Senior Advisory Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome to this welcome to this meeting of the Neighborhood University Relations Committee or NERC. It's now 6PM, so I'll call this meeting to order at 6PM. We're gonna take roll call first, so I'm I'm taking roll. Member Chahal has notified the staff that he will not be attending tonight. So he's taking care of a member member Gonzales? Present. Member Ross? Present. Member Collins? Present. Member Mulquaney? Member Zing? Present. Member Forge?

Chair Jane, I think that member Milquini let me know that she needs to leave the meeting a little early today. I think it's 07:30, just so people are aware that she will not be staying the entire time.

Right. So, would anyone like to make a motion to excuse member Chahal? Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Jane? Okay. Passes. Now we're moving on to the consent calendar.

Consent calendars may be enacted, approved, or adopted by one motion unless requested to be removed by anyone for discussion or explanation. If ever any member of the NERC Commission staff or a member of the public wishes to comment on a consent item or would like the item to be heard on a regular agenda, make this request now. Items listed on the consent calendar with associated file numbers constitute public hearing item. We have one item on the consent calendar that is the meeting minutes of 10/20/2025. Is there a motion to approve those minutes?

Moved. Second. Second. Collins. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstained? This is unanimously. Now we move on to public presentations. Would any member of the public like to address this committee on any items that are not on the agenda. We'd like to please step forward and make your comments. We'll move on to

Oh, chair Jane, I think there is a member of the public. And as I see a lot of come on forward. As I see a lot of new faces in the audience, the consent period of time is when you have an item on the agenda, we will have an opportunity for members of the public to speak on the item. So if there's something that isn't on the agenda that you wanna speak about, we allow this time at the beginning of the meeting for someone to bring that up.

This is not on the agenda. Hi. Good evening, everybody. Nice to meet everybody here on Zoom and on face. For those of who may not know me, I'm Jerry Pono.

Nice to see some familiar faces. I'd bring to this council because I tried to handle this internally, but I don't have the university doesn't have a dedicated app team for from what I recall. I tried to include a fun updates like live from parking so that students doesn't block my driveway, nonsmoking campus so that way students don't I still see students smoking on campus. So I thought, you know, this would be fun updates, and I thought, you know, I could handle this internally, but IT bounce me to access because I thought they were a student. But I'm a resident.

I live next for those who don't know me, I live next to I live next to the hut. So I thought, you know, I could help help out the app, but it's I think the app could need better improvements because it's 2026, and there's no, like, nonsmoking or anything. It's a static app, and I'm it's not it's not I'm disappointed. It's more like I'm it's it's it's it's more like I'm I'm really just yeah. I'm gonna say I'm disappointed that I didn't have to handle this internally instead of handling it with you guys. And I'm not saying that you guys are bad. I'm just like, I'd rather handle it directly because Steve knows my process. I call him trash cans. Done. Deal.

That's it. That's my process. So, hopefully, with talking to you guys, I can have a dedicated team for the app. Thank you.

Thank you.

We don't generally comment on public presentations, but there is a My Santa Clara app for residents that don't know about it. It's for any issues with the city, trash cans left out, illegal dumping, potholes, etcetera. So if any member of the com public is interested in complaining about something to the city, you can do at the My Santa Clara. It's tracked there. Issues get resolved pretty quickly. Any other member of the public would like to comment? Yes. Move forward, please.

Good evening. My name is Jane. I live in the neighborhood. My desire is to work with the committee to help the students live according to the norms of the neighborhood. There's two things I have in mind.

One is the appearance of Helms. I walk my dog twice a day, so I see like, this I just snapped yesterday. There's, like, a stuffed couch, a beer pong table, a bunch of red cups. It's just sort of a drag to see that. I know there's an app, but I the other thought I have is I'd like to not be responsible for monitoring behavior.

So I I I'd maybe we can brainstorm ways to incentivize or encourage the students to do something that that all the rest of us do every day. I've lived in Santa Clara for twenty five years. I've never seen a nonstudent household look like this. And then the other issue is noise. Generally speaking, like this winter, our windows are closed at night, so I haven't heard a lot of parties.

But last fall, I thought it was kind of a drag during the sorority rush period that I happened to be because my work schedule, was at home. And for about a two week period for, I don't know, an hour or two a day on and off during this period, there was this loud, like, shouting call and response ongoing. And I just sort of thought, like, oh, if this was just a neighbor, that would be unacceptable for someone to have be making this amount of noise for two weeks, you know, over this long period of time. I didn't call the police. I also just sort of get tired of feeling like a nag.

You know?

Like, I

sort of feel like, oh, this isn't the way I want to live, but I also get tired of me feeling like it's my job. So those are two things that I would love to see, like, just figure out a way to make some positive change. Last thing I wanna say is when I was here at the last meeting, I found it really frustrating because I heard citizens come and, like, give heartfelt complaints about, like, parking and traffic and how it was impacting them. And I felt like these people from the city sort of said, but look. We're doing a really good job.

The number of fees has gone that we've had to apply has gone down. And I heard people from the university say, well, we really try we go around at the beginning of the year, and we tell people expectations. And we really wanna make our students feel like Santa Clara is their home. So we felt like conversation was not meeting the citizens. And so I guess that's another thing that I would love for us to like, I know you're just supposed to listen and not comment, but it's like, well, then what are we like, what is the process?

What are we doing here? How does this work? How do we actually make things Thank you for listening.

Thank you for your interest. We don't comment on items of public presentation because they're not agendized, but we do have reports of, from the police department and from the city from the city and from the university. So when those reports come up, you can comment at that time whether you think that items are being addressed.

Chair Jane, can I just address one thing? I did want people to know that we actually have an item on tonight's agenda to give updates on things that came up at the last meeting. So you may hear some updates in this meeting about information that was relayed. And so just stay tuned if you're interested. Hopefully, some of it is captured for, you know, showing you what's been followed up with.

Any other member of the public wish to speak? Alright. We can move on to our agenda items. The first item on our agenda is training on the Brown Act. These are meetings and procedures and the Public Records Act as well. Will you be giving the presentation?

Not because I'm not qualified to. We actually have our assistant city attorney, Jen Byers, giving it. But I did want people to understand because this is a newly formed committee with representation of people who aren't just our council members, which is different than how the NERC operated before. So because the city has actually appointed people to join this meeting, sorry, The Brown Act this is now a Brown Act body, and that means we actually have to follow those rules that the Brown Act stipulates. And so that's why, assistant city attorney Byers is gonna be giving this presentation.

It's really directed at the committee, but it's also for the public to be aware of how this committee the necessary things for how it should function. And, you'll hear a little bit about that, but this is really to edify the committee on how they need to be conducting themselves. So thank you very much, assistant city to city attorney Byers for giving us this presentation.

Thank you for the introduction, and I just wanna say thank you to everyone for having me tonight. My name is Jen Byers. I'm an assistant city attorney here with the city of Santa Clara. And I apologize in advance for those of you that I know have in-depth knowledge about the Brown Act and meeting procedures and protocol. This may be probably a little bit boring for you. And for those of you who aren't familiar with it, I'm hoping this will give you a better understanding of, one, what the rules are for your compliance with the Brown Act and how meetings will operate and also some things that you may not know about the Public Records Act and your responsibilities with respect to maintaining documents.

Alright.

So tonight, I'll talk about the Ralph m Brown Act, which is often referred to as the open meetings law. It deals with what your rules and regulations are with respect to how you communicate with each other on items that are within the purview of this committee. We'll talk about meeting procedures and protocol. That's the agenda tonight that you have in front of you, how you'll walk through that during each meeting, and what the rules are around making motions and voting on items. And last, we'll talk about the Public Records Act.

Public Records Act is, from a high level, a requirement that local agencies provide responsive records to anyone who makes a request to us and how that might impact you and records that you maintain with respect to your role on this committee. Alright. The Brown Act. First, when you joined this committee, you were probably you should have been provided with a copy of the Brown Act, which is a relatively long and detailed document. If you did not receive a copy, please reach out to our economic development director so that we can make sure that you get a copy of it.

I always find that it's important to understand what a role is and how it applies to us to first understand why it exists. So the Brown Act is there to ensure the that deliberations and of a local body are open to the public. So any conversations you have about an item that comes before you or something that may come before you is discussed in front of the public, all the members of our public who are here today, and are interested in what your thought process is and how your actions are. It's really about public trust and ensuring that there's meaningful conversations and ability for the public to also comment on those conversations. Okay.

So what does the Brown Act require? It requires that all meetings of a legislative body of a local agency be open and public. That's a lot of words that may not resonate with most of us here today. What is a local agency? That is the city of Santa Clara, and a legislative body is our city council, our planning commission, This committee is a legislative body.

And so, therefore, the Brown Act applies to all of you as committee members. Wanting to move this on my computer and forget that I have clicker. And this is where things can get a little bit confusing. What is a meeting? Tonight, we are here at a meeting.

It is something that's agendized, open to the public. There's a a date and a time, and every and we have a quorum, a majority of our body here today to take action on items that are on the agenda. A meeting can be more than that, though. A meeting can also be if four of four members of our body have a conversation with each other about items that are within the purview of this committee. And if that is not done during an open and public meeting, that would be a violation of the Brown Act.

Now it's really easy to see a situation where four of you get together for coffee, and you start talking about items about this committee and how that is very easily a Brown Act violation. There are other types of Brown Act violations that are less obvious. But before I go into those, wanna talk about things that may seem like a meeting but aren't actually meetings. First is attending a conference. It's okay for everyone on this committee to attend a conference together.

You just wanna be mindful about not discussing things that are within the purview of this committee. Attending a community meeting, attending a meeting of another body of the city, attending a council meeting. Again, if there are items that you wanna talk about, as long as it's not in the purview of this committee, that would be acceptable. But you could not talk about items with the majority of this body that are within the purview of your role here. Clearly am ahead of myself on my computer.

Alright. So this is the least obvious of what is a meeting, and it's called a serial meeting. So that is if, for example, one member of your body talks to another one, and then they share that information with a third member who then shares it with a fourth. It's kind of like the game of telephone, and that can add up to what's essentially a conversation about you understand what other people on the committee's position might be on a topic. Again, the purpose here is public transparency, having these conversations front of our public members, and so that's why a serial meeting would be considered a violation of the Brown Act.

I have a little there we go. So as I just explained, this a daisy chain meeting, you have member a talking to member b, talking to member c. And if you add up to four, which is a majority of this committee, you have a Brown Act violation. Another way to have a serial meeting is called the hub and spoke serial meeting, and that's where you have one member who then communicates with a and then communicates with b and then communicates with c. And all of a sudden, that one member has all this knowledge that three others, there's majority of you, and what their position might be on a topic.

So that would also be a violation of the Brown Act. I wanna take a pause there because I realize I've just thrown a lot of information at all of you, on a Brown Act violation. And I if you have questions or you want clarification on anything, now would be a great time to ask that. I'll also give time at the end of the presentation if you have question.

But if two members talk to each other and that's it, it doesn't go anywhere else from that, is that a Brown Act violation?

