Liiaison with City of Newark Meeting

Introduction

• Meeting Type: Liaison
• Date: 2024 (exact date unspecified)
• Key Themes: Facilities planning, housing policy alignment with school needs, School Resource Officer (SRO) program updates, and community collaboration initiatives.

Agenda Items

Newark Facilities Master Plan Presentation

• Description:
  • Overview of draft Facilities Master Plan, including community engagement results (500+ responses) and proposed projects.
  • Key priorities: Cultural Arts Center (74% preferred Community Park location), senior services integration, and $75M in preventative maintenance over 20 years.
  • Proposed center options (A, B, C) vary in size/amenities (e.g., preschool classrooms, senior lounge, dance studios).
• Decisions made or actions taken:
  • Draft report to be presented to City Council in May 2024; final approval targeted for summer 2024.
  • No formal action taken by the committee.

Housing Element Update

• Description:
  • Certified housing element (1,874 units required by 2031) with focus on affordability, equity, and partnerships.
  • Community priorities: Affordable rentals, family-sized units, climate-resilient housing.
  • Collaboration opportunities with school district: Shared demographic data, joint land-use planning, and staff housing initiatives.
• Decisions made or actions taken:
  • No formal action taken.
  • City committed to exploring workforce housing partnerships (e.g., teacher housing similar to Milpitas Unified collaboration).

School Resource Officer (SRO) Program Update

• Description:
  • Program temporarily suspended due to police staffing shortages (critical staffing schedule until July 2024).
  • 2022–23 SRO impact: 124 calls for service vs. 82 patrol-handled calls in 2023–24.
  • Benefits highlighted: Crime deterrence, student-officer relationships, and rapid incident response.
• Decisions made or actions taken:
  • Goal to reinstate SRO program by fall 2024 contingent on staffing recovery.
  • No formal action taken.

Public Comments

• Key themes:
  • No public comments were made during the meeting.

Follow-Up and Commitments

1. Facilities Master Plan:
   • Finalize draft for City Council review (May 2024).
   • Investigate transit accessibility for proposed Cultural Arts Center locations.
2. Housing Collaboration:
   • Share demographic trends with school district; explore joint land-use opportunities.
3. SRO Program:
   • Monitor police recruitment progress; aim to reinstate program by fall 2024.
4. Future Agenda Items:
   • Discuss annual joint City-District community event.
   • Present local tobacco sales ordinance proposal (aligning with school safety goals).

Conclusion

• The meeting focused on long-term infrastructure, housing, and safety planning. Key next steps include finalizing the Facilities Master Plan, advancing housing partnerships, and reinstating the SRO program. Collaboration between the city and school district was emphasized as critical for addressing community needs.

[64] Phuong Nguyen: At 6.03 p.m. Roll call, please.

[77] Kathy Slafter: Committee member Jorgens.

[79] Matthew Jorgens: Present.

[81] Kathy Slafter: Committee member Hill.

[84] Aiden Hill: Here.

[85] Kathy Slafter: Committee member Collazo. Committee member Collazo is noted absent. Committee Chair Nguyen?

[93] Phuong Nguyen: Here.

[98] Phuong Nguyen: Up next is item B, minutes. May I get a motion to approve the minutes from October 16, 2023, please? So moved. Motion made by Member Jorgens. I will second the motion.

[120] Kathy Slafter: Roll call vote, please. Committee member Jorgens? Yes. Committee member Hill?

[127] Aiden Hill: Yes.

[129] Phuong Nguyen: Sharon Nguyen? Yes, thank you. On to item C, old business. There is none, so we'll move on to item D, new business. First item is D1, presentation on Newark Facilities Master Plan by Senior Management Analyst Gonzalez. City Manager Bernudin?

[149] David Benoun: Yes, good evening committee member committee chair Nguyen and members of the committee. Tonight, we have a presentation from Ms. Roria Gonzalez, a senior management analyst in the city manager's office. She's going to provide an overview of the facilities master plan. We're currently in the draft phase, but we did through extensive community outreach, we were able to make some preliminary findings and Ms. Gonzalez is going to walk through those findings. Ms. Gonzalez.

