Tom Wong
City Council Meeting – Emeryville, CA – April 15th, 2025
lanetary environment. The goal is to address inequities in energy access and prioritize the health of people and the environment. And now, therefore, it be resolved by the city council of the city of Emeryville that 04/22/2025 is hereby proclaimed as Earth Day in the city of Emeryville, and all residents, businesses, and institutions are urged to advocate for policy changes, adopt renewable energy solutions, and work towards a cleaner and more sustainable future for our planet as proclaimed by the mayor of the city council of the city of Emeryville at a regular meeting held Tuesday, 04/15/2025. We now have item 4.2, a presentation from the police department for the annual report. Chief Jennings. Alrighty. Good evening, vice mayor Carr, mayor Moore, and our former first mayor, Courtney Welch. So this is gonna be a brief, overview of our annual report. Normally, luckily, I have the 3 people who've been on my public safety committee who've seen this or a version of this before. Car just saw it a couple months ago. So, you know, what it normally looks like, but it's also for, community members who did not have an opportunity to see it. They can see it through on, the webpage or the large gallery we have here today. So, with that, you see our annual picture we got right here behind us. You see a very eclectic, happy group. Next slide. Basically, my message, and my message is always the same. I appreciate the fact that I have a council that has given us the tools and the support to do what we've done, and I definitely appreciate my officers who have gotten the job done, bringing more trust in, community engagement, with the city. So I can't I can't do it without the officers that we have. Next slide. This is my former command staff. Everyone here is gone besides acting Lieutenant Dauer and PSM, Buze, but they'll both be leaving shortly also, so that that'll be different next year. Next slide. You'll see my my main sergeants here. 3 of these people will be gone, in the next future. And, special thanks to Sergeant Pablo Roxas, who actually put the PowerPoint together and is our community engagement liaison, and also my, recruiting and training officer, which is critical to the growth of our organization. Next slide, please. Again, about staffing. You see some pictures, lovely folks, that we just hired. 1 of the highest, honors to bring new people into their organization. It's important to hire good folks. That's the beginning of having a good organization. At 1.1 glorious moment, we were totally staffed in October, but that has changed, with attrition and injuries and some people moved on. So you see the numbers right there. And at any point in time, feel free to ask me any questions. We can engage in this. We're gonna keep it going. But again, you've seen this before. Next slide, please. Another thing that I'm proud of in our organization is the demographics. You see, we're a very, diverse organization, by our numbers and by the photos that you saw. We definitely represent the community that we serve. 1 of the things I'm most proud of is the fact that I've made it intentional to hire, great qualified female officers. The national average for female officers is less than 10%. We're up to 19% and, we're on our way to get to 30%. That's the national 30 on 30, initiative that's been put on by the National Chiefs of Police. And, I'm informally a part of that. I'm going to, I'm going to get there. So we're going to get there. Next slide, please. Again, our female, statistics, demographics are sworn. Again, seem very diverse. Nice. Next slide, please. Again, so what we hear about, our primary focus is to thwart crime, drive down crime, driving down the fear of crime. We've done an excellent job of doing that, and this is a for how you wanna get into it, a very layered, nuanced way of driving down crime that, with me and my 34 years of experience and my officers with a lot of experience have focused on with a with a vision of making sure that we're integrated with the growth of the city and also the, the feeling of, togetherness in the city. So most of our crime is property crime. 85% of our crime is property crime. We have a rich, diverse, commercial, area. We have a lot of apartment complexes and most of our crimes are petty theft, based on opportunity to commit those thefts. Next slide, please. Or violent crime. Any crime of violence is also, you know, is a threat to our society, the fabric of our society. But our crime rate, again, is low, especially compared to our regional partners. 1 of the things also I pride myself on is I did a, longitudinal study of our crime from 2010 till now, where you'll see across the region that most people most agencies' crime is down 15% to 20%, if not higher. But a lot of those crimes are, are down from, a high point that they've had. We've never reached our high point in the last, 15 years. Our higher point of crime was 2019, and we've never gotten to that number back yet. So I'm pretty pleased with that number. The numbers went up during, went down during COVID, and then they shot up exponentially, 21, 22, 23. And we're seeing, we've, ours was going up, but we've kept it below that high point number, which is really pleasing for us. Next slide. Again, showing that a crime is down 20%. The number is up to right now. We're down another 10 to 15% on most crimes compared to last year. So, again, this is due to several factors in my opinion, 1 being a change in, public policy, that's going across our region. Another is the fact that we've gotten the flock camera system. Another factor is that we had a significant increase in our staffing. So instead of running overtime to run the day to day operations of the police department, we're using the overtime to thwart crime by using some of the graph, the grant money that you'll see there on that we've used to put those strategically in areas that were crime was occurring to actually drive down crime further. So multi layered and everyone buying in on my vision And, the new hires are very enthused. Next slide, please. Again, breaking down the crime numbers. Again, petty theft being the highest. Our our, our crimes of violence are being the lowest, which is great. But, you know, any crime. We're trying to get to a utopia where there is no scribe, and you don't need police officers. And then our breakdown by demographics, and their rest. Next slide. Our juvenile rest remain consistently low. We consistently return juveniles to their homes, 79, 80 percent. The 1 the juveniles that end up going to juvenile hall usually have a warrant for the arrest for some other, reason. Possession of a firearm is automatic, take to juvenile hall. Usually, the robberies are depending how the robbery was committed. Was it force or fear? Was there actual violence used? They they automatically go to juvenile hall. So those numbers remain low, which is good for us at the win. Next slide, please. To me, this is important. And it really would be more important for the members who have not been on the, public safety committee. But this really explains how our use of force is used. Try to give an explanation. So if if you were to arrest me and then, Mayor Moore put me in a twist lock and Vice Mayor Moore put me in another twist lock is 1 victim or 1 suspect, but 2 incidents. So the numbers can be skewed in that sense, but every use of force is counted in our, in our matrix, and you can see less than 0.4% of our, our calls for service involve force, which is different from what you see in the news, it's different from what you see, what you read in the paper. But that's how, California counts our, our incidents of uses of force. Vast majority of our, contacts are traffic and a lot of talking. Next slide, please. Usually, we use the forces that will come complaints. Those are definitions of our dispositions of uses of, complaints. Not really nuanced. Either you, you know, we have very you'll see the next we'll just go to the next slide. Unless you have any questions. So you'll see our numbers. Very part of our trans our transparency portal. All this is on our web page. You can find all this information. It's on there. You'll see that most of our sustainer for policy violations. And, essentially, every day, there's somebody who's doing a policy violation. It could be as as minor as not having your, your correct uniform on. So there's policy violations day to day. But every time that we do a, internal affairs complaint, we look at it from top to bottom. If we find policy violations, you see those are sustained, but you don't see any sustained for any, force, violence, rudeness. Well, there's some rudeness in the sustained policy violation. But the ones that really get us in trouble of, the ones we don't like, the mistake of the mind, where or the specific mistake of the heart. Whereas the heart where you're you're you're malicy by malice committing, you know, hurting someone, believing in someone, we don't have that in our organization. And those are born out in our internal affairs investigations, which are, which are low. Next slide. 1 of the reasons why I think that our crimes are down again, nuanced approach is the flock cameras. Thank you, council for approving that. Some of the numbers that come with that, 2,000,000 license plates are scanned monthly. Same license plate can run through the town 16 time. You count 16, 16 other times. But you'll see some of the things. And these are numbers are just from, October when the cameras were fully off automated to December. So this is a short, snapshot of how the cameras have affected us. But the most important number to me, besides the ones we've arrested, is the 3 96 to 1 vehicles alerted and the 20 felony vehicles alerted. When officers are alerted, they see it. They go. They drive the car out of town. That anecdotally would be the reason why crime could be done also. So there's several things that go involved with, fighting crime. This is a very good tool. City, manager Bellos just had me talk to our state senator regarding giving another federal grant, to maybe possibly or asking for, the rest of the cameras, to be paid for through a grant. So we'll see how that that goes. So, I talked to Luca for quite a bit. I sent her our our staff report. So we'll see what comes out of that. Next, slide, please. My staff, again, my my beautiful communication staff with part of my, parking enforcement staff, you see the amount of calls. A lot of calls for service. I'm very pleased that our 911 answers are 20 seconds or less, which is, integral to people feeling like they're gonna be served when they call us. We're a full full service organization. We have a we respond. And, I can't say that for for everybody. You see the amount of calls for service that we have, significant amount of calls, 38,000, and the amount of reports are generated, 4,000. Next slide. 1 person doing this property and evidence booking, almost 2,000 items booked in a year, over 2,000 other items purged. That's done with the group on overtime and 500,000,000 pounds of drugs purged. That's done by 1 person's, 1 person, Adrian Robinson, and she's also the 1 that does all the stats that you see. So I I know the public safety committee under understands that. Everyone's listening on the watching the television. 1 wonderful person does all that work. Next slide, please. Another 1 person does our records. With a little help from our, my, my public safety manager, Duchess Bouzet. So again, a lot of calls for requests. These things are not easy to do, redacting, finding them, mailing reports out, and sending subpoenas. So that was simply done by 1 or 2 people in my organization. Next slide, please. And she's also my chaplain. So a lot of people doing multiple things. Traffic enforcement. So this is 1 of the things that caused me concern last year when I saw the amount of traffic actions that we had. Back in the day, well, before any of us, there used to be 4 traffic enforcement officers. We're down to 1, Steve Hindergard. Everyone's responsible for doing traffic. Every officer is supposed to be doing some, but that number had significantly dropped after COVID. It was like hands off. So I, reenergized the folks into doing these things because we wanna drive down, injury accidents, accidents where people really get, who die. And also, it's proven that when you're having, proactive enforcement, that it drives down crime in your town. So you see that there's a 27 increase in traffic stops, 70% increase in moving violations. My emphasis to answer some of the, qualitative issues regarding our stops is to make sure you're moving doing moving violations opposed to mechanical violations. So we're looking at things that are gonna cause accidents, which is easier for me to defend if something goes wrong in doing that traffic stop. I'm not caring about expired, registration or your cracked windshield and this is so egregious that you're gonna imminently wreck. But I want you to do running red lights, running stop signs, you know, merging crazy. So those are why you see the 70% increase. We made an emphasis on that. Parking citations up 9%, which is amazing because those doom buggies that we have have been broken on and off. So they really again, the officers are doing some more park parking citations. So that's a significant, revenue maker. And also, it keeps the flow of traffic in our our commerce areas moving. And so that was a 9% increase. And that 1, Mike, is gone. It's only only 1 parking enforcement officer right now. So that's another vacancy that we're we're working to fix, because they pay for themselves. Next slide, please. Again, more of the traffic collision numbers. Next slide. 1 of the things that, again, I'm I'm pleased with that, you know, I had officers buy into doing these grants. There was no way that the command staff could do this on their own....
Dublin City Council Regular Meeting April 15, 2025
Call to order Pledge of Allegiance Presentations and proclamations Public comment Consent calendar Public Hearing Unfinished Business New Business City...
Berkeley Special City Council Meeting – April 22, 2025
It is 6.04. And we're gonna get this show on the road. Are we ready? Just about. Let's make sure...
Orchard Avenue Calming Project
The Orchard Avenue traffic calming pilot project is designed to enhance safety for all road users by reducing speeds and discouraging cut through traffic. Key features include a travel lane reduction in each direction, lowering speeds and eliminating aggressive passing, flexible delineators and bollards allowing for future adjustments, mini speed humps and refreshed striping at the Joyce Street roundabout to slow vehicles down. This cost effective pilot project was implemented quickly without asphalt or concrete work, keeping Orchard Avenue adaptable for future permanent improvements. A safer, calmer Orchard Avenue built for the community.