That would not be a Brown Act violation because it's not a majority of the body. There is a best practice of not having conversations because it is a slippery slope of sometimes, you know, you don't know if the person you're talking to is then gonna talk to someone else and then talk to someone else. As a practical matter, two members talking about a topic, it's not a violation, though.

I have a question Yes. For the presentation here. So thinking about my role on this committee as an Oakwood resident, I'm only one person. So there will be instances where I may seek input from, like, fellow residents. That is not in scope of the Brown Act. Right?

That's correct. So a Brown Act violation is just in your conversations with the majority of this committee. If you're having conversations with members of the public, since they are not a part of the committee, it wouldn't create an issue for a potential Brown Act violation.

K. Thank you.

I'm gonna give a little a little bit of context around this. I know you wanted to make this presentation really short, but but I wanted to present the motivation for the Brown Act. So it wasn't the governors that did it. It was a legislator, Ralph Brown, who I think in 1959 was concerned that there were places in the state where city officials would meet in smoky back rooms and decide on a housing project. And the public didn't have it would already be decided before the council meeting happens.

And so he wanted to avoid those kinds of decisions. And so that's why you can't speak to a majority of your fellow council members. But what you can do is you can create what's called a Brown Act subcommittee. So if I and two other council members really wanna push a housing development project, we can talk to each other about that project, but we can't talk to a fourth person because then we have a majority, and we will have already decided to vote on that. So you're free to talk to two other people on this committee as much as you want, and it does and that's on a particular topic.

So you can talk to me and Sean about something, and then you can talk to Colin and Albert about something else as long as it's not the same topic. So it just to avoid these smoky backroom decisions is why the Brown Act was created. And then when, like, the Silicon Valley Bike Coalition comes to me and says, Albert told me that he wants to put bike lanes on one zero one. You know? I'm like, don't tell me what another council member told told you because that could inadvertently create a brown act.

Because if I've already talked about bike lanes on 101 with two other people, then for this year, the coalition to tell me what Albert's thinking creates a brown brown act violation. So those you have to be careful about those kinds of things. So I always tell anyone who's lobbying me, don't tell me what any other council members tell you because I may have already spoken to two people.

Such a great point, councilmember Jane. I appreciate your insight and and experience, real life experience with dealing with the Brown Act. It's so important to keep in mind the intentions behind it, which is public transparency as you're navigating these conversations. And another easy way to potentially violate the Brown Act is through social media. And I know that it's so easy to go on and see someone post something on social media that might be a topic that's within the realm that would come forward for your committee to discuss and decide on.

But a comment on something like that would also create a Brown Act violation. And the reason for that is your comment can be seen by everyone. Now a comment isn't just putting something in text in response to it. It could also be a like. It could be a heart.

It could be a thumbs down. All of that evokes something that shows your intentions or your position on a particular topic. So if you see something on social media that relates to a topic that is something that could come before this committee, you should refrain from commenting or responding, liking. You are, however, free to share information on social media about this committee. Mind moving the next slide?

Thank you. So for our next topic on the Brown Act, it's how can you discuss these things? You're interested in something. You want to have a conversation about it. It's something that's within the purview of this committee.

How do we make these meetings open and public? Well, the first is all the hard work that happens behind the scenes, which is our staff coming in, preparing the agenda, publishing the agenda, publishing the appropriate notices. That way, members of the public are aware of what we're planning to have a conversation on tonight. They are aware of the topics and can show up to have conversations about them and hear what your position is on these items. Second is allowing the public the opportunity to provide input.

So earlier tonight, you heard anyone who had a comment on items that are not on the agenda. Those members of the public came up and spoke, and we couldn't have a conversation about those items because they're not agendized. And I'll get to the importance of discussing only items on the agenda later on in this presentation, but they are here and able to comment on items within the purview of this committee. And, actually, sorry. My third bullet point is no substantive nonagendized discussions.

And this is something that it can be very frustrating from the members of the public perspective to come up, give a comment on something, and not hear a response. But the rationale behind that and I guess I'll I'm giving this presentation to the committee, but I'll also speak to some of the points made by the public tonight. The whole purpose of the Brown Act is to ensure public transparency. And so if you said something tonight that maybe another member of the community is interested in but isn't here because they didn't see it on the agenda, this ensures that any conversation that happens with the committee is something that happens after the public has had notice that that conversation is going to happen. So you take a look at the agenda, you see a topic you're interested in, and you show up to that meeting because you wanna hear what the committee has to say, or you wanna come and give public comment and allow the committee to discuss those items.

The big takeaway that of all of that for the committee is it's really important to stick to the agenda as you're having conversations and meeting. So you may be wondering, what happens if I violate the Brown Act? What are the consequences for that? And I think the biggest and and most consequential consequence is that you lose the trust of the public. The you're here to help facilitate and the agenda and this committee, and the best way to do that is including the public in those conversations.

And full transparency and public trust are critical to making things happen for a city. So that's really, I think, in my opinion, the biggest consequence. There's also, in very extreme cases, you're intentionally going about violating the Brown Act personal liability, and the practical issue of it could invalidate an action. It may not be as big of an issue for this type of committee, but it could be a big problem if it's something that happens, for example, at a city council meeting. Alright.

So for the practice tips, don't gather and discuss committee business in groups outside of this formal setting. One way to accidentally and inadvertently create a Brown Act violation is to reply all to an email that everyone on this committee is copied on. So just be really mindful if you're replying to an email or you're sending an email out that it is not going to a majority of the commission. Be mindful when you're on social media. And when you're in a meeting, don't discuss items that are not on the agenda.

But if you're interested in a topic and you want it to be agendized, you can refer it to be added to an agenda in the future so you can have a conversation about it. I always say when in doubt, reach out to us. That's what we're here for to help you through. These can be confusing. And if you're concerned at all, it's always best just to reach out.

So that's the end of the Brown Act part of my presentation. I'll start the meeting procedures and protocols now. But before I start that, are there any other questions on the Brown Act that I could answer? Alright. Meeting procedures and protocol. So this is just practical in how do these meetings run. How do they operate? When there's an agenda item and there's action on that agenda item, how do we vote? What does it mean? You heard tonight for the meeting minutes that were decided.

There was a motion and a second. Your chair is facilitating that meeting and will help guide the meeting as it goes along. If there are questions and one good document to review if you have questions on the protocol and how to make a motion or modify a motion, you can look at the city council policy 55. This policy was adopted by the city council in June 2025, and it was in effect for a period of six months. So up until December 31, and now it's on a month to month basis.

It's still in effect, and it will help guide how these meetings are operated. Once the council takes some official action on that policy, there will be direction provided to all the boards and committees and commissions on how these will impact your meetings. Really, these come up mostly when things get complicated. Someone on your committee makes a motion, and another member of the committee wants to slightly modify that motion. How do they go about doing that?

What is the way to do that? You have a chair with plenty of experience who can help facilitate those conversations. But if you ever have questions on how do you go about doing that, you can read that policy. And Rosenberg's rules of order, it's a five page document that kind of talks through meeting protocol and decorum. Before I move on, I think the most important thing as you're taking actions is that it's clear.

Whenever I'm chairing a meeting or or sitting as an attorney advising on a meeting, I just wanna make sure that the action that's taken is clear so that the next day when the meeting minutes are being drafted, when people wanna understand, oh, what did they do? What was the action that the body took? Everyone can understand. This is what it was. There's no one who's gonna come in and say, oh, wait. I was confused. I thought they said something else. So we've already talked a little bit about a quorum. We talked about it in the context of a Brown Act quorum for your body. You have fours or you have seven members of your committee.

So a quorum is a majority of your committee. That would be four members. In the context of the Brown Act, it's a violation of the Brown Act for four of you to meet outside of a public meeting. In the context of actual meeting procedure and protocol, you can't have a meeting unless you have a quorum. So this body cannot discuss items, cannot take action on items unless there are a majority of you present.

It's why it's really important for everyone to make the time to attend these meetings, to be here to have the conversations about them so that action can be taken on items. The way that votes work on an on an item is you need four votes in favor of an item for it to pass. So let's say you have a meeting and only four members of the committee are present. You would need everyone that's present to vote in favor of an item in order for that item to pass. I'll take a pause there and just take a moment for any questions.

Either I'm really boring all of you or I'm super clear in my explanation. I hope it's the

latter. Alright.

This is a question that comes up often. You can't attend the meeting in person. You're out of town. You're sick at home. You have to take care of a family member, but you want to be here to attend the meeting.

What are your options to attend from a remote location? And under the Brown Act, there are two ways you can go about doing that. I would say, first, if you realize you cannot attend a meeting in person, the best thing to do is to reach out to your contact for your city contact so that they can figure out what are our options available to us. Under the traditional Brown Act rules, you could attend remote by putting your meeting location on the agenda. So you'd have to know before our agenda is published that you're not gonna attend in person, and you'd have to be willing to make sure that wherever you're attending the meeting from is open to the public.

That means that when that address is posted, anyone that the door is open, any member of the public that wants to attend the meeting from your location could choose to come to your location and attend the meeting from that space. Many people choose not to attend remote using this option because when they're at home because they don't want that invasion of privacy. But often when you're on vacation, if you're or you're out of town, you're at a hotel, they have conference rooms. They have spaces that you can meet in, and you are able to attend this. It's critical that you inform our staff as soon as possible if this is the route that you wanna use for attending remote because there are certain like, you have to publish the notice and the agenda at that location seventy two hours before the meeting or whenever the meeting notice needs to be published.

So there are certain steps that we need to take, our clerk's office and your staff liaisons can help with all of that. It just helps us if you let us know in with as much advanced notice as possible. Now let's say the day before the meeting, you are very sick or you need to take care of a family member. There are options for you to attend remote using what's called the just cause requirements or the just cause circumstances. And this is something that came about post COVID and, actually, very recently as of just January 1 this year has been slightly modified from what was in place during the co the post COVID era, I'll call it.

And so, again, if this is some if you're sick, you need to take care of family member, you have a question on if you can appear just cause from remote attendance, just reach out to your staff liaison so we can help you through what needs to happen in order for that for your attendance to work. There are certain they'll give you a script. They'll help you on what you'll need to announce and what you would need to say. I won't go through the details today because it's a lot, and you don't need to go through it unless you're interested in meeting using that for a particular meeting. So this is just the basic format of how a meeting will operate.

You have a chair who will help facilitate your meeting. The chair will read the agenda item. The chair will ask for a staff report or presentation. Members of the staff of the members can ask staff questions about that after the presentation, which I I'll give you an opportunity to for tonight. If there's an you'll invite public comments, then the public comment will publicly able to comment on the item.

And then you would discuss, make a motion in a second, and take action on that item. So I've talked a little bit about the chair and the vice and I have not discussed the vice chair, but vice chair is the person who would serve in the absence of the chair. The chair is the presiding officer of the meeting. They're responsible for the orderly conduct of the meeting and typically is the spokesperson for the committee if there are situations where you need spokesperson representation on an item. That is the end of the procedures and protocol part of my presentation.

