After a week off, the full City Council returns on Tuesday to a stacked agenda as we turn the corner into the fall season and head into the final couple of months before your Council undergoes a major overhaul.

If you'd like more detail on anything summarized here, click the agenda, then click on the item. Over on the right side of the page, you'll see links to a staff report and other pieces of supporting material.

City Council -- Tuesday, Sept. 29

Tuesday's agenda includes two proclamations and eight consent items that won't be discussed unless a Council member or member of the public pulls an item for conversation.

The action / information portion of the proceedings will be highlighted by two items related the City's efforts to confront homelessness and two items related to systemic racial inequities and this year's public response to injustice:

On homelessness:

• Update on Operation Shelter to Home (Item 332): On Tuesday, the Council will hear a presentation on Operation Shelter to Home, the program upon which the City embarked as a response to COVID-19. Under the program, the City, partnering with the County and the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, restructured its existing shelter operations and folded them into the San Diego Convention Center, where clients have had access to meals, showers, bathrooms, laundry services, case managers, housing navigation services, primary healthcare, mental and behavioral health services, and COVID-19 testing, rapid isolation, and treatment.

City staff will provide a rundown of the operation’s activities and detail efforts to place clients in transitional or permanent housing. They'll also talk about the program's exit from the Convention Center and funding needs.

• Performance Audit of the City’s Efforts to Address Homelessness (Item 331): Directly after the presentation on the Convention Center, the Council will hear from the City Auditor's office, which spent some time diving deep into how the city government is addressing homelessness. They released their findings back in February.

For the Auditor, the problem largely comes down to outreach -- connecting with a person who's experiencing homeless, face to face, and doing whatever you can to route them to shelter and services.

In a nutshell, the Auditor concluded that 1) the City has ratcheted up its response to the crisis, including adopting the Community Action Plan on Homelessness in 2019, but more work is needed to realize its goals; 2) the region lacks a comprehensive outreach strategy that includes sufficient outreach workers, improved coordination, and use of data; 3) and the City is missing a good opportunity to do effective outreach with people who are experiencing homelessness when it's cracking down on encampments.

"Without effective outreach," the report states, "encampment residents may simply relocate to another location that may later also require abatement—thereby sometimes resulting in a repetitive and costly cycle of abatement and inefficient use of City resources." It should be noted that the Council included $1.5 million in the budget it passed in June to expand a program that uses social workers, rather than police officers, to reach out to people experiencing homelessness.

The report includes 12 recommendations and notes that the City has agreed to fully implement seven of them and partially implement the other five. However, there is disagreement between the Auditor and city staff on some of this.

On racial injustice and the public's response to it:

• Establishing the Office of Race and Equity (Item S500): When the Council passed the current-year budget in June, it included $824,752 to staff a new Office of Race and Equity with three full-time employees. This office will provide education and technical support to City staff, local law enforcement, and elected officials in order to recognize and eliminate systemic racism and other barriers to fair and just distribution of resources, access, and opportunity in San Diego. On Tuesday, the Council will take action to officially create the office.

Also included in the budget was $3 million for a new Community Equity Fund, dollars from which will be invested in underserved communities and used to boost partnerships with community-based organizations to help realize the goals of the Office of Race and Equity.

• Seditious Language (Item 333): From the City Attorney's office comes a proposal to repeal a section of the San Diego Municipal Code that makes it illegal to use "seditious" language -- defined by Merriam-Webster as "incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority." This was enshrined into local law 102 years ago to chill expressions of dissent against World War I, and the City Attorney believes it might be an unconstitutional violation of free speech. A number of people protesting racial injustice this summer were cited by police under this section of law.

We also have four items related to housing development:

• Alante Project (Item 336): Proposed here are a series of actions that allow construction of a four-story, 50-unit multi-family residential building atop an existing two-level parking structure at 10211 Rancho Carmel Drive in Carmel Mountain Ranch (artist rendering at right). Of the 50 one- and two-bedroom units, 15 would be reserved as affordable for low- to moderate-income households earning between 60 percent and 120 percent of the area median income. 

In July, the City's Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend Council approval of the Alante project. Conversely, the Carmel Mountain Ranch Community Council voted unanimously to recommend denial, objecting to the project's density, height, traffic, and bulk and scale.