Hayward Planning Commission Meeting April 10, 2025
Transcript I think we're waiting for Nick. We're good to go. Recording in progress. Good evening, and welcome to the City of Hayward Planning Commission meeting for 04/10/2025. We We are holding a hybrid meeting with some participants in the council chambers and others who have joined virtually via Zoom. This meeting is being webcast on Comcast TV channel 15 and live streamed on the city's YouTube channel and on the city website. Per Assembly Bill 2 4 4 9 and pursuant to government code section 5 4 9 5 3, the meeting will include a teleconference location at Starbucks located at Box located at 400 East Ocean Avenue in Lompoc, California. Planning Commissioner member Goodbody will participate via teleconference. The agenda has been posted at the teleconference location, and the public will have an opportunity to address the planning commission. This meeting is called to order at 07:02PM. Can we please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance? Miss Allen, would you please call roll? Good evening. Commissioner Franco Closson, absent. Commissioner Goodbody? Present. Commissioner Hammond? Present. Commissioner Lowe? Here. Commissioner Myers? Present. Chair Hardy? Present. So we will now open public comments on any non agenda items. The public comments section provides an opportunity to address the planning commission on items not listed on the agenda. The commission welcomes comments and requests that speakers present their remarks in a respectful manner within established time limits and focused on issues which directly affect the city or within this jurisdiction of the city. As the commission is prohibited by state law from discussing items not listed on the agenda, your item will be taken into consideration and may be referred to staff for further action. Speakers shall not use threatening, profane, or abusive language, which disrupts, disturbs, or other wise impedes the orderly conduct of a commission meeting. The city is committed to maintaining a workplace free of unlawful harassment and is mindful that city staff regularly attends commission meetings. There are no public commenters. Commissioner, There are no public commenters. Commissioner Goodbody, are there any members of the public who wish to make a comment at your location? There are none here. Thank you. I will now close public comments. So item number 1 tonight is an action item. For this item, the planning commission may make a recommendation to city council. Item 1 p h 2 5 0 1 5 is a public hearing for the recommended fiscal year 20 26 through fiscal year 20 35 capital improvement program. Does staff have a presentation for this item? Thank you, and good evening, madam chair and commissioners. I'm Alex Amiri, public works director for the city. Staff is pleased to be here this evening to present the city's FY26, FY35 '10 year capital improvement program. The development of the CIP has been a process involving many staff from various departments over the past several months. Public works and utilities team have been managed by senior management analyst, Ellie Lowe, and the process has been led by management analyst, Michael Wolney. As always, engineers, planners, and other staff in various divisions and departments have been involved and contributed to the process. Staff recommends that the commission finds that FY '20 '6 '30 '5 CIP is consistent with the city's 02/1940 general plan and recommend its approval to council. I now turn this over to Michael Worny to kick off the staff presentation. By the way, Michael is at City Hall, but stayed stayed in his office to make use of his multi screen, setup. Thank you. Michael? Good evening, everyone. Can everyone hear me and see the presentation? Yes. We can hear you. Great. And, do you see the presentation? Okay. Perfect. Yes. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, planning commission, members of the public, and city staff. My name is Michael Wolle, and I am the management analyst in the public works department. This is the fiscal year 2026 to 02/1935 recommended capital improvement program presentation on how projects within the CIP are consistent with the 02/1940 general plan. Just for reference, the photo that you see here in the background is the completed phase 1 of the STAC Center, which I'll mention again in some later slides. This is the fifth year that the CIP has been developed in the online OpenGov stories format. OpenGov stories is an online budget book development tool designed to increase the user friendliness and ease of navigation within a complex budget. It's also intended to help increase the depth with which community members, council members, and other stakeholders can explore a budget. I will now open up the online book to provide a quick tutorial on how to navigate it. 1 moment while I switch screens. Okay. Can everyone see the CIP web page on the city's website? Yes. Perfect. Okay. Scrolling down on the CIP web page, the public will see a blue bar, which will take the user to the online version of the CIP. This is the recommended viewing experience for the CIP because it includes a number of interactive tables and charts. If the public would like to view a printable version of the CIP, they can click the second blue bar here to view the entire CIP document in PDF format. There's also a section on the website which includes the fiscal year 20 25 CIP semi annual progress report where users can view status of current projects. Now I'm going to scroll back up and click the first link to take you to the OpenGov platform. Here, you'll see the home page. If you scroll down, you'll see 4 main sections of the CIP. First, the introduction introduction section includes more information about the city's elected officials and and organizational chart. Second, the strategic priorities includes an overview of the city's strategic priorities and some featured projects that support these priorities. Third, the explore the budget section is the heart of the CIP, where the public can get key budget insights, such as the total proposed budget amounts, as well as information on various projects within the CIP. Lastly, the table of contents page will allow users to navigate within the CIP, which I'll go over later. First, let's look at explore the budget. As you can see, this page summarizes the fiscal year 26 budget at a high level. The recommended fiscal year 26 budget is a hundred and $61,000,000 and the total 10 year budget is at 1,300,000,000.0. Below that section are other key insights such as the total fiscal year 26 general fund transfers to CIP funds, which amount to approximately $3,000,000. The total fiscal year 26 internal service fees are approximately $3,900,000. And the total identified but unfunded capital needs portion is approximately 709,000,000. If the public would like to see further details on the projects that comprise these 3 amounts, they can click the links to the right side that say click here to learn more. Scrolling down, the user can choose either to view the CIP by fund or by category. I'll start by clicking the fund link. Here, the public can see an overview of the city's fund portfolio. If they click down into the table into the, carrots on the left, the public can view the total recommended budget amounts for specific funds. If the user, keeps scrolling down the page, they'll see a description of each fund and every underlying text is a link to a new page that will show the various projects within each fund. For example, if I click on the fund 2 10 gas tax fund, I'll be taken to a separate page dedicated to fund 2 10 projects. As you can see, I can click on each caret, and, it will show a short list of featured projects with each having their own project number and project page. If I scroll down, beneath the table, there's also a short list of featured projects that have their own page. For example, if I click on the fiscal year 26 pavement rehabilitation project, I will see an image and description of the project along with an overview of revenue sources that contribute to this project, as well as the expense budget for this project. Now I'm gonna go back to the explore the budget, category page. And once again, the public, if I click on the total budget by category this time, the public will, again, will see a pie chart with the fiscal year 26 total budget, but this time broken down by category. Just like the fun page, the public will see a type table that populates a pie chart and allows the user to see the projects within their total budgets or organized by category. If the user continues down the page, they will also see the page's, links for each category. For example, if I click on the livable neighborhoods link, I'll see a description of what the category is and then another table and the projects and budgets that are in this category. Similar to viewing by fund, the bottom of this page will also show all of the featured projects within this category. In this case, parks and buildings, traffic calming, pedestrian and bicycle improvements, etcetera. Now, I'm going to go back to the Explore the Budget page 1 more time. And I would like to point out 2 helpful resources. First, starting with Appendices. If the public is looking for a specific project budget, but aren't sure of how to find this budget, or excuse me, how to find this project, the user can click Appendix A for all project budgets by category. The Appendix A page will show an extended view of every project and its budget. The public can search for keywords using the control or command f function. For example, if I wanted to search for pavement, I can click control f, type in pavement, and then find all projects with the word pavement in the project title. On the other hand, if the user is looking for a specific project description and aren't sure where to start, the best source would be Appendix B. So going back to the Explore page, I'm going to click Appendix B. On this page, the search functionality is actually built within the table. Again, if we wanted to search for pavement related projects, I can type in pavement into the project title search bar, click Okay, and this table will bring up all projects with the word pavement in the title. The easiest way to reset your search is to refresh your browser, like so. If you are ever lost or want to start over, the bottom of every page should have a table of contacts link. When the public opens the table of contents, the user will see an overview of the structure of the CIP to links to every single page in the CIP. This is the best way to navigate to a particular section or page quickly. The 3 main sections featured on the homepage are also here: the Introduction, Strategic Priorities, and Explore the Budget. The other 2 subsections of the CIP, by Fund or by Project Category, are also here. This allows the user to view project budgets and descriptions by fund or category, like we just went over. The last section, for other, shows the appendices as well as the CIP PDF link. The semi annual report for fiscal year 26 will be linked later this year as projects make progress. That concludes our tour of the online CIP book. I will now return to the presentation. 1 moment while I switch screens. Okay. And just 1 more check. You can see the PowerPoint presentation? Yes. We can see it. Great. Thank you so much for confirming. Okay. So this slide provides a snapshot of the recommended CIP's budget breakdown by project category. As you can see here, the largest portion of the recommended fiscal year 26 budget has been programmed in the sewer system category in orange. This category comp, encompasses a wide range of projects which support the ongoing replacement and improvement of our utility infrastructure. Projects include our annual sewer line replacement and our phase 2 improvement project at the water resource recovery facility. The second largest category is the livable neighborhoods category in gray, which includes projects like La Vista Park, the South Hayward Youth and Family Center, median landscaping projects, traffic calming projects, pedestrian and bicycle improvements, and sidewalk projects, among others. The amounts shown are the forecasted expenses that are planned for fiscal year 26. This slide slide shows a snapshot of a recommended budget broken down by fund as opposed to category. As you can see here, funds with the largest allocation of the recommended budget are the water and sewer system funds in blue and orange. And the fund with the third largest budget allocation is fund 4 0 5 for capital projects. Many projects will, will fall within deliverable neighborhoods categories such as La Vista Park and the STAC Center, which I previously mentioned. The rest of this evening's presentation will focus on demonstrating the proposed CIP's consistency with the Hayward 2040 General Plan. For any members of the public who are unfamiliar with the General Plan, it's a comprehensive document that contains the goals, policies, and implementation programs intended to guide the future development of Hayward. The full, plan can be found at the link shown at the bottom of this slide. The plan's goals and policies are organized, into various elements, which are listed in the web page. The proposed fiscal year 26 CIP includes a number of projects which support these elements. I'll be going into further detail about some of these CIP projects on the following slides. The following slides will also have the goal or policy number on the '20, from the 02/1940 general plan at the top of each slide under their respective element. Projects related to this element, goal, or policy number will be showcased on each slide. The Public Facilities and Services element establishes goals and policies to guide the overall provision of Hayward public facilities and services in Hayward. The South Hayward Youth and Family Center, which is a community center located on the corner of Tennyson And Roos Road, is a prime example of a CIP project that supports this element. The new public safety center will also fit under this goal as well. 2 additional examples include the water resource recovery facility, switchgear rehabilitation, and phase 2 improvement projects, which are critical to ensuring the continued operation of future growth of our wastewater treatment facilities and services. The mobility element of the general plan serves to improve the mobility of people and goods throughout the city. The Mission, Mission Boulevard phase 3 project is a key example of a CIP project that supports this element. It's the last phase of the 3 phase Mission Boulevard corridor improvement project. And will include traffic calming measures the addition of bicycle facilities the installation of landscaping monument sites and other improvements some other examples include the Campus Drive improvement project through which a series of traffic calming measures have been implemented in the stretch of Campus Drive between Second Street and Hayward Boulevard. Finally, the Main Street Complete Street Project and Safe Routes to School implementation are examples of a major CIP project in alignment with this element. These projects will improve pedestrian and bicycle facilities along Main Street and near Hayward Schools to create safe and friendly environment for multimodal travel in Hayward. Several other mobility projects worth noting include the pavement rehabilitation and new sidewalk projects, which are completed every year and are intended to improve the city's pavement condition index, as well as expand the city's sidewalk network. Staff has also in has also an internal policy to allocate at least 10% of the overall paving budget to roads with a pavement condition index of less than 30. The table shows the city's historical PCI for the last 10 years. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 means newly paved road. The natural resources element establishes goals and policies to protect and enhance the natural resources within Hayward. Our recycled water project supports this element by combining or by providing treated wastewater to customers for irrigation purposes, which saves drinking water and reduces the volume of wastewater discharged to the bay. The city officially began delivering recycled water to approximately 31 phase 1 customers in March 2022. And will begin developing a phase 2 facilities plant to prepare for the expansion of the system. La Vista Park is another major project aligned with this element. The project is a 39 acre planned destination park located a quarter mile east of the intersection of Tennyson Road and Mission Boulevard in South Hayward. The the design phase of the project is complete and bids for construction are currently in process. Additional examples include the 1.4 megawatt solar project at the water resource recoveries facility, through which the city is expanding its solar field. Efforts to transition the city's fleet to hybrid and EV models is another example as well as the citywide EV charging projects. These 3 items also directly align with the city's climate action plan, which have been adopted as part of the general plan. The committee safety element serves to enhance the programs and services of the Hayward Police and Fire Department. The new Public Safety Center project aims to develop the conceptual design of the new facility, including site assessment of 2 potential locations: the former California Air National Guard site and the former City Hall building on Foothill Boulevard. The scope of the work encompasses identifying space needs, conducting site analysis, design, and creating facility layout plans, and cost analysis. The land use element establishes goals and policies to enhance Hayward's neighborhoods and districts with an attractive mix of uses and amenities. 1 of the main goals within this element is the goal to create attractive corridors that serve people traveling through the city. Median landscaping improvements and the new public art crosswalk project are examples that meet this goal....
2/6/25 – Library Commission Meeting
have the requirement for graduation. All of the PUSD schools do and possibly some of the private schools. We even use it for training as well. We put training videos online and we can yeah. Very extensive, awesome product that we like to use. I just have 1 question and might get into discussion. I'm just curious why the teen programs went so down. Like, it was 47 in 2022 and 23 in the in the data we got in the That's a great question. I think it came up we used this data for our prior presentation, and that same question came up. And I think it was how, and, Jeff, please correct me if I'm wrong. I have some recollection, and we can get you a more definitive answer. There was a change in the how we measured the the age groups. So what the library does is we report information to the state every year. So they give us categories, and we are trying to track all our stats based on the categories for the state report. It just makes it a lot easier. So I think there was something to do with that and possibly that we didn't measure teens in in that period in the same way. Is that Or did you measure them in all programs? Grama that We could have done that. They could have been but we can get you a a a more accurate answer on that. 1 of your slides described interactive programs for youth as something people wanted. What does that mean exactly? So I would consider that a program I would consider that a story time program, but I would also consider it, like, our robotics and coding programs for kids, any art and craft program, anything that they're participating in instead of just sitting and listening is how I would Okay. Like, not passive, I'm assuming. Even in the library world, I guess you could a a passive program could still be interactive and participatory. Passive would be more of, on your own versus a staff led grama, generally. And 1 of your slides mentioned community partnerships. Do we have any community partnerships with the library? We do through our, Value Humane Society with Paws to Read. It would be 1 of the biggest ones I can think of. School district. School district. Yes. Yes. That could definitely be a community partnership. I think we often refer to it as a district partnership, but it's it is still a community partnership. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Are we exploring the report further than or is this our discussion area? Oh, we are. Yes. I think we were trying to segment, we have, actually some questions we'd love for you to consider. Okay. You don't need to respond to them all, but just, you know, kind of to kick off the discussion, but you're, of course, welcome to discuss anything of interest. So I'll pass it back to Jeff for that. Excellent. So we're ready, moving on to our discussion. Using the perspective of your connections in the community and your personal experience, we would like you to input on the following. Do the planned program areas reflect the needs of our community? Are there emerging trends or community interests we should consider for future programming? And finally, what additional information would help you support outreach? And again, I'm more than happy to slide back to different slides here as needed. I guess 1 of the questions, and I'm not sure, you might have included it in the teen programs, but I know that in the past year or so, we had, the finance. We we sort of had a couple of presentations for teens or workshops for teens that had to do have the requirement for graduation. All of the PUSD schools do and possibly some of the private schools. We even use it for training as well. We put training videos online and we can yeah. Very extensive, awesome product that we like to use. I just have 1 question and might get into discussion. I'm just curious why the teen programs went so down. Like, it was 47 in 2022 and 23 in the in the data we got in the That's a great question. I think it came up we used this data for our prior presentation, and that same question came up. And I think it was how, and, Jeff, please correct me if I'm wrong. I have some recollection, and we can get you a more definitive answer. There was a change in the how we measured the the age groups. So what the library does is we report information to the state every year. So they give us categories, and we are trying to track all our stats based on the categories for the state report. It just makes it a lot easier. So I think there was something to do with that and possibly that we didn't measure teens in in that period in the same way. Is that Or did you measure them in all programs? Grama that We could have done that. They could have been but we can get you a a a more accurate answer on that. 1 of your slides described interactive programs for youth as something people wanted. What does that mean exactly? So I would consider that a program I would consider that a story time program, but I would also consider it, like, our robotics and coding programs for kids, any art and craft program, anything that they're participating in instead of just sitting and listening is how I would Okay. Like, not passive, I'm assuming. Even in the library world, I guess you could a a passive program could still be interactive and participatory. Passive would be more of, on your own versus a staff led grama, generally. And 1 of your slides mentioned community partnerships. Do we have any community partnerships with the library? We do through our, Value Humane Society with Paws to Read. It would be 1 of the biggest ones I can think of. School district. School district. Yes. Yes. That could definitely be a community partnership. I think we often refer to it as a district partnership, but it's it is still a community partnership. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Are we exploring the report further than or is this our discussion area? Oh, we are. Yes. I think we were trying to segment, we have, actually some questions we'd love for you to consider. Okay. You don't need to respond to them all, but just, you know, kind of to kick off the discussion, but you're, of course, welcome to discuss anything of interest. So I'll pass it back to Jeff for that. Excellent. So we're ready, moving on to our discussion. Using the perspective of your connections in the community and your personal experience, we would like you to input on the following. Do the planned program areas reflect the needs of our community? Are there emerging trends or community interests we should consider for future programming? And finally, what additional information would help you support outreach? And again, I'm more than happy to slide back to different slides here as needed. I guess 1 of the questions, and I'm not sure, you might have included it in the teen programs, but I know that in the past year or so, we had, the finance. We we sort of had a couple of presentations for teens or workshops for teens that had to do with budget and managing money and learning a little bit more. And I know that I I remember they were fairly popular. I mean, there's always been the the stock game, which is, you know, kind of interesting. It's certainly a learning opportunity, but it seems like there's a vast number of teens, a larger number of teens who could benefit from the the other, like, budget 1 0 1 workshop that I think that we did. And I I didn't I wasn't sure if that was still in here. I didn't see it called out. But it seems to me that increasingly, that's still an important factor. I mean, I hear more and more that that kids are coming out at coming out of college and just having absolutely no idea how to how to deal with their money. Yes. So, I know we have done programs in the past. We do also have digital resources. Our wife's financial ratings and reports has actually a lot of PDFs online that kind of talk about finance 1 0 1. But again, yeah, for a programming, perspective, yes, I think I think the future ultimate goal would be to to have those and to continue to have those. Yeah. Yeah. I think that having them as a group, I mean, it's it's great to have online resources, but we all have that. I mean, we all have that at home. But I think to have the the opportunity to have community among that age group is huge. And the fact that the ability to sort of see the fact that other people need to know the same thing. I mean, it's 1 thing if you're at home and you don't know and then you're kind of alone. But it's another thing if you're in a group, and you have some community and you all say, well, gee, I really don't know anything about this. You know, how can I get the help? I think there's a there's a hand holding element to that that's valuable. It's part of why we see so many teens in the library, like, after school and, you know, sharing about their homework and everything because it's community. So I I would encourage us to think about, you know, continuing to do that sort of, you know, that sort of, project. Is this the adulting? Was it, like, adulting? I think it was adulting 1 0 1. Yeah. I think it was something like that. Yes. We did have a, budget 1 0 1 type. I believe it may have even been an online, during it was sort of the Zoom era, but afterwards, we did the money out loud program. I wonder, could that be what you're thinking of? It was the guest speaker. The guest speaker. The office. Yeah. Ishmid actually was 1 of the panelists. She did great. I remember that you were involved in it. So Yeah. There was a lot of interest in that topic. Yeah. I I mean, I think it's good. I think parents actually would like their kids to learn it. And maybe at that point in their lives, the parents aren't the people that the kids are listening to. So it's kinda nice if there's another opportunity for that. Thank you. And I had 1 more thing. I may as well just go, and then I'm done. With regards to outreach, I was in I I was encouraged to see that we now have a listing of all the commissioners on the city website, although Ishmeet is missing. So so we need to we need to do that. But I also thought that when we send out, you know, the library newsletter that comes out, it might be worth occasionally, like, listing the commissioners and saying, hey. Do you know these people? These are people in your neighborhood. These are people I mean, I think when we sign up to be commissioners, 1 of the things that we sign up to be is public. I mean, that that we are a library commissioner. Not that we're giving out our personal information or anything, but but to say, do you know these people? You know, maybe these people are your friends. You could ask them about things that are going on at the library just so that our names are more out there, because I've talked to several of my neighbors who didn't know that I was a library commissioner. And, I mean, that's not a big deal or anything, but it's just sort of like they're like, oh, it's a surprise. Like, oh, you're a library commissioner. I have a question. But unless they know who we are, they they're not that conversation isn't gonna happen. So it's just a a thought that we might put that in the newsletter. Yeah. So we can definitely bring that forward. I think we have explored that. I think it would be done on a city level, you know, for consistency across commissions was sort of the feedback I got on that. I have some seen some cities do that with their commissions. And they've, you know, where they have I think Livermore's pushed out some bios. I know I have some colleagues now in Livermore, and I believe it is an opt in type situation where a commissioner who's gone through sort of a, you know, an academy, community academy, was profiled recently, profiled in a good way. Realized all that. And, really I thought it was really neat to see it. It was on social. And, you know, it talked about how they became a commissioner, you know, what their interest in supporting the community was, what their experience was. But my understanding, it was it was just it wasn't a consistent thing. It was just sort of a a, you know, a featured social post, that the commissioner had opted into. Yeah....