Are there any questions? Alright. I'll go into the last item, and I'm gonna preface this with this shouldn't scare you, because I think it can come off as a little bit scary, and it shouldn't it shouldn't be. And if you have questions or concerns, happy to answer any questions. It's called the Public Records Act.

And, again, this is goes to public transparency and ensuring that if members of the public are interested in items, in emails, in correspondence, in documents, in records, that they have an opportunity to obtain those. So as a legislative body of the city, the work that this committee does is subject to Public Records Act. First, it's important first, it's important to understand what is a public record. So the law broadly defines a public record as any writing containing any information related to the conduct of the public's business prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency regardless of its physical form or characteristics. That's an email that you send to a staff member about a topic related to this committee.

That's an email that you send to another committee member related to a topic in the purview of this committee. It could be a voice mail. It could be a text message. These are all various records, probably the most common that will come up for for all of you. And what's important to understand is when you create a record, you also have to retain that record for a specified period of time.

If someone makes a public records request for something that you may have a record for, what will happen is our staff will reach out to you and and inform you, we received a public records act request seeking all emails related to discussions about dumpsters at the university. If you have any of those emails, you need to produce them to our staff so that we can prepare them and produce them as part of the response to the public records request. I have some practice tips on this one. And before I go into those, I just wanna take a moment to answer any questions if you have them about the Public Records Act. Councilmember Jane or chair Jane?

Will committee members be getting city email addresses?

I believe email addresses. Yes. We can follow-up on that, but I thought you were gonna say device Citi devices on

that. Yes.

So the recommendation is usually that

you you have

to produce all your records. If you're using a Citi email account, the Citi will then scrub they'll go through your email to look for responsive records. But if you're using a personal email account, you need to do that yourself to respond to any record requests. You can use either or both as long as you're responding to the record requests. It's generally easier to respond to public records act requests if you're using a city issued email account.

Fairly common. Oh, K.

This is fairly common? Does this come up pretty often where people make public records requests? Or

It is very common. We receive I don't even wanna try and guess, but many public records act requests. I wanna say even

weekly, daily. Yeah. It is it is pretty common. You will notice it for more controversial topics. I would say there are also committees I've been part of where there hasn't been a single public records act request, so I

don't want you to all

think that you're gonna get slammed with public records act requests. I think that this is good because anyone could, at any point, ask for one. And so we have to learn how to handle them and the really good organizational tips we have around it. But I don't want you to also think that this is going to be something that you're inundated with in your life, but you have to be prepared if it's requested.

That's absolutely correct. And at you know, ultimately, you're probably not going to have significant number of records related to this committee. And the best way, you know, as I go through my practice tips, you know, the best way to organize them, if you don't have a Citi e at first is if you have Citi email, only use your Citi email for Citi business. That's the easiest way to track, monitor, retain the records for the period of time that you need to retain them. If you don't get a Citi email address, one option is just to create a subfolder in your personal email that is,

you know,

neighborhood university relations committee emails. And anytime you have an email related to this committee, you just drop it into that folder. And that way, it's all in one place, and it's easy to locate. So practice tips. Be prepared to respond.

As it was mentioned, it's not it may not be something that's super common for this committee. They are fairly routine, so our city staff are extremely experienced in preparing the records, packaging them, reviewing them. We do review them to redact confidential information. If you have an email from a member of the public about the committee and it has their phone number and address, we would redact those because we wanna protect their personal information and ensure the public's not getting their their physical address and phone number. So we do have practices in place to ensure that that type of information isn't produced.

There are also certain records that, like, attorney client privilege communications. Those would wouldn't be produced. Confidential communications at that have proprietary information in them. Those would not be produced. But internally, we we facilitate that review, and we categorize all the documents to, one, ensure that they're responsive to the request because we don't wanna inundate a requester with a bunch of documents that may not be responsive, and to ensure that anything that needs to be redacted or withheld for confidentiality reasons is withheld and redacted.

Communicate carefully. And this is just PRA aside. Anything you put in writing could end up in front of a judge, could end up in front of your neighbor, could end up in front of your community. You wouldn't wanna put anything in writing that you wouldn't want any other person in the world to read, a judge to read, your grandma to read, your mom to read. These being professional, being mindful of what you put in writing is is very important.

And writing also includes Teams messages. So if you have, like, a Teams account and you're communicating, that's also a writing. Document your search. So if for some reason you don't have a city email address and we're not doing the searches for you, document that you if we sent out a request, what you've done, what search terms did you use to ensure that you checked all your records. And if this comes up for you, I know this won't be a regular thing, and you have questions or concerns about how to search your email, ask the staff liaison.

They'll help you figure out what are the appropriate search terms to use to check for emails that might be responsive or records that might be responsive. It's best not to use private accounts, but that's not always a realistic goal because you may not have a city email address. And some committees do, some don't. You'll find out, I think, soon if if you're able to get Citi email accounts. You have questions about this or you're interested in just reading more, there's a document that's called the People's Business, a guide to the California Public Records Act, and it is a you're interested, an interesting read on the Public Records Act and and how it applies.

I am happy to provide you with a copy of it if you are interested. Reach out. That is the end of my presentation, so I'll give everyone the opportunity to ask any last minute questions.

Any member questions? Yes.

Will we get the deck afterwards?

Yes. It will be published online.

Thank you.

Okay. We'll go to the public now. Any member of the public wish to speak on this item? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to agenda item three, updates from the 10/20/2025 NERC meeting.

Thank you, chair Jane. And, for members of the committee and for our audience, I want to introduce myself. I'm Rina Brio. I'm the city's director of economic development and sustainability. I also have on my team Kranti Kapoor, who's a management analyst who supports me and the work of economic development and sustainability as well as this committee. We will be, in many ways, the main point of contact for people who are on the committee. I will serve as our liaison to the committee. So if you have questions, please come to me directly. And we're gonna talk a little bit about communication tools for people in the public as well. So this item and I'm sorry.

I know it's coming up. This item is really at the last meeting on October 20, there were a number of questions that came up from committee members, members of the public. And at the meeting, we weren't able to address some of them. Some of them we did address, and that's not what this presentation is for. This presentation is really for the things that we had to go back, research, and provide some information on. So and Kranti is getting this here.

Yep. Thank you. Can I take the Sure?

You know how we do we advance it this way? Oh, I got it.

I figured it.

Thank you. Okay. Was that maybe I didn't fall. Maybe I didn't figure it.

Thank you. Thank you.

Could you do the next one? Oh, there you go.

Oh, I did. Okay. Alright. I don't know why.

Yes. I want the email. Okay. So at the last meeting, there were some questions about, hey. Can we set up an email address for NERC?

There were also questions about, can we improve the NERC website? So just want people to know the NERC website is a work in progress. We're making a lot of updates. Not a lot of information to be shared at the time at this moment about the website itself, but it is a good resource for finding out about old the old meetings, what was discussed, presentations that were up, as well as a resource for where you can go to find out information that we commonly talk about here, like what are common code enforcement citations, for instance. But an email, address was established, just recently for the NERC, and I'm going to direct you specifically to our web page, which gives you a link.

And the reason why I'm not giving you the email address right now is because the way that this email has been set up to date is that it actually comes directly to staff. It comes to myself and to. And we actually are able to forward those inquiries on so they can maybe be addressed. As you know, the cadence of this meeting actually occurs rather infrequently. So if it's like a topic that comes to NERC but maybe requires a shorter term response, we can flag it, and we can send it on to the appropriate people internally.

However, our goal is to actually have the members of the committee receive the communication. That is not how it's currently set up. So once the email address is set up in that manner, I will actually share the email address with everyone so that they and I the reason why I'm not sending sending sharing it right now is because I don't want you to remember an old email address in case it needs to be modified. I don't wanna get into all the technical back end terms with our IT on that, but there are some there's a possibility that the email we actually created will be changed, the address itself. So we will share that email address.

But if you go right now to our website, you can actually click on the, hey. Contact the committee, and you we will get email communications direct to us, which will be helpful. We still highly recommend the best way if you are talking about something that needs immediate attention to send it to our 311 app. That app actually has a very triage system where information and requests go directly to those departments. For instance, if it's about trash overflow, it's gonna go to the right department.

If it's about potentially a police issue, which is nonemergency, it'll go to the police department. So that's how the app functions for all things related to the city, and that's still the best way if you're if you're wanting to provide information that is, like, that needs addressing, obviously, isn't urgent or an emergency, but needs addressing in the near term. This email address would be good so that we as a committee know the issues that you're dealing with or trying to address. And once we add those committee members on, they'll be able to see those requests and communications. Okay.

So a topic that came up, and this was an extensive topic related to traffic and pedestrian safety. So I'm gonna go through the various different slides in ways that, questions were posed related to traffic and pedestrian safety, Specifically, our public works traffic division actually answered all these questions for me, and so I can give this update on their behalf. So a question was posed about whether or not the city has reviewed the Benton Street and Alviso Street intersection because it's been shared in the past as an area that was needing safety upgrades. So what Public Works traffic division let me know is that they have reviewed this intersection, and they do recommend some pedestrian safety enhancements. It's actually, incorporating a crosswalk.

So Public Works is gonna collaborate directly with Santa Clara University, on this, just making sure that we get their input. This is also something that may need a funding contribution from Santa Clara University. They have, contributed to some improvements that are in the area. So that is something just wanting folks to know that is being addressed right now. And, you know, as that design advances, we can provide updates on it.

But wanted you to be aware of the Benton And Alviso Street Intersection and a potential future crosswalk to occur there. Another question that was posed was regarding the review of Poplar Street and Alviso Street Intersection, specifically including the consideration of a four way stop, speed bumps due to ongoing concerns about speeding. And so public works traffic confirmed that they're in the process of collecting traffic data and an evaluation. So public works does believe that concerns that were raised today or at the last meeting were related to Poplar Street. However, they would, you know, appreciate any additional clarifications if there were speeding concerns also related to Alviso Street.

So I have, some contact information that I'll share in a couple slides. If there is someone who's like, hey. You know, I raised that issue or I have some insight on that. If you can connect directly with public works, they would appreciate any more insight. But what they're really looking at right now is Poplar Street on those topics. A question was also really relayed, I should say.

Move here.

To this one.

This is about red curve painting. Right? And I guess there was a a request. You know, can we have some expanded red curve painting with the intent of trying to expand visibility so that people can see ongoing traffic, you know, because, obviously, when cars are parked near the curb, that prevents visibility. So there is a statewide daylighting law now.

It's called AB four one three, and it's actually applicable everywhere, that have adjacency to really intersections, crosswalks. And the city has already begun implementing this law that took effect, and all those areas near Santa Clara University have red curbs that are in compliance with AB four one three, with areas that have marked crosswalks and higher pedestrian activity. However, regarding Alviso Street in particular, they recognize that there is a lot of red curb that exists on Alviso Street already that's in compliance with AB four one three. However, Elviso is really a long corridor. And if there's any insight from the community about particular segments of concern, they would once again appreciate that feedback.

