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San Leandro City Council Meeting April 21, 2025
ll sick of me already, but, yeah, we are not above the law. For years, the city has known that our at large voting violates the California Voting Rights Act. Rather than address it with the urgency that we required, the city sat sat on their hands. This is about representation and accountability. As I've said in previous interviews and chats with some of you on the city council, we can literally be sued for millions of dollars for committing this level of disenfranchisement. My goal is to elicit this change without costing us millions of taxpayer dollars. You all know that this is a million dollar gamble. And as as stewards of our taxpayers money, I find it upsetting that knowing the stakes, the city chose to wait until a lawsuit was filed rather than what was doing what was right. You know, what was smart? I disagree with some of this council's sentiment that this effort is undemocratic. The law clearly states that this method of at large voting is what's undemocratic, not the other way around. Although many have elected officials and hundreds of residents that I have talked to throughout the city, there have been less than a handful, that would prefer the current at large system, mostly those who are or have been elected through it. So you may harbor some resentment towards me for taking action when elected officials chose not to. But remember, that also means that you also harbor resentment for those that want this type of representation. And we can do better because I know we can. And, you know, we don't gotta fight. We just gotta do what's right for everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Leo West? Well, this is caused by somebody who lost the election that wants to redraw the system as if, the race or a person would determine how they vote. The way that people vote in a city council is accordingly to the interest that bankroll their campaigns. We see meeting after meeting, they consent calendar with the issue are cooked up behind the scene, and we all we see is a 7 years vault. We also see our meeting after meeting, less and less council member even bother to show up here. That was not happening before. A total of the respect for the people, San Leandro. And, so you are gonna change 1 way or the other. You don't touch the internet behind them. They take time to go to other cities, to other states. And **** the citizens. That's the reality. So, Asian representation was claiming. We had a Asian representative when I was living in the Manor District, Benny Lee, who was consistently in favor of landlords, voting against any proposal of rent control, even, the tenant relocation assistance. And now we have no agent who spends her time going to 1 city to other states and neglecting the district. Thank you. Mister mayor, there is no more public comment. Okay. So with that, I will close the public hearing. It is 07:42. Okay, so continuing on the item. Are there any council member questions at this point in time? Okay. Seeing none, we will move to our next agenda item. Again, reminding the public that we will be taking public comment for a number of additional meetings. ll sick of me already, but, yeah, we are not above the law. For years, the city has known that our at large voting violates the California Voting Rights Act. Rather than address it with the urgency that we required, the city sat sat on their hands. This is about representation and accountability. As I've said in previous interviews and chats with some of you on the city council, we can literally be sued for millions of dollars for committing this level of disenfranchisement. My goal is to elicit this change without costing us millions of taxpayer dollars. You all know that this is a million dollar gamble. And as as stewards of our taxpayers money, I find it upsetting that knowing the stakes, the city chose to wait until a lawsuit was filed rather than what was doing what was right. You know, what was smart? I disagree with some of this council's sentiment that this effort is undemocratic. The law clearly states that this method of at large voting is what's undemocratic, not the other way around. Although many have elected officials and hundreds of residents that I have talked to throughout the city, there have been less than a handful, that would prefer the current at large system, mostly those who are or have been elected through it. So you may harbor some resentment towards me for taking action when elected officials chose not to. But remember, that also means that you also harbor resentment for those that want this type of representation. And we can do better because I know we can. And, you know, we don't gotta fight. We just gotta do what's right for everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Leo West? Well, this is caused by somebody who lost the election that wants to redraw the system as if, the race or a person would determine how they vote. The way that people vote in a city council is accordingly to the interest that bankroll their campaigns. We see meeting after meeting, they consent calendar with the issue are cooked up behind the scene, and we all we see is a 7 years vault. We also see our meeting after meeting, less and less council member even bother to show up here. That was not happening before. A total of the respect for the people, San Leandro. And, so you are gonna change 1 way or the other. You don't touch the internet behind them. They take time to go to other cities, to other states. And **** the citizens. That's the reality. So, Asian representation was claiming. We had a Asian representative when I was living in the Manor District, Benny Lee, who was consistently in favor of landlords, voting against any proposal of rent control, even, the tenant relocation assistance. And now we have no agent who spends her time going to 1 city to other states and neglecting the district. Thank you. Mister mayor, there is no more public comment. Okay. So with that, I will close the public hearing. It is 07:42. Okay, so continuing on the item. Are there any council member questions at this point in time? Okay. Seeing none, we will move to our next agenda item. Again, reminding the public that we will be taking public comment for a number of additional meetings. Thank you very much, and have a great evening. Thank you. Douglas Spalding, may you may unmute yourself. Thank you very much. Well, you know, I loves me some, some good art when it's good art. So thank you so much for, for for doing that work. I I I'm scratching my head a little bit because I keep going by the Hesperian Triangle. I'm trying to figure out what that circle piece of art is. If it's a portal someplace, how do you get to it? Because it's all fenced in. And and it's not really facing in a way that