Hayward City Council Meeting April 15, 2025
I don't know why I bring this. I never look at it. Oh, I guess I need it for the Recording in progress. Progress. Good evening, everybody. Good evening, everybody. Wanna welcome and good evening to you too. I wanted to welcome everyone, to a special joint, meeting of the city council and Hayward redevelopment successor agency board. Today is 04/15/2025. I like to call a meeting to order. And if I could ask, council member Bonilla to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Absolutely. Please stand if you're able. Thank you. Madam city clerk, if you can please take the role. Yes. Thank you very much, mister mayor. Good evening. Council member Andrews? Present. Council member Bonilla junior? Present. Council member Goldstein? Present. Council member Roach? I understand she's running a few minutes late. Council member Syrup. Present. Council member Sir Menon. Present. Mayor Salinas. Present. Thank you. Moving on to we have a special presentation, this evening. This is annual National Public Safety Telecommunications Week. And, I know we have the police chief here. Do we have anyone else from the dispatch dispatcher? Dispatch is here. Thank you. Let's give our dispatcher a big round of applause, you know. Thank you. If I can have Councilmember Bonilla hold that up. And then, I'll read the proclamation and then we'll take a picture up here. And then, if you have a few a few words, you can always deliver those if you want. Okay. Proclamation. Whereas, emergencies that require police, fire, or emergency medical services can occur anytime. And whereas, when an emergency immediate response of police officers, firefighters, and paramedics is critical to the protection of life preservation life and preservation of property. And whereas the safety of our police officers and firefighters is dependent upon the quality and accuracy of information obtained from residents who telephone the 911 communication center. And whereas public safety telecommunicators are the first and most critical contacts our residents have with emergency services in times of distress. And whereas public safety telecommunicators provide information to and ensure the safety of our police officers and firefighters by monitoring their activities by radio. Whereas the members of the Hayward, where whereas the members of the Hayward 9 1 1 communication center have contributed substantially to the apprehension of criminals, suppression of fires, and treatment of patients. And whereas each dispatcher has exhibited compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their jobs. And whereas the, whereas the city of Hayward, OSE, you debt a gratitude to the dedicated men and women of the Hayward Police Department 9 1 1 communication center who dedicate their lives to answering calls from residents experiencing intense personal crises and during community wide disasters and who serve as the main points of contact for those persons seeking relief during an emergency. Now, therefore, I, Mark Salinas, mayor of the city of Hayward, do hereby proclaim the week of April 13 to the nineteenth 20 25 as National Public Safety Communications Week. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give our dispatchers a great big round of applause. This is where we, we we break Instagram right here. Yep. It's gonna turn fire. There you go. You hold it. Okay. Oh, yeah. She's coming. Yeah. There you go. Perfect. Perfect Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. If you wanted, you can say a few words. Mister mayor, council, thank you very much. This is an honor to be here. I just wanna recognize our emergency dispatch center. We have the best of the best. 247, our team is on duty here to help the citizens of Hayward when they have an emergency or a bridal, And I'm very proud of our team and, the amazing work that they do every single day, and you should all be proud too. So thank you very much for this honor. Thank you. Also, I wanted to, I wanted to acknowledge, a special student today. Her name is Giselle, Sanchez, who is an intern for the city clerk's office, and she's from the rising leaders program. Where's where's Giselle at? Is she here? Thank you very much, mister mayor. She's actually on her way here. Oh, she's Because she can't find parking. So Oh, she's parking. Okay. Good. That's you. Alright. Well, she comes from the rising leaders program. And, when, when she comes into the room I'll do this whole whole bit all over again to make sure she hears it. But she's, you know, she's a young student who's, trying to, get her way into local government. And so, it's always good to see students, starting young and, early. So good. Save your applause. We'll applause her when she gets in. Okay. Let's see. Next is public comment. Next is public comment, and this is reserved for people who would like to make a comment on something on the agenda or not on the agenda. I do have 1, 2, 3, 4. I have 6 comment cards, and let me see if there's anybody online. Okay. I will start with lehi me start with online. Is it Ariana Castellanos? Hi. Is this the time to comment on the consent or anything on the agenda? If if it is something on the consent calendar, I will, ask for public comment on on the consent calendar when that comes. So if you wanna wait, you can wait. I'm hoping to comment on something on the work session agenda. Should I wait or Yes. To comment now? Yes. Why don't you wait and then I'll, I'll I'll call back and I'll be Okay. No worries. Thanks. Just checking. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. Next speaker is, Elizabeth Lisonbee. Welcome. Thank you. It's interesting being on this side. Good evening, mayor and council members and city manager Alvarez. I'm Elizabeth Blanton. As most of you know, I'm a senior planner here in the development services department. I wanted to come to public comment tonight to tell you that I've been with the city for almost 7 years now, and I've really enjoyed my time working here. A major reason for that is that I've always felt that the city has valued me not only for the services that I provide for our community, but also as a whole person with a life and responsibilities outside of my job. Specifically, this was demonstrated when following the COVID pandemic, when it was time for our temporary work, flexibility to end. The city progressively decided to establish a permanent hybrid work policy with options for remote work. In the development services department, where I work, many of us were able to benefit from this hybrid work schedule, and this has led to better work life balance. It's boosted our employee morale. And while still allowing us to fully cover our permit center, our general inquiry boxes, and our e permits portal, which is open 24 7. For me personally, I being able to work from home for part of the week has cut my commute time. I live in Richmond, so that's 10 plus hours a week if I was coming in every day, down to 4 to 6 depending on the week. It's also allowed me to use my lunch break to walk my dog or handle chores at home, things that would normally fall to a weekend activity. So then when I am here, I can be fully a weekend activity. So then when I am here, I can be fully rested, present, and able to serve our community. So as a as a result, I was disheartened to receive an email from the city manager yesterday directing all staff, to come back into the office full time. The decision was made without consulting staff. And from the email that was sent, it's unclear why this significant policy change is necessary, and moreover, why a 1 size fits all approach is appropriate. Hayward's decision to entirely eliminate remote work also goes beyond what many other Alameda County jurisdictions are doing and even what beyond what the state is requiring. So, doctor Alvarez, you've told us on numerous occasions that you are driven by data and that you welcome feedback and collaboration. Staff would be happy to provide you with data demonstrating our effectiveness in serving the community when working from home. We also would be happy to partner with you to identify areas where we could improve our service, and develop tailored strategies for doing so. But in order to do that, we need to be invited to the table. We all have a shared goal here to provide the Hayward community with the best service possible, and there's no reason why this needs to be at odds with the city allowing for work life balance for its employees. So thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. Thank you. And and I have to apologize if I'm looking down, it's because I'm I'm taking notes. So, please. Next speaker is, Rick Rivera. Good evening, Mayor, city council, city manager Alvarez. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here this evening. First, I wanted to make a quick announcement that, beginning on May 12, the Hayward operated paratransit program will be doing a soft launch for our wheelchair accessible vehicle, service as well as our companion ride service for people who need help getting to and from their home. This is a service funded entirely by Measure BD, which was approved by Alameda County voters in 2014. So I would like to thank all of you, as well as the entire Hayward community for making it possible, to provide this service to our older adults and people with disabilities. My name is Rick Rivera. I am a analyst with the community services division. I would also like to take a moment to address data. This is what I do. I'm an analyst. I I analyze. Despite the ongoing debate regarding the end of hybrid and remote work, there is remarkably little hard data. Our very little does not mean none. In issue 630 of the peer reviewed journal Nature, published on 06/12/2024, Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Robing Han of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and James Liang of Peking University published the results of a 6 month randomized control trial of 1,612 employees at a firm with a market cap of 20,000,000,000. Randomized controlled trials, as you know, are the gold standard, of experimentation and very rare in the social sciences. I would like to share these results with the council. The experimental group, which was provided a hybrid work schedule, experienced the following. A 33% reduction in overall attrition, a 40% reduction in attrition for non management employees. The non management employees were a sample size of 1,217, by the way. A 52% reduction in quit rates for employees with a 45 minute or longer commute each way, a 54% reduction in attrition for female employees. And while I do not have hard data on this, having been at city hall for nearly 6 years, I can say that that does represent a significant portion of those of us who are here working. The data showed no significant difference in productivity between the control group and the experimental group. The data found a statistically significant improvement in manager perception of hybrid work, for a largely negative prior perception, to the experiment. Now, I did find 1 benefit to, all, work in office. In a survey of 1,500 CEOs, 20 5 percent did say that they would be utilizing that to reduce their overall, personnel costs, by motivating attrition. Thank you very much for your time, and have a good evening. Thank you. Next speaker is, and forgive me if I mispronounce this. Is it Cal, Kowalski? That was fine, Mr. Mayor. I only see you walking in on a City Hall. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, and my colleagues, up on the Fourth Floor Of City Hall. I've worked as a planner for various cities for my entire career. It's 25 years now, and I've never had to stand before a council in this type of situation before. It's unfortunate, but I felt strongly, I feel strongly enough about it that I felt like I needed to say a few things tonight. As civil servants, it's our job to provide our customers with the information they're looking for, to answer their questions, and to get them on their way. That's the most important thing, not making sure there's a **** in every chair, in every cubicle at city hall, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. I don't disagree that city hall should be open 5 days a week to the public, and that every department should have representatives there to assist customers who do take the time to come in. That's how a good government agency is supposed to operate. But it's simply not necessary to have every single employee be at city hall every day. We've proven that over the last 5 years. Let each department come up with its own plan to make sure it has some people here every day....
