Tom Wong

As an investigative reporter focusing on municipal governance and fiscal accountability in Hayward and the greater Bay Area, I delve into the stories that matter, holding officials accountable and shedding light on issues that impact our community. Candidate for Hayward Mayor in 2026.

Hayward City Council Meeting April 15, 2025

Tom Wong April 15, 2025 0

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

Tom Wong December 19, 2024 0

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)

Tom Wong December 18, 2024 0

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

Tom Wong December 18, 2024 0

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

Tom Wong December 17, 2024 0

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

Tom Wong December 16, 2024 0

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

Tom Wong December 16, 2024 0

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

Tom Wong December 16, 2024 0

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

Tom Wong December 11, 2024 0

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....

Berkeley City Council Special Meeting December 10, 2024

Tom Wong December 10, 2024 0

Transcript Whenever you're ready. Alright. I don't have the agenda in front of me actually, but I'd like to call this special meeting to order. Okay. I Can you take the role, please? Yes. I will take the role. Thank you, mayor. Council member Kesarwani? Here. Kaplan? Present. Bartlett? Here. Treib? Pheasant. O'Keefe? Here. Lackey? Here. Luna Parra? Here. Humber? Present. And Mayor Ezey? Here. Okay. Miss Quorum is present. Hey. Well, welcome everyone. I'd like to welcome you to the December 10th special meeting of the Berkeley City Council and call this meeting to order. I did that, so I believe we just have 1 item on our agenda, so would someone like to move item number 1 as written? So I so move. Second. Clerk, would you like to call the roll? We could, take public comment on the consent counter at this time. Oh, I don't have this. Here it is. Yes. I'd like to take public comment, please. Is there any public comment from attendees in the room for the 5:30 PM special meeting? Does it have to be on topic or Yes. Yes. No speakers in the room? Okay. We'll turn to the remote attendees. We have 1, speaker who's raised his hand, Blair Beekman. You can now unmute and provide comment. Hi. Blair Beekman. I'm a person who, works on the issues of tech accountability, the future of, open public policies and best practices with the future of our technology, surveillance and data collection. Boy, congratulations to the new mayor. Thank you that he is, it's it's nice to see your it's nice to be here and to be a part of this process with the new mayor. Thank you. All candidates are always important and good. I'm really hopeful in what the new mayor can be working towards and accomplishing. I hope we can really set a course to really understand that tech accountability is a process of community participation. It's an awesome process. It does some really amazing good things in working together as a full community effort and not just, you know, specific specialized groups. It's a really interesting work. So good luck in the efforts, and, thanks for the meeting today. And, yeah, hello to Berkeley. I'm currently in Vietnam, by the way. I'll be here for a few more months. Thanks for your time. Bye. Thank you. Alright. Any other There are no other, speakers, on Zoom. So we could proceed to, to a vote on the consent calendar to confirm the results of the November 5, 2024 General Municipal Election. Council member Casarwani. Yes. Taplan? Yes. Bartlett? Yes. Treggum? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Una Parra? Yes. Humbert? Yes. And Mayor Ishii? Yes. Okay. The motion carries. And that concludes the business for the 5:30, p. M. Special meeting. Mhmm. And, thank you. We will, start our regular meeting at 6 p. M. For the ceremonial swearing in of our new members. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Thank you. Okay, Council Member Castorwani? Yes. Taplan? Yes. Bartlett? Yes. Trego? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Clackabee? Yes. Luna Parra? Yes. Humber? Yes. And Mayor Ihshi? Yes. Okay, we are adjourned from the 5:30 p. M. Special meeting. Thank you. Thanks everyone for waiting. Oh, that was it. Recording stopped.