that welcomes people to our city coming in off the freeway on a hundred and fiftieth. So so, you know, I don't I don't sure how we make sense of all that. I I just I love this program. I I thank you for all the the, the events that happened downtown. It really makes San Leandro a happening place. And there is no other more cost effective program than I I think than the safety ambassadors. I think we really have to see it as part of a whole providing for public safety. It is very effective. And, and I wanna I wanna piggyback on what Jenny just said. You know, I'm I'm also remembering that we've talked or there's been discussion about extending it to the greenhouse. And I think other areas too, you know, the manor, the Bay Fair District, you know, there there probably are half dozen or more areas that could benefit from a similar program. And I'd I'd love to see us sink more money into this very, relatively low cost, highly effective program. It just is, it it it is the right approach. So thank you very much. Thank you. Mister mayor, there is no more public comment? Oh, close public comment on the side of it. Come back to council members for questions or commentary. Beginning with councilman, Resvedo. Thank you for your presentation and yeah you guys this past year. There's been a lot of great events. I've gone to a lot of them with my families and friends and I really enjoy it. My question for you is, have you heard any, feedback about the sign ordinance with businesses in downtown? Because I'm hearing that in District 2, like, Guadalajara's and all that. Has it been affecting the businesses in downtown? I think that, you know, the sign ordinances were not enforced for a very, very long time, and signage really got out of hand. So I was really appreciated to see that the community preservation. Group was starting to enforce it. I think that the there's a lot of confusion because people didn't know what the ordinance was before the hammer kinda came down. So on balance, I think it's really helped the downtown, but there are some unfortunate incidences, particular incidences that it could have been communicated a little better. But in general, I think it's important that we do have standards. Otherwise, we'll have feather flags just all up and down East Fourteenth Street. And, but, yes, some of our downtown ones are are scratching their head. They just don't understand it. Yeah. There has to be some kind of order, but yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Some more education, I think, is probably in order. Okay. Yeah. And I I just wanna say, I think the safety investors are doing a great job. Yes. And we definitely need to expand them to the greenhouse and Bayfair. We are we're pushing for that because we need it in more areas of the city. Yeah, to that point, I do I neglected to say that the saving ambassador program downtown is a cost sharing program. So the City pays a certain portion and the property owners pay another portion. And so that can be a barrier, I think, to other neighborhoods if they can't agree to or don't have the means to do some of the cost sharing. It's not great. It's like a 955% split, but that 5% is not it's it's not nothing. Right? And then we do a lot of in kind, support of it. And then the other thing I wanted to mention that I neglected too is that 1 of the the statistics we don't track, but I think is really important is that we, our ambassadors get calls to help with merchandise recovery from theft in, In the plaza or in different stores in the downtown. And just yesterday, I think it was Clovis. I think it was you that aided in the recovery of 2 incidences totaling over $750 at Safeway. So that's another I I wish if we started tracking the money on on that, that would be pretty impressive too. Yeah. All my questions and comments. Thank you. Coming to vice mayor, please. Thank you, mayor. Hi, Morgan. Nice to see you again. See you too. Missed being in the meetings. I don't take my daily walks to La Placita anymore, but I always appreciated how impactful the the all of your programming is downtown, but in particular, how responsive the safety ambassadors were to the different needs of the community. I know that La Placita was incredibly, grateful, and certainly the parents were as well to having, very responsive from your team in general. So I just, you know, wanna give that shout out. I wanted to ask obviously, this is a presentation about all the great things that you're doing. I'm curious about some of the challenges you see going forward, whether it's to do with the financials or safety or whatever else it is. That way, we can kinda get an idea of how we can best support continued success for you. Yeah, thank you. I do think, 1 of our goals this year yes, there's the financial challenge. That's always going to be a challenge. I think we could really benefit. It was really fantastic to add a morning safety ambassador Monday through Friday. I think that's the 1 gap in our programming is we don't have that on the weekends. And they just are able to accomplish so much and and help businesses, at first thing in the morning. I would say that 1 of our challenges is, and it's a goal for this year, is really proactively and intentionally, getting the word out to our AAPI community in town. And so, we really look to, we've looked to the Katie Bowman's team over there and Tom's team in community development to assist with translation services. So that assistance is really helpful. We work with every single department in this City, except for maybe HR, and I have to say, without exception, we get incredible support from each individual department. So, passing the word on to those departments to continue to work with us is really helping us address every concern. The final thing I would bring up as a challenge is, summer months are coming, and when the weather is nice, folks come out, and I'm glad we have the alternative response unit coming out and starting to try to address some of our regulars who are are are problematic. I think a little more coordination between PD and ARU and us would be helpful, so that we can more efficiently communicate what's going on with folks. The sad reality is there's really no place for these folks to go, folks who are diagnosed with some kind of mental health or an addiction issue. But that's kind of above our pay grade, I think. I don't know that's a bigger issue, but I think we could be a little more streamlined in how we try to address it. And, in terms of thank you for that. In terms of folks accessing resources or calling the the public safety ambassadors, if something were happening, is it the business owner then that is usually the 1 reaching out to you, or are is there an effort to let community members who are frequently out there or Alta Marais or some different apartment buildings?...
