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Staff urges a cautious, criteria‑based approach to repurposing public and quasi‑public land, including school sites
Summary
Staff recommended developing a framework to consider limited changes to public/quasi‑public lands rather than wholesale redesignations, citing that public lands constitute about 15% of San José’s developable land and that 26% of SB 79 areas overlap public school sites; presenters and education officials urged clearer, faster pathways for adaptive reuse.
Jared (staff) reopened discussion of the city’s public and quasi‑public (PCP) land use category and described its role in preserving community‑serving sites such as schools, utilities, faith‑based organizations and community gathering spaces. Staff said PCP comprises about 15 percent of the city’s developable land — roughly 6,700 acres — and that the category includes a range of uses from schools to hospitals and utilities.
Jared gave site examples to illustrate scale: a San José Water site of about 9.53 acres, a Kaiser hospital parcel of roughly 11.43 acres and an East Valley YMCA site of about 4.47 acres. He said the city currently has joint‑use agreements for at least 44 school sites that provide public access and that, in an initial look, about 30 percent of city land falls within SB 79 areas; of that 30 percent, 26 percent is school land (approximately 548 acres).
Given uncertainty over SB 79’s impacts and demographic changes at school districts, staff recommended a nuanced, criteria‑based framework to evaluate requests to change PCP designations. The proposed approach would develop objective criteria — based on demographic, economic and other data — to determine when partial or targeted changes are appropriate while preserving adequate community‑serving space.
Education and district representatives urged faster, clearer pathways for adaptive reuse of surplus school sites to support community uses and stabilize district finances. Matthew Tinsley of the Santa Clara County Office of Education said many districts are facing enrollment declines and that expanding permitted uses (for example, childcare or community clinics) would provide districts more options than selling land under uncertain entitlement timelines.
Commissioners asked staff to include scenario analyses showing how conversions, swaps and rezoning would affect park/open‑space access, employment lands and long‑term public service capacity. The city attorney cautioned the group to be careful because once public land is redesignated or disposed of, it may be difficult or impossible to restore.