[175] Ms. Gonzales: Thank you. Good evening, committee members. Tonight, I will present you with the overview of the facilities master plan process. focusing on the community engagement and provide an overview of findings. In November of 2022, City Council authorized a contract with Group 4 Architecture and Planning and their team of sub consultants for the development of the city's first master plan. The city owns and maintains 24 building structures at 18 different locations. The current facilities are maintained within current staffing levels and allocated resources. due to the city's anticipated growth and change in our community, as well as the condition of our aging infrastructure, a comprehensive plan was needed. The process consisted of four main tasks. The first task was the existing conditions evaluation. Bureau Veritas, a subconsultant for Group 4, did facility condition assessment of each of our building structures, They looked at the building as a structure, their mechanical, electrical, plumbing. They did not look at the operational needs during this task. Task two, the future space needs assessment, included that operational needs looked at staffing needs in the future as well as the needs of the community. And this included phase one of a two-part community engagement process. And I'll get into that in just a moment. Task three, the alternative facilities options, The consultant provided the city with a few different options to meet the needs of the community. It also included phase two of community engagement. And then cost four, a cost estimate and an implementation plan. During the first phase of community engagement, the consultant asked the community what type of spaces they wanted to see in public facilities. This was done via an online survey and a few different pop-up events, including Groovin' at the Grove, Family Day in the Park. As you can see, the community identifies aquatics, the arts, community, and recreation spaces that they want to see. In general, they identified the arts and community and performance art theater being one of them as a high priority. Next, the consultant looked at the different community facilities that we currently have. This includes the community center and the community center annex over at Newark Boulevard and Cedar, the senior center, and the old library. Based off of the community engagement results, the existing facilities that we have, and then several different planning standards The consultant introduced the idea of a cultural arts community center to meet the needs of the community. They came up with three different size options involving different programming. Each of the program spaces within each option was derived from the community engagement results in phase one. They also presented two different locations. So option A includes a lobby, reception area, community gallery spaces, two preschool classrooms, art and maker classrooms, some staff support spaces, and then some office spaces that could be used potentially for the Chamber of Commerce, and then a large community room seating about 500 people or 300 in a banquet setting. This room could be used for a variety of different things. It could be rented for by different community organizations or the school district if needed. Option B would include everything in Option A plus some additional meeting rooms, conference space, a senior lounge, consultation room, and a cafe vending area. The idea behind option B would be to bring all of our senior center services currently operating out of the senior center and incorporate it into a larger facility. Option C would include everything in option A and B, plus a few additional amenities like a dance studio, music room, and additional art and ceramics studio. Like I mentioned, they looked at two different locations, one of being the Civic Center Park, which is right here at the location of the old library. Option A, the smallest of the three different program sizes, would fit nicely right over the existing library. But as you can see, the parking that would be required sort of starts to impede on the park spaces. And the larger the facility gets, the more the parking impedes onto the park spaces. The second location is the existing community center location at Community Park. Again, you can see the smaller size kind of fits right where the existing community center is with some parking. It impedes a little bit, but not too much. And then option B and C. You know, looking at these three different sizes, two different locations, the consultant provided a list of evaluation criteria so that we could have a way to evaluate the positives and negatives of each location, each program size. This information, along with the slides I just went over, was presented to the community in phase two of community engagement, and they were asked to vote on a size and a location preference. During phase two of engagement, we got over 500 responses. Again, there was an online survey. We had a couple of pop-up events as well as a traditional community meeting, and about 74% of the community preferred the Newark Community Center location. Looking at the three different program sizes, over half of them preferred option C, which is the largest option, including all of the spaces that I went over a few slides ago. So looking at the facilities master plan as a whole, the consultant presented their recommendations in three different buckets. One is preventative maintenance. Like I mentioned, we had facilities condition assessments completed on each of our buildings. which helped us project out the maintenance costs and maintenance needs for our facilities. We're looking at about $75 million over the next 20 years. They recommended the new Cultural Arts Center, and that meets the community needs that were identified during the two phases of community engagement, as well as the replacement of Fire Station 27 and 29. And then there's renovations and potential capital improvement program projects. There were other projects that were identified that don't fit into the Cultural Arts Center or that have to do with staffing needs, and those will kind of fit into our normal capital improvement program projects. In our next steps, we are planning to present the draft report to City Council in May and final presented for consideration in summer of 2024. And I would be happy to answer any questions Sure.

[622] Matthew Jorgens: Yeah. Thank you for your presentation. Um, just a couple of questions that I've been thinking about. Um, have we looked at, you know, when we have on one of the earlier slides, we had the long list of services that would be provided at the center. Have we evaluated, you know, what those, who those services would serve based on age or are we just looking specifically at community need as you know, we've taken in?

[649] Ms. Gonzales: Um, there, you know, there's services that are specific to senior needs. And this is a very high level survey that was conducted as this phase. If we decide to move forward with a cultural arts center, there will be a second phase of programming and further community engagement can be done to refine that.

[669] Matthew Jorgens: And then my other question is when we're looking at the two locations, I believe the library is on the AC transit route as it goes through and on the AC transit route from NMHS after school. Is that true of the current community center location too?

[684] Ms. Gonzales: I'm not sure. I would be happy to look into that and get back to you.

[688] Phuong Nguyen: So that our students can take advantage of the community center, the new activities and everything like that. That would be great. Thank you.

[712] Aiden Hill: Member Hill. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. So, this is my first liaison meeting, so I apologize if my question is not well informed, but number one, thank you for your work. I'm just curious, do you see, I know that the focus is more on senior needs and how to accommodate them, but do you see any connections with the school district on this particular project that we can help to support?

[753] Ms. Gonzales: So while option B did include bringing the senior services over to this community center, it would serve the entire population of Newark. So there would include two preschool classrooms, which would replace the preschool classrooms at our existing community center, a variety of other opportunities for, you know, enrichment programming. So senior lounge and senior services is just one small component. So there's definitely opportunity for, you know, partnering with the school district.

[786] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Ms. Gonzalez.

[787] Phuong Nguyen: Sure. Member Jones.

[791] Matthew Jorgens: Sorry, my other question was if we could, you know, before it comes back to us, have a list of, you know, public services, whether it's the city or the school district that have gone out to private locations or locations outside of Newark that could be served by the center, I think that would be helpful and beneficial for our community as we start seeing the benefits. Sure.

