A Meal Too Big For One Meeting
Learn and Earn has a celebration, A Plan to feed with cooperation, and Council bats down CSC recommendation
A Sweet Start to the Meeting
Eden Area Regional Occupation Program (EAROP) was given the “Business Partner of the Year” award by the city for their work on the Learn and Earn program that is a part of the Food Action Plan.
The Learn and Earn Program took 8 paid interns from local schools (CSUEB, EAROP, and Chabot College) and gave them some experience in a lot of different aspects of agriculture and food production. Most of it is outlined in the Food Action Plan, which is coming up here in a second, so hold tight.
A few students came up and talked about their experiences and how good it had been for them and it was another one of those heartwarming things that Council likes to start their meetings with. Good vibes.
Cameras and Inclusion on Toast
There were several public comments this time around:
Someone called in to support inclusionary housing and to request that it be implemented in an upcoming development. I wrote about it when it came before the Planning Commission a little while back, so be sure to check that out.
3 Members of the Hayward Concerned Citizens came in to push for red light cameras. One seemed to be for all kinds of cameras, which kind of felt like it got into Orwellian territory, but generally speaking it was kept to red light cameras.
For context, apparently red light cameras require a lot of back-end management in regards to checking every single image that’s taken. They also tend to increase rear-ending accidents. Because of this, the City Council took down all of them several years ago. Allegedly the speed cameras don’t need all that management, which feels weird, but we’ll see how the statewide pilots go.
Consent Item Small Plates
Councilmember George Syrop had a few questions about some of the Consent items. He asked for clarification about the under-staffing of the Public Works department and if the City is addressing it. Apparently Transport Engineers are very hard to hire and retain, likely because of how lucrative the consulting business is.
Don’t believe me? City Manager Kelly McAdoo admitted that there has been at least one instance where an engineer was working for the City, quit to join a consulting firm, and then the City hired that consulting firm to get the same engineer back to work on something. If this doesn’t sound like some late-stage capitalist nonsense, I don’t know what does.
Councilmember Syrop also asked after the security of the emergency items that had been stolen and the City Manager reassured Council that it was the result of a one-time event and shouldn’t be an issue going forward.
A Cornucopia of Food Action
City Staff outlined the Food Action Plan, all of the work for which was paid for by a grant, and laid out the work Staff had done. They worked with community members and Community Organizations and businesses to help coordinate education and job training and all kinds of stuff.
The main ideas that came out of it were that there’s a lot of resources around food and agriculture in Hayward, from local farming knowledge to historically good farmland (though a lot of that is houses or industry now, to be fair) to Community Organizations that work hard to distribute food to those who need it. However, there’s also a lot of issues around putting these things together from a lack of coordination to funding to refrigeration to a lack of accessible arable land.
So City Staff outlined a few things that will need money to do (there were some that are already being paid for, so there was less of an issue there):
Continue the lease for the Hazel Garden: $14,000/year (also involved in a People’s Budget Project!)
Create a Business Plan for an Entrepreneurship Hub at the in-progress Stack Center: $40,000 (1 time)
Continue the Learn and Earn Program: $14,000/year for 8 people
1-year pilot with DSAL, Tri-Ced, and Daily Bowl to increase food recovery activities: $300,000 for the pilot (who knows how much ongoing afterward)
Bunches of Ripe Partners in Supportive Bowl
A lot of people for the food recovery activities called in to support the program, including: The CEO of Tri-Ced and two people from the Alameda County Deputy Sheriff’s Activities League (DSAL).
Former City Councilmember and Current HARD Director Sara Lamnin also called in to support the projects and encourage collaboration between stakeholders (HARD was involved in developing the Plan).
Two members of Feed Hayward also stepped in to voice their support. They will, according to the Plan, function as the coordinating body of the Food Policy Council which will help coordinate these activities going forward.
Council Support Fountain with Minor Questions
Let’s be real here, everyone was supportive. What’s not to like? You’re feeding people, you’re getting farmer’s involved, you’re growing businesses. There’s literally no downside to any of this aside from cost.
Councilmember Ray Bonilla Jr. even pushed to double the Learn and Earn program (upping the price tag from $14,000 to $28,000) so that 16 students could go through a year instead of only 8.
All councilmembers stressed the importance of collaboration between all the agencies involved as it’s a complicated and wide-ranging issue. Councilmember Bonilla Jr. even commented “I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many agencies come together to solve a common purpose in our community.” So with all those involved, coordination will be key.