Berkeley City Council Regular Meeting December 10, 2024

Tom Wong December 10, 2024 0

Transcript Hello. Hello. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to welcome you all to the December 10th meeting of the Berkeley City Council and call this meeting to order. Can we start with a roll call, please? Okay. Thank you. Council Member Kesselwani? Here. Taplan? Present. Bartlett? Here. Tregga? Present. O'Keefe? Here. Blackabee? Here. Luna Parra? Here. Humber? Present. And, Mayor Ihshi? Here. Okay, quorum is present. Thank you. So typically, we would read the land acknowledgement statement at the beginning of each monthly meeting, but since this is my first meeting, I'd like to ask that we do a land acknowledgement statement again. And, from now on we're gonna be switching off and have different council members do the land acknowledgement and, we're gonna start with council member Casarwani. Thank you very much, Mayor Ishii. The city of Berkeley recognizes that the community we live in was built on the territory of Huichun, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people, the ancestors and descendants of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to all of the Ohlone tribes and descendants of the Verona Band. As we begin our meeting tonight, we acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of Berkeley, the documented 5000 year history of a vibrant community at the West Berkeley Shell Mound and the Ohlone people who continue to reside in the East Bay. We recognize that Berkeley's residents have and continue to benefit from the use and occupation of this unseated stolen land since the City of Berkeley's incorporation in 18/78. As stewards of the laws regulating the City of Berkeley, it is not only vital that we recognize the history of this land, excuse me, but also recognize that the Ohlone people are present members of Berkeley and other East Bay communities today. The City of Berkeley will continue to build relationships with the Luohan scribe and to create meaningful actions that uphold the intention of this land acknowledgement. Thank you so much, Council member. I'd like to move us on to ceremonial manner matters and I'm gonna pass it off to Mark, our City Clerk. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. So at this time, we will, administer the oath of office for, newly elected and reelected, members of the city council and mayor. Okay. So at this time, I'll have you stand. And if you turn on your microphone and point it up, it'll pick up some better audio. And raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, state your name, I I, Shaitanya O'Keefe. Do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California and the Constitution of the State of California. Against all enemies against all enemies, foreign and domestic, foreign and domestic, That I will bear true faith and allegiance. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. To the Constitution of the United States. To the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the State of California. And the Constitution of the State of California. That I take this obligation freely. That I take this obligation freely. Without any mental reservation. Without any mental reservation. Or purpose of evasion. Or purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully discharge. And that I will well and faithfully discharge. The duties upon which I'm about to enter. The duties upon which I'm about to enter. Congratulations. Thank you so much and thank you to those who are here to witness swearing in. I wanna give our new council members and, also reelected council members time to say a few words if you'd like. Council member Brokawbe. Sure, I'll be brief and we said a little bit this Friday night, but, I just want to let everyone know here, I'm so honored to be joining this body, to be joining the city council, with this wonderful group of colleagues, who all wanna serve our community and make Berkeley even better. At a time that we're entering some rocky waters nationally, I do believe that what we do here locally really matters because government can be a force for good, empowering us to join together as a community to solve problems that we can't solve individually, and to extend a helping hand to friends and neighbors that need our support. The people of Berkeley deserve a world class local government that delivers top notch public safety, affordable housing, vibrant public spaces, and safe transportation for everyone that uses our streets and sidewalks. They deserve a government that is data driven, accountable, and transparent, and local leadership that stands up to defend our progressive values. And I'm looking forward to doing all that work together. In particular, I just wanna thank the voters in district 6 who placed their trust in me to be their voice on the city council. It's an honor and a privilege that I don't take for granted. 1 thing just to think about, the people of district 6 have had only 2 council members over the past 32 years, just 2 32 years. Susan Weingraff for the previous 16 and Betty Olds for the 16 years before that. These are 2 trail blazing, outspoken, courageous women who were passionate advocates for our district and dedicated to constituent service. They've set a super high bar and I will work every day to live up to their examples. So again, I'm looking forward to joining our new mayor, all of my council colleagues, our city manager, Paul Budenhagen, and our terrific city staff to tackle the challenges ahead and help Berkeley live up to its fullest potential. For everyone who lives and works here now and in the future, Thanks again for the privilege of serving. Thank you so much, council member Blackby. Would anyone else like to say a few words? Go ahead, council member Humper. I I I wanna personally say a quick but hearty congratulations to our new council members and those who've been reseated and to say a hearty welcome, once again, I've welcomed them several times, to our new council members. And I wanna thank the city clerk and the staff for all the work on this election. Berkeley really puts our staff through trials with our many measures, and that includes council making a lot of demands when it comes to crafting the ones we place on the ballot. I'm not gonna address our ballot measures, but finally I wanna say a special congratulations and welcome to Mayor Ishii. Herding council cats and other creatures isn't always easy, but I'm excited for your leadership and really looking forward to working with you. Vlaminos. Thank you. I also would like to join my colleague in welcoming our new colleagues. It's nice to have a full full house once again. It's been a long time. And all of you, I've known you all many years, all of you. It's really amazing to see this. It's like, 1 family all coming home to roost. And I welcome you. I'm gonna help you and support you. I'll be there for you, and just welcome aboard. I'm so proud of you all for doing it. And my mayor, madam mayor, wonderful work. You you are a trailblazer and so proud of the work you've done already and look forward to helping you succeed and help us all see together. Thank you so much. And to the voters of District 3, thanks again for your support. I'm there with you, reach out anytime. Thank you so much. Yes, Council Member O'Keefe. Just briefly, I wanna say, I'm a child of Berkeley, I was born at Ulta Bates Hospital. I've lived here almost my entire life and, frankly I plan to die here. This is my home. In a very serious way and I love this community and I love this city so much and I just wanna say this is the honor of a lifetime to be able to serve in this way and I wanna say thank you to the voters of District 5 and, thank you to all my colleagues for welcoming me and I'm really looking forward to to working with y'all. And I hope to do your pad, Berkeley. Thank you. Council member Taplin? Thank you. Thank you to the voters. Welcome to the members. Welcome to the new mayor, mayor Ishii. And, let's get to work. Yeah. I also just wanna thank folks again for being here this evening and, to say that even if you didn't vote for me, my job is to earn your trust and I look forward to being in touch with the people of Berkeley and hearing from you. I'm very much looking forward to doing this job. It's been an absolute honor and everyone has been incredibly welcoming and supportive. I look forward to moving forward as a council together. So, thank you so much. I, Thank you. I also want to acknowledge that this is the last meeting for deputy city council managers Latanya Bellows and also Anne Cardwell, so I wanted to give, I believe council member Taplin first an opportunity to speak and to to make some comments since I'm new and didn't get a chance to work with you much. Thank you so much and good evening everybody. On behalf of the council, Madam WC manager Bello and Madam c Madam c Madam WC manager Ian Cardwell, thank you so much for your years of service to the community, city, and people of Berkeley. We have benefited so much from your unflinching responsiveness and your executive approach to the administration. And although it is with a heavy heart that we must say goodbye for now, we are so excited for you and your, your journey in Emeryville, not too far away. So, hopefully, you won't be gone too long and, but, but but honestly, thank you so much and, I've I've loved working with you. We've all loved working with you and and we wish you the best. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm not actually sure if Anne's here, but I'm going to pass it over to our city manager, to say a few words as well. Thank you, Mayor Ishi. I want to say a few words about our retiring Deputy City Manager, Anne Cardwell, as well as our moving to the Emeryville City Manager, Deputy City Manager, Bello. So to both of you, my profound thanks for your hard work, for your leadership, for your compassion, for your passion, and for all of the many things that you've done to make Berkeley a better place for everybody who lives here. I know you're gonna do the same in Emeryville. I know that we will stay connected as 2 cities working together. So, I thank you for all of that. And also thank Deputy City Manager Anne Cardwell for her years of service here to the City of Berkeley. She had the internal service department, so she wasn't quite as visible, but that was really the backbone of what made the city work also. So my sincere thanks to you also and Deputy City Major Cardwell. Thank you so much for those comments and actually, I'm going to send it to, we are going to send it back to you for City Manager comments, actually. Thank you, Mayor Richey. I don't really have any comments other than I do want to pull item number 9 from the consent calendar. Other than that, that's it. Thank you so much. And at this time, we're going to take public comment on non oh, sorry, my apologies. Our City Auditor also has some comments. Alright. Good evening and I wanted to congratulate, our newly elected mayor and, our newly elected city council members and our reelected city council members. And I also wanted to just, send best best wishes to deputy city manager Latanya Bello and, Anne Cardwell as well. Thank you for your service to our city, and to this council and to, our city manager, our, city attorney, and and other folks on the city staff. I look forward to working with you all to ensure Berkeley services are run efficiently, effectively, and equitably. Tonight, I just wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, some of the audit recommendations, updates that's on the agenda. A key part of our work together is ensuring that departments implement these recommendations outlined in our audits. And I just wanted to share some of the progress with you, our, you know, with the departments and to the public. I wanted to share that 4 of the departments have provided updates as information items on today's council agenda, including the first update on restaurant inspections, on the restaurant inspections audit that, the that was released in July. The public can provide comments during the consent calendar on all of these items. So I'm gonna just share a little bit about each item. Item number 22 is the, restaurant inspections audit where, the department has been understaffed and the program did not meet targets at the time of the, audit release. When this report was released, city council requested that the environmental health division provide an update to our recommendations in December given the serious public health risks identified in the report. To fulfill that request, the division shared an information item and to demonstrate that they've started or, partly implemented 7 out of the 8 recommendations proposed in the audit. Our report found that longstanding staff vacancies impacted program operations and left too many restaurants and other food facilities uninspected in 2023. According to the department's response, the division should have finished inspecting all high risk food facilities by November 2024. Their target is to now complete the inspections by the end of this calendar year for all low and medium risk facilities. We're pleased to share the environmental health division is also staffing up. The division has filled 1 inspector position and is in the process of selecting a supervisor to hire. In the short term, they've entered into a contract with California Association of Environmental Health Administrators for temporary food inspection support. And additionally, the division reported that they are planning to upgrade its current database to enable public access to food facility inspection results. Next, I wanted to share item 24. This is the report. Rocky Road, Berkeley Streets at risk and significantly underfunded. And Fleet Replacement Fund is Short 1,000,000. Public Works department has shared updates on 2 outstanding audits. 1 related to, street maintenance and the other regarding the Fleet Replacement Fund. For the streets audit, the department plans to engage a consultant to conduct an annual inventory of deferred street maintenance needs and estimated associated costs. The funds from measure FF, which just was just approved by voters, will further support the goals of the paving program. And for the fleet audit, public works progress since the last update includes launching a new fleet management system in spring of 2024 and the department's updating replacement costs in the new system to account for all associated expenses, such as personnel and customization, which was not included before. Public works also completed an assessment of the charging infrastructure, vehicle trans transitions, and costs needed to transition electric fleet by 2030. The 3rd item, item 23, is a audit titled Domestic Violence Response. Berkeley needs a comprehensive policy to support city employees. And in their update, HR shares that they will continue to make progress on recommendations. Since the last update, they have made additional revisions to the city's domestic violence policy, including revisions to the title, scope, and definitions. And this updated policy will soon be submitted to the City Attorney's Office for legal review. HR is also planning to incorporate staff training for compliance with the updated policy into a redesigned supervisor training curriculum. And finally, item 21 is, fire prevention inspections, insufficient resources strain code compliance....

