A much more reasonable 3 hour session today compared to last week's marathon that I think may somehow still be in session but three big ticket items--
- An audit of the Department of Transportation (DOT) on Vehicle Abatement.
- The new name of Plaza de Cesar Chavez.
- The fate of Parkmoor Community Apartments.
But first the ceremonials and, though chronologically out of order, I want to start by pointing out that underneath his usual suit jacket, Councilman Cohen eschewed a button down in favor of a Golden State Valkyries WNBA finals shirt. Put your Vs up and onward to Ballhalla!
For the final Invocation of her time representing District 9, Councilwoman Foley called up four people to be deemed D9 Stars, exemplars of civic engagement within her district. They were thanked and presented with plaques for their years of community service. Next month will likely belong to District 10.
There were four other ceremonial items recognizing Andre Mackenzie for running the open space authority for the past 15 years and the start of Digital Inclusion Month, but the two more important ceremonial items are the declaration of Thursday, 29 October, as NATIONAL CAT DAY. I used to be very allergic to cats, but spent some time with a friend who has several and didn't get one itchy or dry eye so now the compulsion to get a cat in my middle-years is growing so this day means something to me. When he was announcing it, Councilman Ortiz seemed so excited that he referred to himself as a proud "cat day" instead of "cat dad" because he knows what's up. October is also National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Councilwoman Campos delivered a very solid set of remarks about the pervasiveness of domestic abuse and the many visible and invisible forms it can take. We're all in this together so check in with your friends.
Finally, before the meat of the meeting, Assistant City Manager Lee Wilcox spoke to say that the Weather Service officially certified San Jose as "Storm Ready," having learned and implemented changes after the Coyote Creek flooding. He said people should go to alertscc.org for notifications if El Niño gets bad this year.
Thing one: Vehicle Abatement
First off, what this audit wasn't about: It's not about illegal parking, people living out of their cars or RVs, or anything of that sort. The infographic on the first page showed those issues so presumably the City Auditor will provide a report on that in the future but for now, for today, they were only covering Vehicle Abatement and the removal of abandoned vehicles throughout the city. Anecdotally I can say that parking enforcement is going to be a bigger deal going forward--I talked to a parking enforcement officer when they were writing a ticket for someone parked in a red zone near my apartment, they're getting extra hours and bodies to do patrols. In other words, just don't park where you can't park, okay? But if you see someone parked where they can't park there's a good chance they'll get a ticket if you report them through 311 and have to ask themselves if that space is worth $60 or not.
Anyway, Abatement. The audit showed that there were over 10,000 reports of abandoned vehicles last year and that 33% of them came from 311 while the other 66% came from proactive patrols circling the city. The full report is here but the basic breakdown is that of the 10,000 reports, 2400 were towed and 7300 were found to be compliant (either they were erroneously reported in the first place, or they were cited with a warning and were moved within 72 hours, or some other factor that means they were dealt with) and the remainder were forwarded to a different department. DOT, for instance, isn't authorized to deal with lived-in vehicles or stolen cars that are abandoned, they have to pass that onto someone else. 98% of these reports were closed within 14 days.
That all sounds good! So why, Councilman Ortiz asked not-rhetorically, are abandoned cars reported in June still on the east side in October? Ultimately, DOT and the auditor found, the problem is communication. If you've ever used 311 you know what I mean--You file the report on the app, you get an email saying what the case number is, in a couple days you check online and see that the case was closed and that's it. Doesn't say if they were given a ticket, a warning, a tow, if they were in compliance, anything. You just know it was closed and that's it.
The audit made several suggestions and DOT accepts all of them. Fundamentally though it's a problem of not having enough people. The proactive patrols are supposed to canvas the entire city every 14 days, but given the current manpower they're only able to canvas 57% in that timeframe. Many cities use full-on police officers for parking enforcement, but San Jose uses contract workers so that the police we have are out there doing actual policework (well, so the claim goes...) and then when a vehicle is cited again after its initial warning the real police are notified and they come out to deal with the vehicle--issue a fine, authorize a tow, whatever. It's a redundant system, but the alternative is having every cop doubling as parking enforcement. Things are better now than they were in 2020, but civilian contact with cops is still not fantastic, so in my opinion the contract method is a good alternative. I like cops, personally, but I come from a background where they look at me and say "How do you do, good sir, are you aware you were going over the speed limit? Don't let it happen again ha ha just kidding, speed all you want just don't swerve." Anyway, properly proactively patrolling for abandoned cars would take more contractors and it remains to be seen if the city wants to pay for that.
Overall though, from an operational standpoint, the department is meeting its goals. What remains to be worked on is improving constituent experience--to that end the 311 app is scheduled to be updated in March 2027--and more communication is needed to explain why your report was closed but the damn car is still there.
Thing two: Renaming Plaza de Cesar Chavez
Unless you've been living under a rock you almost certainly know that the downtown park currently named Plaza de Cesar Chavez has been undergoing a 6 month process to find a new name after the revelations about Cesar Chavez in March. There were many speakers, but all were in favor of changing the name--the idea of a name change was so broadly popular that even the notorious crank Caller Number One was in favor of it. He's wrong about literally everything and obnoxious in his wrongness but even he said it should be renamed, do you know how hard that is to achieve?