Oakland City Head Start Advisory Board December 19, 2024
Transcript Hi. I've never Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot. You can. It's it's good. It's good. Thank you. Yeah. Please. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the City of Oakland Head Start Advisory Board meeting. We're gonna go ahead and get started. The meeting is being, called to order on December 19, 2024 at 3:40, PM. Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Really? I'll just speak loud. Kate Chopp will fix it. So what we'd like to ask is if, our translation support, International Connect I'm sorry, International Contact could, present the international contact, instructions for interpretation, with miss Lucia. Yes. Of course. Yes. Hello, everyone. This is Luciana from International Contact, your language host for today. We have Spanish and Cantonese interpreters for this meeting and interpretation channels have been created. 1 moment while we 1 moment while we provide instructions. So, Vanessa, can you go ahead? Yes. Okay. Now, Olive, can you provide instructions? Cantonese. Cantonese. Thank you. Alright. Alright. Now for English virtual participants, please go to the English channel. Go to the world icon in the lower part of your screen and select English or e n. If you are using a smartphone, click on the 3 dots and select English. This is very important if you want to hear the interpreted comments into English in the latter part of the meeting. Reminder for English speakers is to, please, speak slowly so interpreters can keep up with you. So please keep that in mind. Now, interpreters will be asked to come to the microphone to provide instructions there as well and after instructions are finished, we, the multilingual instructions will be concluded. So now Vanessa, Olive, please, go to the mic. Rita Ma from Zoom? Or do you want me to go up to the mic? Everyone can hear me. To the mic? E either either either place is fine, Vanessa. Okay. Okay. Thanks. So do you want me to repeat everything? Yes, please. Okay. Thank you. Olive, please. Thank you. Alright. So this concludes the multilingual instructions. Thank you. Thank you, international contact team. So I want to, at this moment, let the, members know that there will be 3 different opportunities to speak, in the meeting. 1 will be a call for public comment. You'll have 1 minute to ask a question or make a comment. The next will be during the meeting, where discussion might occur, comments can be made, questions asked before an agenda item is voted on. And then at the end of the meeting at, open forum, members of the public or members here in the room, can make, you know, make a statement or ask a question that is not on the agenda. Each opportunity will be about 1 minute. So at this moment, I'd like to call roll. Chair Molly Tafoya. Thank you. Chair vice chair Lisonbee Bondi. Excused. Member doctor Jave Ross. Here. Thank you. Member Kevin Bridal? Present. Thank you. And member doctor Mari Tomarath? Present. Thank you. Member doctor j j Watkins? Excused. Member me Christina Michaud? Here. Thank you. Member Julia Forte Bridal is So we do have quorum. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to ask, chair Tafoya if you have any announcements you'd like to make. Nope. Okay. Thank you. Then we can proceed with the business of the day. We do have call for public comment. Wanna make sure we do that. Are there any interest in making comments or asking questions here in the room? I see no hands raised, on on Zoom. So at this moment, no public comment. Great. Thank you. Thanks to everybody for joining. We have Quorum, and it's almost a holiday bridal. Home stretch. So thank you for being here. First up for agenda items, review and approval of today's agenda. Are there any additions or edits to this agenda? I do believe that there is an edit under the financial report, for the financial 23 sorry. The final 2324 reconciled report for children's initiative. Is that something that we wanted to, present in January? Okay. So that was the only, staff request. Great. I move to approve the revised, December 19th board meeting agenda. Can I get a second? Kevin, do I have a second? All those in favor, please say aye. Yes. Aye. Aye. Aye. Approved. Great. Review and approval of the board meeting minutes from November 21st. Just a reminder, you did not have to be in attendance to review and approve. So we have quorum to approve those. Are there any edits or comments on last month's board meeting? Just that you were missed. I'm sorry. That's all. Sick kiddo. It happens, as you know. Well, then I will not move. Don't let somebody else move to approve the board meeting minutes. I move to approve the November board meeting minutes. Christina. I second the approval of the November 21st minutes. All those in favor, say aye. Yes. Aye. Great. Thanks. And then review and approval of the special advisory board meeting minutes from November 14th. Any amendments, comments, edits? Thank you for your participation. Thank you to staff for convening that. I know that was extra, and we appreciate you. I'll move to approve the advisory the special advisory board meetings from November 14th. Can I get a second? Kevin Vermont, second. All those in favor? Yes. Aye. Aye. Great. Thanks. Next up. We're on to action items. Advisory board officer elections. And Divina, I think that's you. Do you wanna take this 1? So this agenda item is actually for you to decide, when you would like to do the officer elections. The parent policy council, voted to move their elections to January because they didn't have they had just about making quorum. And so what they chose to do at the meeting was to actually just review what the different officer positions are, look at who has been in them, and give an opportunity for those current officers to just speak to what those roles are. So we can either go into office elections now or you can, choose to follow that similar pattern that the policy council chose. But we need we need a vote either way about which way which way you wanna go. We do. So we are missing 2? We're missing 3. We're missing 3 folks. So how do how do folks feel about waiting until January if we have more of a robust quorum? Okay. And, do we feel like we need a review of the positions, or do we Do we have it in the packet, Tracy? Not in the packet there in the bylaws. Yeah. Though. I think the the positions we vote on are just the 2. It's just chair and vice chair. So, I don't know if folks feel like they need an updated overview. I I don't, but I've been here a minute. We can do it again in at the elections. Yeah. And there is room to add any other office positions that you'll see fit. Yeah. So if, for example, you wanted to add fiscal or anything else, you're welcome to do so as well. So I just put that out there for you all to consider for January as well. So then we'd just ask for a vote on that. I actually think it might be helpful to know for the January meeting if we've if this advisory board has had any other positions between besides chair and vice chair? I don't recall anything else....
Oakland City Discipline Matrix Ad Hoc Committee (12/18/2024)
Transcript We're now live. Thank you for joining us today for our discipline matrix ad hoc committee meeting. The time is 6:0:2. We have our chair, Ricardo Garcia Costa, who is in transit. We have our captain Bridal Hubbard, and we have deacon Reginald Lyles. Let me see if there's anyone else in the audience that we should acknowledge. We have 1 participant from our from the public, miss Bridal. Welcome. And, we're going to get started. I'm gonna turn it over to captain Hubbard. Alright. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I we're gonna start with, like, we left off last week talking about custody of prisoners, and I'm sure that will take up most of our time this evening. But I do wanna go back to 38470. If you can see my screen here, subversive organizations. I made some changes to it. I'll read it again. No member employee shall knowingly join, affiliate with, or support any organization, group, or gang involved in illegal activities, or designated as subversive by a competent authority within the Oakland Police Department, including the chief of police, CPRA, or an authorized designee. Such groups include, but are not limited to, organizations that seek to undermine, disrupt, or overthrow any form of lawful authority, whether that authority be vested in federal, state, or municipal government, city councils, or or other recognized lows local governing bodies or laws and regulations legitimately established under the jurisdictions of California, the United States, or other lawfully constituted entities. Additionally, any organization engaging in illegal acts against public order and safety may be considered subversive. The designation of a subversive organization will be based on a preponderance of evidence demonstrating that the organization actively participates in activities intended to undermine, disrupt, or overthrow such lawful authority or commit illegal acts against the public welfare, Membership or affiliation for any purpose related to advancing lawful objectives is strictly prohibited, except when such involvement is essential for official duties supported by a lawful investigative purpose and authorized in writing by the chief of police or a designated official. A long 1 there. The main change here is right in the middle. It was requested last week that we expand on what lawful authority is. That 1 is subversive against and included federal, state, municipal, city, local laws, California, United States, etcetera. And, as I stated last week, California Post, you'll see it here on the side. They have government codes that govern them. It doesn't explicitly address affiliations with subversive organizations. But it does talk about being in good moral standing. So 1, assumably, would not be hired if they're part of a subversive organization because that would not be considered in good standing. Questions on that section? Excellent. I I definitely appreciate the the hack at this. This is pretty, pretty layered. The 1 thing that's kinda standing up to me is the area in the first paragraph at the end, the bolded area where it says designated as the the mercifully competent authority within the Oakland Police Department. Can we also the way it's written right there, I have no problem with that. But in terms of law enforcement, can we also expand it to, like, any other kind of, like, law enforcement, you know, folks that are not whether it be, like, an FBI or federal agent. I mean, there might be, like, a submersive gang that's in a database with the FBI that's been located, but maybe OPD doesn't have it on their radar yet or something. You know? Sure. Yeah. I mean, that that would be the only thing I would add on that, but that I like that. That that looks pretty good. But that probably won't be my final I'll write that better, other law enforcement IDs to include, maybe. Okay? Like, you know, DOJ, all that type of stuff, Ryan. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Well, if if an organization decided to to, to have a march and demonstrate against, let's say, the Oakland Police Department for what they thought was some unfair practice or some decision made by some court or whatever, and they marched in the streets. Let's say, like, it was the NAACP. That would be a legal act marching in the street. Could they be considered subversive? What is what are what is their I think if if it's not illegal against public order or safety, I would say no. Well, you know, every demonstration that happened in the past was an illegal act. Every 1 of them. Either they had them trespassing, or, they were didn't have a permit to march in the street or not. So what they were doing was illegal. There's no question about that. And, so, you know, I you know, some of us may be so young that we don't remember those days that we think we take for granted that, someone or a group exercising their, free speech and demonstrate it, I just don't want them to be considered as being subversive. See, I thought the Suburbs Act was not against overthrow of lawful authorities. I thought being subversive was was overthrowing governments in cities, municipalities. You know, you know, I think you ought to have a right to be able to demonstrate against the police. If the police have done anything, as long as it's peaceful, and you ought to be able to come out in the street and protest, for whatever reason you wanna protest. But if you're out protesting, then you then now we say, hey. You're a subversive organization. I thought subversive means overthrowing a government. And it seems like it's blended here in my reading of it is, you know, just, being disruptive against the lawful authority. Well, as a police officer, I'm a lawful authority, And and people have a right to demonstrate against, the the police. Or maybe you think they don't. So it appears that we're hung up on seek to undermine or disrupt, if it just says overthrow. Is that Yeah. I don't I don't see I don't I I think you ought to be able to disrupt. I think that's free speech. I think that's first amendment stuff. And, but I'm not trying to overthrow the government. I just think that the the police are acting in a way that I wish they did not act. But I don't wanna destroy the government. I'm not subversive. I'm I'm a citizen exercising my first amendment rights. I don't think there's a disagreement on the citizen side. I think this speaks to membership like the officers. So do we want officers doing that? And if I'm if I'm hearing correctly, I'm a say okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. No. No. No. You go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. I yeah. Gotcha. An officer, an Oakland police officer, right, who's off duty and demonstrated against a agency in Modesto that did something that was untoward. Can can we now say that this officer's, is subversive? I don't think he is. And I think he has a right to demonstrate if if he's protest protesting against, you know, against, you know, spilling of oil in the bay or, environmental issues or fresh air, are you saying that if an officer does any of those things, they're subversive? I don't think they're subversive. They I think they're demonstrating, and I think they have a right to do that under the first amendment. And, so I think disrupting is, is a little too goes a little too far. Yeah. So as long oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. That's my I'm I'm I'm done. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then and along those same lines, I also agree with you. Like, where does like, a slippery slope. Like, where do we draw the line, or where do you go from, like, exercising free speech or the right to gather legally, right, to now you're becoming submersive. Now you're disrupting public order. Right? I mean, what if you had a peaceful protest and now folks end up breaking property and disrupting the bridge and shutting down the street? Now they're doing illegal activity. Could that be interpreted as now you're being submersive to, like, government order and law? Right? I don't think you'd be I I think it's wrong I think you're right. To deem a police officer off duty exercising his first amendment rights. And and and for that person to be deemed subversive. I thought this this subversive would be being part of a group, you know, criminal enterprise, you know, some some gang that is making, you know, illegal activity or some group that wants to overthrow the government Yeah. Or overthrow law enforcement. I have a problem with that. Yeah. Like January 6th. Like January 6th. Thank you very much. That At what point at what point, captain Hubbard, just kind of on a side note, just I'm trying to just process stuff. If if a cop is just out exercising their free speech, you know, the example Dekelau said, like, let's say, like, an oil spill in the bay and there's, like, a group that's protesting a oil company or, you know, has nothing to do with, like, law enforcement issues or anything like that. Right? And they're out there exercising their speech. And then at some point, let's say and and, again, I'm not saying I'm not suggesting that this is subversive, but just on a side note, in terms of just, like, illegal behavior, like, let's say a group starts splintering off, breaking property, disrupting traffic, doing things that are basically, could be classified as, you know, you get cited for or arrested for. Right? At what point, not suggesting that it's subversive, but at what point is an officer like, okay. Maybe I need to walk away from this situation because if I get photographs next to a person breaking glass, they identify me as OPD. This could now be a negative reflection or bridal real repute to the organization. Like, is there a point now that you have responsibility as an officer that, like, there's laws being broken around you that you kind of, like, step away from that? So you so you so that there's not a perception that you're a part of that. How does that work? Just aside from the subversive issue, just just on a side note. How does that work? Yeah. I mean, we have an obedience to law section and and if you're the the evidence will have to support your involvement in this, but the the initial allegation would be obedience to laws where you're you are there, you are participating and can and what then turned into illegal behavior and the officer can be charged with that. If to take it further, that group is considered subversive by, let's say, a competent authority, but more of more over preponderance of evidence that they're trying to overthrow something, undermine it to where it collapses, if you will, then the added charge would be subversive organization. Sure. Gotcha. Okay. So there is a lower level of just being around legal behavior, and that's not necessarily with this clause. This right here, 3838471 is really around the immersive, like, the intent to over like, I would under I would I would think it's more around seeking or the intent to actually convert an established system or institution or government. You know? Yeah. That's what this is what it's speaking towards. Right? I just wanna make sure, to **** and Lyle's point, that we're not creating something that's meant for that, And then it ends up impacting people's free speech, you know, and and right to assemble and things like that. Well, again, here it says undermine or disrupt a lawful authority. And and I and and disagreeing with a police officer is not subversive. Or disagreeing with a police agency is not subversive. Overthrowing the city government is subversive. Planning dynamite, disrupting the the, the government process, you know, that could be deemed as subversive. But disagreeing with a police officer is not subversive. I don't have to disagree with agree with the lawful authority even when I'm wrong. I'm innocent to proven guilty. So III just think that the the the way a lot you know undermine disrupt overthrow any form of lawful authority. Now, you know police officers can be disagreed with. We can disagree with There's too much of a slippery slope is what I'm hearing. I'm sorry? There's too much of a slippery slope is what I'm hearing then. Because anything could get interpreted as I wanna be ******** on this. Police officers are not governments. They're not always right. They are agent of the government disagreeing with a police officer. You have a right to do that as a citizen. The the government, the citizens, the police and the the the the government has to prove me guilty. I'm innocent and I have a right to protest to say no, I'm innocent. You know, I have a right to do that. And so now if you have, it written in here, this could be interpreted that, well, I'm a lawful authority. You disagreeing, you're disrupting, a lawful authority. Well, we got enough laws on the books, to deal with that 148 and all of that. You know, you can use 148 P. C. You don't have to have this in your teaching folks that anybody who disagrees with you, you know, is subversive. They're not subversive. They're innocent until proven guilty. It just indicates to me how far we've come in this country, And it's scary to me. How far we've degraded from my political perspective. You know, police officers are are not absolute, you know, they're not governments. They're agents of the government, but they all lawful authorities, and I and and we can we can disagree with them....