Berkeley City Council Regular Meeting December 3, 2024

Tom Wong December 3, 2024 0

Transcript You are almost always right on your policies and positions, not quite a 100%, but almost. And when I've disagreed with you on 1 of your positions, at the same time, I've known that in holding that position, you have the best interest of your constituents in mind. Having said that, I always want your blessings for my items and I have a feeling even when you're off council would probably still behoove us to make sure that our referrals have your approval. I'm so thankful for all your service and for being a friend and mentor to me as I've gotten the hang of being on council. At the same time, I'm glad you'll be getting some much deserved rest and time with your family, though I know you're gonna still be active. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if you become 1 of the folks who comes and comments on nearly every item at every meeting. I think that would help us. But you deserve to enjoy your retirement, so instead I'll just have to ask myself, what would Susan do? From the bottom of my heart, thank you again for everything you've done and do and I wish you and your loved ones, your husband Mark, your grandchildren, your children, and your adorable grandchildren a happy council retirement. Thank you. That was so sweet, council member Humber. WWSD. What would Susan do? I guess, Susan and I will be, enjoying a leisurely dinner during the, council meetings. You know, we made it do some really rigorous times. We absolutely have. And so council member Windgrath, you, were like a living library of everything this council has done, all the rules, you know, the right questions to ask, and I enjoyed working with you. And despite our differences, which on on its surface appear to be many, difference in age, gender, race, geophysical positioning within the city. But but what united us through these years, these 8 years together, was the love of Berkeley, want us to work together. We came together many times, and you supported me. I supported you. We worked on Measure FF for fire. We worked on the fire plan in 2017. We worked on a myriad of issues. And every time you were there to to lend a helping hand and teach me, a plucky kid from the chief of South Berkeley, how to operate and be collaborative and initiate a vision, and we did it over and over again. And you were always steadfast, and you held your ground. And when it made sense, I was with you. And, I don't relish the, the fact that I have to take your position now as the most senior member on the council. Very alarming possibility, eventuality. And I will say again, just, council member Wingraff, it's been wonderful, wonderful experience. You're you're a lover of the arts. We share that, and I've learned so much from you and inspired by you and learned so much. And I'm gonna miss you, And please come around and comment on every item. Shut us down a couple of times. Okay? Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And, councilor Mohan. Well, councilor Mahan, what can I say? So going back with 13, 14 years, I think it was, when we first, started coming together, You recruited my wife onto the the the women's commission, and you led the charge to shut down these massage parlors and to take that group, which had been relegated to, you know, 1 of those traditional women's auxiliary type clubs, talking about lace patterns and doing an annual event, to being proactive and producing leaders and making big change and sticking up for women. And, that was incredible. And then I saw you get involved in the downtown plan and all these large scale projects with council member Ara Gein back in the day. And through these years, you and I became so close. And, again, another genius woman here taught me so much and loved working with you through the years. And on council, we came in together on that blue green tide, and, we we brought a new a new energy, a new direction, and I can tell you, working with you and observing your your the power of your intellect is unrivaled. Powerhouse with a a brain and thought structure so massive and so complex, it takes a lot of time to express it in words. A lot of time. Oh my god. Counselor Ron. And, you know, and you're you're you're you're you are of Berkeley. You're a yellow jacket. Cheerleader. You know, you get it. You get what Berkeley is. You get it. It's in your fiber of your DNA. You get it. You express it. You believe in, what makes us unique, what makes us strong, what made us famous throughout the world. You embody that, and you push for that stuff. You go for it. And it's been an honor to support you throughout these this near decade together. And, you know, I'll I'll say this. Yet now that you've, you know, amassed all of your powers and you've you've run a campaign, you've launched out now, you're gonna be, free in the world with these new powers and new energies and new thoughts. You're gonna rest for a while, but I know what's gonna happen. I'm gonna leave you with a poem from my late father, Dale Bartlett. He would say if he were here, life is a river and must run its course, from a trickle to a stream and back to its source. We'll see you again. Farewells are really hard for me, so I'm not gonna say farewell because I hope to continue working with you and seeking your guidance. Councilor Bahan, you when I was first elected, you really embraced me as a colleague. I cherished our walks we would go on. I loved working on a number of my items with you and having you review my items at committee and give your feedback and knowing that I can always come to you for insight. And even when, we didn't agree, you were always willing to hear me out and and make my items better. Like you, I also grew up here in Berkeley, but I've never met anyone in my life who loves Berkeley as much as you do. And I've also never seen someone fight as hard on behalf of the city and its people in the way that you do. I've been so grateful and in awe of your passion, your deep knowledge of history, your championing of affordable housing, everything you've done for the arts community. And as someone who will be the 3rd most senior member of council, I feel so fortunate to have had these last 4 years to learn from you, and so I hope to continue doing doing so. And I hope that you can continue keeping me updated and let me know how I can support you. And, I hope to see, even more of you. And, and thank you for everything you've done for for all of us, for the community, for the city. Thank you for not being, afraid to challenge people and to call people out and to hold us to our better selves and and, you know, doing that for the community as well. And thank you for thinking of not just the good of the city, but also how to make sure that everyone in the city has a beautiful life, that we have beautiful spaces to share, to preserve our culture, to create culture, to work on the world that we all wanna see, and that our community deserves. And I I'm I'm deeply indebted to you for that and for having had that as a as a guiding light, especially through the pandemic and as someone who really, you know, came out of nowhere, didn't know anything when I first got here. So thank you so much. And, Mary Windingroff, I have loved every single day of these last 4 years working with you. Like Ben was saying, you know, we represent 2 very different districts, 2 very different parts of town, but, you we were always able to mutually support 1 other and and our our constituents. And and thank you so much for your your, your commitment to West Berkeley and the waterfront and for the wealth of knowledge that you have and just being able to come to you with all kinds of questions. And and I remember 1 time, it was 1 of my first first, like, doctor referrals. It was, I think you're, you know, you're all gonna laugh at me here. But it was a referral to add some trash cans along from Hill Avenue and it went to, I think, agenda in the rules, perhaps, and you were like, why do we need an item for trash cans? But at the at the time, it felt like, oh, crushed. Like, oh my god. Like, my first little item. But, you