The city presented a brief history of the plaza and then expanded on their process for the past six months. They received 610 name submissions, compared all of them to the city's naming regulations (ie: If it's named after a person, they must be more than 5 years dead) then eliminated duplicates and combined redundancies (ie: If you said it should be Plaza Park and someone else said it should be Park Plaza those were combined together and considered as one name) to reduce it to 88. Then the 88 were ranked by the number of times they were suggested. Then we did a round of voting. Then we did another round of voting. Plaza de San Jose won, and as much as you may be frustrated by how generic that sounds the fact of the matter is that it was #1 out of 88, and it beat the second and third suggestions combined. When we did ranked choice voting it was #1 by a mile in both rounds. I get it, I liked Farmworker's Plaza and I even liked Quetzaqoatl Plaza and ranked those above it, but we lost. And we lost resoundingly. So Plaza de San Jose was the winner fair and square of a democratic process and now it's the name of the plaza!
As I said there were a lot of speakers on the issue, all of whom were in favor of changing the name. Interestingly there was a strong push at the very end to go with the name Plaza de Lots Immigrantes (Immigrants Plaza) in honor of the fact that all of us except the Ohlone are immigrants to this place. And, you know what? I like that name a lot and I like their reasoning--but the time to suggest it was six months ago. Or even three months ago when the first round of voting happened. Or during the several community meetings held online and in person. Doing it at the very end... Yeah, it wasn't going to happen.
Also a point for anyone calling in in the future: TURN YOUR SPEAKERS OFF. A lot of you are young and vital and don't remember sports talk radio, but I repeat what they said two, three times a day: TURN YOUR RADIO DOWWWN. Your speakers and your mic are on a delay so when you talk into your phone the stream plays you speaking, which is then picked up by your mic and creates a feedback echo and none of us know what you're saying. Meanwhile you are confused because you've never heard yourself speak before. Honor the memory of Gary Radnich and turn your radios down!
Motion passed unanimously, we have a new name for the plaza.
Thing Three: Parkmoor Community Apartments Conversion
This is one that came out of nowhere and it's complicated and mysterious what happened, so everyone on the Housing Department side of the presentation was sheepish while everyone on the City Council side was confused. As best as I can piece it together, the previous housing administration issued a loan to Parkmoor Community Apartments to create 80 units of low-income housing with some of those units being explicitly set aside for foster care and young adults. Those apartments were built, they were completed in December 2025, they spent months getting tenants and now they're up and running--and losing money hand over fist. The operating group, Abode, had only spent about 5% of the loan the city gave them, the rest of the construction was paid through other methods and now Abode is deeply in debt to Capital One (what's in your wallet?) and this building is facing insolvency, it seems. The current housing administration was made aware of this and started investigating what was going on and how to get out of the situation.
The solve they proposed was to use the remaining 95% of the loan the city offered to pay down the principle on the money owed to Capital One (what's in your wallet?) because they were in line ahead of the city in terms of repayment, meaning if the city did nothing the creditor would get repaid in full before San Jose got even a dime back on the loan it had given out. No one on the council was happy about this and asked many questions varying from "What?" to "No, seriously, are you joking?" but Parkmoor is a very important piece of property, there are 80 units filled with low-income people who did nothing wrong and need the building in order to, you know, continue living indoors. Since the loan money had already been allocated to Abode it was effectively out of our budget, so using it to bail Abode out and put ourselves to the front of the repayment line was a regrettable, but reasonable, solution and the motion passed unanimously.
The Housing Department is reviewing all the properties the city operates and issuing a report on their solvency in two weeks. They know Abode will come up again and are looking into other properties operated by them extra carefully, but at this time it appears Parkmoor is a one-off oopsie-doodle by the previous administration and Abode and replacing them doesn't seem prudent yet. An interesting thing I noticed when Housing Director Eric Solivan was speaking was a sense of frustration on his part and a mention that 100% low-income units like these are laudable but financially unsound without more expensive units within the same property or complex to subsidize the lower income ones. He's making the case for mixed-income housing but it doesn't sound like anyone is hearing him. Just my two cents.
DESERT: Odds and ends A few smaller items that were passed:
- Warming centers are set to open at the Roosevelt Community Center and Cambrian Branch Library. Public comments were grateful for the warming centers, but questioned why Cambrian is getting one since there aren't nearly as many unhoused people there to use them. Turns out the SOP is that warming centers are rotated throughout the city on a yearly basis and it was Cambrian's time is all. The city urged people to use the referral system to get (free) transportation to a warming center if needed--He didn't say how to use the referral system, though.
- Agreements were made with at least two city unions. I think all four were passed, but it's hard to tell if AEA passed or not because there was also a motion to drop their item from the orders of the day. But both were voted on affirmatively and passed unanimously so unless a city architect wants to tell more, I'm going to go with saying that all contracts passed.
- City ordinances were amended and we will begin to phase out using potable water for artificial turf and other wasteful practices in line with state regulations. Most places I see do this already, that's what those signs saying this fountain uses gray water or recycled water means, so it's not really going to mean much changes. But now it's a requirement instead of something people do voluntarily.
- Solid Waste Management ordinances were also amended and speakers were supportive of this leading to more recycling over landfills, but I'm not familiar at all with solid waste so I'll have to take their word for it. Councilwoman Campos (I think) asked explicitly if this will make it easier for residents to report and deal with dumping of solid waste on sidewalks and bike lanes and the answer was yes. So however this actually works, at least it sounds like it'll make the streets cleaner.
That's about the shape of things. A nice, simple, dull city council. But also a new park name and hopefully the berg of the iceberg and not just the tip of it on low income housing solvency.
To Ballhalla on buckets, shiny and chrome.