Councilmember Angela Andrews highlighted some of the regulatory issues, which are quite complicated with new state law (SB 1383). She asked about Ghost Kitchens, which are small kitchens that operate semi-illegally in shipping containers and other small places for food fulfillment services like Uber Eats or something. It wasn’t confirmed that this was an issue in Hayward, but merely that they’d need to have their excess food recovered, too. She also asked about shared kitchens and Staff said they’d have to look into it as it’s complicated.
Councilmember Julie Roche asked for clarification on what the city’s responsibility is according to State Law, and Staff responded with, you guessed it, it’s complicated. Apparently the law is unclear who’s responsible for what with an implication that the City has some responsibility to coordinate food recovery, but the main responsibility is on the business owner. Staff then offered a refresher on SB 1383.
Councilmember Syrop shared that he had helped organize Feed Hayward and congratulated the two callers who were a part of it for all the work they had done. Councilmember Dan Goldstein liked all of the knock-on benefits of feeding people, especially lowering crime and expressed an interest in gleaning, which is, in this context, the recovery of excess food from people’s private residences. Forstr apparently covers that.
Mayor Mark Salinas wanted to include a history of food distribution in Hayward which feels weird, but harmless. He also wanted to ensure that other agencies come forward to share the financial burden of all of this.
No action was taken as it was just discussion. Approval will come at a later meeting.
CSC Recommendation Flounder
I’ve written about this before as the Community Services Commission (CSC) has been trying to do something about the Community Advisory Panel to the Chief of Police (CAP) for some time.
Staff outlined the general process which brought us to this point, which you can read about at length if you feel the need. The main idea is that, after attempting to meet with the CAP on the subject, the CSC developed plans to make the CAP more transparent, as it currently has no reporting requirements, is operating on 4 (or 5 or maybe 6? It’s unclear) of 12 members, and has been used as a way to claim community involvement in policy making decisions, including in HPD’s drone policy.
The recommendations are:
Make the CAP a Brown Act body (public meeting requirements like any other commission)
Require a Form 700 statement of economic interest (which all other City commissioners are required to fill out)
A kind of complicated but semi-private appointment process for members.
Staff also suggested doing some very minimal, but necessary, things like:
Improve the website, including posting updates on meetings, updating the membership roster, and other kind of basic and reasonable things
Change the CAP to disallow any elected official from being a member (this is apparently standard practice, but this would force Trustee Sara Prada off of the CAP)
Gelled Commissioner Support with Peppercorns
Four members of the Community Services Commission made public comment, three of whom were in person. In general, they pushed City Council to accept the recommendations, but several also wanted this to be a starting off point for an independent, resident-led Police Oversight Committee of some kind. Resident involvement was a key part of all of their comments.
Our local Police Boosters, the Hayward Concerned Citizens, made comment seeming to allege that the recommendations were creating divisions within our community and were biased in some way. Little to no clear evidence or context for this claim was provided in the comment.
And Now for Something Completely Different
This one took a hard left turn really quick. The agenda item was about making recommendations to increase the transparency of the CAP and Councilmember Bonilla Jr. opened comments by proposing something entirely different.
He proposed a new Council subcommittee: The Council Public Safety Committee. The general outline of which was that it would have 3 councilmembers on it, appointed by the Mayor, be a Brown Act body, and have purview over fire, HEART/MIHU, Police, Public Safety Communication, Ambulance, Emergency Preparedness, and Emergency Facilities.
Now, for context, this is a bit of a professional passion of Councilmember Bonilla Jr. As you can see from his LinkedIn profile, he currently works for Elevance Health as the Head of Global Business Resilience. Before that, Global Business Continuity at Meta. Before that, Resiliency and Crisis Management at Kaiser, Disaster and Emergency Management, and it goes on. This is clearly something he is neck-deep into, and, in all fairness, something the City needs and deserves. The Fire Chief even called in and made note that the only time he gets to report to the City Council is during the budget presentations. That’s not really enough.
However, all that aside, this addition made it a tonally difficult meeting to follow. We’ll do the best we can here.
CSC Purview Under Glass
One of the topics that came up was whether or not this whole item was within the purview of the CSC. As has been outlined before, it is within the very expansive charge of the CSC to be concerned about public safety.