know, like, but especially for for newer members of council, having someone who is willing to sort of point out when something is a little ridiculous and and naive, in a way that, you know, is is clear, but also encouraging. And it's very important to have have those moments so that we don't end up doing better referrals or for for individual trash cans. And and, you know, working with you and the public safety committee and getting to learn about the needs of of the Hills District with respect to, evacuation and fire safety and wildlife wildfire, mitigation, and, you know, some of the less glamorous things we have to deal with, you know, refuse issues, infrastructure. Those have been my favorite parts of of working for the city is tending to those those assets. And, and I thank you so much for being, like, my mentor and my friends, and I I I really hope that, we can continue calling on you and and Lunch. Lunch. Yeah. Lunch. Absolutely. Yeah. And don't be surprised when, you know, if if we end up naming a couple of parks and streets and facilities and gardens and the city itself after you. I want to first echo my colleagues beautiful comments about Council Member Hahn and acting mayor Weingraaf who served on this council with such passion over the past 8 to 16 years. And while I only shared half of a year of that time with you both, I feel like I have learned so much from the both of you. There have been countless moments I've shared with you where I have been so appreciative of your expertise, your knowledge of history, your passions, your questions, your curiosity, and your kindness. Sophie, I want to specifically recognize some of the incredible work that you have done with maintaining affordable housing and supporting tenants. It is really incredible and I'm so excited to be able to continue to work off of it, but I know that it is because of you that I get to work off of it in the first place. I am so thankful to have had the chance to serve alongside you, and I just wanna mention how many times in the past 6 months I have smiled to myself and thought, wow, that's a really good point. I would not have thought of that. And it has been just really really incredible to see, this to see your work and and how passionate you are about it. So thank you. Susan, your dedication and your compassion and your thoughtful leadership have made such an incredible mark on this community and I, again, feel so fortunate to have been able to work alongside you. Your attention to detail and your commitment to your constituents, all of your constituents, will be sorely missed. Although I know that your successor will will follow in the very large footsteps that you have left for him. It is so clear to me how you lead with kindness and humility and a deep commitment to the well-being of our residents and I so admire the integrity that you take, in every single decision that you make. And I think that it will inspire our city's leaders for generations to come. I wanna thank you both for your years of service and especially for welcoming me to this council, and for the moments that we shared. I feel so lucky to have been able to serve with 2 such strong women on this council. I feel inspired. I wish you both and your incredible staff all the very best in the future, and I am glad that your families will get to spend more time with you. And I hope that you don't hesitate to reach out and if it is okay, I also won't. Thank you. Okay, thank you so much. Okay, we'll go now to council members on Zoom. Ingrid? You know, I simply don't have the words to describe, the depth of my appreciation of the community's appreciation for both of you, Sophie and Susan, mayor Langraf, and council member Han. If I had the boards, we would be here all night. I'm not going to make you go through a long council meeting, as as your final 1. But, I did want to share a few different stories that I think capture the full depth and breadth of everything that you have brought to our community throughout, not just your Council tenure, but your lifetime. Susan, I don't even remember the issue, but I remember that we were at loggerheads about something. This was maybe a decade ago or more, but you invited me into your office. And when we talked through it, and we had just a heart to heart conversation, I'll never forget what you told me. Oh my gosh. I am I am sorry for whatever, in the I don't even remember what it was, but whatever it was I was going through, and you offered to make me chicken soup. Your memory is better than mine. I am not making this up. And I'm also not making the up that after I left your office, I was like, what the hell were we arguing about anyway? Like, what what was the actual disagreement? And then, just I I also remember then I I was on a I was zooming into a meeting when you, offered, and I wasn't sure if you were talking to your council colleagues only. I was not on the council at that time, but you offered to take anyone who wanted to, on a, tour of the hills. And so I remember texting you in the middle of that meeting, and I said, I'm not sure if this was meant for me, but I would be honored. I would love to learn more about the Berkeley Hills. And almost immediately, or once, you went on recess, you, texted me back and said, let's go. So we we jumped into your leaf, and we went all around, the r 1 h district in the hills, and I learned so much from that. No, tomes of zoning, documents or materials, could ever, describe the half of everything that, I learned from you in that hour long tour. Susan, thank you for always inspiring, and challenging us to come up with a fully baked product. And if it's not fully baked, then after it gets a grilling from you, you better believe it's going to be a much better work product. Susan, I I learned from you. It's nice to get to 5 votes. That's a that's a quick win. That may be the easy win. But what would really go a long way towards really being desorbing of serving our entire community is something that gets a unanimous vote. And thank you for showing me through your leadership and through modeling that time and time again, what that level of collaboration and partnership and problem solving with everyone, how that feels at the end of it. And it feels fantastic because at the end of it, we're all working together. So thank you. Thank you, Susan. Sophie. Thank you, Igor. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sophie, some things are never going to change. You knew me, I think we first met when I was 23 and I was a knucklehead and you you challenged me to do better and then you reminded me that the community deserves nothing less. And then 17 years later I remember mourning a really just mourning a very unfortunate, national election loss. And then you were like, Igor, I need you to come to my house. We have an item. Actually, you did the fall item. It was a 21 page memo, I believe, and it was, concerning an issue in my district. Thank you for taking that on. And then once I got there, like, have you read the memo yet? And I was like, no. I'm not done warning the national election results. You are going to read the memo, sir. I'm going to sit here, and you're going to read this memo, and, you are going to make sure every I is dotted and every t is crossed. There were no i's that needed to be dotted, you took care of that. I I will met, 2 days after I wasn't sure, but maybe I may have gotten, elected. Like, the results were nowhere near certified that it was still being counted. You were, like, 8 AM. I've we're meeting. I've convened this meeting of, folks in your district in the arts community. We are going to work to try to save the arts district. That wasn't even your district, but you knew what, it means to be, for all of Berkeley, and thank you for that. I, I have so many stories. I will cap it off here because I really don't want us to I I don't want to I will spare you having to be here all night, But, I am so blessed to have such good friends in both of you. This goes beyond, whatever the position was. You, we have gotten to know each other's families. You, Ben reminded me, yes, Sophie. It's all your fault....

