. Okay, I I think I you know what you see from the chair here is I am struggling because this item talks about restorative justice mediation. It does not talk about our city website. It does not talk about a prior investigation. So, Council Member

Simon, I will afford you the opportunity to try to make a connection at this point in time to what's been agendaized for the public.

Uh, sure. I think restorative justice mediation, it looks at a different method to solve problems, to solve issues rather than punitive discipline, rather than um harsh discipline. And I think that posting the investigations on the websites for up to two years is the opposite of restorative justice. I think that it doesn't help heal anything by having it up there. So that's the nexus is we want to heal things on our council and I think having a discussion on pulling that down is one step to helping us heal which is part of restorative justice. So I would request that we could take a vote please. Okay. So, I'm going to come back to you. You had told the council earlier that as you were thinking about restorative justice, it was about something going forward and that that was your intention. And now I'm hearing a motion that's not directly related to restorative justice, but it points backwards. Um, so again, I'm going to come back to city attorney and ask, given the descriptions provided thus far, is this an agenda item?

It is not part of It is not this agenda item. Okay. Is a request for a future agenda item.

Yeah. So, what we're going to do is we're going to take this item under item uh 12 is item 11 and we'll explore how that's being handled there because it's it's not part of this agendaized item. I believe you had a second motion that you wanted to make. Yeah, the second motion is to and I would agree with vice mayor to bring this to rules to have a discussion how to implement restorative justice mediation into our discipline policy. So that's my motion. It's your motion. I want to go to council member Aguilar. Point of order clarification. I can't comment on the last motion because you put that under 11, correct?

Yes. Okay, then I'll wait for that. Thank you, Council Member Bolt.

Um, now I'm getting confused. Where are we at? What are we doing right now? What are we going backwards? There is currently a motion to take the uh to to have a restorative justice mediation um the possibility of incorporating restorative justice mediation within our discipline policy to have that discussion occur at rules. So it's kind of a motion to move this discussion to rules. Um, as we contemplate our discipline policy, I'm going to stop and ask, is that a fair summary, Council Member Simon?

Yes. And going forward adding as a toolbox for future issues that may arise. So, that's the motion. Do you have a second for that? Not currently. I will second taking this conversation to rules. Okay. Council member Aguilar. I was going to second, but thank you. Okay. Council member Paul,

I get a sense that we will have consensus on this, but let's let's just kind of take a quick poll if just moving this to rules. So, I'm not going to have not going to have unanimity, it appears. So, maybe we need to take one moment, please. Okay. So, I think that uh we're going to go ahead and take a vote. I just thought maybe we could get a quick a quick quick unanimous consent sort of thing, but we can't. So, let's go ahead and vote on this motion to take this discussion uh as laid out by council member Simon. Move the discussion to rules. Uh please vote. All votes are in and the motion carries with six, sorry, five yes votes and Vice Mayor Rose Walto abstaining and council member Bowen absent. And so coming back to council member Simon, does that close out your item?

Yes. Okay. So we have item 10D closed and we are moving on to item 11. Have we had any item 11s submitted? City manager. Just because you're not on a mic, I will repeat that the answer was no. No, sir. Um, so the answer is no. By our process, then we move to item number 12, city council reports, calendar, and announcements. It appears council uh vice mayor, please. I wanted to thank um staff for a fantastic um ribbon cutting of our farmers market at the library. It was a rainy day that was cold and we still had a lot of people that came to the market. And also for folks out there, there's a whole bunch of new um food options at the farmers market. So, there's a couple of the old favorites, but there are some cool new options. So, if you're hearing, please join us um every week at the farmers market. Um and then I'm also planning on doing some tableabling sessions at the farmers market. I'll make sure to um announce them publicly. Um I have them every year since I started. Um and those are that's the end of my comment.

Thank you, Council Member Aular.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to have a word of appreciation for the council mayor and staff for a really warm welcome. In the last couple of weeks, I've been meeting with folks um in the city staff um on council for advice and how how do I do this, right? Um but nonetheless, I've gotten such a warm and inviting and lovely welcome and I I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. Um and so I I'm looking forward to working on this team. Um because I know we have a lot of work to do, right? A and I'm looking forward to being a part of those conversations and helping to push the conversations forward, helping us really enforce governance and protocol procedure because that's that's the world I come from. Um, but in addition, I also wanted to say um just a shout out to the business community. I went to the Taste of San Leandro um just the other night and uh that was lovely and I hadn't realized how how many great diverse options there are in our city. Uh and what that says about us as a city and who our people are, who our business community is, who makes up San Leandro. Uh and so you'll see me ask data questions just related to that like I did today on methodology is who are we having these conversations with? who are we gathering data from? That's important to my worldview. Um, but just otherwise a a gratefulness and a thank you for the welcome and I'm looking forward to doing the work. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Aguiler.

Uh, thank you, Mayor Gonzalez. On Wednesday, March 11th, I attended the 1,145th meeting of the board of trustees of the Alama County Mosquito Baitment District. We um passed a resolution to honor our county at large trustee Kathy Roach. Um we also move forward with the dissolution uh dissolution of the ad hoc policy review committee. We also appointed an ad hoc manager evaluation committee for our general manager. Um, we also approved replacement of a 2015 Nissan Frontier 4x4 with a leased 2026 Nissan Frontier um 4x2. We also went through the state of California master mutual aid agreement. And um with regards to our lab reports, surveillance in February 2026 indicates Alama County remains in a low winter season public health risk period. Arbo virus testing for Westnau virus, St. St. Louis encphilitis virus and western ecoin and sephilitis virus remains negative across all birds um and mosquito. So the collections were dominated by Kulix tcelis and kulaceta inoratada the species that commonly remain active during winter conditions. So that I have no 80s egypti um to report or that were detected during February and uh no west now virus to report. Uh I also wanted to touch base on um the national cities conference. I attended that March. Oh, I have it on my calendar. Um, anyways, I attended National Negities Conference and DC with my some of my fellow colleagues to advocate for for

federal funding. Uh we got to meet with uh staffers from council congressman Latifah Simon's office and uh congressman Eric Swallwell's office and I attended the um ITC meeting uh LGBTQ meetings uh and various uh sessions at the national neo cities conference. So that's that concludes my report. Thank you council member Simon please.