The email address that I'm gonna relay in a couple slides, that's who you should share any unique feedback with. And, on that, oh, it is really interesting to note that, you know, AB four one three statewide is in effect whether or not there is a red curve there. So even if it's not painted red and you think that somebody is parking too close to what they should be doing in relationship to AB four one three, the city will absolutely enforce that. So we do have the phone number here for PD Communications Center that you would give a call to and report a real time violation. So once again, you know, the city has done what we think is the right job to paint those red curbs.

This is true for really any jurisdiction in the state of California, But I can tell you the city of Santa Clara is enforcing it. So you just please give us a phone call, and they will go out and check and, make any enforcement or citations if that is the case. So there was a broad comment. And once again, just like systematically going through the comments, you know, have existing crosswalks been evaluated for safety improvements in the neighborhood? So we we talked about Benton and Alviso and the work that Public Works traffic division is doing on that.

Once again, Public Works kind of responded to that question like, hey. If somebody has something more specific than that, please let us know, which leads me to the next slide, which is if you do have some additional information to share on any of the things that I raised, please send an email to Amjal Poyagar, who is our senior civil engineer in the traffic division. And he's working on, getting some more information. But if you have additional insight, he's really the right person to direct that to. I think that would be better coming from you.

You know, we are playing a little bit of telephone tag if you give me some information, so I'd rather you relay that directly to public works traffic. And you can do that, you know, at any point, really. And as information advances on some of these improvements, we will bring them back to the committee. So, another topic couple more topics came up related to police and Santa Clara University. I'm just gonna raise those questions at a high level because, actually, police in Santa Clara University are gonna give their own presentations, and they're going to address these questions in in their presentations.

And that's gonna be the next item. So how does the police department equip officers to handle the public complaints? How does the police department enforce parking with specific areas of concern like Alviso, Benton, Fremont, Harrison, and neighborhood streets adjacent to SCU? How does Santa Clara University approach off campus housing and handle conduct by students who live off campus? And as I mentioned, those are going to be addressed really in our next item. So that concludes the staff report, chair. Happy for any questions from the committee.

Is any member of this Jennifer? Yeah.

Thank you. Just one on the a b four one three. Definitely very helpful information. Are the students aware of this? Is that provided through the orientation for, you know, any kind?

I can ask Santa Clara University to respond

to that. But what I

would tell you is that when this law took effect, there was community information that was shared. And I don't think that the specifics have probably been integrated for SCU to communicate, but, I do have to say, I know that there is a fair amount of commune and this is a statewide law. So, really, the communication was coming out from the police department. This is new. We will be enforcing it. So if you think that that's something that would better equip SCU, I'm sure they can, you know, take that under advisement or whatnot.

If okay. Yeah. Hold on. Okay. If

we had a couple other crosswalks that we wanted to hopefully have the city look into, just go ahead and email the email provider.

Yeah. I think emailing Jaw would be good. I would ask that for anything that we didn't talk about in this committee, if you could please include me. I'm not tracking those things. And we're gonna talk about this in a little bit. The committee obviously is functioning to provide collaboration, problem solving. The committee doesn't actually direct staff work or provide new resources to handle things. So we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. But certainly related to this, actually, our public works division was working on all these items. So when they were raised as questions, it wasn't like, hey.

This is a new body of work. This was, hey. We're already working on it. Would love more information. So just to give a little bit of context about how those issues were addressed. But if you were like, hey, you know, I have this new intersection over here, they might take a look at it, but it may not be something that's immediately addressed.

Yeah. Sure. Jesus.

We've been working actively with Public Works for a while on most of these intersections. They've been fantastic. And, yeah, but they've identified concerns we've raised. In some cases, they've done a study and said it doesn't warrant something. In other cases, they validated it, and they've added red curbs to at least five intersections that I know of, and we're still in contact with them. So

Yes, Steve.

As as far as student education, we do focus on parking generally. So we'll we'll talk about respecting the neighborhood, making sure they're not parking on the grass. But as far as that specific law, that is the first time hearing of it. And so it's one of those things we can work to include in the future.

Yeah. Regarding the daylighting law, it's it's hard to judge what 20 feet is from the intersection because where does the intersection start and all of that? Red red paint is the most obvious measure of where the curb is. Do you know what are I mean, it's category exempt from CEQA, so it's, you know, easy to do if we wanna do it. Do you know what the budget is for doing that or for like, the plan is? How many curbs are we gonna do per year or anything like that?

I I do not have that information. I can ask public works if they have it for the next meeting. If this is something the committee is really interested in, you can put it on your work plan. We could ask public works to come in, give a little presentation, and more education on this in the future. But if it was a simple question like, hey. Do you have a budget? How many are you gonna do? That's something I can easily follow on.

Okay. Thank you. Any other okay. We'll go to the public now. Any member of the public wish to speak on this? Come forward.

Oh, and just because we're a new committee, I just want everyone to know when we have public comment, and this is just practice, and it's applicable to everyone, there is two minutes. It wasn't a problem before, but I just want you to know I'm gonna time everyone so that we just have that what is that? It would be called equity equality for everyone. Oh, yes. And if you can say your name, that would be helpful.

My name is Jane DeRosa. So I

Is the microphone on there? Is the green light on on your microphone or the red light?

Green light here? I so just for clarification, the on Alviso, there exists already red curbs. Is that what you're saying? Bit like the law is already in compliance is what I heard, I believe.

As public works relate it to me, they believe they have already installed the red curb and Alviso in compliance. But if anyone feels that that is not the case in their areas or then they would be happy to follow-up.

Me?

Hi. My name is Mark Kelsey, and I do think pedestrian safety is a very important issue for this kid in many to consider. And I, perhaps Jane and I, will need to personally invite public works to walk the street with us. There are no red curbs, And there have been no visible enforcement of individuals parking right at the corner at Elviso and Poplar, at Benton And Elviso, at Bellamy And Alviso, at Market And Alviso. It's and to be honest, the same the answer I heard about Benton And Alviso tonight was the same answer we heard two years ago.

So I would urge the committee to take this item very seriously, and we need more urgent action by public works.

Okay. Yes. Come forward. Yes. Go ahead. I was just saying somebody could somebody could put this on my Santa Clara app. Right?

Yes. They could. They could. They could also not the red curb paint. Red curb paint should go on My Santa Clara app. But if you actually think someone is parking even without the red curb paint, you can call. I did wanna just use the opportunity, Mark, as well. I didn't go into all the specifics.

Sorry. Sorry.

Sorry about that. I obviously didn't stop the timer. The I didn't go into the specifics. If we want public works to do that, they have advanced design work on the crosswalk, so there is actually work that's happening. That's not my specialty of sharing that information, but I did want people to understand that even if it was talked about, there have been things that are have been moving forward from design to actually implementation.

I just wanna thank the committee for this new new new thing. Maybe maybe in the future, the students can finally stop parking near the Law Building because that's another problem area that they they they they like to park over there on the brown about at the edge of the Franklin Street. So maybe next year, they'll stop finally doing that.

So I wanna thank you guys for that. Oh, and could you just tell us your name?

I'm I'm I'm Jared again. Jared Bono. Great. Thank you.

Okay. Any other member of the public? Anyone online?

We do have a couple hands online. So David iPad. David's iPad, if you would like to speak, you are unmuted, so you

can do that.

Sure. Thank you. David Curtis. First of all, wanna thank you guys for talking about the Alviso and Benton. I live in Lafayette and Benton. As Mark Kelsey said, I've been I I and other neighbors have been trying to do this for over seven years, so I'm very interested in this. I'm glad I'm hearing it again, but I think Mark said that two years ago, we are promised. So I I will follow-up with Public Works and the email that you gave because I wanna see if it's gonna be just a crosswalk, if it's gonna have the yellow lights, so it makes it much safer because I've I've seen too many close calls at that intersection. So I did wanna thank everybody. So thank you for bringing that up, and I I look forward to seeing the crosswalk there. Thank you.

IPhone two. If you'd like to speak, you are unmuted, and you have your hand up. Oh, and please let us know your name. Member of the public online with an iPhone. If you would like to speak, you have your hand raised. We are have unmuted you so you can speak. Okay. We're gonna move on to CP. CP, if you would like to speak. You have your you're unmuted.

No. The system's working. K.

Okay.

CP. I'm gonna try CP again because they kinda put their hand up recently. I feel like they def can can they? Can they speak? Okay. CP, if you'd like to say anything.

K. Can we go back to iPhone then?

IPhone? They are unmuted. They can speak.

Just gonna move on to the next agenda item then. Oh, yes, Albert.

So as far as I know that our our staff and our our PD are always looking out for, you know, code violations or things that they can address. But, definitely, the public is also there to help with that, and especially if you see problem areas around the curves where where the sunlight and, like so then sunlight and lock comes in is is important for us to to be aware of that. So please let us know through that app. I know that it's been much more impactful in places like San Francisco where, you know, people it's just much more dense as far as the parking. So maybe, you know, as we move forward with with our university partners to make sure that if there are issues with parking or unavailability unavailability of parking, we definitely address some of these things, make sure that, you know, our students only are parking in the right locations, but have the resources or or, you know, parking areas that that they that they desire and they need.

Anyone else? Okay. We'll move on to the next item, which is updates from community development department, Santa Clara University, and the police department.

Hi. Good evening, everyone. I'm Leslie Xavier, and I'm the planning manager with our planning division here in the community development department. And our code enforcement team goes out and enforces within the university area. And we do that along with our environmental programs team, so our our trash folks.

And we focus community development focuses on discarded materials, appliances, beer pong tables, couches, while environmental programs addresses overflowing dumpsters, uncontained trash, and bins left out on the street. So since the last NERC meeting in October 2025, we've had 51 violation notices. And of those 51, all of them were remediated within the given time frame, and only one received a citation. And environmental programs had 11 violation notices, and no citations were issued. For the violations for community development, most of the items were for discarded furniture, mattresses, beer pong tables, and trash and litter as well as parking on landscaping.

That is all I have to report.

Yeah. I think we have next is it police? I think we have police next, so we're gonna turn it over to sergeant Otico in one second. And committee members, just to keep the flow, we have three presentations under this item. So if you have questions, if you can make a note of it, we can come back to the the particular individual that gave that presentation.

So you heard from planning. You'll hear from PD, and then you're gonna hear from Santa Clara University. And after we answer those questions from our groups here, that will be open to the public to comment on all these three presentations for this particular item.

Hi. Good evening. My name is RJ Otico. I'm a sergeant with the Santa Clara Police Department, and I oversee the community response team. In reflecting back at the previous NERC meeting in October, I wanted to really just give a broad overarching view of what the police department does and how we execute on that, and that's gonna start with our mission statement.

This pretty much drives our tasks, our objectives, and I'm just gonna read it out loud. The mission of the Santa Clara Police Department is to always provide quality police service to the public. Working together and in partnership with the community, we will identify and resolve problems utilizing all available resources. We will perform this service professionally and with integrity. So what is the community response team?