[814] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you. On to item D2, presentation on housing element by city manager Brunoon and community development director Turner. Welcome. Thank you.

[838] Steven Turner: Great. Good evening. I'm Stephen Turner. I'm the Community Development Director for the City of Newark. Thank you for hearing our presentation tonight. We're very excited to be able to state that our housing element, which has taken a number of years to complete, was certified by the state late last year. And it's a very big monumental achievement for our community, for sure. There are some cities throughout the Bay Area that still do not have a certified housing element, but pleased to mention that all cities within Alameda County have certified housing elements as well. So I want to talk a little bit about our housing element and how it came to be, as well as some opportunities for collaboration with the school district and the city into the future. So the topics that we'll be going over tonight are just giving a sort of a general plan overview and how the housing element fits in with the general plan. I'll then describe a little bit about the timeline, about how the housing element was developed and how we got to this point. We'll then focus on community engagement. We did an extensive amount of community engagement in the preparation of the housing element. And so I want to speak with a little bit about that. Then we'll go over some of the key goals, policies, and programs, particularly as they relate to cooperation between the city and the school district, and then talk about those next steps for city and district collaboration. So just a bit about our general plan. It was developed in 2013, so it's just a little over 10 years old now, and it's really the city's long-term development vision. It provides goals, policies, and programs across a number of different topics, and it's really meant to guide development and actions the City would take over the lifespan of the General Plan. This General Plan has a lifespan of about 20 years, so we're about halfway through the implementation of the plan. The General Plan also identifies the priorities for the City, as well as guides the Capital Improvement Program for investments within our community. There are a number of required elements or chapters. General plan law is within state law, and so the state has indicated that there's a number of chapters or elements that are required. Land use, transportation, housing, conservation and sustainability, environmental hazards, and parks and recreation and open space. Through the process of updating the housing element, We also updated our environmental hazards element which looks at safety and noise concerns within the community to make sure that development is safe and has as little impacts to our community as possible. Our general plan also has some three optional elements that are not required by the state, economic development, community services and facilities, and health and wellness. So we'll be focusing on the housing element of course tonight. What is the housing element? It's really a plan for the housing that is needed within the community. As you know, the cities don't build housing, but we do create the rules and framework where the housing should go. It includes, as I mentioned before, housing goals, policies, and programs. It's required by state law that each city has a housing element. And it's the only element that needs to be approved or certified by the state. A big part of the housing element goals is to describe our target amount of housing that we should be producing over the next eight years. And that number is determined by the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, or RHNA. The housing element is updated every eight years. And again, it's the only plan that's approved by the state. So what is included in a housing element? Community engagement is an extremely large part of developing the housing element, and I'll talk a little bit about that in one of the upcoming slides. Housing needs is really an analysis of the housing need in the community, and we take a look at household and job trends, as well as census information to help us define what the housing needs are. In this particular housing element, and for all housing elements across the state, there really is a focus on affirmatively furthering fair housing, also known as AFFH. And it's really meant to address some of the past actions that created segregation, and really to look at ways where we can foster more inclusive and equitable housing development within the community. And so we spent a lot of time building out our AFFH section in our housing element. The element also contains a description of constraints, and that's government constraints and non-government constraints. So a government constraint might be things like zoning requirements, like setbacks and height, as well as the process to develop housing, like use permits and those types of things. Non-government constraints could be, for example, interest rates or the cost of developing housing, That is also a constraint that sort of limits the production of housing in the community. We also look at resources, and those could be financial, administrative, or non-profit resources in the community that helps us build housing. Then there's the housing plan, which comprises of the goals, policies, and programs that help guide our housing efforts into the future, as well as a sites inventory, taking a look at the places within the community where housing is most likely to be developed. So I talked a little bit about RHNA and the number of units that the city needs to plan for. Really what you should be focusing on is the bottom line number of 1,874 units, but that comprises of different levels of affordability for housing, and you can see the numbers that are there. The number of 1,874 was developed through a formula process through the Association of Bay Area Governments And it's based on things like where the jobs are, where existing housing is, high resource areas, all get factored into the formula and ultimately came up with our number of 1,874 units that we need to plan for. And then a little bit about the timeline. This starts in early 2023, but really we began much earlier in terms of the public participation and community engagement process. We did a lot of that in 2022. But throughout 2023, we met with the Planning Commission and the City Council, held community workshops to get input about our housing element, and then had a number of reviews with the states so that they could review our plan and ultimately find it consistent with state law. We had to go back and forth with the state a number of times in order to get it right. But finally, at the end of December of 2023, we received notice that our housing element is consistent with state law and is therefore certified. So in terms of community engagement, again, we started that in 2022 and had a number of very typical community engagement efforts through social media, posters, and flyers. We created a website, newyorkhousingupdate.org, which is still valid. You can go to that website and see all of the housing element materials that we have developed over that period of time. We did a lot of in-person engagement. interviews and listening sessions, particularly at community-wide events, such as Family Day in the Park, we were able to speak with a number of community members about their thoughts about housing in the community. But we also did a community survey, which was, we got a very good response of over 340 responses, and that really helped us kind of focus on what we should include within the housing element. And then particularly with the school district, we met twice in 2022, in April, both with the Parent Advisory Committee and the District English Learner Advisory Committee, and that was also helpful to get some different perspective from the school district about housing in our community. So what did we hear? We did hear that residents are very concerned about housing affordability, and that's not just limited to Newark, but most communities are also dealing with that issue as the number one concern from their community, that it's just It's very expensive to obtain housing, whether it is purchasing housing or even renting housing. It's just very expensive. And those high prices make it unaffordable for folks. And so they may not be able to live as close to where they work, but instead may have to go out to less expensive areas and then commute into their jobs. The community also felt that not everyone in the community had equal opportunity to housing, and so they wanted us to have policies and programs to help address that. Community members are also interested in a variety of housing types, so everything from sort of traditional single-family development to more dense urban development, such as townhomes and condos. Rentals, of course, were a big a housing type in need, and also accessory dwelling units were very popular as well. These are like the granny units that an existing single family property owner may want to develop on their property. We also heard that Newark needs to plan for climate change and make sure that where we place housing is not going to be in areas that are inordinately affected by climate change. And our community wants to stay in Newark. You know, they find it challenging to do so, and many members are being displaced from Newark in order to find less expensive housing, and so the more that we can provide a variety of housing types that is affordable to our community members, that we'd be going in the right direction if we can do that. So, some of the goals that are in the housing element. Again, these goals are more aspirational, and really the The meets or how we achieve these goals are through the policies and programs that we'll talk a little bit about later. But these goals are reflective of what the community had told us, that we should preserve and improve our existing housing stock, that we should facilitate more homes for more people, that we should reduce and remove constraints for affordable housing development. We want to help people stay in their homes and in their communities. We want to increase the opportunities for affordable housing. make sure that we enhance the quality of life, that there's equity and environmental justice in our housing decisions, and again, as we talked about AFFH, that we further fair housing throughout the city. So focusing on some particular policies relating to some of those key goals, our policy H2.3 It's promoting and facilitating affordable housing partnerships with nonprofits, the school district, and community colleges. And we know that college districts and school districts may have land opportunities to develop housing, and we had heard that from the community that that might be an opportunity for us to explore. In particular, Program H2.6 directs us to work in partnerships with school districts, and that might be an opportunity for more affordable housing production on those sites, to build up and strengthen those relationships between the city and the school district, collaborate so that we can implement plans for district-owned properties, and expand accessible resources for families, educators, and staff. Another goal, goal H.4, helping people stay in their homes in the communities, policy H.4.3, work to identify opportunities for partnering with other public sector agencies and landowners to acquire sites for affordable housing and seek creative ways to develop those relationships and those affordable housing units in those projects. And then H7.3, distribution of housing resources. This relates to Assembly Bill 27, which requires the school district to provide housing information and resources on their website. The school district does that right now, and you have a very extensive list of links to housing resources and housing providers, so that's very helpful. The city wants to work with the school district to ensure that all of the required and helpful information is included on the school district website going forward into the future. We also want to put a particular focus on homeless households with children. These are folks that are experiencing homelessness that may have children within the school district and try to find solutions to address that problem and also assist the school district with any sort of staff training or information that could be posted on the website in multiple languages so it's available for everybody. So some possible next steps Again, the city works very extensively with census data and demographic information, and we're always open and working with the school district staff to be able to share demographic information and learn more about trends and see if there are any areas due to those trends that we should be focusing on. We understand that the school district, when it comes to school district land, may be looking at opportunities for the development of school district sites. And the city is willing to be a partner and investigate those opportunities with the school district. And we also feel that we could work together to collaborate on public engagement and messaging opportunities. We think there's a really good opportunity to work directly with your stakeholders to get information out to them that would be helpful for them and their housing situations. So that concludes the presentation. A lot of information for sure, but I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