City of Fremont Council Meeting | October 17, 2023

Tom Wong October 17, 2023 0

Transcript Good evening. Welcome to the October 17 city council meeting. I'd like to call the meeting to order, and I'd like to invite Councilmember Yang Xiao to lead us in the Pledge. I pledge an allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, the visible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Roll call, please. Thank you. Council Member Shao. I'm sorry I missed. Council member saw one. I apologize. Present. I was ready. Council Member Shao is here. Council Member Casson. Here. Council Member Campbell. Here. Council Member Kang. Here. Vice Mayor Cox. Here. Mayor May. Here. Thank you so much. And at this time, I'd like to share the announcements that there's vacancies on our Boards and Commissions. And the City Clerk's Office accepts applications for the boards and commissions throughout the year. And if you're interested in learning more about those opportunities, please see our Boards, Commissions and Committees web page on our city's website. Or if you have questions, feel free to dial call the City Clerk's Office at 510-284-4060. Emails submitted to the City Clerk Office are compiled and distributed to the City Council and considered part of our City's public records. And if there's any other questions, if you're coming here today to join us, I would like to announce this meeting will go up to 11:30 p.m.. And we'll allow for 30 minutes of general public comment. And if there are additional speakers for oral communications after the initial 30 minutes, we'll take those at the end of the evening if time remains. And I would like to now turn this meeting over to our City Manager, Karina Shackleford, to make any announcements and introduce her staff at this time. Thank you, Mayor May. With us this evening, there is our city attorney, Rafael Alvarado. Across from me is our city clerk. Susan Gothier, and our management analyst, Alberto Quintanilla. And we also have our Sergeant at. Arms, who's always here with us, sergeant Kenneth Quok. Thank you. No announcements this evening. Thank you. And at this time, I'd also like to then move the Consent Calendar. And the consent calendar are items that will be passed with one council vote, and the staff recommendation will stand. Does any member of the Council wish to remove any item from the Consent calendar? Any speaker cards for any items? Thank you. Is there a motion from the Council to prove the items? Oh, thank you. Sorry. Okay. Thank you. So I see. Vice Mayor Teresa Cox and also Councilmember Saw one. Is that a motion in a second? Yes. I would like to move that we accept the entire consent calendar and we. Have a motion and by second by Council Member Saw One. Please vote. Thank you. And the consent calendar passes unanimously with the staff recommendation standing. And at this time, I'd like to share this evening, we have two ceremonial items. There is a proclamation for hispanic Heritage Month, which just ended a few days ago, but we would love to still celebrate it's traditionally September 15 through October 15. And so I would love to welcome Patricia to join me. Patty. Sorry. Montenejano. So bienvenido. And I look forward to seeing you down there's. It longer arms. Thank you so much for coming. So again, bienvenidio. I would like to share this for Hispanic Heritage Month. Whereas Hispanic Heritage Month started as Hispanic Heritage Week under former President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, and was expanded by former President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to cover a 30 day period starting on September 15 and ending on October 15. And whereas Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens and residents whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and the Central and South America. And whereas the diverse heritage of the Hispanic community has had a significant role in the economy, culture, education, all fields and identity of the United States, and made contributions to the City of Fremont's success. And whereas the City of Fremont recognizes the many contributions and accomplishments of the Hispanic community, as well as their deep commitment to family and community, enduring work ethic, and the perseverance to succeed and contribute to society. And Whereas, the City of Fremont encourages the recognition of the rich cultural heritage and ethnic diversity within greater Tri Cities area as part of the City of Fremont's commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and cultural awareness programs, and Whereas, the Fremont City Council encourages all to promote and join in the appropriate celebration and observances throughout the City of Fremont. Now, therefore, the City Council of the City of Fremont hereby declares September 15 through October 15 as Hispanic Heritage Month in appreciation of the achievements and contributions made by members of the Hispanic community to the City of Fremont. So, congratulations. And thank you, Patty, for coming to accept. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just push I just want to say thank you for everyone for having this such a great moment for me. It's my last one. It's my last one in person as I'm terming out as a Human Relations Commissioner. But I'm so glad to have been part of wonderful eight years of being part of such a great community. I may be off the commission, but I tend to dabble and get myself into lots of trouble here and there. So I'm not completely gone. But thank you very much for tonight. This means a great deal to me and my family and everybody else. Thank you so much. Madam mayor, I would like to make a point of privilege that our commissioner, Patty Matago, was honored by assemblymember Alex Lee, as well as Alameda county supervisor Alyssa Marquez at the recent Hispanic heritage month celebration. And she was our honoree for this last month. So I'd just like to recognize that before our City Council that Fremont was in the House. Which is glaciers and bienvenido. We were so much appreciative of the fact that yourself and so many others have represented our community and continue to be able to celebrate this. And I hope that people will join us. In the past, we have had in our city, besides this honoree, we also have had three Spanish immersion programs, and we're so blessed to have that resource here in our city, as well as be able to celebrate DS de le Muertes and other holidays. And so we look forward to continuing this as well. As I know I would say soccer, but my son would correct me and tell me it's football. Football. And so I know that with the World Cup and other things coming, there are so many opportunities, and of course, we look forward to your continued participation and that we welcome that in our community. So thank you. Muches gracias. Also this evening, I'd like to be able to honor Filipino American History Month. And so I'd like to invite our former trustee, current trustee for New Haven. Sure, I'm going to read this Magadang. So, whereas California is proud to be home to the largest Filipino American population in the nation, that contributes greatly to shaping, advancing, and enriching our community, and nearly 100,000 Filipinos live in Alameda County, representing 6% of its total population. And whereas Filipino Americans are the third largest Asian American group in the United States and the second largest Asian American group in the state of California, and whereas the Filipino American National Historical Society recognizes the year 1763 as the date of the first permanent Filipino settlement in USA, in St. Malto, Louisiana. Malo. Yeah. Okay. Sorry my eyes are not as great as it could be. Whereas in November of 2009, the United States Congress passed its resolution to officially recognize October as Filipino American History Month. And whereas Filipino men and women have made valuable contributions to all areas of life throughout the California state and the United States, including government, business, education, arts and sciences, medicine and healthcare, law enforcement, and the military. And whereas Filipino Americans have a long history of engaging in social justice movements across the nation, including, but not limited to, the United Farm Workers Movement and the Hawaii Sugar Plantation. And whereas the Filipino American communities have shared their rich culture and traditions with neighbors and friends, while setting examples as model citizens and public servants. Now, therefore, the City Council of the City of Fremont hereby proclaims October of 2023 as Filipino American History Month at the City of Fremont encourages all the members of the community to continually engage in efforts to learn, respect, and engage the history of the Filipino American community. And thank you for holding that wonderful event, and perhaps you can share a little bit about that. And I think this is an annual event that you've been doing, and so we look forward to sasalamapole. Thank you. Take a real quick picture. Okay. Thank you. See what thank you very much on behalf of the Filipino National Historical Society in the East Bay, which is Alameda and Contacasta counties. And I would like to thank you for this proclamation. But I also would like to introduce who's with me. This is Victoria Santos. He is one of the national Board trustees for the Northern California area. We have over 40 chapters, 43 chapters all around United States and Edith and Dennis back there. So we are here as member of funds to accept proclamation. And what Mayor May Lily May was sharing was that on October 7, we had a Filipino Historical History Month celebration at Italyong Veracruz Middle School. It was a very successful day. We had the topics of standing on your shoulders, representation matters and legacy. And we had a very good turnout of people. We have almost 500 people attendees at that event. So we are very grateful to the community for supporting us. So again, thank you. I will not take more time. Thank you very much for this proclamation and we will share it. You will sure will see you your faces on Facebook tonight. Thank you so much. I also wanted to share that we have many different great authors locally too, and resources. And so around the corner from here is Banter Bookstore and they have one of the books from one of the authors who is local here to celebrate Filipino history. So we're so fortunate to be able to encourage the access to these wonderful resources and programs. Next on our calendar this evening is our regularly scheduled agenda item. Oh, actually, it's oral communications. And at this time are there any speaker cards for oral? Currently have four. Okay, thank you. If we could announce that this is for any persons to speak on matters which are not scheduled this evening on the agenda may do so under Oral Communications section of the public Communications. And the communications received again via email are placed on file and considered part of public record. And so if there's any agenda item that's not scheduled this evening, the council cannot take action and nor respond to the items that are brought up under Oral Communications. But please note that we will take note of these. And however, the item could be agendized for a future meeting. If the council makes a referral to staff for a report back when speaking on behalf of an organization, please kindly state the name of the organization you are representing. And a bell will ring when 30 seconds are remaining for you to sum up your comments. And the bell will ring again when your time has ended. And so if we could call our next speaker and we'll go with two, three we'll go with many minutes, three minutes. It's only four speakers. Okay, the first speaker is Benjamin Yee, followed by Kelly Rose. Welcome. Hi. I think everybody knows who I am. Thank you. Mayor May and city Council and city staff. I know they're all smiling right now. I'm extremely excited about what I want to share with all of you and announce it's, especially because we just had the proclamation for Filipino American History Month. So, the mayor and I have been working for the last couple weeks with Iglesia Nicristo, one of the largest Philippine church organizations in the United States, and I just got off the phone with them, as well as the management team with Pape Machinery. They both have worked together and agreed that on the 29th of this month, from four to 07:00 P.m., they'll be giving away food to 100 needy families. So I just wanted to let you all know that they will be doing that on the 29th from four to 07:00 P.m.. So the name of the event, they just sent it to me, so bear with me. It's called the Felix E. Manolo foundation. Care for humanity in honor of the birthday of a glacier. Nicristo executive Minister brother Eduardo V. Manolo. So, just wanted to let you know, so I won't take up all three minutes. I think I'm done. Thank you. Kelly Rose. Welcome, Kelly. Followed by John Hines. Good evening. Thanks for having me. I'm here tonight as a private citizen concerned about a homeless encampment that is on the rise on Chapel Way in Fremont at Irvington Avenue....