So the NERC is just one of the many hats that I wear. It's a very important, hat that I wear, but it's also important to share with you all that in addition to, its work with the NERC, the community response team manages, a range of responsibilities, including nuisance and quality of life issues, mental, mental health and crisis response, vice. Those are your, like, prostitution, illegal gaming, would be traditionally, considered as victimless crimes. However, it's the conduct is prohibited by law. So, like, vice vice crimes, criminal abatements, and, homelessness.

So the the team also oversees the administration of two grants, which is the alcoholic beverage control grant, and we have a tobacco grant. In the photo there is depicted as as the, the staff members. So they're all full time. We have one, supervisor, which is myself. And I'm joined here tonight by one of four officers.

In the audience, I have officer Richard Belushi, who is new to our unit. We also have, a mental health clinician help us assist with calls of mental health crisis and then one community service officer that helps us deal with the a lot of municode violations and vice operations. So for the NERC, this image highlights the designated area of focus associated to, what we're gonna be talking about tonight. It's the area highlighted, obviously, in, in purple. In reflecting on the previous NERC meeting, essentially, there were several key concerns raised by the community members, including parking violations, traffic congestion, noise complaints, and incidents of public drinking.

Residents also expressed interest in understanding the proper channels of reporting these issues, and they sought clarity on enforcement actions and measures being taken to address them. My intent tonight is to sort of shed some light on on these issues and what is being done. The parking and traffic enforcement is, actually quite simple for us, whereas the noise complaints and other things are a little bit more nuanced. So, really, there are, two primary enforcement approaches when it comes to the parking and traffic violations that, we're talking about. Reactive excuse me.

Proactive and reactive. So the proactive enforcement involves trained staff. Typically, it's gonna be a community service officer actively patrolling areas to identify violations and take enforcement action, which include issuing citations, of posting seventy two hour abatement notices. So these are for vehicles that are abandoned. We see a lot of that with RVs who remain in one spot for more than seventy two hours, and then towing vehicles when legally authorized to do so.

Reactive enforcement occurs when the community member, complain, and it's typically received through our dispatch, and that will prompt, staff to respond. They'll create a CAD event, which is in our CAD standing, means computer assisted dispatch. They'll actually create an event, list the address or location where that, complaint is is at, and then, an officer or CSO is sent out to assess the situation and take appropriate enforcement, measures as warranted. So what does that mean for you all? If you see that car stopped and parked in the red zone, if you see it parked blocking your driveway, if you see it parked in front of a fire hydrant, that is an immediate call to our nonemergency line.

The number is listed there, and that starts that process. They would generate a cat event. Someone will get sent out. And, typically, we are gonna be complaint driven. We are not gonna be proactive if we have somebody who has actually called in and generated a complaint.

Now we have CSOs that are constantly patrolling not only the SCU footprint in the previous map that I showed, but they they go all throughout the city. So I realized that some of you you all, had mentioned sort of a lack of enforcement in the in the in the area of around the university. Just for perspective, as I've mentioned, CRT also oversees a lot of homelessness issues, and we are getting really inundated with RVs throughout the city, parking, for extended periods of time, camping inside their RVs, and a lot of the CSOs have really been, addressing those complaints. And I can say that they have due to that, perhaps that could be a reason why there's less proactivity in the university area. However, if you call in to make that complaint, again, that starts that process where they will certainly be dispatched, and that event remains in our CAD system unless until a CSO or officer physically goes out there and and gives it a proper disposition.

So whether it's a warning issued, citation issued, but that would be your best way to address parking and and traffic enforcement around the university. Okay. The noise complaints, those are a little bit more nuanced. Officers are using a progressive enforcement model. So officers emphasized education and relationship building as the first step in promoting community safety and compliance.

By participating in a variety of outreach events and neighborhood engagements, officers proactively connect with students, residents, and community members to build trust and encourage open communication. These efforts include some that are listed up there, which are the OCHO, which is the off campus housing orientation, which officer Baluchin just completed last week. He did three days of, presentations, at Santa Clara University. We participate in the walkabouts, new student move in, where we do outreach, house meetings with the tenants and property management, and, as well as, like, follow-up meetings, ongoing communications with all the various stakeholders. And the purpose of these interactions is to ensure that the community members understand, like, shared expectations, the applicable laws, and then also the the role of the police department as far as enforcing enforcement.

We we we educate them again on the violations, what, the potential consequences would be financially to them. And then, as I was taking notes, I think one thing that should get woven into, is, again, the new daylighting law, a b four one three. So we will include that as part of one of the things that bullet points will cover when we have these meetings. So, again, we start by education, rapport building, building a great relationship with the students, and then teaching them how to be good neighbors. And we're we're not just there to be the bad guys and, you know, just come in and and do enforcement and drop the hammer on them.

What I have listed there is just the common violations that we see as it applies to noise complaints. Those are the two most common, and it's it's disturbing the peace, which is, between the hours of 10PM and 7AM. These are your loud parties, your loud music, and then the amplified sound. This is your DJs, your speakers that are causing a lot of complaints due to the amplified noise. So I just added this slide in.

This is an example of how we're working with the students. So a at a lot of the events, we're having conversations with these students to educate them on all these various aspects of being a community member, being part of this community, and what they can expect from the police as a response should they generate a a complaint. We in addition to that, we're also teaching them just general safety, right, to look out for prowlers, for nefarious activities, drug dangers, just addressing bad actors. So we did have some concern about students. For example, they don't wanna call when someone at a party who's underage is is drunk, because they don't wanna get in trouble.

Right? We educate them on, you know, if you call us, right, we will not punish you for hosting a party where someone was underage, where you did the right thing to call us because it would sort of be counterintuitive. Right? So but they need to make that call to us. So all the little nuances of just what to expect, where we would hold them accountable, and where there's, like, some leeway, right, if they are choosing to do the right thing in the example that I gave.

There's also other events. We did the first responders night where we, we we just attended one of the baseball games where we can interact with the students, and this is open to not just the community response team, but department wide. A lot of our police officers attended, brought their families, and that's just another way that we can meet with students and engage in dialogue, build trust, build rapport, etcetera. And we are firm, but we are fair. Like, although we have great relationships with some of these students, ultimately, if there is a violation, like, we we do hold them accountable, which I'll go into.

But this is a typical sort of cookie cutter enforcement example. Community member makes a complaint to dispatch. Dispatch sends officers to the location to investigate. Officers arrives on scene, will assess the situation, and determine whether a violation has occurred. If there's no violation, officers provide additional education, and issue a warning as they deem appropriate. And we see this. We see sometimes we get a complaint, very limited information. Officers get there. They what what they were given was, loud music and, like, 10 people throwing a party. They get there, and it's just two people standing on the porch, and they're having conversation.

So that would be an example. Now if a violation is confirmed, the officers issue is what we refer to as a first response, and then the officer completes a police report documenting the incident. And that report is then forwarded to the community response team and is reviewed by officer Volusian here, who does his review, his analysis, and, appropriate follow-up on enforcement action is taken. This could mean issuing a citation, conducting a house meeting. It could mean if our data shows we've been out there several times and we've already issued citations, like, worst case scenario is a blue tag, which I'll go into, which is essentially we've deemed them to be a nuisance property, and we start leveraging heavier fines.

But what is a first response? So as I mentioned, if an officer deems that there is a violation, he issues a first response, and he writes a report. So although kinda small there off to the right, that's a sample report of what an officer writes. Okay? And then officer Belushi receives that at his desk, and he goes through his analysis.

So he will evaluate the totality of the circumstances to determine the most appropriate enforcement action. Some of the factors that will be considered includes the time of day, the number of individuals involved, the distance and impact of the amplified sound, the presence of alcohol and and minors, the level, of cooperation from the tenants or students or whoever it is, right, and how many times we've been out there, so the frequency of prior police responses during the school year. So we take all of that into account, and we make, a determination whether or not it merits a citation. Now after we've cited a house or property, several times and the problem still persists, that property, is going to then receive a blue tag. So when a property is designated as blue tagged, that is essentially, it's been deemed a nuisance property.

Under California law, a nuisance encompasses any condition or activity that interferes with an individual's enjoyment of life or property or poses a risk to the health, safety, or welfare of the community. Public nuisances such as loud parties, illegal gatherings, ongoing criminal activity, unsafe property conditions that affect the entire neighborhood. Enforcement may be pursued through civil or criminal remedies under California penal code three seventy two. And in addition to our standard fines that we've been issuing them, they will be subject to an an added $1,000 penalty every time the police have to come out again. So this is ultimately our like, one of our very heavy, leverages against them.

Right? Because once they get blue tagged, the financial penalties, are much greater and more substantial, which tend to we we we tend to not have so many blue tagged homes because, there are many steps before we get there. Again, we're issuing citations. We're having house meetings with them. If they're on the verge of getting blue tagged, we meet with not only the tenants, We bring in the property manager.

We bring in the property owner, perhaps maybe somebody from the Santa Clara University, and we explain the concerns where we're at, and we really have a sit down talk to with them. So anybody receiving a blue tag, it should come as no surprise. Right? And then if they get there, that, it should be expected, from them. And we've had a lot of interventions prior to getting there.

On the note of blue tags, So this is historical data, and it goes all the way back to 2019, and it shows how many blue tags we've issued for the semester year. And currently, we are at zero blue tags. However, in looking through prior to this meeting, some of the, events that happened over the weekend, perhaps, there might be one or two properties that might be on the verge of blue tag being blue tagged. This is some historical statistics on where we stand today, and we're actually doing much better than we have in the past three years. So these are our, special response notices.

So from 09/01/2025 to, the most recent stats I was able to get prior to this meeting was, on the twenty fifth, we've had 67 special response notices, whereas the same time frame a year ago, last year, we had 88, and then the year prior, we had 77. So it is trending downwards. The administrative citations is also trending downward. To date, we have 30, whereas last year, same time frame, we had 50. And then the year prior, we had 46, so also trending downward.

And this is sort of just a snapshot on we take the number of citations. Or the we the the total number of fines issued divided by the number of citations to kinda get an average of how much, the penalty is per citation. And based on the current math, we're averaging about $395 per citation. And, again, it should be noted. The goal here is not to produce money.

We don't produce money. It's just ultimately to achieve a behavior change, right, and then bring peace to the neighborhood and that accountability piece. I mentioned earlier, CRT does have, two grants that we oversee, and administer. And I've sort of woven this into the NERC and all the issues related, to what we're seeing in the university. So one grant is the ABC, grant.

So ABC is the alcoholic beverage control. It's a state agency. We have a grant with them that has certain objectives, and some of those objectives include minor decoy operations. This is when we send in, a minor to the retailer alcoholic retailers, throughout the city, and they try and purchase alcohol. If the clerk sells alcohol to a minor, minor in this case, meaning less than 21 years old, the law requires that you be 21 and over to purchase. Right? So less than 21 years old, we will issue a citation to that clerk. And we've done that around the university area, so that they're not they're make we're making sure they're checking IDs for those who look underage. They should be checking IDs regardless of everyone. Right?