[1733] Phuong Nguyen: Any questions? Member Jorgens?

[1736] Matthew Jorgens: Yeah, thank you. So when we share demographic info, what's the ordering? Is that more predictive, more responsive to once something's built? We are able to provide that information then, or is it more predictive?

[1749] Steven Turner: No, I think it's all of that for sure. I mean, we get census information that can help us spot trends. Um, and, um, the school district, uh, I believe has worked with, and most school district work with the demographer to understand their community and their families. And, um, and we can share information that will help us kind of make better decisions with regard to housing, um, and, or helping to do that into the future for sure.

[1776] Matthew Jorgens: I would be interested in seeing some of that demographic info for some of our past developments to see, you know, has our building housing led to, you know, more families being, able to move into Newark, which is going to lead into my next question. On slide 10, we had talked about a desire of Newark residents to have a variety of different housing types, especially on rentals. As we look to have more families to be able to afford to live in Newark, that would mean multi-bedroom rentals. When we look at our projects coming up, how are we doing on that? What's the status on that going forward?

[1811] Steven Turner: We're doing well. Um, the city council last year, uh, committed $12 million to an affordable housing site that is specifically rental housing for families. So these are units that there are some one bedrooms, but predominantly there's two bedrooms and three bedrooms rentals that, uh, would be perfect for families. So they were, as I mentioned, the council, uh, committed $12 million, uh, to satellite affordable housing, uh, to develop a project on Thornton. Um, and, uh, the, SAHA and their architect are drawing up the plans for that housing. We will be reviewing that housing and those plans later this year for council approval.