Oakland City Planning Commission December 18, 2024
Transcript Good afternoon to our 1 guest in the room, but in addition, we do always have a TV audience. I will note that you can see we have a quorum of planning commissioners. We are waiting for our chair. It is 3 o'clock as soon as the chair is here and ready to start. This will be the December 18, 2024 Planning Commission. And if the 1 member of the audience would like to speak on any item you're welcome to fill out a, card. It looks like you already have. And if you parked, and this is for the commission as well, if you parked in the garage at 250 Franco Gowa Plaza, you may use the promotion that the city offers for free parking, which is posted next to Hanifa. Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. All right. It is what? 302 and I will call the December 18th planning commission meeting to order. Let's do a roll call. Alright. Commissioner Maurice Robb. Here. Commissioner Shahar Shirazi. Here. Commissioner Josie Aarons. Here. Commissioner Alex Randolph. Here. Vice chair Natalie Sandoval. Here. Each chair, Jennifer Rank. Here. You have a quorum. Thank you. Okay. So let's go right to commission business. Is there any agenda discussion? No agenda discussion. Is there a director's report? No director's report. Any informational report? Oh, I sorry. I'm I thought that bylaws would be under information report. No information report. It's actually further down on the agenda. Oh yeah. Gotcha. Okay. All right. So no committee reports. I don't think any committees have. No committee has met since your last meeting. So that takes us to commission matters. Number 1, the, commission bylaws. Right. And, apologies. Yes. So we put this as number 1, so it's identifiable on our webpage with, staff reports, etcetera, although it's not specifically a public hearing. This is the, proposal which you've already seen once, the proposal to adopt new planning commission bylaws. And a reminder that first of all we'd like to thank Aaron Lemur who brought the draft bylaws to this body, quite a while ago. Aaron, I will note on the side, Aaron is actually not in the Bureau of Planning. He helped us out tremendously when we were significantly understaffed by taking on this project. He was also our, our Landmarks Board Secretary at that time. And so he while we have been working on staffing, Aaron held onto this project, which is to draft and work with you, the planning commission, to adopt bylaws, and the reason we had this as an important item over the past year you have bylaws but they're pretty old and they do not allow for hybrid meetings. And the state has noted to all municipalities that in order to have hybrid meetings, we need every board and commission who would benefit from that. They must have bylaws that allow hybrid meetings. This was an opportunity to, look at our bylaws overall and improve them, make them more efficient, responsive to our times and how we actually operate. And Aaron brought the proposal to you again. I can't I can't exactly remember when May 15th May. And he heard your questions and he worked with the city attorney to revise the proposal and he's bringing back a staff report with responses to your questions today on those proposed bylaws and our hope is that you will be willing to consider making a motion and approving those bylaws today. And with that, I know that Aaron Lehmer does have a presentation for you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Catherine. If we could get this slide up. Thank you so much. Yeah. And, good afternoon, chair rank and, commissioners. This is again the second reading of the proposed bylaws, for the planning commission and, just wanted to do a quick, recap of what they intend to do. Basically, they want to establish, you know, an updated framework for you all to conduct your business, and to conduct decision making. They wanna they wanna clarify roles and responsibilities, for both you as commissioners, and support staff, and they also clarify processes and procedures, for hosting hybrid meetings. And, lastly, they, help to clarify, processes that must be followed for remote or hybrid meetings. Going on, I'd like to, respond, to the, requests and some of the issues that were raised at the May 15th meeting, at the first reading of these bylaws. The first issue concerns the role of, the commission around reports. I believe it was, chair Shirazi, raised these, issue that there could be greater clarity around that particular point. And so, in the, article 2 duties of commission 4th bullet item, what we've done is, proposed to modify that language, basically to say that the commission shall also provide recommendations to be included in staff reports on subjects requested by the city administrator or the city council. So just to clarify that we are talking about staff reports, and that you would be making recommendations around those. So that's the first, proposed, revision. Second, the issue around, when planning commissions may begin, hosting hybrid meetings here in Oakland. That, was raised by commissioner Sandoval noting that, hybrid meetings have also been, you know, underway at city council and that there have been, you know, staffing, done provisions made for those particular meetings. However, we wanted to kind of further clarify, I think, where we're at with the planning commission, namely that in terms of readiness, we think that we need to meet at least, 3 key conditions. Number 1, having the appropriate technologies ready, installed, here at at city hall, which thanks to the great work of, KTOPS has already been done. Secondly, as Catherine was mentioning, we wanna make sure that the actual bylaws, which codify those processes are adopted by the commission. So that's something you can, do here today. And thirdly, that there is, sufficient, city resources that are allocated to, fund support staff for the hosting of those hybrid meetings, particularly to make sure that, remote attendees can participate in an equal manner with respect to, in person participants during the course of those meetings. And so that would mean, you know, there would need to be the support staff that would be assigned, trained in those processes, and available during the course of regularly scheduled planning commission meetings using, Zoom or whatever comparable platform we have available. The 3rd issue that was, raised at the May 15th meeting, concerned the accessibility for persons with disabilities. And we think that there's a natural place for, for including that within the bylaws under Article 3, meetings of the commission on page 3, paragraph 2, by adding the following language. All regular and special meetings of the Planning Commission should be open to the public and will be accessible to all persons in accordance with local, state and federal law. And lastly, we wanted to, I think, address a question that, commissioner Randolph had, posed around, you know, what commissioners can do to request to participate in remote meetings. And, staff just wanted to note that, you know, once the planning commission begins hosting hybrid meetings, then commissioners can check with the secretary or support staff, for further instructions on that process. And we just really wanted to note that, you know, there are there are only special circumstances under which those are allowed and those are, outlined in the city attorney's frequently asked questions document that we included as attachment D in a supplement to the staff report. So, with that, again, I'll just echo, I think, Catherine's, urging that to move forward here with all of these processes, we really do need to have codified approved laws from you as the planning commission. And, if there are any questions concerning these and or the issues raised, please let us know. Thank you. Thanks, Aaron. Appreciate that. Are there any questions? No? All right. I will go ahead and open public comment. There's no public comment for this item. I will close the public hearing and bring it back up for discussion. Is everyone, I'm guessing those that commented in May are satisfied. So so, does someone want to make a motion? We might, beat our record of the- at the last hearing. I can make a motion to approve, adopt the bylaws as revised. Motion by vice chair Sandoval. I'll second the motion. And a second by, I was about to say chair, but commissioner Shirazi. Commissioner Robb. Yes. Commissioner Shirazi. Yes. Commissioner Arons. Yes. Commissioner Randolph. Yes. Vice chair Sandoval. Yes. Chair rank. Yes. Motion passes unanimously and these will be posted in a number of places on our planning commission web page. We will plaster it all over the website where appropriate. And we'll keep them in our city files for use into the future. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Erin. Okay. Do we have a city attorney's report? No city attorney's report. Okay. Open forum. I'm guessing there are no speaker cards. Yes. We have 1 speaker. Okay. Yes. And it's Christian Rock, Bach, I mean. Christian Bach. You may come up. Please state your full name for the record, and you have 2 minutes. Over here. Oh, right here. You should be able to simply speak into the mic. Is it working? Yes. It's working. Because not everyone brought their hearing aid. Okay. So hi, guys. My name is Christian Bok. I am just a regular citizen. Currently, we live in San Diego, and we bought, land in the Oakland Hills, property that has been vacant, or empty since the fire of 91. And I'm here because I'm trying to find access or just an open door for someone to help me out with my issues with, the planning and building department. We are trying to get the building permit for a new residential home, and currently, we are supposed to work with someone, who when she first introduced to us, when we submitted the paperwork, said that she was probably not going to be the 1, who was working on the on the case because she didn't have experience. And then later on, once we started submitting, she is actually the person who is, working our, building application. And currently, we have issues, where the planning department announces that the time frame for, the permit would take 12 to 14 months. And currently, she's requesting the lady that we're working with is requesting a creek permit or a creek protection permit. And my understanding is that, creek protection permit is only required once per property. And in order to prove to her that this has already been done in the prior, building application from a previous owner, she wants us to submit again an application. So, like, those are the issues we're facing here. And, apart from the fact that I think we're living in a digital age, for me, it's very difficult to talk to people in the planning department when there is no 1 to talk to. The, in person meetings that you have on Sorry. Your time is up. You may complete your last statement. Okay. So, regarding what what you guys are doing here for for Zoom meetings, etcetera, When we are trying to talk to people from the city, sometimes we have well, not some we don't have an an opportunity to talk to them in person, so they scheduled Zoom meetings. And during the Zoom meetings, they don't even turn the camera on. So sometimes you feel like you're you're not in a Zoom meeting, but you basically have a conference phone call. And I don't know if that's something that you guys I mean, it's what you're doing is is fine, and I don't think that's an issue here for you guys. But overall, I think should be important to notice that, like, if you're having a meeting with someone over a Zoom meeting, that they should be present and visible. But that's just what we have. So I'm really just here to see if maybe after the meeting, someone can approach me and tell me if there is an open door or a way for me to start communicating with someone regarding that matter. Because we feel, if we're investing here, I don't know, this house is probably gonna be, like, 1,600,000. That's money that's going into the local area since we're building here. And I think that should be an important issue for the city also that people that are willing to invest in Oakland, you know, should, you know, try to get some help. And so my name is Christian Bok, but that's that's all I have to say. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. Catherine, is there a way that we can try to facilitate something for him to in terms of someone to talk to, or how do we handle that? Yes. So my email address is on the web page. It's probably how you found out about this meeting, and it's probably listed on the agenda too. I'm not looking at the agenda....
Alameda City Council 12/17/2024
Transcript Are you ready? Okay. Good. Alright. Alright then. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the city council of Alameda. Today is Tuesday, December 17, 2024. And, I'm about to call I am calling the meeting to order. And we're gonna start with a special city council meeting, which is a closed session. And I would like to ask the city clerk, Laura Weisinger, to please call the roll at this time. Vice Mayor Jasag. Here. Council member Hara Spencer. Present. Mayor Ezea. Here. 3 present. And, hopefully, the other 2 council members will get here shortly. Hopefully. Alright. So at this time, we take public comment on closed session items only. Madam Cook, do you wanna introduce what those items are before we take the public comment? Performance evaluation and 3 b is potential litigation. Alright. Thank you. And do we have public comment? We do. Alright. Estella Villagrana. Welcome. Hello, everyone. I'm here in person for the first time. I tried to speak, on the phone a long time ago. And, the reason why I'm here is in my last intent to save my business, which is building 43 Winery. I am building 43 winery, not Todd. Todd is not building 43 winery. And my business is suffering and is about to be shut down by the city, leaded by the mayor because of what Todd doing in his personal or personal label. He's doing whatever he's doing, challenging the sequel against the city again in his personal level. So I met with city staff last week and my last intent or 1 of my intents to save my business. But it did, you know, seems to me that they didn't have the power to offer any help, any support, and I'm here. I sent earlier a letter to all of you. So I just wanna make sure that you guys received the letter and you had the opportunity to read the letter or if you have a couple of minutes before you go into closed session to read that letter, do so, please. And I just hope that I get the same support from the city as Project Burger did at the time. And you all know the help that you guys give Project Burger because I was here when you guys made that decision. So I hope that I will get the same support, not less, from the city. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, Todd Hickman. Welcome, speaker Hickman. So I'm just gonna talk today on what I've seen and how shameful I think it is the way that the city has treated Ms. Villagrana. Building 43, they've tried to get at me me and my personal hobbies of filing CEQA lawsuits. I mean I just love CEQA. I love the environment. It's my own personal crusade. I love historic districts. I just can't get enough of historic districts particularly military bases. It's a big part of my life and it's just, you know, how I'm gonna spend, the rest of my life is on being a historic, particularly with relation to, naval bases, a preservationist. And it's just something that I'm enthralled with and something that I'm gonna do, so I'm not gonna be stopped. You know, I have, you know, several other, things that I do as well but, you know, Miss Viagrana, this is all that she has is this business it's her business it's not my business. So the way you've treated her the harassment what the mayor said publicly I mean quoted by the, Alameda Post, we have evidence of what she's done through what I call her minions. These, public, participants in her crusade, to try and shut down building 43 and what she's told them to do. The 100 of 1 star Yelp reviews, telling people how to get at us or try to get at me. And again, none of it really worked because I'm just picking up steam and now as you notice I'm more encouraged than ever. I'm just not gonna stop. And Mr. Shen, I mean, you know, I thought we were gonna be tight, you know, having a beer after work and stuff and you've just let me down. You failed to reign in the mayor. You failed to perform to your lawyer's oath. You committed felonious fraud on 2 judges, a warrant representing the people of the state of California and inspection warrants as the municipal attorney, the landlord's attorney, and you're committing a felony telling a judge that you're gonna represent the people of the state of California? Are you ******* kidding me, mister Shen? Are you ******* kidding me? My, oh, my. This has got a ******* stop up in here. Enough of this ****. You people have ******* lost concept with reality and how this really works. This is not how government service works. I've been there. I've been there. I've been on all sides of government service, and this is not how it works. So what you have done is scandalous. What you've done is illegal. What you've done, you are going to pay for. So I hope you're smug. I hope you've had a good time sitting up there smirking. I hope you've had a real, real good time because the party's coming to an end. Kinda like that, like that Natel party you had all scheduled, last week, you know, at the hearing, you know, that party you had all set up, all those people watching. And your time is up. Thank you. Our next speaker? We don't have any more speakers. Okay. With that, we will close public comment on closed session items. And, we will adjourn to closed session to, consider the matters that do you wanna read them more fully? 3 a is public employee performance evaluation pursuant to government code section 54957. Positions evaluator city attorney Yves Shen. 3 b is conference with legal counsel potential litigation, potential initiation of litigation pursuant to government code section 5495.9 subsection D4. Number of cases 1 as plaintiff's city initiating legal action. Potential defendant, Steel Town Winery, LLC DBA, Building 43 Winery. Thank you. Alright, everyone. We will be back by 6:15. Thank you. Okay. Everyone involved We're good. And we're good. Yeah. Oh, what's that? I said a few things. You're the 1 who didn't hear that. All right. If everyone could, give us your attention. I am going to call the meeting back to order and good evening, everyone and welcome to the Alameda City Council meeting this evening is Tuesday, December 17, 2024, last City Council meeting of the year. And the City Council has just returned from closed session. And, I would like to start with the announcement of action taken in closed session. So on item 3A, which was public employee performance evaluation for the city attorney position, The council voted on the process that we will follow. It was a 4 to 1 vote with council member Herrera Spencer voting no. And then I will go on to the city clerk for the report out on item 3b. 3b which is regarding potential litigation. Staff provided information and council provided direction. Also by 4 ayes with council member Horace Spencer voting no. Alright. Thank you for that. And with that we will adjourn the, closed session. And I will call to order the special city council meeting. And I'd like to start with the pledge of allegiance. Council member Harris Spencer, may I call upon you to lead us in the pledge? To rise. Yes. You're able. Ready to begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, 1 nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, council member Herrera Spencer. And, now we will go to roll call, madam clerk. Would you call the roll, please? Yes. Vice mayor Dason? Here. Council members Herrera Spencer? Present. Jensen? Here. Bella? Here. Mayor Izzy Ashford? Here. 5 present. Did you get a call? Yes. Okay. Yes. Alright. I'm sorry. Sorry. Miss Dimmel? Alright. So now we, move on to the consent calendar. And I'm going to call, first on, the city clerk, Laura Weissinger. And I just like to announce that tonight, staff is requesting 2Q, which is the resolution approving a final map, be withdrawn and it will return at a later date. So we're withdrawing 2Q. Okay. And then are there any, consent calendar items that the council would like to pull? Any pulls from council? Okay. I have a pull. I'm going to pull item 2 f, f as in Frank. Okay. So then, before we go to public speakers, does council have any questions on the remaining items, the balance of the consent calendar that isn't pulled? No questions. Okay. Then we will go on to public comment. Madam Clerk, public comment on We have none. Consent calendar. We will close public comment. And Right here, we have 1. Last meeting of the year will just be magnanimous. Madam Clerk, do we have public comment? Yes. Todd Hickman. Alright. And that would be mister Hickman? Okay. Welcome. So in relation to 2 o, there's 30 days to appeal that. I believe there's a large contingency that's growing, and I don't think that that should be accepted on that. So I think that is an issue. I think we had election interference and potentially federal election fraud as we had a crime committed against an elected official and elected council member. So, hopefully, we are still gonna get to the bottom of that. 2 f. Oh, I think that did get pulled....
