City of Salinas planning staff presented an in‑development housing production dashboard built with Microsoft Power BI and asked the Housing and Land Use Committee to review features during the alpha/beta testing process.

Planning manager Vincent Montgomery described the dashboard as a "real time data driven system" designed to monitor housing activity, track progress toward the Regional Housing Need Allocation (RHNA) for the sixth cycle and increase transparency on housing-element implementation. Montgomery told the committee the dashboard will display geographic visualizations of projects, distinguish developments by affordability level and stage, and allow users to drill down into specific projects.

Montgomery said the dashboard is still in alpha and being refined, and that staff plan to present an update to the full City Council on Dec. 2, 2025 with an opportunity for the committee and other stakeholders to test the site before public release. He said the tool has the ability to update up to three times per day and described it as effectively "real time" for committee use.

Committee members asked whether other cities in the county use Power BI; Montgomery said he was not aware of other local cities using Power BI specifically but that similar platforms are used across the state and that San Jose may use a comparable dashboard. He also confirmed the dashboard includes RHNA progress visuals and cited the sixth-cycle RHNA target discussed in the presentation (6,674 units), which includes units permitted during the projection period.

Members asked if the dashboard can produce month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter comparisons and whether it could incorporate rental-registry data. Montgomery said drop-down menus and sorting should permit temporal comparisons and that integration with the city's rental-registry system is a possibility to explore, though staff noted a separate system (Ptolemy) currently handles rental-registry-type data and further investigation would be required to determine integration feasibility.

This was an informational administrative report (ID 25-546); no formal action was required or taken. Staff will continue alpha/beta testing, brief City Council, and return with updates or potential public launch steps.