[1850] Matthew Jorgens: I think that's really important, you know, as you know, we talked about Newark Unified, like a lot of school districts in the Bay Area are in, you know, declining enrollment and a big part of that is families just not being able to afford to live in the area. So as much as we can do there, you know, kind of helps on two different fronts. Thank you.

[1870] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you, Member Jorgens. Member Hill.

[1877] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Mr. Turner, for the great presentation. So two questions. I think you said 1854 units, is that correct?

[1885] Steven Turner: Yes, 1874. Oh, 74. I thought that burned into my mind. Okay. All right. Okay, so 1874. Yes.

[1888] Aiden Hill: And then over what period of time are you anticipating the addition of these units?

[1898] Steven Turner: Well, it's a period of over eight years. And again, the city is not required to, well, city doesn't build housing, but developers build the housing. So we just need to make sure that we have the policies, the programs, the regulations, removing the barriers to allow those units to be developed. And through the housing sites inventory, we've identified where most likely those housing units could be built. But again, the city doesn't control that. We rely on property owners to propose housing projects to us that we then can review and perhaps ultimately approve. And all of that kind of leads and helps us meet our goal, housing production goal of 1,874 units. But it's not like a hard goal. We just have to have all the policies, programs, and rules in place to allow that to happen.

[1949] Aiden Hill: OK, great. And then sort of building on what Member Jorgens had mentioned, um I mean obviously from a school district perspective we're concerned about enrollment and trying to grow enrollment um and I'm curious if you've looked at the distribution of the of the different housing types um because that will have an impact on family size and ultimately the the number of kids and so and I think that as member Jorgensen mentioned if we have smaller units it makes it more affordable but usually that means that the family size will be smaller there'll be fewer children you know the the bigger potentially larger family size, but again, you know, more expensive. So just curious if you've looked at that and if you have any thoughts or projections on that.

[1992] Steven Turner: Sure. Well, Newark has done very well at producing market rate larger units in the form of townhomes. All right. So these are larger units that are family size units, but they are for sale predominantly. And by far that's been the the most popular housing type that's been developed. And so we understand and realize that, um, ideally it needs to move to a more dense product, uh, that would likely be condominiums or rentals. Um, and that would, um, allow, I think, uh, more people to be able to afford those units. Uh, also the city has been collecting affordable housing impact fees and using those fees to, promote the types of projects that we believe are necessary. So I gave the satellite affordable housing example of 54 rental units that would be oriented towards families. They would be the larger size, but they would be rental types of units. And we think that that is the housing product type that is really in need and in demand. And so many of our policies and programs have been developed to promote that style and that type of housing within the

[2062] Aiden Hill: And you're saying condos are the type that you're now kind of migrating towards?

[2067] Steven Turner: Well, I think that condominiums allow for more dense product and certainly rental units. If you followed the development along the New Park Mall specific plan, where the idea was to put rental housing around the mall, that would be in a very dense type of product would be, those would be rental units and not condos, but we think that that is the housing type that is most needed and most in demand.

[2100] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Mr. Turner. Sure.

[2103] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you, Mr. Turner, for the presentation. I have a couple of questions in regards to new developers coming in. Has the city asked them to allocate a certain percentage of housing made specifically for affordable housing?

[2117] Steven Turner: We are moving in that direction for sure. Right now, developers can pay affordable housing impact fee and satisfy their affordable housing regulations. However, the city does allow for an alternative means of compliance by providing units and producing units on site. And that's been the council's preference is to provide units. So as we work with developers, we tell developers early on that the city council expects units to be affordable units to be provided in with their project. It doesn't work with every single development. And we are looking to change our ordinance to kind of flip the requirements around. So instead of paying the fee, you actually build the units and have the fee as a secondary means of compliance.

[2164] Phuong Nguyen: Great. Thank you. And then secondly, I know that City of Milpitas and Milpitas Unified School District have work in collaboration to jointly develop workforce housing. for the teachers at Milpitas Unified, and I'm hoping that maybe in the future we can have that collaboration and also do the same with the City of Newark. That would be wonderful.

[2190] Steven Turner: Certainly. I believe through the adoption of the housing element by the City Council, and therefore the goals, policies, and programs that look for opportunities for collaboration, that that is also a goal.

[2201] Phuong Nguyen: So I guess I'm kind of plugging and asking for help and helping us pass a bond, and maybe we can We can create some workforce housing for our teachers and our civic working employees here in Newark. That would be wonderful.

[2216] Steven Turner: And we're very willing to be helpful in terms of the technical discussions that the two staffs of the two organizations can have to kick that off and start to investigate that opportunity.

[2228] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Okay, up next, item D3, update on School Resource Officer Program by City Manager Bernoune, and please, Chief, and I apologize, I'm gonna mess up on your line. Thank you. City Manager Bernoune.

[2252] David Benoun: Yes, good evening committee members. This is an update on the School Resource Officer Program. Tonight we have a presentation from Lieutenant Sandoval. Lieutenant Sandoval previously served as the SRO a number of years ago. He does oversee this unit at this point in time. It is temporarily suspended. Bottom line, Lieutenant Sandoval is going to walk through the presentation, give an overview of the SRO program, compare calls for service when we had the SRO program in effect versus now it's currently suspended. And he's going to outline the goal to have an SRO program reinstituted hopefully later this fall. That will depend ultimately on the staffing levels of the Newark Police Department. With that in mind, I'm going to pass it over to Lieutenant Sandoval. You have the floor, sir.