City of Fremont Council Meeting | September 19, 2023

Tom Wong September 19, 2023 0

Transcript Meeting, and I'd like to ask Councilmember Yang Xiao to lead us in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May I have a roll call, please? Council member Sullivan. Present. Council Member Shao? Present. Council Member Cassin? Here. Council Member Campbell. Council Member Kang? Here. Vice Mayor Cox? Here. Mayor May? Here. And at this time, I'd like to share that there are vacancies on our Boards and commissions, and our City Clerk's Office accepts applications throughout the year. And if you're interested in looking at the Boards and commissions, please look it on our web page at fremont dot gov. Or please contact the city clerk's office at 510-264-4060. Members of the public participating in this night's evening, if you're doing it so electronically with Zoom, please press the Raise Hand icon. Or if you're calling in by, dialing star Nine. And I will make announcement before each section of the agenda, and if not noted on the Zoom screen, please kindly state your name. And if you're representing an organization, please state the name of the organization that you represent. Emails submitted to City Clerk's Office are compiled and distributed to the Council and staff and published in the City's Agenda Center on Fremont Gov, and will be placed on file and considered part of the public record. I would like to announce that the meeting will go up to 11:30 p.m. This evening, if needed, and we will allow for 30 minutes of general public comment, and if there are additional speakers for oral communications after the initial 30 minutes, we will take the additional speakers at the end of the meeting. If time remains, I will now turn the meeting over to our City Manager, Karina Shackleford, to make any announcements and to introduce herself and her staff at this time. Welcome. All right. Thank you. Mayor May, good evening to you and to members of the Council. Thank you for the opportunity to introduce my colleagues. Raphael Alvarado, our city attorney. Across from me is Susan Gothier, our City clerk. And next to her is Alberto Quintanilla, our former assistant city clerk, now management analyst, but still helping us with the clerking duties. Thank you, Alberto. There is an item that I'd like to share this evening and just want to make the public aware that the city's Homeless Response Plan vendor has completed an initial assessment and data analysis, and staff are working with the consultants to schedule next steps, which would include stakeholder interviews and focus groups, which will occur in the fall and winter. And also the isherwood and Washington underpass, which is future Bart parking. They're scheduled for enhanced cleaning activities at the end of September, early October, so be on the lookout for that. Thank you. Thank you. And at this time, I'd like to have the consent calendar be reviewed the consent calendar item are agenda items that will be passed with one council vote and the staff recommendation will stand. Members of the public wishing to comment on an item on the consent calendar may do so by submitting a card if you're in the audience or if you're on zoom by pressing the Raise hand icon, or if you're dialing in via phone by pressing soar, nine does the City Clerk I know, I see we won. Public speaker on the consent calendar items two J. Two J. Okay. Are there any members of the Council which wish to address some item on the consent calendar? Council member saw one? Yes. I'll be recusing on item 2D, which is a centerville, railroad corridor, safety improvements that is adjacent to my office. Okay, thank you so much. 2d, which is the centerville, and two J, which is the ACTC project funding agreements. Okay. May I get a motion, please? Vice Mayor Cox? Yes. I would like to move that we accept the I'm sorry, your mic is off. I would like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda, except for two J, and then noted that our Council member someone, is disqualified for himself on 2D. Yes. Okay, may I have a second? Seconded. Okay. Seconded by Council Member Kang. Please vote. Can everybody please vote? I think it cleared again, so that's why cassin council Member thank you. Please note, the consent calendar passes unanimously with the exception of item two J, which will be addressed separately. And 2D for the recusal of council Member saw one. Thank you so much. And at this time, I would like to proceed to the ceremonial item. And this evening, we have a proclamation for American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month. Thank you. So I've joined. Thank. I believe accepting the proclamation this evening will be musa tariq, who is the policy coordinator with the council on american islamic relationship for san francisco bay area office, accompanied by nasir iran from the saleem food pantry and salam food pantry and also salma ume from the muslim support network. So if you'd like to join me up here, I'd love to share this. Assalamu alaikum. And so this is a proclamation on behalf of American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month. It's usually in August, but please note that our council is usually in recess in August. Whereas enriched by unparalleled diversity of its residents, the City of Fremont takes great pride in supporting individual religious freedom and is strengthened by many varied religious, political, culture and contributions of its diverse population, including those that practice Islam. And Whereas, over 90,000 Muslims live in Alameda County and made significant contributions to the well being of the City of Fremont, the State of California, and the United States. And Whereas, Fremont has a thriving Muslim community with full time Islamic schools, organizations and mosques that have been providing religious and community service for decades and have answered the call for help during the COVID-19 pandemic. And Whereas, the Islamic Society of East Bay has established their COVID-19 care program that provides financial aid, groceries, supplies and serves dinners at the Abode homeless shelter and delivers food to all vulnerable community members in partnership with Support Life Foundation for COVID-19 vaccine clinics that provided 6200 vaccines. And Whereas, the Islamic Center of Fremont and its volunteers have served hundred meals a day and continued to its monthly grocery bag delivery program for underprivileged of the Tri Valley area and in partnership with the Salam Food Pantry to serve the economically disadvantaged community. And Whereas. Founded in 2016, the Fremont based American Muslim Community Foundation is an innovative and award winning national community foundation that is committed to its social needs, racial justice, and health equity initiatives by distributing more than 8 million to over 400 nonprofits, then creating donor advised funds, giving circles, distributing grants, and its building endowments. Now, Therefore, the City Council of the City of Fremont hereby honors and recognizes the month of September 2023 as American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month in the City of Fremont and acknowledge the rich history and contributions of the Muslim community. So I just wanted to say welcome. I know that over the years I've had the opportunity to welcome many of your organizations. And I know our council joins me in sharing our warmest appreciations for the outreach that you've provided, whether it's for our small businesses, for the vaccines, for the health and wellness and public safety within our communities, and certainly in these times that have been trying. I think that we are very pleased and honored to be able to partner on awareness of hate and also to be able to spread more hope and love with one another. So I'd love to present this to you're. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and assalamu alaikum, my dear brothers and sisters, I am deeply honored to stand before you today as we accept this proclamation from our esteemed Mayor May recognizing American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month. This proclamation not only celebrates the rich cultural tapestry of our diverse community, but also highlights the importance of unity and understanding among our fellow citizens. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Mayor May and the City Council for their unwavering support and for acknowledging the contributions of American Muslims in our great city. I also want to take this moment to express my gratitude to all the dedicated individuals who made our organization Muslim Support Network, possible. We are committed to serving the elderly Muslim population in our city, and this proclamation is a testament to impact of our work. Every fourth Monday of the month, we invite our elders to the Age Well Center and set up some activities to help them heal from their physical and mental health issues, relax, and connect with other members of our society. We have also helped the elders in our community with difficulties overcoming the language barrier. I would like to especially thank the Fremont City Human Services Department for their continued support for past 18 years. May this American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month be a time of reflection, unity and appreciation for the diversity that makes our city great. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, city Council members and assalamualaikum. This is California's 8th year designated as the Muslim American Appreciation and Awareness Month. We truly appreciate the City of Fremont honoring this month on behalf of Slam Food Pantry, which is a local, nonprofit, volunteer based and community funded food pantry established in 2016, serving families and individuals facing food insecurity in Fremont, Hayward and Union City. Over the past six years, we've created a network with other nonprofit organizations, restaurants and local businesses to support our cause. I'm thankful for our energetic volunteers some of them are here, who are predominantly high school volunteers and our adult volunteers supporting us through the past years. Since the pantry opened in 2016 of April, we've not missed one single distribution day, even during the pandemic. As American Muslims and integral fabric of the local community, we look after our neighbors who are veterans, disabled, homebound, and unable to get to groceries, and neighbors who are facing challenges at the end of the month to get groceries on the tables. We carry our Islamic values and human values and love serving them throughout the month. We are inculcating the same values in our children to be responsible and caring. Slum Food Pantry and its volunteers are humbled to receive the recognition during the American Muslim Appreciation Awareness Month. This pro commission signifies the daily role American Muslims play in their communities where they live and raise their children as caring citizens. We truly appreciate the recognition. Thank you all. Everybody. I wasn't anticipating making a public comment today, but that's okay. I'm Musa Tariq, the policy coordinator at the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Care, the Council on American Islamic Relations. And I just wanted to say thank you to everybody, particularly in the Muslim community, for showing up today for this proclamation. Out of all the City Council meetings I've been to for the Muslim Appreciation Awareness Proclamations, this has one of the largest turnouts, and that's not very surprising considering the robust Muslim community in Fremont. And we have members of our staff that also are residents of Fremont, including our Executive Director, Zara Bilu. So I just wanted to say thank you for all the people showing up today and mobilizing for your community and for all your great efforts. Thank you so much. To who are you talking to? Tells Theory to go home. Thank you to all who have joined us this evening. At this time, I'd like to go on to public actually public communications, and that's for items that are not agendized this evening. So if you are interested in addressing an item that's not agendized this evening, if you're in the audience, please submit a speaker card. Or if you're a member of the public on Zoom, please do so by raising the raise hand icon, or if dialing in by pressing Star nine. And again, if not noted on Zoom screen, please state your name when speaking on behalf of an organization and state the name of the organization you are representing. Do we have speakers? We have three cards so far. Joe Rose, followed by Kelly abrupt. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor May and council members. My name is Joe Rose, and I'm executive director for Nami Alameda County South. That's the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and we're having our annual walk here in Fremont. Although we serve all of Alameda County, we're really grateful for the city of Fremont to be a hub for our walk at Lake Elizabeth. We're going to be doing that on Saturday, October 7. I believe that there was a flyer that was sent out, and you should be having that. And our supervisor, Halbert, is going to be a keynote speaker there. Supervisor Marquez is going to try to be there. She's a busy lady, but she's going to try to be there and speak as well. And we have a lot of things going on. This is Mental Health Suicide Awareness Month, and although we're having our walk in October, what we're going to do is we're going to have a butterfly release in memory of those who have passed way too soon. There's going to be in three separate parts. One is for people that are at the walk to want to release a butterfly in memory of someone. Then for those people that are not able to be there, they're going to be a butterfly released by somebody that's there for them. And then finally, we're going to release a dozen butterflies in memory of those who we can't mention in name, because we don't know them, but they still deserve recognition. So we're going to be doing that. We're going to have in addition to that, we're going to have face painting and a lot of things to celebrate life. And so I hope that you can join us on October the 7th. And again, we want to thank the city of Fremont for hosting us. Fremont PD will have a table there. Fremont Fires has two companies. They're not going to be there at the same time, but they will be there to support us. And we'll have a number of other organizations. So part of this, most of the fundraising is online, but what we look at the walk for is to do outreach to the community, because a lot of people walk there. So we're looking at really, basically doing an outreach to the community to let people know what services are available and how they can get a hold of those services. So thank you very much for allowing us to host our event here in Fremont. No, thank you so much for sharing. The next speaker is Kelly Abrew, followed by Saleem maston. Thank you. The representation of our culture in the film, in cinema, is actually very important. And some of you may know something that ought to be titled the Real Housewives of Ruby Hill. Ruby Hill is in Pleasanton, and it's a reality TV kind of a show, which does exactly the kind of things, stunts, that you would expect on a reality TV show. But Fremont has a real movie, a serious film called Fremont is the title of the film. And it seems that the film has a very accurate analysis, or insightful, penetrating insight into the political and social culture of Fremont. And a lot of the message there that the director is trying to put out is very timely and very apt and very correctly aimed. His analysis of our culture, very accurate right here in centerville the whole city and in the city Human Resource Human Services Department, because a lot of the city policies are based on this idea of female disempowerment. Female, you know? Yeah, disempowerment. And that's entirely overblown. In fact, the film director told KQED two weeks ago, when he spoke to them about the movie, for nearly an hour on Forum, he said, something that has annoyed me a lot has been the representation of Afghan women in the media and the cinema, in that they seem to solely focus on the oppression that they were under. And that is not untrue, because, of course, it's dire the situation for them. But having grown up around Afghan women in Iran and also abroad, most Afghan women I met were very independent. They had a sense of agency, they had desires, they had wishes, and we seldom heard or saw anything about that. So when he wrote the movie, actually, he had a woman write the movie. But when he filmed the movie, and when he came up with a concept for this movie, it's all about trying to portray Afghan women more accurately. And the result of this kind of misperception is perhaps an imbalance in the treatment of the Afghan community by your Human Services Department. The next speaker is Salim Maston. Good evening, Mayor. And the City Council members and the staff. I'm sorry I was late for the presentation, but I got to say a few words, too, for the Muslim Appreciation Month. What is it to be a Muslim in Fremont, California? We came here about 50, 45 years ago, and we settled here and started becoming a family, which is now over 500 people. In these 45 years of Fremont, we have made sure that we as a community, not only think about just Muslims, but everybody. In all, we have encompassed everyone along with us....