• 3Roots Project (Item 337): This one proposes a series of actions that would allow for subdivision and development of 1,800 new homes, 160,160 square feet of retail and commercial space, and 256 acres of parks, trails, and open space on 413 acres of undeveloped land at 10207 Camino Santa Fe in Mira Mesa. Of the residences, 180 would be affordable to those earning up to 65 percent of the area median income. 

Both the Mira Mesa Community Planning Group and the Planning Commission have voted unanimously to recommend approval of the 3Roots project. 

• Ulric Street Apartments (Item 338): The San Diego Housing Commission will ask the Council to approve issuance of more than $28.9 million in multifamily housing revenue bonds to fund the development of Ulric Street Apartments, a 96-unit affordable housing development at 2645-2685 Ulric St. in Linda Vista.
• Affordable Housing Fund Annual Report (Item 330): This is an informational presentation by the Housing Commission on the City's Affordable Housing Fund, which is composed of a Housing Trust Fund and an Inclusionary Housing Fund. The report covers revenue and investments, performance in meeting goals identified in the most recent annual plan, the number and types of housing units assisted, rents and sales prices of units assisted, and the amount of other funds leveraged.

But wait, there's more! Here's the rest of the agenda:

• CARES Act Revolving Loan Fund (Item S502): In July, the City learned that it had been selected by the federal government to receive nearly $1.8 million from the CARES Act to create a new revolving loan fund to help businesses in the region (San Diego and Chula Vista) retain or create jobs amid COVID-19 through investments in equipment, business systems, websites, marketing, store layouts to facilitate safer in-store or online browsing, ordering, and pick-up or delivery. Individual loans would be in the range of $25,000 to $95,000. As the initial loans are repaid, funding becomes available for new rounds of loans -- hence "revolving."
• Fiscal Year 2021 Slurry Seal Projects (Item S501): The City expects to slurry seal 330 miles of streets during fiscal year 2021 (July 2020 through June 2021). The four contracts in this particular proposal would cover 155 of those miles, involving streets in all Council districts and costing a bit more than $20.2 million. By the way, a slurry seal is when workers apply a mixture of water, asphalt emulsion, crushed rock, and other ingredients to an existing asphalt surface. 
• Amendment to JVJ Pacific Consulting Agreement (Item 335): A year ago, the City entered into a five-year contract with JVJ Pacific Consulting for $593,000 to assist the City with its next gas and electric franchise. The current franchise, held by SDG&E since 1970, expires in January 2021. JVJ used that money to develop a report with a series of recommendations for proposed new franchise terms. On Tuesday, City staff will ask the Council to approve increasing JVJ's contract by $600,000 to help guide the City through the process going forward. There's an unused $750,000 already budgeted for help with the franchise issue. This increase would come from that.
• Computer Aided Dispatch System (Item 334): The implementation contract for the San Diego Police Department's computer-aided dispatch system, which has been in place since 2017, expires in October. So, the SDPD is seeking a master services agreement with Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure for annual maintenance and technical support. The agreement would be for three years plus two additional one-year options for an amount not to exceed $5.87 million.

In addition to all of that, the Council also serves as the San Diego Housing Authority, and wearing that hat, the Council will take action on the following:

• Ulric Street Apartments: This is a companion to the Ulric Street Apartments item mentioned above. The Council and the Housing Authority must both approve.
• The Orchard at Hilltop Family Housing: This would authorize the issuance of up to nearly $27.9 million in tax-exempt and up to $3.5 million in taxable multifamily housing revenue bonds to fund acquisition and new construction of The Orchard at Hilltop Family Housing, a 113-unit affordable rental housing development to be located at 922-944 Euclid Ave. in Chollas View.
• San Diego Housing Commission Semi-Annual Grant Report: This is an informational report on activities surrounding various grants that the Housing Commission received between January and June 2020.

Tuesday's meeting officially starts at 9 a.m., when the Council will listen to public comment on any items on the closed-session agenda. Then they'll retreat to closed session and return to open session at 11 a.m. Only City staff and credentialed members of the press may attend in person. However, anyone can participate and make comments by dialing 619-541-6310 and entering the access code 877861 followed by # when the item you're interested in comes up (full call-in instructions). Watch the meeting on cable TV channel 24 or AT&T channel 99, or stream it online.

Next up will be a post on the Audit Committee meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 30.

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