[2301] Lieutenant Sandoval: Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'm here to talk to you guys about the SRO program, which is probably one of the most passionate programs that I'm involved in. I've been involved with working with kids throughout my career over 20, well, over 24 years. This is one of the programs that's, I understand, very important to us. I started in the SRO program probably right around 2013 when I became, well, I became an SRO at the end of 2014. But right before that, you guys haven't met me, but I became a high school teacher. So I teach high school classes over at ROP. And slowly after that, I became an SRO. And so I worked as an SRO for a few years before I promoted into supervision and management. So the SRO program, find to be one of the most important programs that we have in our police department, so I completely understand the need for it to get back in session with our schools. For just a quick overview of what our SRO program does day to day, you know, we create this environment when you have an SRO in the school, you create this environment that makes the ability for the kids to bond and interact with an officer every day. which is important because we typically, when it comes to officers and children, I think one of the most common things we hear parents say to their kids is do your homework or eat your food or else the police are coming after you. So by the time they come to high school, they might not want to interact with the officer during your high school. One of the best things I found as an SRO is being able to create that environment, being able to create the friendships and the bonds with kids. So we're also there to make them feel safe. And a few things that happens with making them feel safe is we're parked out in front of the school, our police car's visible, and we're wandering around the school, interacting with the kids, working with staff. So I'm gonna go over a few of the duties that our SROs do every day. Aside from providing a uniform presence on the campus, we also are trying to discourage intruders from coming on the grounds. Sometimes the intruders may not mean to come onto the grounds. I could tell you a few stories that happened when I first became SRO, which was a campus that is open and free to the public, to be accessed by the public. We found that a lot of neighboring residents wandered onto the campus, brought their dogs, thought it was okay to wander around the campus. We're not so much concerned about those. The ones that I was more concerned about were the visiting students that would come from other districts or visiting adults that would come from other districts. So having a SRO on campus helped deter that as well. Some of the duties that we typically do there on the campus is, like I just mentioned, the positive image of law enforcement, being able to interact with kids and build relationships. provide the students with better understanding of law enforcement. You know, I can't tell you how many times throughout my day or throughout an SRO's day, the kids, maybe they're afraid to ask questions about law enforcement, but they'll come to you and ask all kinds of police related questions that they wouldn't typically want to ask. We give classroom presentations and just make ourselves available. Some of the most, I think, beneficial things as well with that relationship is I can't tell you how many times I've had students that would come and confide with the SRO or confide with me when they needed help with something simple, advice, something that maybe they didn't want to go to a principal or a counselor. So we built those relationships up as well. We participate in counseling sessions. I could tell you I've spent hours trying to negotiate to teenagers from not getting into a fight. problems at home, problems with homework. We go typically above and beyond what you normally would do on the street. We're not in the school pulling over people. We're talking to them about their homework and about relationships at home. And then helping the school administrators. We work hand in hand with the administrators. And a lot of things that we help them develop, you're going to see here in a little bit, they'll talk about. program. We developed the school safety plan, but where we see a deficiency somewhere, if we see a hole somewhere, we help the school develop a program to fill that void. One of those that we did quite a few years ago was our school safety plan. We serve as liaison between the City of Newark and the school district. You know, we bring information back to the school district that from the police department to help you make better decisions when it comes to events happening on campus. We make ourselves available to the school district after hours for all kinds of questions and all kinds of incidents. We investigate most crimes that occur on the campus. Some of the crimes that happen associated with campus not necessarily are on the property, but maybe across the street. The chief and I were just talking about an incident that occurred where an officer realized that there was a guy that kept hanging out across the street from the high school. He was on the New Park Mall property. Long story short, he realized that this guy was selling marijuana to the kids. And he was able to intervene and arrest him just because daily the officer was there noticing him show up, noticing kids going to where he was. Some of the other events that you know, we see off campus, especially when it comes to intruders, is people visiting and you start to get to know the people that are just walking by versus the people that don't belong coming to the campus. So an SRO really develops a sense for who's in the neighborhood, who's not supposed to be there. And also, we also, as being on campus, the SRO is able to communicate with the school quicker than a phone call. you know, one of the one of the events that I could tell you about deterring criminal activity and and pre warning the high school is, you know, we have events that happen nearby the high school that we're listening to on the radio and listening to the radio and we're able to communicate that with the school staff quicker than our dispatcher will be able to to get on the phone. Benefits for having us on campus is the support that we provide the school the relationships we provide to the school district and to the school administration. The school safety program that we plan and execute throughout the year, one of the most important ones is the school safety program that we teach to all schools from K to 12. Years ago we developed a program when it came to school safety that we found a way to teach elementary school age kids all the way to 12th grade so it didn't matter what grade level you were at, it would follow you all the way through high school, no different safety plans for different campuses. And we teach that annually to all the campuses, to all the staff as they request an update for that role or for that curriculum. Next, I'm going to talk to you guys about some of the calls for service. Now, this year we don't have an SRO. And as the city manager mentioned, that's due to staffing. It was really difficult to get to the point where we had to choose to suspend the program, but it was ultimately what we had to do. So I'm going to kind of frame for you these numbers because I do want to point out that while the numbers look lower, some of the things that I even have to explain to the rest of police administration and the police staff is that the SRO opens and develops more investigations while they're on campus versus what the school will necessarily call. So if you look here for the SRO school year of 22 to 23, where we had an SRO assigned, there was 124 total calls for service at the campus. And where you see 100 calls during school and then 24 calls after school, the difference between that is just the school hours, the SRO dealing calls during the school hours, 7 to 3, and then after school, what typically would be the time between leaving school and maybe going to play football or an after school sport. Some of those incidents occurred in the surrounding areas around the campus, but that's about how many calls the SRO handled that year. This year, without an SRO, these calls went to patrol. These are patrol officers that had to leave the beat to go handle them. 82 calls, and this is with the school being a little, well, the school calling in the calls they need to call in, but no dedicated SRO that's patrolling the surrounding neighborhoods and developing a call or creating an investigation because of something they observe. So those calls are typically going to look smaller and you'll see the same thing with the cases on the next slide. But I will note that a lot of the things that the SRO does on campus aren't documented because of all the different office hours that they keep with counseling and intervention. So some things never make it to develop into a call. Next slide here is total cases that we documented. In the 22-23 school year, we documented 21 cases that could be a mixture of fights, it could be a mixture of medical needs, 18 during school hours and three after hours. Now this year without an SRO during this time period, and I didn't make note that we compared the time period of August through March, the months that we had an SRO last year and the months now that we can quantify some of this data. So this year, from August to March, the school year, we had 16 cases. So 13 cases during school and three cases after school. And again, not necessarily that's handling these. These are being handled by patrol officers. The top cases that we've had at the high school are typically EMS and 911 calls, followed by battery and disturbance calls, and 5150 or welfare checks for both school years. And that's typically the highest calls that we take. Now a little bit of the history of the program, how it all started. I was able to go into the closet and start to research some of the historic memorabilia and talk to the very first, I made a phone call to the very first SRO just to get some of these dates here. 1988 was the first time we had an SRO at Newark Memorial High School. It was the first full-time SRO. and we didn't have that program expand to the junior high until the year 2000 where we had an SRO on both campuses. That was great to have that. I'm sure the junior high school would love for that to happen again. Right now we can only you know if we get back if we are able to get back on our feet we can only provide an SRO at the high school. So we had a junior high SRO until about 2010, where we had some financial challenges and we had to reduce staffing. So that eliminated the SRO position. In 2013, we tried to bring a hybrid program back. It was called an SLO. It was a part-time SRO and part-time patrol officer. But we found that the needs of the schools were just so great that it was hard to maintain that. and we had to keep our officer back on patrol. So in 2015 is when we had to eliminate the SLO program. And then, of course, we all know what happened in 2020. And so our SRO was assigned to go back to patrol. Now we're at 2023 to the 2024 school year where our critical staffing schedule has caused us to suspend some programs at the police department So we are, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, we have been actively recruiting trying to build our numbers back up. We do have officers that have gone through training and are back out in the street and we are hoping that those numbers will build up high enough by the time fall comes so that we can try and assign a new SRO back to the high school. right now we're projecting to end our critical staffing schedule in July. The critical staffing schedule is really where we're down to a minimum frame of officers patrolling the streets. Once these officers get out of training and we can build the numbers back up and we can go back to the normal teams that we had before, then we'll hope for the ability to bring the SRO back to the high school. And I added some pictures from back in the day so you guys could see some of the interactions at Tahoe School. I didn't purposely put a balloon over my face but.

