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Fw: Palo Alto Humane Society Supports the Budget Request for San Jose Animal Care Center City Clerk <
Mon 6/13/2022 6:38 PM
To: Agendadesk <
Office of the City Clerk | City of San José
200 E. Santa Clara St., Tower 14th Floor
San Jose, CA 95113
Main: 408-535-1260
Fax: 408-292-6207
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From: Leonor Delgado <
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2022 6:37 PM
To: The Office of Mayor Sam Liccardo < District1
< District2 < District3 < District4
< District5 < District 6 < District7
< District8 < District9 < District 10
< City Clerk <
Cc: Carole Hyde < Leonor Delgado <
Subject: Palo Alto Humane Society Supports the Budget Request for San Jose Animal Care Center
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Dear Mayor Liccardo and Councilmembers,
Thank you for considering the additional Budget Documents proposed by Concilmembers Mahan (#83 & #91) and Davis (#31). Palo Alto Humane Society greatly appreciates the Mayor's responsiveness and recognition of the challenges the shelter faces and taking steps to move in the right direction to prevent unnecessary suffering and death of animals in the community, provide assistance to the unhoused and their pets, improve overall conditions and relations at the shelter, alleviate staffing turnover and be better equipped to meet the needs of the community.
Palo Alto Humane Society strongly supports Councilmember Mahan's proposals for San Jose's Animal Care Center, to help restore operations and staffing to the effective levels needed by the community and the proposals by Councilmembers Mahan and Davis regarding funding for spay/neuter services by partnering nonprofits such as St. Francis Animal Protection Society.
We at Palo Alto Humane Society urge the Councilmembers to consider the urgency of the need and the long-term beneficial impact to the community and approve these requests.
Thank you,
Carole Hyde
Director of Programs
This message is from outside the City email system Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources Leonor Delgado
Education Manager
Palo Alto Humane Society
This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources.
This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources.
Project MORE has been working with all stakeholders to create a vibrant and welcoming place for everyone. In partnership with urban planners, experienced global design firms like Gensler, and organizations like the International Interior Design Association, we are revitalizing and beautifying the Qmunity District. I have attached our most recent project presentation for reference.
June is International PRIDE Month. We honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising and the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement, and celebrate the acheivelments and culture of the LGBTQ+ community. We would be extremely grateful to announce your support for the Qmunity District and the local LGBTQ+ community by approving the year-long closure of Post Street.
If we can be of further assistance or address any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at In the spirit community, thank you for your support!
Nathan Svoboda, President
Project MORE Foundation, Inc.
About Project MORE
Project MORE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and creating inclusive experiences for the LGBTQ+ community through thoughtful advocacy, engaging campaigns, cultural events, creative consulting, and supportive services. Created in 2013, we work to fill the gaps in services for the entire LGBTQ+ community. Known for breaking down barriers and developing innovative solutions, Project MORE strives to be more and do more in everything we do. To learn how our organization is making a difference and building community, visit and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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Fw: 06/14 CC Meeting Item 3.3 - Support Memo from CM Peralez, Carrasco, Davis & Arenas City Clerk <
Tue 6/14/2022 2:07 PM
To: Agendadesk <
Office of the City Clerk | City of San José
200 E. Santa Clara St., Tower 14th Floor
San Jose, CA 95113
Main: 408-535-1260
Fax: 408-292-6207
How is our service? Please take our short survey.
From: Amanda Rawson <
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2022 12:08 PM
To: City Clerk <
Subject: 06/14 CC Mee ng Item 3.3 - Support Memo from CM Peralez, Carrasco, Davis & Arenas
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Dear Mayor and Councilmembers,
I am writing in support of the memorandum from Councilmembers Peralez, Carrasco, Davis, and Arenas calling for additional amendments to the Mayor’s June Budget Message. In particular, Recommendation 2: Strategies to help revitalize our arts, hospitality, and visitor sectors to spur business recovery, job growth, and economic fiscal health.
Our local visitor, hospitality and arts industries continue to struggle as we adapt to deeply structural economic shifts.
As a community we are all fully aware that business travel, conferences and other parts of our local economy such full-time in-office work will never be the same as pre-pandemic. For these reasons we need to build new strategies to attract visitors from afar as well as our own Santa Clara County residents to visit and patronize our San Jose businesses, hotels and cultural offerings. Committing the City's Transient Occupancy Tax resources to this endeavor is a logical and pragmatic use of industry generated resources to help rebuild for the new future and lay a solid foundation for long-term success.
Each year San Jose Jazz works hard to draw visitors from near and far to participate in the cultural life of San Jose.
Beyond our Summer Festival and its 120+ performances we also produce and market more than 150 other performances throughout the year. We are fortunate to get to hear the many positive comments of visitors to San Jose extolling their wonderful experiences with friends and family in our CIty. We know rebuilding visitorship to our City is going to be hard and will take years. The City's Budget Director, Jim Shannon, has projected that TOT revenues will not return to pre-pandemic levels anytime in the next five years. However, we also firmly know that San Jose possesses exceptional visitorship assets to build upon and that an eager market exists ready to be tapped into.