Yes. I also wanted to give a shout out to the local businesses like um James, Council Member James Agular has. I went to the Taste of San Angelo last Thursday night. It was an incredible event to see so many different businesses and sample their great foods and great great um beverages. It was a very nice event and met a lot of people. A lot of people from the city staff were there, community members were there, of course, business was there. It was a wonderful event. I'd encourage I would encourage everyone to go out next year. It was really good. I also attended the National League of City conference with my colleagues um March 14th through 18th. One of the good programs I went to was a opening session for the youth program and it was really really exciting to see high school students from around the country that were presenting um their involvement with local government and there was um youth here from right from the Bay Area. one from South San Francisco, another one from Nevada, and just hearing how the youth are making the voices of the community, making policy stronger from the youth level, and hoping that we can perhaps do that here too in San Leandro. Also went to a a session on looking at solutions to help in homelessness. That was very uh powerful. Um, also using housing as an economic development tool and was really great to meet our representatives, uh, Senator Padila's representatives and shifts to help bring in money for some of our projects such as the Llewelling Boulevard multimotal safety and complete streets project. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Bolt, please.

Yes. Uh, thank you, Mayor. I will just quickly say I also attended the taste of uh San Leandro. It was a great event. There were a lot of good options and I appreciated the uh business community coming out and sharing that uh with everybody in one place and giving us the opportunity to really uh look into to um seeing their uh going to their facilities. and a lot of them I had been to before. Um, but it was it was neat to be there and hear the conversations around what they're doing next. Um, with the appointment to EBDA, East Bay Discharge Authority. Um, on the 17th I did my first uh operations and maintenance committee. um understanding the role that EBDA plays um and all the different aspects that go into what they do along with the overall commission meeting. So the 17th and the 19th and then on the 24th I took a tour of San Leandros um facility down at Davis. um really enjoy the opportunity to learn about this and and uphold our values uh on that committee. Um, I will be working hard and and uh making sure that what we're doing is is legit and in line and any opportunities we have to support what we do here in the city is is a really um uh important role that I didn't you know just going through this it's how much goes into it is amazing. The amount of water they move is just insane. Um, and I will be setting up another tour

because it it consists of a lot of other areas in the East Bay. So, more to come on that and uh how we can help support them. And that's it. Council member,

uh, thank you, Mayor Gazels. I'd like to um inform the public that I will not be at the April Monday, April 20th meeting u because I will be on a flight in flight from Hawaii back to Oakland during that time. So I will not be able to attend in person. Thank you for that. Okay. So, just for me quickly to wrap us up, um, remind folks that we have state of the city on April 28th. Doors open at 6:00 at the San Leandro Senior Center. So, it's in about what is that about 3 weeks from now. Um, I sit on the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and one of the things that we've been focused on is streamlining the permitting process and making sure that we can keep driving uh economic development within the nine Bay Area County region. Uh like my colleagues, I attended the National League of Cities um in mid-March. I think we were highly successful at moving along. Our two uh requests are now sitting at the appropriations committee. So, thank you to all of the council members for the good work. East Bay EDA, East Bay Economic Development Association had awards last week that we attended and two San Leandro companies were recognized. Fuse Technologies um based here right AC caddy corner to Kaiser for their work in the fusion space and B3 investors for the uh work that they have done to revitalize revitalize and transform spaces and so it was a good night for San Leandro. were proud um attended an Alama County Transportation Committee, but I want to focus on a specific element, namely the central county connection uh sub meeting that we had. So, there is a corridor running along Llewelling all

the way out into Castro Valley and ACTC has been focused on how to make it more accessible for pedestrians and bicyclists. And there was a discussion about different projects that are going to be prioritized in that corridor. And it afforded us as uh commission members that are within that region to provide some feedback and make sure that the work that public works does is aligned with the work that we're doing so that we're coordinated and making sure that we're being responsive to resident needs. Um a fun activity was uh attending the CocaCola bottling plant. Right. All right, they invited all of us to attend. I did carve out a little bit of time to go visit and take a picture with a FIFA trophy and that was fun. Council member Bowen was there as well. Uh, Taste of San Leandro. I'm glad that so many people made it. Uh, I was not able to make it, but my wife and I were able to sponsor. Last couple of things. There are significant number of commissions uh in Alama County that are desperately in need of folks to volunteer to serve. Whether it's the commission on aging or I don't know about the veterans commission if you have openings. I regularly get a list of commissions and perhaps city manager maybe we can even put like the put the list up on the city website or someplace just because there are so many opportunities to get connected and to offer your talents and experiences. And all I can tell you is when I go to the mayor's meeting there's always openings. They're always looking for people to support and so I know we've got a lot of talented people and the opportunity is there. Okay. Okay. So, I'm going to just close by um I know this is a Easter. We've got Passover. Ramadan finished not too long ago. It's kind of a just a heavy religious time of year for many members of our community.

And so in recognition of all that and and really hoping that those uh religious f focused celebrations help to drive peace and healing not just uh here in the United States but really around the world. So in the search for peace, we're going to adjourn in the name of peace. Have a wonderful evening and the time is 10:01.