[3175] Phuong Nguyen: So questions. Thank you so much for the presentation. Member Jorgens any questions.

[3181] Matthew Jorgens: Yeah, if we could, on one of the slides where I was comparing our kind of August to March data, and then it showed the total cases, it looked to me, and it was going fast, so I couldn't do the, you know, back of the napkin math. It looked like there was a kind of disproportionate increase of calls that were generated at the last two months of the last school year. That makes sense to me intuitively, but maybe something we should be paying attention to with the SRO there, that there, you know, might be an uptick in calls there. And just a question, you know, as we saw the, you know, decrease in calls, is that something that we're seeing kind of across other districts as, you know, we're a little further away from COVID, some of the behavior issues that might have stemmed from that, you know, you know, what's that a result of, you know, maybe a high school administrator taking on some of that work versus, you know, we're a little further away from COVID and behavior is just getting better. Do we have some of that comparative information?

[3232] Lieutenant Sandoval: I don't have any data that I could compare for other cities. I could tell you that exactly what you said a second ago is what's likely happening. One of the things that not many will know is I do constantly communicate with the administrators at the high school just to keep them in contact with someone at the police department. And we're probably talking weekly. I had a couple of phone calls today. A lot of stuff the administrators are taking on themselves. And that would be typically something that the police department or the officer would have been investigating when they were there, which would have generated a call. And a lot of times, just seeing the officer or seeing the police department at the campus will cause someone to come and report something which will generate a call.