But that's just one way to make sure they're not selling alcohol to underage youth. The other way is a shoulder tap. So that's just when we take that same minor and then they stand outside a liquor store, for example. And then as random people walk up, they ask them to purchase some alcohol, and they make it over. Like, hey. I I I lost my fake ID. I'm not 21. Can you buy me alcohol? And if that patron, that random person furnishes them alcohol, we will arrest for that as well. So that would discourage, like, again, underage consumption of alcohol.

And then we do general enforcement. And, officer Baluchin, in fact, just did a general enforcement last Friday around the university area. And, I believe he contacted 16 people, who he thought was had was consuming alcohol, but in he did some education with them. And, ultimately, he cited four for drinking alcohol in public. And, again, all of that was in the SCU footprint of the map that I've I've showed.

And then we have team two hundred. So this is staff dedicated specifically to do enforcement on, the SCU footprint. K? So we have a team two hundred deployed. Typically, we're gonna see, that I push that out Thursdays through Saturdays, which is where we see the most activity.

So, and we can adjust it based on our data. If we're starting to see that Wednesdays is now the party night, we can we can post staff for team two hundred. And, again, that's dedicated specifically for the SCU area. And one the last thing I wanted to address was was this, our enforcement. So officers enforce the law objectively and professionally without bias or favoritism.

Officers treat all individuals with respect and make decisions based on facts, evidence, and established laws, not personal opinions, relationships, or external pressures. Enforcement actions are applied uniformly, ensuring similar situations are handled in similar ways. As I mentioned, sort of our workflow, how everything is kind of getting funneled through officer Baluchin, There is a reason for that. We have several officers responding to the university, and we have different shifts. We have different officers.

We have discretion. Officer a might, treat the same party different than officer b, and both officers lack context on how many times we've been out there. Have they have we engaged with them? Have we had a house meeting with them? They don't know whether or not they've already been issued a citation.

So the mechanism for which for us to overcome that is to have them document violations and then that be sent to officer Boulushin, and he will be able to see the totality of that situation. And you can make the best take the most appropriate action based on the totality of the circumstances, whereas, you know, we might get some more variance if we have different officers responding to the address with and and also, you know, different thresholds of what they deem to be a violation or not. So, ultimately, we do hold the students accountable. I think the trends are showing that our actions have been effective. We're seeing, less violations, than we did the previous years.

So far, we have zero blue tags. The goal is to to to stay that way for the remainder of the year. And I'll close with that. This is my contact information. Feel free to reach out to me directly. That number right there goes straight to my work cell phone right here. And if you wanna chat offline, more than happy to do so after this meeting. Thank you.

Any committee members have questions?

Oh oh, the committee members. I was gonna say councilmember Jane, we were gonna have Santa Clara University give their presentation. So

Oh, yeah. I'm sorry.

Yeah. No worries.

Are we doing the yeah. It's the one from the twenty fifth.

Okay.

Yes. Alright. So last at the last meeting, I got a lot of questions about what are we doing on campus to support students support and educate students that live off campus. The one thing I sort of the general overview that I'd like to get out there before we get started is that the university stands on students that live off campus is not once they're off campus, they're off campus, and they're not our problem anymore. We very much care about the students that live off campus, and we educate them, and we work to work with them and help them be good neighbors.

It's just that there's certain ways that we have to do that given the relationship and given their their status when they live out in the city and they're private citizens. Oh, okay. Alright. Cool. So first, kinda starting at a high level, we have the dean of students office. I'm an assistant dean. We have our dean of students in the crowd. Hi, Matthew. And so we we have five different areas that we cover. Basic needs so that students helping students meet their general basic needs, food, housing, paying bills, things like that.

We have equity and belonging to make sure our students feel included and that they aren't being discriminated against. We have our student well-being, so that's generally making sure students are feeling okay and that they get the support they need to their general well-being, mental, emotional support that they can get. The fourth one is off campus living. That's my area, and we work to support students that live off campus, help educate them, make sure their transition into the community goes well as as well as providing some education when maybe things don't go as well. And then the other one is student conduct, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

So with that, SCU for those of you that don't know, SCU does have a residency requirement. And so for our first two year for students' first two years, they are required to live on campus. And then during their third and fourth years, they can live off campus. With that, after year two, once they've they can decide if they wanna still continue to live with us on campus or if they wanna live in privately owned camp housing off campus. We do have some options for on campus.

That is the university villas. So it's over by the train station across El Camino, and students can live there if they choose to, but there is limited space there. And then off campus, we also have our neighborhood units, which are university owned off campus housing. And then we have our and then students can also choose to live in privately owned privately owned housing or apartments. So with that, in terms of our neighborhood units, to to go over that a little bit, we do have 17 houses and 14 apartments that students can live in.

They are university owned and managed, so we get to we do have a bit more discretion and and, you know, how the students act when they live there. It is next to campus, so it's the two city blocks directly across the street from Benson Memorial Union and Swig Hall. That's where most of the end use are. We call neighborhood units, end use for short. And then we also have two houses on either side of the hut.

So on the other side of campus, we have on either side of the hut, we own two houses. And those housing contracts are similar to what we have for the students that live in the residence halls. So the the continuity of experience for students who want to live in the the neighborhood units or would find those places desirable. For off campus housing options or the privately owned housing apartments, what's nice for our students there is they get a bit more say in the options that they want so they can customize their experience more. They can choose what type of landlord or property manager they wanna live with.

There there are you know, they can choose if they wanna live in a big house with 14 people or if they wanna live in a in a in a small apartment by themselves. They can choose that. They have a bit more options. Even my students are private citizens when they're at home, so there's bit more discretion and limitations that the university has to take when interacting with those students when they're in their homes. But it also provides students a bit more fiscal flexibility.

So some students, we get a lot of students that are interested in living on campus, but we also get a lot of students that are more interested in in some of the options that are provided by living off campus. So as far as some of the events in education that we do, one, we talked about this a lot, our annual walkabout. This is our what we do at the beginning. So it's the first Saturday of every school year. We we get together with police, fire.

Say, our community partners include the police department, the fire department, code enforcement. Our on campus partners include off campus living, campus safety, and our associated student government. And so we all what's awesome about this event is it gives us a chance to actually go around at the start of the school year and help students understand what it means to be a good community member. We'll talk about city policies, how to maintain good relationships with your neighbors, so go over some of the common code violations. And even as we're walking around, sometimes we'll see code violations, and we'll die.

Let's walk through it. It's a perfect example. I think one year we saw a couch on the roof and was like, yeah. No. So those are the times when we discussed that fire safety as well as, like, university and community resources.

Sometimes the students get it in their head that, you know, when they live off campus, they're somehow removed from university resources, and and we really reassure them that, hey. You have that support, we're here to support you along the way. One of the other programs that we do that we just completed is our off campus housing orientation, which I know Tico talked about. So just to reiterate, that's open to it's required for students that are gonna live in the neighborhood units, but we make it available to any students that's gonna live off campus. So in that and we know that in the past that some property managers and landlords has offered incentives for students to attend.

So it's one of those things we're really pushing and and really we see it as a good opportunity for students to move move into the community, having that knowledge, and so that, hopefully, they're better off. And I think you see that in the numbers that sergeant Wasiko reflected. There is an in person and online component, and so there's some stuff that they go through in person, which is great because we partner with the Santa Clara police and the old quad rep old quad residents association to give them presentations. So it's not just that they're hearing from me or from my staff, but they're hearing from members in the community and the people that they're going to be interacting with about what the expectations are, what we'd like to see, what resources are available to them, and how they can really integrate themselves in the community in a way that's that's helpful and engaging. Yeah.

So we went over this. I'll talk a little bit. So, yeah, we talk we describe the university expectations, articulate neighbor expectations. We do summarize tenant rights and expectations. And then we also add in some other education around bystander intervention, alcohol and drug education, and multicultural awareness. And that's important because a lot of our students are when they live in the residence halls, they're living in a very homogenous community. And so one of these we're trying to get them to understand is, like, alright. You went from a community of 18 to 20 year olds, and now you're in a community of everybody. How are we gonna move out there and make sure that we're still being good members of community? So we do provide events for students, live on campus, on campus to make sure everybody is engaged.

We talk about our Malley Bash. That's our recreation center on campus. So at the beginning of the year, students are able to come through, join a lot of events, and have a good time. We have various sporting events throughout the year. We just had the Gonzaga game, which is a big pool for our students. We have the club fair in September, and so we're constantly looking at ways to get students, even though they live off campus, how can we get them engaged on campus? And then we have, I think, almost 200 clubs on campus that students can join. We have our grad bash at the end of the year, which is really popular, and we get students they're excited to graduate, and so we get them to come back. And then something new we started doing this year is our study break event. And so towards the end of the quarter, every at the end of every quarter, we give our students an opportunity to come out and take a study break.

We had an inflatable with an inflatable snow globe that students could take pictures in, and we had a mechanical not a bull, but a reindeer that students could ride. So that was a lot of fun as well. And we got a lot of positive response from that from the students. So in terms of things that we do to support the community because I think that's one of the things is when our mission in off campus living is to to really make sure students understand that they're part of the community. So one of the things that we do is the the Halloween picnic in the park.

We partner with the city, the Mission Branch Library, and Oak Quad Residence Association to help plan that event every year. We we help purchase some food, and we we volunteer. This year, we got a couple a lot of student orgs out there. So we had our our SCU Bells. Let me know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. We had the Bells out there. Munson staff goes out there, and we really just help to put on a great event. So we do that. We also started I partnered with Code Enforcement, and now we do we have students whenever they start to get a little too comfortable partying and they end up in my office. One of the things that we happen to do now is go out and actually pick up trash in the community to help help.

Because part of our our thought process in the in dean of students' offices, not just about taking things away from students, but how can students who have maybe caused a disruption in the community can come back and give something back to the community. So now we have them go out and they pick up two bags of trash, and and the students have really, I think, found a lot of joy in that, and I think the community enjoys it as well. We also provide parking. University provide parking for different events like the parade of champions, And know that we're open to if there are other opportunities you all can think about to partner as a city with the university, reach out to us and let us know. We're open to, you know, making sure that we're contributing to the community and that, you know, we're as part of much a part of the community as anybody else.

So in terms of ongoing strategies of how we support students that live off campus, to talk a little bit more about off campus living at SCU, so our office, we have a staff of me. I'm the assistant dean for the office, and then we have Matthew who is our area coordinator. And then we have our four neighborhood ambassadors sitting in the back, and so that's our student staff. And so our job is to really focus on we don't focus on so much of the like, if you think about it, those who've been in college or seen, like, the RA's experience, we don't necessarily it's something like that in terms of our neighborhood ambassadors more focused on the education piece and the connecting and helping build relationships less so than the punitive piece. And so that's what they do.