Oakland City Mayor’s Commission on Persons with Disabilities (MCPD) Meeting, December 16, 2024
Transcript Good evening. It is 5:37, December 18th or 16th. Sorry. And we will now begin our December session of the of mayor's commission of people with disabilities. We'll start with the in person meeting logistics and rules read out by staff. Okay. Remember, no food or open drink are allowed in here in room 1 to maintain a clean and professional environment. Drinks must be in a closed container, like Fatima has, to prevent any spills or accidents. When commissioners speak, please press the top red button that says Mike. And when you are finished, please press the button again. To ensure clarity and transparency, when commissioners speak, please state your name before speaking. When a member of the audience is speaking or commenting, please first state your name and any affiliations you may have. Restrooms are located outside here in room 1 near the elevators. We will now move on to roll call and determination of quorum. Here. Vice chair, part 2. Here. Commissioner Cloyd. Here. Commissioner Rowe. Commissioner Foote. Here. Commissioner Creswell. Commissioner Wilson. Here. Commissioner Saint Julian. Here. Commissioner Arey. Here. Commissioner Carter. Here. And with that, we do make quorum. Oh, nice. Perfect timing. Alright. Well, can I share that it was here too? Okay. And with that, we definitely make quorum. We'll now move on to item 3, open forum. Any person may directly address the commission on any items within the jurisdiction of the commission not on the agenda for today. Speakers wishing to address a specific item on the agenda may do so when invited at the time the item is being considered. There's no discussion allowed during open forum. Please raise your hand if you wish to comment and wait to be called on. Which 1? It doesn't matter? Okay. I think it's this 1. Yeah. Hi, everybody. Lenore Gunst. I am Lenore Gunst, and I chair the mayor's commission on aging. And it's, a pleasure to be back here to see you all, although I wish the circumstances were less dire than they are. As you may know, the city is in a fiscal crisis. And, as a result of that, the city council tomorrow will be making, a decision about implementing some mid cycle budget reductions, which will have a drastic, really, severe impact on seniors, persons with disabilities, and veterans who live in the city of Oakland and utilize, Oakland's, senior services. So of the people that attend, sir, use the services most and attend the senior centers, are mostly low income people and people of color. So it's an equity issue, and it's also, critical services that a lot seniors rely on, for for their safety and well-being. And among the probably the biggest 1 is the closure of the senior centers. We had a meeting last week and, and have attended every hearing, and have been advocating on your behalf as well as senior's behalf. And, we were just shocked when we learned that, that a set of, well, the city administrator proposed a set of cuts and and did so, saying he had the confidence of the, directors of all the departments in adult and aging services and human services, who had, offered these cuts as being something that they could live with. And that really was not the case. Adult and Aging Services had not been consulted. And this included, rotating actually, I heard a question about the the centers, not opening West Oakland right away. It's still under construction apparently. But, the other centers would have 1 center director and they would, this person would rotate among the the 3 others that are open, and it would be open 1 day a week. So Oakland's a big city. It's hard enough to get around and I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir about that, but, you know, to get from West Oakland out to East Oakland, for 1 day a week, it just isn't tenable. Not only that, but they're, the downtown Oakland Senior Center, for instance, is the, head start program runs there. The veterans administration runs out of there. Essential programs like, case management. All transportation and script is available at, for people that need help to get to doctor's appointments and all are, available at the senior centers, as well as meal and food distribution. So, we have been lobbying very hard for, an alternative plan or at least, something that that, would mitigate the impact to seniors and persons with disabilities and veterans. We are hopeful that tomorrow at the at the meeting that, we will have gotten our message through. We have just had tireless efforts. So last week, we had an opportunity to meet with the city administrator. And, and we had a rousing meeting. We had buses come and pick seniors up from all the senior centers and brought them there. Over a 100 folks were there. And, he did acknowledge at the end of that meeting that there was still time to see whether or not they couldn't mitigate some of the impacts that they were anticipating. So, we'll see. So tomorrow, we have a rally. And, so we're not just gonna take that for an answer. We're gonna go the to the end, to the end of the line here with everything we've got. So it will be out at Fracagawa Plaza, and it's going to start just before the city council meeting starts at 3:30. So we'll be out there at about 2:30. And, Anwar is going to be speaking. We have, folks from Mercy Brown Bag, from SOS Meals on Wheels, from the Senior Services Coalition. We are hoping, very hopeful. We're gonna have somebody from, supervisor Nate Miley's office will be there, United Seniors of Oakland, and, we're hoping 1 of the council members will come out as well. We know we know at least 2 or 3 that are really sympathizing with us. But, you know, fire and police are important, and that seems to be where the city has, has really hedged in terms of being able to cut too much of those resources. They're union they're big union jobs, and so, you know, that's another complication in in the works. But seniors are important. You know, we're the fiber of, I think, of Oakland. And, we take advantage of what Oakland has to offer, and we've lived and worked here for, for many for their whole lives, and people wanna stay. And the senior centers play an important role in that, as do senior services, as do all of you. So, so I'm here just to give you that update. We're gonna have we're kind of waiting out with bated breath to see what happens tomorrow. There it will be the last opportunity. You know, in addition to all that, the over half the city council's turning over, including the mayor. So, so, you know, we'll be back at it in the beginning of the year, virtually starting over with our advocacy and relationship building with, several of the council members. But, it's all worthwhile. So, so anyway, I just wanna give you that update. I wanna thank you very much for your support. Come on out tomorrow if you can't. If you do have a relationship with a council member, you know, shooting an email, there'll be public comment available, during the meeting. You can submit a a card if you come in person. It may be too late to do it on, any comment, but, certainly, you can just email council members if they get them and just let them know that, that you really support, not closing the senior centers and retaining some of the, some of the other programs that seniors rely on. So any questions at all? Yes. You spoke of well, I know the West Oakland 1 was closed. I know a lot of people that used to go there. So you said they remodel, and they couldn't be remodeling if there's no money. So what are they doing with it? Yeah. So there's something called, carryovers, in the budget, and most of those are for capital improvement projects. So, so construction is well underway. And, so yeah. I know. It's kind of a slippery slope there. There is money. I mean, there's money. Oakland's got money, but, you know, a lot of it is not discretionary. It's it's restricted in how it's used. And a lot of I think a lot of the the concern that the city councils, had, in their decision making is that the fiscal, where the city ends up in all of this will, will certainly impact their credit rating. So the city floats bonds to finance a lot of the capital improvement projects. You know, I live on Broadway Terrace. The road has not been paved in 50 years or something. It's, you know, it's there's other, infrastructure improvements and all that. So the funding for those are, those funds are earmarked and they're there. But, yeah. Right? You'd think that we would take care of Oakland's most vulnerable people first before some of these other, you know, projects and things, get taken on. But, Do you have any excuse me. Would do you have any idea which one's closing or just? Well, they would all, right now, they were all gonna close. So last last Tuesday, we learned, like, that they were eliminating 6 and a half positions out of adult and aging services, and we pressed and pressed and pressed to find out what they were, and staff didn't even know what they were. And it turned out it was all the senate directors. Is Oakland the only 1 that's broke, or is it just, you know, is it just the Bay Area period? Is it just Oakland? That's a good question. I, you know, I honestly don't know. I, I heard, council member Jenkins talk about San Diego. I guess he's been down there a couple of times and, you know, talking to people there about it. We I remember the city of Vallejo went, you know, went into bankruptcy. Yeah. So I'd I'd like to limit conversation too much. I I do know that other cities also suffer from problems of things like police overspending and bunch of problems, but that's discussed for another time. Yes. Exactly. So any other questions that that anybody has? Any yes. Sorry. I may have missed this, but did you say they're voting on this tomorrow at tomorrow's meeting? That's correct. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Great. Well, thanks again, everybody, and I wish you all a happy holiday. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any other speakers? I'm Sheila Gunn and I'm laughing because this is this is always the way. I'm I'm wearing 2 hats today. Thank you, Lenore, for talking about tomorrow's meeting. I will be there virtually. I think that when we destroy the infrastructure, the social infrastructure that helps people on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, maintain their health and well-being both physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, whatever. If we destroy that then that means more emergency room visits, that means delayed doctor care, that means not getting transportation to where they need to go for medical and social things, and that means isolation. So if there are people not in this room, who, feel that this is important, they should come on out tomorrow. It won't be cold inside and the rally will only be an hour, so, come and be here and and do what we need to do. I want to switch gears though. There was a tornado in Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley. There was almost a tsunami in San Francisco. We are in we are definitely in climate change times. And, how, communications about said tsunami and who should move to where for what and all that was rather confusing even from supposedly trusted sources. I choose KCBS when I need to know what's going on and NOAA Weather Radio isn't enough. So and and NOAA Weather Radio did say pretty much what KCBS said, but I didn't know that my house was at 126 feet above sea level. I don't I don't I don't, what do what do you call it when you drop the stick in the in the sea to to see how to depth depth sound sound the depth. Anyway, and so that was a very loud and clear wake up call. By the way, I did not hear any Oakland sirens. Apparently, Berkeley did some stuff and Alameda Alameda moved some people around. And so I think it's time we had a hot wash after this cold rain. So I would like to see a thing like that. I think that's it. Everybody be safe for the holidays. I know that the Berkeley shelters are open. I've been sending things out to the Oakland disabled list about that. I don't know where to get Oakland shelter information. I would send that out if I had it. And we will CIL will amplify things when we know they're needed....