We encourage the full Council to adopt the recommendations of the Councilmembers' memo and commit to this long-term strategy to build back our visitorship, hospitality, and arts sector for the benefit of all San Joseans.
For your reference, I have attached the full letter we sent you on March 15 at the start of this year's budget process.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Brendan Rawson
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Brendan Rawson
Executive Director
March 15, 2022
Mayor Liccardo and City Council
200 E Santa Clara Street
San Jose, CA 95113
RE: Concerns regarding FY2023 City budget and pandemic recovery.
Mayor Liccardo and City Council:
It should come as no surprise that the economic recovery from COVID-19 is proving to be brutally uneven. Some sectors have effortlessly transitioned while others have faced successive waves of closures, lost livelihoods, and lost life savings. The arts, entertainment, and hospitality sectors, which are vital to San José’s culture, tourism, meetings, and conventions industries, as well as to the City’s stated goals of building “vibrancy,” have suffered severely and disproportionately. This sector has accounted for more than ½ of all jobs lost (52,400) in our region since the start the pandemic. 1 San José’s recent mid-year budget review clearly illustrates the unequal recovery. The Budget Director forecasts year-end revenues for the general fund to be more than $100M above original estimates.
Record-setting commercial and residential real estate deals are driving tax receipts significantly higher than expected. Sales and business taxes have also increased significantly, reflecting the breadth of the recovery. In contrast, the City’s decimated Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) is falling far behind budget expectations, and likely to end near $20M this year compared to $51.3M in FY19. The City’s forecasts do not project TOT returning to pre-pandemic levels anytime within the next five years. Unless addressed immediately, this decrease in TOT will continue to reinforce the inequities of this current uneven recovery for years to come.
2 TOT is the key source of income for the Convention Center and cultural facilities maintenance, sales and marketing for all travel and tourism to the City of San José, for the Office of Cultural Affairs, and for its grants programs. These industries are essential for sustained urban vibrancy, for resident quality of life, for tourism and convention revenues, and to provide a variety of well-paying local jobs. To support these critical industries and their workers, we propose that the City:
1. Commit full TOT resources on an ongoing basis to the recovery of these sectors. The 40% of TOT that is currently channeled to the General Fund should instead be reapportioned to the remaining components that the TOT supports.
2. Dedicate a portion of these funds to develop and execute on new long-term cultural tourism strategies for a more vibrant city in the post pandemic era.
1 California Employment Development Department, Labor Market Information Division, Labor Force and Industry Employment Data for San Jose Metropolitan Statistical Area -- https://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/geography/lmi-by- geography.html
2 Tourism Economics, Inc., the City’s third-party resource for visitor industry analysis, currently projects that San Jose TOT will not recover to pre-pandemic levels for at least five years, February 25, 2022.
BACKGROUND AND DATA
The arc of recovery projected by the City for TOT vs. the General Fund illustrates the unevenness of the recovery:
The City of San José states that building “vibrancy” is part of its long-term strategy to create a fiscally sustainable and livable city. Yet, it has no clear plan or funding strategy to accomplish that. In addition, the City is currently faced with a perfect storm of “vibrancy” challenges:
• While other job sectors have bounced back, the arts, entertainment, and hospitality sector continues to struggle. There are still 16,000 fewer jobs in this sector in our region than at the start of the pandemic and wide reporting of underemployment persists.3 • Still at under 30%, local return-to-office occupancies are among the worst in the nation.4 • Restaurants and entertainment are wrestling with a “new normal” defined by changed consumer behavior. The National Restaurant Association states that “the industry is unlikely to ever completely return to its pre-pandemic state.”
Meanwhile, the overall General Fund is in a healthy state – with the five-year projection forecasting a $128.8M surplus.
Today, 40% of the TOT is channeled into the General Fund. These tax dollars, generated largely by out- of-town visitors, must be reinvested into our cultural and visitor industry infrastructure and destination marketing efforts to drive TOT revenue, sales tax and to support jobs and business recovery in the arts, entertainment, and hospitality sector.
3 California Employment Development Department, Labor Market Information Division, March 11, 2022, https://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/
4 Kastle Systems, Workplace Occupancy Barometer, March 2, 2022, https://www.kastle.com/safety-wellness/getting- america-back-to-work/
The City already has the structure in place to facilitate this work. We recommend that the City equally reapportion its current General Fund TOT allocation across the remainder recipient fund accounts of Fund 461: the Office of Cultural Affairs Arts Grants Program, the Convention & Visitors Bureau, and the Convention and Cultural Facilities Fund (536). The timing is right. TOT has contributed a very small portion of overall General Fund Revenues pre-pandemic, and it has diminished more during the uneven recovery. It is forecasted to continue below 1% of General Fund revenues.