City of Fremont Council Meeting | September 12, 2023

Tom Wong September 12, 2023 0

Transcript Meeting to order, and I'd like to ask Councilmember Campbell to please lead us in the pledge to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one. Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and. Justice law may I ask for a roll call, please? Council member. Soar Present. Council Member Shao? Present. Council Member Cassin? Council Member Campbell? Present. Council Member Kang? Present. Vice Mayor Cox? Present. Mayor May? Here. So, at this time, I'd like to share. There are vacancies on our Boards and Commissions, and the City Clerk's Office accepts applications throughout the year. If you're interested in learning about those, please go to our website at the Committee's Commission's webpage at fremont dot gov. Or feel free to contact our City Clerk's Office at 510-284-4060. Members of the public wishing to participate this evening via electronic meeting may do so and speak under Public Comment by clicking on the Raise Hand icon, or if dialing in by dialing Star Nine. I will make an announcement before each section of the agenda, and if not noted on the zoom screen, please kindly state your name. Or if you're representing an organization, please state the organization that you're representing. So, in addition, please note that emails submitted to City Clerk's Office are compiled and distributed to the City Council and staff and published in the City's Agenda Center on Fremont Gov, and are placed on file and considered part of the public record. I'd like to announce that this meeting will go up until 1130 this evening, if needed, and we'll allow for 30 minutes of general public comment, and if there are additional speakers for oral communications after the initial 30 minutes, we will take those additional speakers at the end of the meeting. If time remains, I will now turn the meeting over to our City Manager, Karina Shackleford, to introduce her staff at this time and to make any announcements. All right. Thank you, Mayor May. Joining me this evening is city attorney Raphael Alvarado, our city clerk, Susan Gothier, and our management analyst, Alberto Quintanilla. As far as announcements are concerned, I'd just like to soar that on August 11, the City announced a notice of funding availability for the creation of affordable housing in Fremont. There is approximately $30 million in funding available for new construction of affordable rental developments or sustainable rehabilitation of existing market rate developments for the purpose of creating new affordable rental housing for extremely low, very low or low income households. To learn more, visit the City's website. And the deadline to submit proposals is October 31. That's it for announcements. Thank you very much. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to note for the Clerk, please, that our Council Member Cassin has arrived, and then also that the Consent Calendar is next on our agenda. And the Consent calendar are items that will be passed with one council vote and staff recommendation will stand. Are members of the Public wishing to speak on the consent calendar may do so by pressing the Raise Hand icon or if dialing in by dialing Star Nine. Does the City Clerk's Office have any speakers on any of the items on the consent calendar in person? We have one card for two h, and we have somebody who's raised their hand on Zoom. So let's check that one. Suresh. Which item do you want to speak on? I could not get the agenda. No, I was to only speak during the open session. I was unable to see the agenda on the website, but I'll maybe figure that out later. What's going on for oral communications? We'll note that. Yeah. Okay. And then, Council Member Cox, did you want to pull in an item or did you want to okay, so I. Would like to move that we move everything on the consent agenda except for two h. Second. Okay. Moved by Council Member Cox, seconded by Council Member Kang. Please vote, and the consent calendar carries unanimously. Thank you. And then this evening, I'm also next will be our ceremonial items. And the person is not here yet. Okay. Why don't we should we skip that until it's available? They are available. We'll continue with next are public communications, oral communications, and I believe we have at least one speaker for that. And those are for the items that are not listed on the agenda this evening. And any person desiring to speak on. Those matters may do so under oral. Communications of the Public Communications Section. And communications received again via email will be placed on file, considered part of the public record. Members of the public wishing to do so at this time may do so by clicking on Raise Hand icon if you're using Zoom as an app, or by dialing in by dialing Star Nine. And again, if not noted on the Zoom screen, please kindly state your name. And when speaking on behalf of an organization, state the name of the organization you are representing. Thank you so much. Do we have speakers for we're going. To call on Kelly Abrew first for oral communications. Okay. Welcome, Kelly. In Castor Valley. They have something called the Hayward area Recreation District, and they do parks. And they also have something that's kind of like a city council. So yesterday they had a State of the Parks presentation and update by the Recreation and Park District. And the City of Fremont has something similar. It has the EBRPD City Liaison Committee that is supposed to meet three times a year. Three times a year. Now, it met twice in 2016 and 2017 and 2018 and 2021. But in 2019, it met just once, just once in 2020, just once in 2022, and it met on April 27 of 2023. That's once. So it sounds a couple of years of once and a couple of years of twice that averages out to what? One and a half supposed to be three. And if you ask, well, what are the issues? Well, maybe you should turn on look at the Sacramento Bee. They covered the story. The big news, the destruction of the pole at Mission Peak. How about Cron? Four Bay Area news. How about San Francisco Chronicle? How about the San Jose Mercury? I could give you a whole list of articles about what's going on in the park over there. You would think that the politicians would be interested. Even the city politicians seem to have an interest in Mission Peak when it's time to restrict parking, when it's time to cut park hours, when it's time to limit how many restrooms we build and build. Thank you. The next speaker is suresh. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Ten days ago, the Mission Peaker pole at the summit of Mission Peak was sliced in half and tossed 200ft down the side of the mountain. The City council has been eerily silent on this act of vandalism, but the council has had many, many long and lively debates regarding access to Mission Peak. Back in November 2021, a council member made the following statement about the pole imagine if we had that right on Mission Boulevard. You don't have to climb the peak. Well, it seems that phase one of Operation Mission Peaker has been successfully executed. We are now waiting to find out when and where the pole will be reinstalled on Mission Boulevard so that, as the council members suggested, in 2021, you don't have to climb the peak. You could just take the photo right there and then invite them for the experience. Thank you. There's no additional speakers. Thank you very much. I know this is not agenda's item, but I know that our city staff has been working in concert with the East Bay Regional Parks who owns Mission Peak, and so I just wanted to leave it at that. And they will be sharing an update as they work in concert. Certainly all of us as community members are sad whenever there is vandalism of any facilities in our city, be it park or other city facilities. And this is certainly one that's well loved and well recognized in our community. And so thank you for all the care from the community members who have spent time recreating in our city, and thank you for the continued interest in working in partnership with East Bay Regional Parks. At this time. I will also then turn it back to see if there's the recipient, I think has arrived for this evening's ceremonial. That's what I was going to say. Thank you and I'll be coming down, but I just wanted to say that this evening we're sharing a proclamation for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which is the month of September 2023. Thank you. I'll be right download you. Thank you so much. And this is for Childhood Cancer Awareness. Month in September 2023. Whereas according to the American Childhood Cancer Organization, childhood Cancer is the leading cause of disease for children in the United States. Whereas, according to the American Childhood Cancer Organization, approximately one of every six children is not expected to live past five years of age. And whereas the American Cancer Society estimates that approximately 9910 children United States under 15 years of age will be diagnosed. With cancer in 2023. And whereas the potential years of life lost to childhood cancer and the potential years of life saved by treatment extend all exceed all other cancers with exception of breast cancer. And whereas most children cannot be treated at a local hospital, and families must face the disruption of relocating to receive treatment at a regional cancer center. And whereas the result of major treatment advances in recent decades, more than 85% of children with cancer now survive five years or more. And whereas the survival rate of children with cancer has significantly increased since the mid 1970s when the five year survival rate was approximately 58% and whereas survival rates vary depending on the type of cancer and other factors and whereas due to children's bodies still growing and cancer treatments largely geared toward use on adults, children are more likely to experience long term side effects from treatments. Now, therefore, the City Council of the City of Fremont hereby proclaims September 2023 as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and encourages individual businesses and organizations throughout the City to participate in activities and events that promote awareness of childhood cancer and support families affected by this devastating disease. Not just during September, but throughout the year, the City of Fremont celebrates the progress of all related organizations in aiding children battling childhood cancer while simultaneously renewing its commitment to that cause. And so, I have here tonight, Ms. Metta, if you would come and share some words. And then also I wanted to let you know I think gold is the color that represents the children childhood cancer. So that's why I'm wearing it this evening. But thank you so much. Please come and share. Thank you again. Hi, everyone. I'm Manisha. I am Ronald's mom. He passed away five years back in 2018 when he was 14 years old. He was in 7th grade when he was diagnosed with DIPG. It's a pediatric brain tumor and it's terminal. It's very aggressive. There is no cure. There is 0% survival. There is no neil Armstrong's daughter had this in 1960s when she was two years old. And till then, from there till now, there has been no research done, no progress done in this disease and for any other these kind of brainstem tumors. And the reason being because there is no awareness, because when this happened to our child, we were not aware of this at all. And we had to even go out of the country to get treatments in Mexico and all experimental treatments. And the reason awareness is very important is because only if there's awareness, there would be some research, and that could probably lead to some cure. And my son donated his tumor to Stanford Hospital for research and after he passed away. We have now formed a nonprofit organization and we are trying to help in fund research and do some even advocacy. Right, because we just had a bill passed in the Senate for having declaring September as Childhood Cancer month, because California is one of the 20 states in US. Which is still not declared September as childhood cancer month. So it's in the House right now, and then it'll go to the governor. But the reason this is very important is because only if people are aware that children are dying of cancer, and kids also get cancer, then only there will be some federal funding, because right now, literally only less than 4% of federal funding goes to childhood cancer. So all of the 2020 5000 kids are just allowed to die and then there's nothing done for them. So there's only like families whose kids have passed away. They have foundations, they try to do something because obviously we're not going to get our kids back, but we don't want other families to go through what has happened. Awareness and doing something and caring for this cause is very important. And there are so many things one can do. Like you can always talk to people, like right now, like breast cancer, everybody's aware, the pink ribbon everybody knows. But September, nobody even knows the gold ribbon much. But if people talk about it more during your families with your friends and all, if you just kind of pass that message on, and if more people are aware, that could help, or at least help some foundations who are trying to do some work. If you can donate or try to talk to your officials, your representatives, that more needs to be done. Because once you have it, and once you go through it, doing something at that point is very late. And the time is like to care now and to feel concerned about it now, because anything can happen to anybody at any time, to any of your loved ones. Because if we think that it's not going to happen to us, we never thought we would be a cancer family, but it could happen to anybody. So yeah, I just feel like if you feel it in our hearts that we need to do something for the child. Because when a child's life is lost, more than 70 years of lives are lost. So we're not saying don't do anything for adult cancer, but less than 3% is like very little. And pharmaceutical companies don't really do much because the numbers are not there. So the kids are, then somebody needs to stand up and be there for them and fight for them. So thanks for City of Fremont, for declaring September as proclaiming it for this year, for September is Childhood Cancer Month. So thanks. And we hope to take this further. We're going to DC next month or next week for the Cure Fest. And our foundation has been selected, has been invited to the White House also for the Moonshot program. So we're going to go and talk about this more there too, and try and push the needle further as much as we can for all our children's sake. So thank you. Thank you everyone for listening....