Alameda City Public Art Commission 12/16/2024
Transcript You may also submit written comments to me by emailing me at jkeliiaa atalamedaca.gov. Comments submitted during the meeting before the conclusion of public comments section will be read into record. My email address is also on the meeting's agenda. If a remote participant is having difficulty, I suggest that you call using the number 669-444-9171, and meeting ID 896-4208 1044. This information is also at the top of the agenda. People participating via telephone have to please press star 9 to raise your hand, and star 6 to unmute. For For in person participation, a speaker slip must be submitted to speak on any item. There are speaker slips located over there on the chair with with pins. If the commissioner would like to speak, please physically raise your hand, and the chair will acknowledge your request. That chat function has been turned off. Alright. Thank you. Okay. The meeting is now called to order. The time is 6:0:5 pm. Roll call. Commissioner Liz Rush? Present. Commissioner Robert Ferguson? Present. Commissioner Peter Plotsgumer? Present. Commissioner Lisa Martin, absent. Commissioner James Martin, absent. Staff members, Jackie, present. And Duane Dahlman. Present. All right. Hey, comments from the audience may concern matters either on or not on the agenda, but must deal with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the Public Arts Commission. Comments will be limited to 3 minutes. Comments concerning matters on this evening's agenda will be heard when that item is called. Halia'a, do you have any items to read into the record? Public comments? Yes. I do have a public comment from Rachel Campos de Ivanoff. And rate oh, sorry. You can actually come over here and speak because we would like to for your comments to be recorded. This guy? What are you so you're in the as long as you're in the, the frame, you can you can speak here. Hi. Rachel Campos de Eignoff. I am a board member of the Westin Earth District, and I'm also staff for Radium. And Jeff wanted to share a quick update about a wonderful event that we hosted this past weekend, which was called Capture the King Tides. This was a collaborative effort with Westin Arts District, Radium, NASA, Greenbelt Alliance. We braved the wind, the rain, power outfits. Wow. 40 mile an hour away and miraculously 25 people showed up for a free iPhone photography workshop. And it was a wonderful collaboration of being able to highlight through an artistic lens the work that the city is doing, for climate adaptation. So this was a quick pop up event that we did as part of the rising tides project and as a warm up to, a bigger initiative that would be coming in May called In Plain Sight that will be happening at Radium, which is again, also part of the Rising Tides initiative. So that program will be scheduled starting May 9th for about 3 weeks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Raise your hand if you'd like to provide public comments unrelated to an item on the agenda. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak? All right. That brings us to the regular agenda. Okay. Which is to review and approve the October 21st, draft pack minutes. Commissioners? No objection. Okay. That is approved as written. Do you have any other motion? Yeah. I think we do. Yes. I motion we approve the minutes as written. Okay. Okay. Approve. K. Review and approve the September 18th draft packed minutes. I have no changes. Because I think I'm barking too much in these briefings. I motion to, approve, the Minutes as written. Great. Both are done. All right. All right. Regular agenda items. First up, Alameda Recreational and Parks Department, Aquatic Park, Public Art Opportunity Presentation. Yes, please. And then I'm gonna go ahead and share our screen. Off the screen. And make sure you introduce yourself. I will. My name is Patrick Ressy. I am the recreation manager. I'm also joined by Stacy Thomas, a aquatic specialist, in our department. Well, I want to thank you guys all for coming out and listening to this presentation. I think it's gonna be really great opportunity for the Public Art Commission. Little known fact, the Public Art Commission did start in the recreation department when it first started. Many, many years ago. In fact, I was the staff person in charge of it back then. So, so as you may or may not know, hopefully, you do know that we are going to be creating a new first ever Alameda Aquatic Center, in on the footprint of what is the Gene Sweeney open space preserved park. It's, we've never had a facility in Alameda. We've always shared facility with the school district or with other nonprofits. So we're quite excited to finally have a facility that we can use, as much as possible. Because when for many years, we only had access to pools, for 8 weeks during the summer. And now we are going, year round. Especially COVID kinda changed things and opens the world up to alternative schedules. And so now we're we have an aquatic need to go year round. People wanna swim year round. They wanna use it as exercise. So, like, so we're really excited. And it's most exciting is this is gonna be an all electric 0 greenhouse gas emission demonstration project that, we're working with, many city departments, especially AMP, who's gonna be helping, do some demonstration, things out of the facility. So we'll provide it. So if you're familiar with Gene Sweeney, it's a 26 Acre Park. This is the far West side of Gene Sweeney Park, on the corner of Constitution and Atlantic is that's where you see the Atlantic up there. So the that is what it currently exists there now. I don't think it looks as nice as that, but, that's, what exists there now. We do have some public art there already. If you look down below, right above the Gene Sweeney, there is a, right there. Thank you. Is the, Mormon, California, the tides of California, Mesa California, totem poles that are there. Mhmm. Gene Sweeney actually does have several, public art pieces in it, which is super nice, and I think, adds to the element of the park. So, that's the footprint of what's going to become the aquatic center, but now let's see what the vision is for the aquatic center. So that's what the aquatic that space is going to occupy. We are quite excited about it, and we've had lots of we've had many, many, many public meetings and, many, debates back and forth about what what how it was gonna come out. And so this was very, very publicly vetted. And we feel that this is is the best, facility that we're gonna move forward with. And this is the 1 that we're we're getting designs out with, and eventually we'll have an RFP going out, hopefully next year at some point. Right? Tracy. So what I do think though, if you see that, it it lends itself for a great opportunity for some public art to be infused into the project. And if you click to the next slide, is we we kind of identified some areas that will be really great opportunities. We anticipate over a 175 to 200000 people coming to this facility, each year. So it's gonna be highly visible. And I think it'll be a great opportunity to showcase public art. And it also gives an opportunity, in my personal opinion to give, 1 of the major thoroughfares of Alameda, some sort of gateway art piece that I think has been missing. So that the 1 on the far left where it says gateway, that is, again, it's it's a little bit farther away from the facility. But right now, if you drive down there, all you see is a little bench out there that says Jean Sweeney on it. And, and I think there were lots of different plans over the years and it was eventually going to be built out, but this gives us an opportunity to put a signature piece, right there as as everyone goes by there. It's a major, venue place. And that and that could go lots of different ways. I mean, obviously, it's it could be an an access point. It could be, you know, something, that incorporates both aquatic and gene swinging in it. I think that gives it a good a good spot. I will move over to the out to the far right where the plaza is. That's gonna be as people are coming in from the parking lot. And I think that's that would be a nice signature, public art, a place for a good public art piece, welcoming people or however wanted to. I think there's good opportunities, to be out there. And remember this facility again is, being, used also by AMP as a demonstration facility for their 0 emissions, transmissions. The other 2 places, a little bit different and a little bit, not necessarily pieces, but, the wind wall is a wall that is gonna be partially a wall and then partially a fence that goes up in some places to 10 feet and then some at 15 depending on the elevation. And I think there was some opportunities to share a story of aquatics or to do something within the fencing. Do you wanna, the, I forget the tech terminal technology of it, but I've seen where they, they take the metal fences and they do artwork sketch on it. They Punch out. Punch out. Thank you. I the technical word. And I think we're gonna see some and then the last opportunity is, the green tree those green circles are trees, but they don't exist now. I mean, I I mean, they're not they're a little there's a few of them there, but not many. But they're the back wall of the, the building right there will also be facing, the street of the Atlantic. And so that also gives another opportunity for a mural style or some of the public art that could go along there. You know, so I think it it gives an opportunity, many opportunities for public art. And I think it, it also be a good showcase for public art because I think the amount of attention that they get here, because again, unless you are, I I know Liz, you're a really regular park person and you're going into the parks. Some of the public art pieces are in places where people just don't get to experience them as much. Like those columns. Yes. Well, so the beauty of the on that, of the columns, actually, I think the columns will get better exposure because the they're gonna be doing that pathway that goes below it. Yeah. We'll open up right now. It's not open. So that will be a pathway that goes across the the, the call the columns all the way to the street of Atlantic. That'd be wonderful. So and and that's the plan on on a couple of those. Even the 1 that I think the other public art was down closer. There's a mania and that have cut through, and I think goes out to the egg in in Marina Village, in that area. So I think I just think it's it's gonna be a showcase. It's it's gonna be very visible because it's, you know, you get a lot of traffic many ways down there. The potential partnerships with the college and bringing kids over from the college and doing some things over there with maybe our program or maybe with their swimming, making a lot of doing swimming with the college, probably because the college doesn't have a pool, we'll bring the students over. So I think it'll be a a a facility that's gonna be used by both youth, teens, college, adults. You know, the I mean, the biggest complaint that we've gotten over the years, the consistency. We don't have the ability to do consistent programming, and now that'll give us the ability to do consistent programming. So the exposure of this is just gonna be multiplied. So that's that's kind of a a a rendition of what the and you can kinda see the the the wall. It kinda goes up with the perforated thing and then, where the street was. There's, you know, where the entryway and then the there's a little blue marker down there, I think, where the plaza where I was talking about earlier and the wall. So that's 1 of the architectural designs of all the files that hopefully, it'll be very similar to this. I can't I never looked at the design and say that's the Oklahoma because it never ends up being that that way. But, we will build out the parking lot on the 1 side, because it will be a facility that will need parking on that....
Alameda City Planning Board 12/16/2024
Transcript And we're calling the meeting to order at exactly 7 o'clock. We'll go ahead and do the flag salute. Board member Luis, can you lead us, please? Yes, sir. I pledge allegiance to the flag of all, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. And moving on to the agenda, item number 1, roll call. Good evening. Board member Hamm? Here. Board member Hsu? Here. Board member Ruiz? Here. Board member Bridal? Here. Board member Wang? Here. Board member Suhayba? Present. And president Cisneros? Here. We, have a quorum. All are present. Okay. Great. Thank you. Next agenda item is agenda changes. Anyone from the board or staff, any proposed, changes? Seeing none, we'll keep it as is. Item number 3, non agenda public items. If anyone from the public would like to speak on an item that's not on the agenda, you're welcome to come up now and speak for 3 minutes. Are there any speakers? I don't have any speaker slips, and I don't see any hands raised on Zoom. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item number 4, consent calendar. We have the draft meeting minutes. If, there's any items that need to be pulled, now is the opportunity to do so. No? I'm not seeing any. Okay. I will note I will note there were 3, members absent from the meeting, and so, the 4 of you that were there could vote to approve the minutes. Okay, great. I should open it up for public comment, right? Any public comments on the consent calendar item? Seeing none. Okay. Does, anyone want to make a motion? I can move to approve. Okay. And, I'll abstain. Well, I'll second the motion. Okay, great. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. I'll abstain to. Oppose abstentions? Yes, I abstention. Okay. All right. Motion carries. Okay. Great. Moving on to regular agenda items. 5 a, which is, the update is a workshop on the update for the Alameda Point EIR, design guidelines for new infill development. ESSF presentation. Good evening, President Cisneros and members of the planning board. Brian Maguire, planner 2 here to present, essentially a staff update, but we wanted to agendize this to give the board a chance to, provide any comments and the public a chance to comment since we did some work on this item earlier this year, on the EIR requirement to adopt guidelines for new infill development within the NAS Alameda Historic District. A little bit of background. Back in February 2014, the city council approved the Alameda Point project. This involved 4 key actions, to guide the reuse and redevelopment of the base. Certified the final environmental impact report, adopted a general plan amendment, adopted the Alameda Point zoning code as well as a master infrastructure plan for Alameda Point. The EIR lays out mitigation measures to reduce the severity of impacts, environmental impacts, when possible. 1 such EIR mitigation requires that the city adopt guidelines for new infill development prior to constructing new buildings within the historic district. There are many, many in-depth high quality reports and plans by both the Navy and the city, over the years that contain contain guidance for consideration when adding new buildings and other development in the historic district. Most relevant to tonight's discussion are the 1997 guide to preserving the character of the NAS Alameda Historic District, commonly referred to as the guide, and the 20 2012 cultural landscape reports. Earlier this year, staff began developing draft infill design guidelines in consultation primarily with the HAB but also the planning board. At the same time, we were reviewing the early plans for the performing arts center project, which we'll hear more about later. After that separate deep dive into the, existing reports and guidelines, it's become clear that already adopted guidelines are sufficient for complying with the EIR mitigation requirement. Thanks to previous Navy conveyance requirements when they gave us the land, in 1999, the city was required to formally adopt the guide as city policy and then in 2013, this is sort of, you know, I call it sort of the lost resolution. It, happened before the Alameda Point project was approved but, after the federal nomination, in the wake of that nomination, the city council was required to amend the 1997 guide to include 20 pages of design review guidelines for the historic design landscape excerpted from the cultural landscape report, which is Exhibit 1 attached to your staff report. That action is key because it upgraded the guide to include infill design guidelines for new buildings. Previously the guide mostly focused on the reuse and rehabilitation of the existing in the historic district. So that brings us back to 2014, and the approval of the Alameda Point project. At the same time the EIR was certified city council adopted the Alameda Point zoning district rules which included this provision called NES Alameda Historic District guidelines. It requires all new construction in the historic district to be consistent with the guide as amended. If you didn't know about that 2013 resolution, you might, that as amended part might go unnoticed like it did for me for a while. Since the guide to preserving the character was amended a full year before the certification of the EIR and adoption of the zoning ordinance, it was not immediately clear to current staff, hi, that the infill design guidelines from the cultural landscape report had already been formally adopted into the Alameda Point zoning code. By incorporating the amended guide directly into the zoning, city council ensured compliance with this mitigation measure from the start. So where does that leave us? For the Waterfront Town Center and Main Street neighborhoods shown in pink and purple here, we have adopted specific plans to augment the underlying design guidelines from the cultural landscape report and the guide. For the adaptive reuse district shown in green here, there's not currently a specific plan. Most of the contributing buildings from the historic district are here as well as character defining features of the historic landscape like the the the mall sort of in front of City Hall West, the large parade grounds, I believe they're mostly referred to as. So we're likely to see much less infill development in this area. Most of what we'll see would be the reuse of existing buildings like storehouse lofts you saw last week, things like the Almanac and Rake, Firebrand and Kairos type projects. As for the work that was started this year, trying to create a guide to the guides, so to speak. Staff will continue to work on creating a user friendly, visually attractive tool as part of our work program and bring that back to you at some point in the future. I'm happy to answer any questions, hear public comment, take any additional feedback you might have tonight. We're not asking for any action as part of this update. Great. Thank you much for the presentation. Before we open up for public comment, any clarifying questions from the board? Seeing none, thank you so much. I'll open up for public comment. Any speakers? I don't see any hands raised, and I don't have any speaker slips on this item. Okay. Great. Closing, public comment, and, go ahead and open up to the board for any, comments or, feedback regarding this update. Board member Holmes. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the staff report. And I couldn't understand how complex this issue is. I don't give you a Give you a Yeah. A lot of pages. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of different documents. This is more a question if I try to ask it, I guess, under questions. But based on the staff report and what your presentation, covered, it sounds like the cultural landscape report, the guidelines that were adopted into the zoning code, those are the primary guideline that covers all of Alameda Point. And then there's specific guidelines related to each specific plan that might be like a supplemental or that they're kind of they pertain to a smaller geographical area, project specific guidelines. What about the state, historic, guidelines? Are those incorporated or reflected in the cultural guidelines at all? Or they another set of guidelines that that the city needs to be aware of that is in addition to the cultural landscape guidelines? Are you referring to, like, the secretary of interior standards? Yeah. Yeah. The yeah. Secretary of interior standards also SHPO standards. So are those incorporated by reference or otherwise into the cultural landscape guidelines? I I defer to Steve on the SHPO aspect of it. I think the secretary of interior standards, I I can confidently say, are, guidelines that we're required to follow when, taking on projects that within the historic district. In order to get a certificate of approval from the historical advisory board, they have to find that it's consistent with those guidelines, but anything you wanna add to that? No, that's right. I, it's it's, 1 of the mitigation measures, which again is a little confusing because then it's also just put in the zoning code. When the zoning was adopted, they just threw everything into the code as a as a development standard. So, yes, those are adopted and, guidance for the HAB. Okay. So when so when you develop the checklist or the so those will reflect the requirements, the National Historic Preservation requirement? Absolutely. The Secretary of Interior Standards are referenced in, 13 dash 21 in the historic preservation ordinance. So separate from the zoning but it's it's in the code and we would definitely wanna include that as part of the the universe of materials that future applicants, board members and staff would would need to be, referencing when bringing projects forward. Okay. So the way how I'm envisioning this, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, there'll be these general guidelines pertains to the Alameda Point, and then there'll be these sub area guidelines that will pertain to each, specific plan or precise plan area. Yeah. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. You can imagine sort of a checklist. The specific plan areas overlap the historic district but they actually cover a lot of area outside the historic district guidelines. So, like, the waterfront town center covers the area, you know, like, east of Pan Am, basically, and along the Seaplane Lagoon, but mostly it covers everything from site A, like, that was previously developed along West Atlantic, those townhomes and apartment buildings there which are not in the historic district. So it's kind of, you know, it's like, okay, where am I? And then you got to sort of figure out which boxes apply to you. So you're gonna have a nice map that will show all these district boundaries. Okay. Thanks. Great. Any other, comments or questions? Board Member Wang? Yeah. Thanks for the thanks for the presentation. So so I'm understanding that the guide to the guides that you're currently working on is really just a crosswalk between the mitigation measure and the requirements that you already have codified in the zoning code. Right? Yeah. I think you could you could think of it as sort of like a a really big handout for that we would have in the permit center for people who want to build an ADU. Here's your 5 page handout on things you need to be thinking about for development and within the historic district we would we would have something obviously much more robust sort of, to present all of this different information and and help them pull the key pieces that you're likely to need but also sort of as a roadmap for where they need to go for further, investigation. Right. So at this point it seems more like a practical tool than really generating a new document of substance. I'm I'm curious whether you're gonna require an action from the planning board when you when you finalize this document. I think that's a good question. I defer to Steve. I don't think it necessarily depending on what form it takes, we'll definitely want to come to this, to the planning board and the historical advisory board, to provide input on it but since it's really just a sort of a tool and it's it's, you know, sort of supplementing the adopted guidelines, it doesn't necessarily, you know, we don't really feel the need like we would absolutely have to readopt it since it's really just referring to existing adopted plans. So it would feel a little redundant potentially. But we definitely wanna make sure everyone is comfortable with what that finished product looks like because it is really complicated set of, guidelines and and documents to sort through. Thanks. Thank you. And measure, requirements. So I thank you for doing that, research, and looks like it'll come back to us once it's ready to be all packaged up. So, thank you for the work and the update. Great. With that we will move on to item 5 B, which is, to look at the little opera house, project. This is a workshop. So, is there a staff presentation for this? Hello again. Lehi a lot of me tonight. No time no see. Hi again....