FY 18-19 FY 19-20 FY 20-21 FY 21-22 FY 22-23 FY 23-24
General Fund Revenues $1.39B $1.20B $1.36B $1.66B $1.31B $1.36B TOT to General Fund $20.5M $14.1M $5.4M $9M $11M $13M
TOT Share of GF
Revenues
1.5% 1.2% 0.4% 0.54% 0.84% 0.96%
While this change will not greatly impact the General Fund – it will have a transformative effect on the arts and tourism sectors. Arts grants and tourism marketing will see their allotments for FY 22-23 grow from $3.7M to $7M – allowing for the immediate work to begin on recovery.
We also propose that:
3. The City charge its Economic Recovery Task Force to assign a committee to focus on long- term cultural tourism strategies to serve both the arts and the hospitality industries in unison, and to guide the continued long-term investment of TOT resources in these critical sectors.
It is important to note that this vibrancy is not achieved in a vacuum. Visit California has reported wide variation across the state – in 2021 San José’s hotel revenues totaled 36% of 2019 levels while San Diego, Los Angeles, Anaheim, and Long Beach all returned to 64% to 76% of their 2019 levels. Beach and mountain destinations across the state broke visitation records. This directly equates to competitive destinations being able to market more aggressively for visitors and conventions, and to enhance their cultural experiences for residents and visitors.
Helping to restore local budgets for tourism and the arts is the difference between San José successfully and equitably building back from the pandemic and seeing the catastrophic losses of the past few years continue far into the future.
We would like to request an opportunity for a couple of us to meet with you at your convenience to discuss these suggestions.
Sincerely,
Alexandra Urbanowski, SV Creates
Andrew Bales, Symphony San Jose
Angela Schillace, San Jose Chamber Orchestra
Anjee Helstrup-Alvarez, MACLA
Ann Watts, Starting Arts
Barbara Day Turner, San Jose Chamber Orchestra
Barbara Goldstein, Art Builds Community
Ben Roschke, Team San Jose
Bharat Lugani, Hilton San Jose
Bill Fairweather, IATSE Local 134
Brendan Rawson, San Jose Jazz
Brent Gaines, Hotel Valencia Santana Row
Bruce Labadie, San Jose Jazz
Cathleen King, San Jose Stage Company
Chad Johnston, CreaTV
Chike Nwoffiah, Silicon Valley African Film Festival
Christopher Esparza, Mexican Heritage Plaza
Chuck Toeniskoetter, Toeniskoetter Development Inc.
Connie Martinez, SV Creates
Dalia Rawson, New Ballet San Jose
Dana & Yori Seeger, School of Visual Philosophy, LLC
Dana Zell, Children's Musical Theater
Daniel Garcia, Content Magazine
Daniel Hughes, The Choral Project
Demone Carter, Artist/Arts Advocate
Derrick Seaver, San Jose Chamber of Commerce
Eileen Hamper, Rainbow Women’s Chorus
Enrique Fernandez, UNITE HERE Local 19
Erin Salazar, Local Color
Fil Maresca, Filco Events
Gary Masters, sjDANCEco
Gordon Lee, aimusic.us
Hal Laster, The Choral Project
Ihab Sabry, Team San Jose
James Williams, Opera San Jose
Jean Cohen, South Bay Labor Council
Jessica Paz-Cedillos, School of Arts and Culture at MHP Jimmy Sarfraz, Signia by Hilton
Jason Su, Guadalupe River Park & Conservancy
John Ciulla, San Jose Theaters
John LaFortune, Team San Jose
John Southwell, San Jose Marriott
Kathi Fay, The Choral Project
Laura Chmielewski, Team San Jose
Leigh Henderson, Teatro Vision
Lisa Mallette, City Lights Theater Company
Madina Moore, Team San Jose
Marilee Jennings, Children’s Discovery Museum
Matthew Martinucci, Team San Jose
Michael E. Fox, Jr., Goodwill Industries
Michael Howerton, San Jose Dance Theater
Michael P. Mulcahy, SDS NexGen Partners
Mythili Kumar, Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose
Omar Rodriguez, Kooltura Marketing
Owen Murphy, Sign and Craft Display Local 150
PJ Hirabayashi, TaikoPeace
Richard Jaffe, San Jose Chamber Music Society
Rick Holden, Levitt Pavilion San Jose
Robert Pesich, Poetry Center San Jose
Roy Hirabayashi, Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute Sally Logothetti, San Jose Symphonic Choir
San Jose Arts Advocates, Core Team
Sayre Batton, San Jose Museum of Art
Scott Knies, San Jose Downtown Association
Shawna Lucey, Opera San Jose
Shoko Michael, San Jose Youth Symphony
Tamara Alvarado, Community Activist
Tanya Fleming, Team San Jose
Ted McMahon, Bay View Development Group
Trami Cron, Chopsticks Alley
Usha Srinivasan, Mosaic America
Wisa Uemura, San Jose Taiko