[3275] Matthew Jorgens: And then I would imagine with that kind of gap of some of that work's being taken on by administrators at the high school and superintendent, if the high school administrators could come and say, hey, this is the work that we weren't able to get done. This is the gap in our work that we weren't able to do because we were doing this work that was usually in the past had been done by the SRO. I think that would be helpful for our community to see that, you know, as we, you know, talk about the value of this program.

[3303] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you, Member Hiltz.

[3307] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Lieutenant Sandefull. I really appreciated the presentation and kind of the philosophy that you've laid out for what you're trying to accomplish. I'm just curious, you know, you talk about the history and the challenges that we faced around maintaining a consistent program. And I'm just curious, in the Bay Area, is that a common problem with other districts, other cities? Or are we unique? And if so, kind of any thoughts about where maybe there is more consistent support? What are they doing that we could maybe try to copy and benefit from?

[3347] Lieutenant Sandoval: Well, I think that I wouldn't be able to speak on how some of the larger agencies fund their SRO program. While I do know from working in the SRO program, a larger city may have a large pool of SROs. And if they ever have to reduce to a smaller number, the ones that are left are still serving the schools, and they may split it. We are much smaller than those cities. You know, being able to fund multiple SROs, as you saw the last time we were able to fund two SROs, you know, that's taking two police officers off the street from working on the street. We had a challenge with the second one back in 2015, so it's really difficult with a smaller agency to be able to fund two positions and take it away from the street, where we're also trying to fund, you know, an increased number of traffic officers or an increased number of other positions. So uniqueness, I think it's just a challenge of being a smaller city.

[3412] Aiden Hill: Thank you so much.

[3414] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you, Lieutenant Sandoval. I just have one question. In regards to hiring levels, have you guys been losing staff due to retirement, attrition, or what are the challenges of recruitment right now?

[3431] Lieutenant Sandoval: Well, how much time do we have? You know, there's been a lot of retirement. And I think socially, as you may read, the law enforcement profession isn't a very popular profession. There's not very many. To give you a perspective, when I applied to be a police officer, I don't remember how many positions were open, but I vaguely remember around 500 applicants for just maybe one or two positions. And I worked in recruitment under Chief Arguello not too long ago. And we are, you know, all cities that are trying to recruit, because we're trying to recruit over each other and trying to find a better recruitment method to take candidates. You know, you may only get six, seven, eight candidates that apply where you have multiple positions open. So part of it is the just the challenge that law enforcement is facing right now with getting interested persons One of the important things that we have going for us right now that I take pride in is we do have our high school class. I look at one of our officers that was one of my students that went through my class, then became a police explorer, and then we hired her in a non-sworn position, and now she's been a police officer for a while. So we have the recruitment through our education side. But trying to recruit laterals from other cities and trying to recruit people from other cities,

[3520] Phuong Nguyen: Challenges, there's just not that many applicants that are able to get through the process Thank you Thank you for the presentation Onto item e public comment do we have any public comment speakers tonight? Seeing none, we will move on to item F, future agenda items. F1, request for future discussion items. Member Jorgens, do you have any future discussion items that you would like to? Nothing at this time.

[3564] Aiden Hill: Member Hill? Not at this time.

[3571] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you. I actually do have two. One is an annual joint city of Newark and school district community event. I would like it if we could put that back on as a discussion item for our next liaison meeting. And then two, I would like to invite a guest speaker to present on the importance of adopting a local tobacco sales ordinance in Newark. I just recently found out that we're one of the cities in Alameda County that does not have a tobacco ordinance. in Newark, and I think that would be helpful in promoting and also restricting and limiting tobacco use in our students at the high school. So I would like to see if we can bring that up and have a discussion.

[3623] David Benoun: Sure. As to the latter, that is something that staff is currently planning. Oh, awesome. I don't have a timetable as to when we plan on presenting that recommendation to the city council. We are currently investigating that issue, and we hope to have a recommendation. Sometime soon. Great. Thank you so much. And then as to the to the former he said an annual Joint city of Newark and school district community event Okay So this would be an agenda item to discuss a potential future event.

[3652] Carina Plancarte: Yes.

[3653] Matthew Jorgens: Thank you I would like to see a presentation on a tobacco tobacco ordinance just to see the specific impact on schools Whereas, you know from the city perspective we may just look at it, you know more more generally than that. So I think seeing it specifically would be helpful for me.

[3671] David Benoun: Okay. Yeah, we can certainly do that. We do have some zoning ordinances in effect that do regulate the sale of tobacco within a proximity to schools, I believe. But we can certainly speak to that.

[3685] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you so much. With that, we're moving on to item G, adjournment. May I get a motion? Oh, sorry, I was moving too fast. On item F, we have one more item. Future meeting dates, June 24th, 2024 and October 28th, 2024. With that, I'd like to have a motion for adjournment.

[3716] Matthew Jorgens: So moved.

[3718] Phuong Nguyen: Member Jorgen moved.

[3720] Aiden Hill: I second.

[3721] Phuong Nguyen: Member Hill second. May we have a roll call vote, please?

[3729] Aiden Hill: Yes.

[3732] Phuong Nguyen: Yes. Thank you.

[3735] Aiden Hill: Oh yes.

[3740] Phuong Nguyen: With that meeting adjourned at 7.04 PM. Thank you so much everyone.

No minutes available.