Alameda City Mayor’s Economic Development Advisory Panel/Economic Recovery Task Force 12/11/2024
Transcript Agenda item for oral communication public. If the public would like to comment on an item, please email Eric Fonstein at efonstein@alamedaca.gov. Comments submitted during the meeting before the conclusion of the public comment section will be read into the record. If the public would like to comment and has called in by phone, please dial 9 to raise your hand. Comments from the audience may concern matters either on or not on the agenda, but must deal with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the mayor's economic development advisory panel. Comments will be limited to 3 minutes. Comments concerning matters on this evening's agenda will be heard when that item is called. Eric, do we have any speakers or comments? So far, no. It's, even though it looks like we don't have any questions. It's not easy. Yeah. Which brings us to the consent calendar. We have nothing on the consent calendar, so we'll move to regular agenda items. Tonight's agenda item 6 a is an update on the Alameda Point Piers and the Alameda Maritime BlueTech strategy. Before I turn it over to Abby, just a reminder on how we proceed. First, Abby will give a staff presentation followed by clarifying questions from from the panel, followed by public comment. And then at the close of public comment, there'll be a time for a panel member discussion. Abby? Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I'm pleased to be here and I'm very pleased to have a special guest speaker tonight presenting on the Pierist and Maritime Strategy, Ron Golomb. Ron has been an economic and real estate consultant for and and well, in the economic and real estate world for many, many years. Most recently was the director of, real estate real estate at VTA down in the South Bay, and was a long for a long, long time, consulted at Bay Area Economics before then and is now hung out on some shingle very luckily for us. So we have a lot of really decent real estate and economics experience. And Ron has been doing a lot of background analysis that he'll present to you tonight, for our discussion. So you wanna take it away, Ron? I will. Thank you. I'm gonna say it here. Say it. Say it again. Okay. We could do it then. Second here. I need to my machine will be in sync here. Okay. Okay. So thank you for the time introduction. As I already mentioned, I've been working for about 3 decades in creating public private partnerships, really advanced economic development as well as sort of, brutalization. And I've worked on about a half dozen base closure projects. So it's a lot of, interesting experience along the way. Who put this in the presentation? I see it's not a PDF. Right? Sorry. No. That's Hi. Good. So what we'd like to do tonight is and what you saw in the packet is, you saw both the staff report and then you saw the detailed draft, strategy for maritime and blue tech uses that's prepared by Geis Hommerston. So what I'm gonna do is go ahead and kind of give a very high level overview and then really post some questions that hopefully will set the stage. And, obviously, what we're excited about is really getting your input and expertise to help us think about how to sharpen the thinking that we're doing and the work that we're doing. So what I'm gonna talk about tonight are gonna be the opportunities for the peers of waterfront at Avian Point. I'm gonna touch on the challenges that we have because of the conditions and flooding needs. I'm gonna talk about some of the potential strategies to advance maritime fleet type uses. And I do wanna note that while we're focused on the working waterfront, which you see on the graphic that we have here, as well as what we're calling sort of a maritime blue tech area behind it, where we have a number of tenants in the maritime center already, this area is adjacent to the enterprise district. And, obviously, there's also opportunities we think for synergies between what's envisioned for the enterprise district and really those types of businesses and what's happening here. And so, again, what this is really all about is getting your guidance, to help shape our thinking about what should be the priorities and actions that have to be taken. We have a good sign on. That's the challenge is now we have to figure that out. Is this development, can I ask a question? How do I do that? Is this, the development of a new specific plan or an additional specific plan for Illumina Point? Or I think at this point, it's not so much a land use exercise in terms of thinking about specific plan. It's really more on strategy in terms of economic development, which is what are the kinds of uses we wanna track? What's the sector that we wanna try to create and build upon here? And so it's really a little focus in that direction. That's not to say that there wouldn't be perhaps a specific line down the road, but I think we're a little bit early in the process than that. Can I augment a little bit, that that it's really more of an investment sort of at some point the city is going to have to make financial decisions about the pier? So it's an investment plan, but also I think policy decisions that Ron will go over that are not yet, as LeBron said, not land use, but more of just just more real estate policy. So that's more of the feedback we're looking for as we get. Great. So I think a good place to start is really to think about what is the competitive advantage that was Alameda? And, you know, it doesn't say it very simply, what we have at Alameda Point, which is Okay. Which is, you know, there's there's only a few number of place to be here that have this, but we have a working waterfront that's able to accommodate various maritime uses. We don't have a facility that's foreign in towards cargo like Port of Oakland, but we do have a facility that's a lot of really support a broad range of other maritime, cable tech activities. The fact that we're adjacent to the Port of Oakland is a huge advantage in terms of support activities that cannot be accounted important and have been here in the past. The fact that we're also on the other side of Alameda Point from base shipping yacht, from a functioning working shipyard that works with all kinds of garment and fire ships is also another big advantage. This is not something we're talking about creating from scratch. We already have a dozen maritime blue tech tenants at Alameda Point, so we have a cluster here already. This is really a discussion about how we grow and expand the cluster cluster to really help fulfill goals for for Alameda Point. And it's also worth noting that we have available buildings and sites that are both available for reuse as well as new development. And really and this is where it ties into the city's economic development strategic plan. This is about how can we support the city's goals for job and business creation and workforce development when we think there's real opportunities in maritime, in Bluetech sector. The graphic you see shows, well, simply, in peers 1, 2, and 3. Although, obviously, we have significant current uses such as the USS Hornet, you can see him in peer 3, power engineering at peer 1. Pier 2 is not in use at all. I'll sort of have that more embedded. But we have some pretty substantial unused per assets. And as you can see in line with that, we have a pretty fair amount of land in our buildings. And, of course, we have the the SF Ferry, formerly known as WIDA. We have their maintenance and operations facility. So just to talk briefly about what we have already happening at, Alameda Point. So maritime needs to include merit, not the shifts, but some warehouse and support activities they have. NASA navigation, we have Banner Sea Republic Services that supports, maritime, firms. We have power engineering, you know, we have the asset Bay Fair. We also have some significant recreational waterfront uses, the US Department Museum, the LME Utility Center, as well as Tech Adventure. And then BluTech, which I'll talk about in a minute, but really more research and development oriented uses that we have, including door marine, mangrove boats, Kite Concepts, and Pansail drone. And these are facilities that only use the piers at Alameda, but they're actually using the seaplane, specifically the seaplane, ramps as well as the small dock that's over there. So the images on the right are really trying to show 2 things. On the upper image is really giving you another view to show you the piers and the relationships, the land, and the the buildings that are cut up behind them. And in all, we have about half dozen buildings, and we have 20 acres of land that could potentially support a broad range of maritime, and and blue tech activities. How far east does the land area extend for this? For discussion, really, if you look at kind of Orion Street here, this is the dividing line where these are really maritime blue tech uses that are on this side of of Rhine Street, whereas on this area, on the other side of Rhine, it's really Enterprise District. And if you saw the city council presentation a couple months ago, that was when the boundary tour was talked about parcels and phasing. But I also wanna touch on another issue that's really significant for this, and that's the public lands, public trust restrictions. So as true in all of our products in California, what you see in this area, midshaded green, I realize it's a little bit weak, but you can see the areas that identify as part of the public trust where there's actually restrictions on what can go to those areas. And those restrictions are really oriented towards preserving, you know, maritime uses, public access, and so on. And so really about 6 acres of the area we're talking about is already in the public trust. In a lot of ways, and this is kind of 1 of the considerations, is that 1 of the challenges that we appoint is that per policy, you know, the city really has to get fair market value for when it's supposed to properties because the need raised funding for infrastructure or if it has to happen to to allow the plan to be implemented. When you look in this area, because of the use restriction on maritime because of public trust, that actually supports lower land value. Since a lot of ways, it kind of also makes this area a better fit for a lot of maritime and BlueTech uses because it really does support lower value than potentially lower rent than you would than the sea would have to realize in the parts of of that viewpoint per the current policies. So I've talked about the piers in waterfront, but as I mentioned, it's also worth noting what's happening with Seaplane View. And, you know, the key thing about the Seaplane View is that and this goes back to the current plan from your point. This is the area that's really seen as public access to public faces with a lot of uses They're focusing public activity here to really protect the piers and more working waterfront environment that is not necessarily as as open or as accessible by the public. So going back to the town center and waterfront precise plans that are adopted, the eastern side is envisioned as, this area here is envisioned as a mixed use urban waterfront development. So basically, think about mixed use residential with ground floor chimney voices. Pardon? No. You touched that. Can you dance? Oh, sorry about that. Oh, sorry about that. Hang on. Oh, boy. So what I see here is really, mixed use development where you have, you know, retail, restaurants, commercial activities, and places plugged into the waterfront with residential use of weather. On the north side, you have new new waterfront product. I'm sure you see the first piece there that was part of parcel layout. You have a new urban waterfront, that really is kind of a public area for people to enjoy the And, obviously, part of that is gonna be thinking about how to preserve the use of the seaplane ramp by the tenants who are in the hangars. What you also see in this graphic, and the rest is a little washed up here, is what the plant envisions is additional development between that waterfront pond and the existing hangars. And then finally, on the western side, what you see is kind of all goals for habitat restoration and passive recreation. So now I'm gonna get to the nitty gritty bouts, really the challenge that we face here. When we talk about sort of the piers in the waterfront area, we have some really substantial costs for both improvements and repairs and ongoing operations. The city simply doesn't have the funds to to cover. The graph that you see here is a picture of a damaged pile at Pier 2. You can see the pile shear. There's a lot of these at Pier 2, which is why it's been closed to large ships there. Lesser issues than the other piers, but, you know, I think as folks appreciate, the maritime environment is an incredibly corrosive environment. And anything that is in the water requires a lot of ongoing maintenance to really be, say, in an operating condition. So the most immediate issue that we're thinking about is dredging. And so you may be aware that Mara lehi a couple of years ago because their ships were large enough that they were getting a little concerned about was it an assurance for their ships to range to pier too. You know, when the navy was here for the aircraft carriers, they need about 35 to 40 feet of draft for those ships. We don't have that anymore. According to studies that we've done in the past, pure areas sold something about 6 inches per year and a train base in about a foot a year. And so if you do the math, you can realize maybe another 10 to 15 years, we could be in a situation where we have the ability to really accommodate pull off your shifts. And so I'm saying this because it really shows that there's a need for an ongoing dredging. It needs to happen every few years. Now in a minute, I'll talk about a study we're doing sharpness. But based on prior work that's been done, we think that if you sort of average that cost per year, it's about $4,000,000 per year to dredge the the the area from the peers to the train basin. And that $4,000,000 a year is simply money that doesn't exist in the city's budget to cover that cost on an ongoing basis. The next issue then is tier 2. And based on prior studies, and again, we're gonna update this. We think there's at least $15,000,000 of cost and probably more to fix tier 2 so that you could have large ships like, birth clearance passed. Now it is possible for a much more modest air repairs to get smaller ships, names, types of ships that are in there. But right now, there's a real constraint in how you can use peer 2 because repairs could happen. What you'll see when you look at the draft strategy and what's in the packet is there's a lot of scenarios in the back that talk about what are different ways of if we have birthing and the fees we collect from birthing and the revenue we generate, how does that compare to these costs both funding the dredging and funding the the, pure repairs. And what you're assuming with those scenarios is none of them can curve that cost. It just does not generate enough revenues relative to what those long term costs are gonna be. And so what it really leaves us is the realization that if we're gonna sustain kind of dredging activity, we've gotta find federal and state funding to be able to cover those costs. And so that's 1 of our key challenges here is that this is something that's gonna require a larger effort in funding from other partners to be able to sustain the pure use and the water quality. So I'd like to talk for a minute now about based on that background, what is the city doing right now? The staff has been processing. These are some of these actions will become the council in the near future. The first is to hire a marine engineering firm to really develop updated information on what the water depths are right now, an updated bath and hydrant study, as well as updated cost for both the dredging and what their peer repairs are gonna be. And those costs have sort of 2 components for dredging. 1 is sort of what is the periodic ongoing cost, but there's also a decision which we'll talk more about which depth do we need to get to. Because if we can let the depth be a little shallower, you know, you don't have much 1 time cost as compared to if we felt we had actual depth that was here when the navy was birthing aircraft carriers. And so that's 1 of the questions. The staff is also working to set up a port management contract to handle short term licenses for both the impures 13. You know, we have about half of the pure 3, all of pure 2, and pure 1 where we could have short term growth. We could be generating revenues, but that's not something that's been happening. So that's an opportunity that that we're working to really put that in place. As I mentioned, part of asking, making some minor repairs appear to to allow us for growth activity. And then, of course, the other thing to ask this discussion tonight is that you see the draft strategy document. But really as a strategy document, it lays out what the opportunity is and what we can do. But there's a lot of work beyond that as to how you actually go about implementing data. So that's the work we're starting out. That's where your input will be very helpful both in terms of the strategy as well as how you go about implementing it. So now let's take just a couple minutes to talk about Bluetech specifically. So, you know, these are not hard and fast definitions. I think most folks are familiar with maritime. It's really being activities focused around shipping, cargo, you know, waterborne transportation, as well as recreation. And Bluetech is part of that. But where the Bluetech term comes from is really a subset that's focused on more of r and d activities, research and development, technological innovation, and really create more sustainable use of ocean and freshwater resources. And so a lot of traditional shipping companies are already in the space because there's a lot of discussion about how can we make things cleaner. To talk about SF Ferry, They're thinking about how can they electrify the ferries. And so right there, you're at sort of leading edge of where, vessel engineering is as to how do you create and let the ferries sustain that kind of operation. And it's really a great topic because when you think about the ocean right now, 1, we don't understand a lot about the ocean. The state of science technology is very thin....