If you ever have any questions or you you wanna contact us, we you can visit the funny enough, the off campus living office is a house off campus. And so if you wanna come visit us, we're at 862 Market Street, which is right in the corner of Market And Lafayette, or you can reach out to our you can just email us at offcampusliving@scu.edu. In terms of the services we offer to students, so while we are by no means law lease law experts or anything, we will review a lease with the student to help them make sure that the lease makes sense. We we will do conflict resolution. They just help give students tools and then walk them through it.

Or even if we need to do that ourselves, we will we will jump in there. We will help students find help students find housing, identify ways to connect with city services, connecting with helping students connect with resources. We will develop programs and events for students as well as develop and maintain community partnerships. And so we try to do a lot in our office, and if you have any ideas, feel free to reach out. We also talked about the sergeant Otico talked a little bit about team two hundred.

We partner with them as well just when we know that there are events coming up that are going to or weekends that are coming up that are gonna be a little bit more active. Part of that being proactive is saying, okay. We've heard this is going on or, like, the SC Gonzaga game is always one that we know, but welcome weekend, graduation weekend, other times like that. We will work with the police to say, hey. Can we get a little bit more support this weekend?

And they they usually why if Super Bowl or the World Cup or something is going on, they will usually send the team out to help us out and make sure that the community is safe. And this is done for both, you know, both as an enforcement thing, but also really as a community protection thing because we know those there's, you know, more opportunities for things to maybe not go so great, and it's an opportunity to sort of get out ahead of those things as well. So then team three hundred or the university area task force as we call it. So we meet monthly to address some of the ongoing community ongoing issues in the community. And so some of those topics we will address include trash, parking, noise, citations, upcoming events.

And with that, what's nice is that it's a we have a pretty big group that meets on that monthly basis, and so that includes the police, fire, code enforcement, old quad old quad residents association. We have some property managers and landlords that join us. We recently, as of last year, added the school districts, the local school districts in because Santa Clara is really close to middle school and the elementary school, and so it's nice to have them involved. And then as far as on campus, we have campus safety, off campus living, dean of students office, and associated students with government involved. And so it's really nice because when issues come up, instead of waiting until this meeting or feeling like we're we're behind on things, we can be proactive in making sure we're discussing issues as they come up and making sure we're all on the same page about how we wanna move forward.

In terms of community partnerships, we we work pretty closely with the the police department and sergeant Rojijiro's team to to track some of those code enforcement or track some of those violations as well as really just sharing information on which houses or or maybe if there are houses that are close to getting that blue tag or they they've been a little bit more disruptive to the community, we can work to really work with those houses and educate them on what they do. So it's they're kinda getting it from both sides. They're getting it from sergeant team. They're also my team is reaching out or myself. We're reaching out to say, hey. Okay. What's going on? What do you need? And how can we make sure that they sort of understand what's going on and understand the possible consequences should they continue in whatever actions that they're taking. We also partner with code enforcement.

So I talked earlier about the trash cleanup. But oftentimes when there's potential violations going on, the we can we can touch base and say, okay. If we know it's a certain house or a certain street, how can we start to work to do some education around that, making sure that the houses know when they're supposed to pull in their trash or other things like that? And then the last thing I wanna talk about,

I don't know if

this will be the last thing, but well, is the student conduct. So that when students do violate policy, they they get to when students who live off campus violate policy, they get the the joy and the honor of meeting with me, and we get to discuss sort of the actions that they take. I do wanna point out one piece that's in our student conduct code that people may not be aware of, which is we have it in our conduct code that Santa Clara students are the expectation is they're following all city, state, and federal laws no matter where they are in the world. The example I always tell students that I meet with is we had a student that was in Costa Rica over the summer and got in trouble, and he had to come meet with us as well. So the expectation there is that they are being upstanding citizens and that they that they're following the rules where they're at.

With that, so our goals in when we when we do conduct, the goals of conduct is really to promote safe living and living and learning environment consistent with the mission of our university, to promote personal growth of those who commit a violation by focusing on accountability, awareness, concern, commitment, and contrition. And that's really important because a lot of people think conduct is a lot of our students come in scared of the conduct process thinking, okay. I I did something wrong. I'm gonna get yelled at, and then I'm gonna send off, you know, and and be in trouble. And it's really about that, hey.

How can we help you? How can we take time to discern what happened, really think through it, and figure out how to move forward in a positive in in in a positive way. And I would like to think a lot of our students leave the process thinking, okay. I've learned something here. Maybe there were some city laws that I weren't aware of. I I can't tell you how many students I meet with that don't know city quiet hours is from ten to seven. So they're like, okay. We'll shut down a party at 10:30 because where they're from, that that makes sense. But then they meet with us, and they're like, oh, no wonder the cops showed up at 10PM. And it's like, yeah.

Alright. So a lot of it is just helping to educate the students, and with this, the conduct student really provides a process for that. And then just reflection about their behavior on self and others and community as a whole and really challenging themselves to think about how they can be a better member of the community. So some of the outcomes, we we sort of run the gambit of what outcomes can look like. A lot of times, it's just a warning. Hey. Our students didn't know generally didn't know the rules. It's like, okay. And this is the first time they've done something. Alright.

Cool. We'll just give them a warning. Sometimes we happen to do a reflection paper or contribute it to a community service. And once students start moving their way up the you know, we also have a system where we build upon previous violations, and so sometimes sometimes we will assign a fine. And one of the things that we've been really trying to do as of lately is we've really been incorporating restorative justice into our our practices because we really the goal is to make sure that we build a good community.

And so with that, for those of you that have not heard of restorative justice, what it is, it's a community based approach to addressing harm, conflict, and misconduct. And so whereas typically in the when students get in trouble, they tend to think of it as the system or the students have done something, they've broken the rules. And we'd like to shift it to from you've broken the rules to you've created disruption in the community, and so how do we work towards repairing that relationship with the community rather than just focusing on how do I follow the rules? And what we found is that when we have that happen, students are more invested in the community. They get to know their neighbors for who they are.

It moves from a, I'm a student and they're a neighbor to we're both people living in the community, and how can we support and engage with each other. It is focused on that healing and accountability and relationship prepared, not punishment. And what's nice about it is it's it's a collaborative process. So both the the people that have caused harm and the people who've been harmed get to speak into how we wanna move forward. And what we find is that when that happens, it's easier to take accountability.

Everyone still feels valued, and people are able to move forward in a productive way. I'd I'd like to highlight we had a great conversation between members of a fraternity and some Santa Clara community members that I think went really well. And for me, it was, like, kinda clicking up, oh, this is I wonder if this is the first time we've all sat together in a group and talked about what's going on. And there are some issues that the students raised that they had concerns about. There's some issues the community raised, and our facilitators did a great job of navigating everything and getting us to a place where it's like, okay.

We're all humans sitting down having a conversation. Let's figure it out. So, yeah, some of the principles are you know, we wanna make sure it's inclusive decision making, active accountability, we're repairing the harm, and we're rebuilding trust. And I think when we see those work, everybody the outcomes tend to be a little bit better as opposed to just you made a lot of noise. Go pick up trash. Like, sometimes that can be helpful, but as part of the restorative process, when we engage in this, we see students get a lot

of value out of it.

And that's my presentation.

Thank you, Steve. We'll go to the members of the committee. Any questions on the three presentations? I have some questions. Well, I guess it's kudos to Santa Clara University and the police department. No blue tag so far. And, the number of citations is down. That begs the question, and we're trying to build trust with the community. Are we issuing too many warnings and not enough citations, or are we just getting not getting as many complaints from the community?

Yes. It'd be it'd be hard to quantify that. I would say that all the work that we've been doing really is just we're we're just the data shows that we're seeing less violations. So I don't think that the the warnings mean, we could play a role in it, but the definitely, the education, the open lines of communication, and all the steps that we take prior to getting to a blue tag is is really been effective. So I think that we need to continue collaborating, information sharing, and really just working together with this the university, with the students, with the residents to identify problems and just continue what we've been doing.

So I I don't know that we're giving too many warnings, and we've been more lenient. I would just say that we're just seeing in general less less violations.

K. My next question is that, generally

you

know, I live in that neighborhood. After a party, I see a lot of red Solo cups on the ground. I see, you know, dumpsters overflowing. The city has a program where you can buy tags for garbage bags. So, typically, they don't need, you know, three dumpsters all the time.

They just need them when they have parties. So they can buy these tags and put their trash in trash bags and set them out for pickup. So just we wanna promote that program for the students that they can when they have a party, they're gonna have more trash naturally. And yeah. Then the other thing is that, you know, the students can be a real asset to the community.

I know you have a program where students go out and they help re rebuild or do gardening for seniors that can't do their own gardening. Right? There's a program for that. And I know we had some complaints about some people weren't maintaining the weeds in their parking strips, and there was maybe an opportunity for volunteerism to go get rid of, you know, unsightly weeds in parking strips. Is that can you talk to that? I know the university had a program for that.

Yeah. I'd have to look into that more as well. Maybe

we could put that on a future agenda.

I remember us talking about that maybe a year or two ago, so there might be a couple examples if SCU could look into with the students, I think, trying to provide some community service specifically to the elderly.

Yeah. Alright. Any other yes. Albert?

Just had a question. As far as the the orientation, is that recorded? I mean, just when when students have more ability to see or get that communication, they can make a meeting or or what have you, then maybe it's something that they can take a look at and digest later if that's if it's being recorded. I don't if it is. But there's also I'm sure there's there's some level of data as far as when do you know, we've there was a mention of rush week and certain things that occur, you know, throughout the the quarter weeks in the quarter.

Are there weeks where there there's just more That's right before finals week or right after finals week when there's, you know, the more more gatherings and more parting. I mean, maybe there's events. I know we had our our event at the stadium this last weekend. Maybe there's some some synergies there that we can work to have something, whether it's with the city or maybe, you know, rush week is gonna be at at the I forgot what the stadium is called it, but at the Bronco Stadium or something, you might be able to open up some other venues there that might be able to maybe gathering places for for students. But I'm sure you're you're aware of, you know, that.

How do we how do we find ways to to make sure that these students are are having a you know, are enjoying their the university life, not impacting the residents as much. You know? And that's something I think that is is important because we wanna make sure that, you know, they they go to the university, hopefully, more more than one degree. Right? But if they at least for four years, they they do enjoy it.

But, obviously, that that our our neighborhoods are not impacted as much as I've the last six months I've sat on the staff for next committee, and they're looking at expanding stuff up there. And, obviously, the the footprints of their campus and and and Santa Clara are much different. Right? So we're kinda landlocked here. We're not gonna, you know, be able to do a lot lot of other things as far as, you know, property is concerned.

But, you know, in the future, if we can do something, maybe look at some event that we can do together as far as the city and the the university to to make sure that we can, you know, benefit the residents, benefit the students. You know, I see them as constituents here as well. Right? So there there are constituents. You know, they're they're on campus or off campus, but, definitely, they're they're a part of the community here. And how do we, you know, live in a better and work together? And I I won't say party together because not everybody's partying, but, you know, how how do you kinda just intermingle and, you know, just go about your daily lives and your your course and your your weeks. I I have a rise well, not a rising. He's already a junior. He'll be a senior next year, which is gonna help me.

But but definitely, you know, I I understand how that works. And, you know, how do we make sure that they they they definitely have a a great, you know, university life, but at the same time, don't don't impact the residents as much. I just wanna make a comment as far as I know our our sergeant where I live in in in River Mark, there's a street called Hove Street. Those, you know, we had a lot of I think last October, if you if you look at Google, I mean, it was ten ten RVs and stuff. So we can make a difference.

I know we we've seen it. So how do we how do we make sure that we know we listen from the data that you you pointed out? It does look that we are seeing less violations, no blue tags. So how do we just keep that momentum going and try to make sure that I think a lot of it's communication. And like you said, you know, they're unaware that the party has to or at least amplify music. It certainly has to be done at ten versus, you know, 10:30. I mean, there's certain communication that we can do to make sure that we we let the the students know.

Yes, Steve.

Yep. So just to that piece about so I I appreciate the the willingness to partner with that, and it's really exciting. One of the things that we are constantly trying to navigate is that our our fraternities, sorority social fraternities and sororities at Santa Clara are not affiliated with the university. So in terms of that does present some we have to to think about how to navigate that in terms of, there are certain ways we can and we can interact, and and I'm happy to have a a difficult a different conversation offline about what that relationship looks like. But it is something that, as a university, we have been putting a lot of effort into figuring out how to navigate.

But it is something that it is sort of ever leaning in there of supporting them as students while joining organizations that aren't affiliated with the university.

Okay. We'll go to the public now. Oh, yes. Jennifer.

Sorry. Just to follow-up on the OTO discussion. First of all, I just want to say a big thank you. I attended. It was a very powerful presentation presented to the students, very informative.

I understand Ocho is mandatory for students who are living in that two block, you know, campus provided living area. It is optional for the remaining off campus community students. I wanted to ask what is the, like, typical attendance rate for students who actually do not live in that two block area who are truly off campus and if you have seen great attendance, or is there another way we can forward that powerful information to the rest of the student population?

Yes. Yeah. So so we we offer an incentive to go through. If you attended through any of our properties, right, you get your first violation waived, we don't find you on top of it. We don't get a ton of attendance, to be honest. I'd say it's closer to 20%. We put it out there, but a lot of the students choose to live not in the university housing so they can enjoy the freedom that comes with not living in university housing. So I know we offer it as an incentive. I know another property management company does it as well. But even though we blast it out and it can save you hundreds of dollars, let's say, maybe 20%.

What I would add to that is we know that, oh, Joe, we offer it. Not everybody's gonna take it, and so that's why we offer that's why we also do a walkabout at the beginning of the year as well. So it's kinda that, like, alright. You can get it when you're living in the residence halls, But if not, then you're absolutely going to get it when you're living out in the community at the beginning of the year.

I just thought it would be also helpful for people to know that when the walkabout happens, for instance, the way that code enforcement handles it is if there's a property that we've documented that we've shared what violations are and then they have violations, that walkabout serves as the warning, and they can actually increase, you know, the level of severity faster. So, you know, maybe don't answer your door if the walkabout happens. If you plan on missing out, no. That's not the answer. That's not the workaround. But the point is with all the new students that come in, they're they're provided education and a first chance. That first chance might actually be a warning through the walkabout.

Okay. We'll go to the public now. Any member of the public wish to speak on this item?

Hi. My name is Mark Kelsey. Just a couple of comments. First, thanks to code enforcement, to SCPD, to Santa Clara University for all you are doing. It is making a difference. But I have to say there's a lot to do. There's a lot more to do. And so I'm I'm glad the committee is here tonight to address some of those issues. Just a couple of quick comments. First, for Santa Clara PD, I know of two instances where a neighbor called PD to one, to complain about a car parked in front of her driveway.

PD responded right away and got rid of the car. So thank you. There was also an occasion where the street in front of her had so much broken glass from a party that she was afraid to drive her car out. And, again, she called PD. They responded.

They got public works out to clean up the street. So thank you. I do wanna recommend that code enforcement and PD and the multiple venues of code enforcement work together so that houses that have party complaints, that have planning code enforcement violations, that have environmental code violations, those all be accumulated by property. Because I'm sure that our most troublesome properties have all of those problems, and they all need to be addressed. And, certainly, environmental programs has the largest challenge today.

The trash issues on Bellamy and Washington continue to be out of control, so that needs to be addressed. And I would echo committee member Zhang's recommendation that maybe you didn't make this recommendation, but I'll make the recommendation based on your comment that every student living off campus since third and fourth year should be required to attend OCHO.

Any other member of the public? K. We have our last item, which is future anyone online, by the way? Okay. Our last item is future neighborhood university relations committee work plan items. Nina, are you leading that?

Yeah. Just checking. There's nothing else from SCU on this item. Maybe we can save it for next meeting if it wasn't something that was necessarily agendized as in all the pieces. So we can okay.

So thank you, committee members, members of the public. Once again, I'm Marina Brio, director of economic development and sustainability. This item is really to give an opportunity, and if we can go to the next slide. Thanks. An opportunity to talk about a NERC work plan.

So what we have the opportunity to create here is recognizing that our neighborhood university relations committee was established to really allow for coordination and problem solving with the neighborhood, the university, and the city. And because of that and we have really three meetings per year. So in order to really pace out the work to understand what would be expected in future agenda items, recognizing in the past, we are trying to get away from just, hey. This is an update, and this meeting is just full of updates. Like, hey.

What's the information that could be shared, or what are the topics that could maybe advance improvements? So with that, coming up with a work plan process, which really is the opportunity at our next meeting, which is, I think, May 20. It's May 18. May 18. Thank you.

To be able to have a discussion about for the committee to really decide what are the items that the committee would like to have worked on, and it and it's really to create a priority list. You know, Mark Kelsey, our community member who's spoken today, he's sent a couple emails, and those have been attached to the agenda item for this where he suggests some work plan topics. Really, the work plan is intended to take feedback specifically from the committee members themselves as well. So what I've requested in order to have a meeting that is more comprehensive is that by Friday, April 17, if the committee members could specifically email me, proposed work plan topics. And what I will do is, if you could go to the next slide, is, we are going to analyze, and this is for instance, if there was a topic about, hey.

Let's get more red curbs installed or let's get a presentation from public works. It's, recognizing that the city is multifaceted, and we have a lot of different subject matters. So I will be working with different departments to analyze what these proposals are and understand, are these things that are really quick items that can be addressed? You know? Hey. We're gonna put an item on agenda. It's about information sharing. That's, you know, a little bit of feedback that could be given. Is it more about, hey, Citi. We really want you to approach this completely different.

We want a different level of service here. We want different policies here. Those are things that are gonna absolutely require more time, certainly more resources. So because of that, we really want the committee to have a full understanding of what's the time involved and then really help, really, staff understand what's the pace of the items that you would like agendized. So this does lead me to also share with the committee because you're a new group. Right? So the committee is empowered to get feedback from the public to help facilitate problem solving and collaboration. The committee cannot actually reassign or direct city resources. Right? That's not in the committee's purview.

Really, what we're trying to hear understand here is, like, what's the better understanding of the issues involved? And if there has to be an escalation where the committee feels like, hey. You know, there's a lot more resources that are needed here. City council, we wanna make a recommendation that you invest in this, that that recommendation could go to the city council and the city council through whatever form that they would. Maybe it's the priority setting process, which they evaluate different proposals.

Maybe it's in a particular meeting that they would deliberate that with more information involved. Like, for instance, you know, it's actually gonna take $300,000 to install a new it would actually be more than that. I'm just throwing numbers out for for information. You know, $300,000 to install a new streetlight. But the the committee really feels like based on the information it has, this is the issue they wanna raise for a funding request like that.

So most of what I would recommend, especially that this is a new body take on, are the easy wins, the things that's about information sharing, the things that you're gonna learn more about what issues are. And as the committee evolves, that might be the time to be like, hey. This is an ongoing topic. We've heard it again and again. This is an issue that we feel, like, really requires more resources.

Through this work planning process in the next meeting, which, by the way, is only your third meeting of of as a body, we will share with you kind of like, these are the topics that have been proposed. These are the things that staff thinks are gonna be quick things. These are the things that are gonna take more time. And then the next meeting, which we will agendize, will allow the committee to kind of develop that prioritization list. And then staff will use that list in order to agendize topics and and move forward.

But I did wanna share that this particular work plan, it's new to the committee. We haven't done it in the past. I also wanna recognize that this committee meets three times a year. So, you know, to set expectations as well that, you know, if this is something that's a body of work that's way more than what the committee could handle, that's not really the intent of why this committee was formed. There are other forums where maybe that issue would be a better topic.

But, certainly, next meeting, my specific action is that I think it's by April 17, I would ask the committee members to send me your topics so that the staff can do analysis so that at your next meeting, we will be able to share that analysis and have you as a committee decide on prioritization topics. So that is, I think, it.

Any member of the committee have any comments on this? April 17. Alright. We'll go to the public now. Any member of the public wish to comment on our work plan?

Hi. Mark Kelsey. Thank you for taking up this item. I think it's very important. I think for too long, the NERC has been seen by community members as completely ineffective.

And so I think this is an opportunity to make a difference for our community, so I really appreciate this. I know you have copies of the emails that I sent. I wanted to give a quick summary of and and maybe a way to think about some of those things. I think there are a couple of things that could be addressed very quickly and easily implemented. First off, on my list for recommendations for that immediate Lee addressing is in strengthening the enforcement tools for PD and code code enforcement, particularly for code enforcement.

PD does an excellent job of a progressive enforcement model. Code enforcement lacks the tools, and acting as a combined body, as a city body, I think they could be more effective. I'd also recommend that the enforcement actions, citations, and so forth be made public so that the public can easily access perhaps on the NERC page on the city website what enforcement actions have taken place. A second item, I know we talked about this already, is the crosswalks around the university. I understand it's being worked on, but it's taken far too long.

And as we all know, within the last eighteen months, there's been a fatal accident around the university. So I think this is a very important topic. And finally, perhaps you could ask the code enforcement and PD to identify smaller areas that they might focus their efforts on to really clean up the the problem areas in the city. So those three things I think could be done right away. I'll be quick.

For immediate term, we need responsible for for medium medium term, we need voluntary property owner standards. University has their neighborhood units. This is a model for how other landlords ought to be operate. There ought to be a way to to create a voluntary process for that. And then longer term, the fundamental issue is the university continues to grow.

We need to understand as a group what the university's plans are, and we need to work together to create a plan to address that. University enrolled its largest class last fall, 2,000 students nearly. I understand plans are to enroll similar sized class this year. In a few years, that would mean that the university's undergraduate population would be 8,000. Just a few years ago, it was 5,000. Where are they all gonna live? So longer term, we need to create a plan together, and I would hope that the committee would take that on as well. Thank you. Thanks for the extra time.

Any other member of the public? Okay. Any that concludes that

item. And we don't have any hands raised online. Good.

Any other comments from committee members? Alright. We'll move to our adjournment. This meeting is now adjourned. Thank you.