Councilmember Julie Roche was probably the most vocally opposed to CSC involvement: “I do have a little bit of a bone to pick.” She stressed that the CAP owes CSC nothing, which is true, but then also implied that CAP members were being compelled to do something, which was untrue. This was merely a recommendation to Council, for them to implement or not, same as any other recommendation.
She continued: “To me, the CSC doesn’t equal public safety” which seems to show a serious misunderstanding about the interactions between law enforcement and, say, our local unhoused population (for example, on September 6th, there was a police shooting wherein two officers shot a, presumably, unhoused man with their semi-automatic rifles because another officer claimed, incorrectly, that he was drawing a gun).
Councilmember Angela Andrews also seemed to question whether or not this was within the CSC’s purview and seemed to conflate the recommendations with some kind of order or direction. Councilmember Andrews also desired there to have been more CAP involvement, despite Councilmember Roche’s correct assessment that the CSC cannot compel anyone to participate in anything. McAdoo, in an overly flippant and misrepresentative way, summed it up: “The CSC basically formed the ad hoc committee and said ‘Go invite the CAP members to join us’ and only one CAP member chose to participate.”
The general sense from City Council was that this wasn’t within CSC’s purview and that they should stick with funding recommendations. For better or worse, there seems to be little chance of that happening any time soon.
Two Definitions on a Cedar Plank
Mayor Mark Salinas summed up that one of the main concerns was oversight or accountability. And that certainly seems to be the case. However, it was unclear if there was a shared definition of what “accountability” and how important independence is.
Council almost exclusively focused on incident-level accountability: when there’s an officer-involved shooting, or a claim of police misconduct (there’s still no way to report that anonymously without literally going to the Police Station, by the way). They mentioned numerous times, often times in patronizing tones, how many different independent or government agencies get involved in these incidents. Things get referred to the County District Attorney’s or the State Attorney General’s offices, and that’s fine and important! It also complies with numerous, confusing laws around this kind of thing.
CALEA was also held up as a form of oversight which feels very disingenuous if you’re interested in independent oversight as CALEA was formed by the following organizations:
International Association of Police Chiefs
National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officers
National Sheriff’s Association
Police Executive Research Forum
One would be hard pressed to say that this is a truly independent body.
However, all of that aside, the thing that council did not focus on was policy-level accountability: the drone policy (which it was claimed CAP signed off on), the Military Equipment Policy, and others like it. This is, it was assumed, one of the reasons CAP was created: to provide feedback on policy as representatives of the community. In its anemic state, it couldn’t provide that in any meaningful way and the City did nothing for years about it.
Subcommittee Surprise
Despite what it said on the agenda, this is what this section was actually about. Overall, people were excited about the plan. They recognized the need for some kind of oversight and reporting for departments that take up over 50% of the budget. As Councilmember Bonilla Jr expressed, being a Council Subcommittee brings all of the open government laws along with it.
Councilmember Bonilla explained:
If the electorate and if the community of Hayward has voted us in* to provide a safe community for them, accountability has to be with us.
Unfortunately, the City Attorney threw some cold water on any ideas of Council holding the Police accountable and outlined that the City Council doesn’t have the authority to hold anyone accountable other than the City Manager, the City Attorney, and the City Clerk. The Police Chief answers to the City Manager exclusively.
Now, that could possibly change with an amendment to the City Charter, but even more possible would be, perhaps, some kind of independent civilian oversight body endowed with relevant powers to fulfill their duties effectively. That could help with Councilmember Bonilla Jr.’s concern that “the community might feel like their hands are tied.”
Mayor Mark Salinas supported the new committee, incorrectly claiming that “crime and safety” were the #1 concerns in recent community issue surveys. Councilmember Syrop corrected him later by clarifying that it was actually #4, behind Homelessness, Cost of living, and graffiti.
*Editor’s note: Councilmember Bonilla Jr. and Councilmember Goldstein were both appointed, not elected.
Representation Roast Drip Coffee
Something that barely came up was the representation of the voices of regular Haywardistes. Councilmember Syrop encouraged Staff to consider some way to include members of the public on the committee (he did not specify whether or not they should be voting or non-voting members). However, none of the other members of Council mentioned including resident voices in any meaningful way.
When it comes to how Police exist within our community, standard practice right now is that any changes in Police policy can come from either mandates by state or federal law, the Police Department itself, or the City Council (as they have legislative and policy power). None of those bodies involve the community in any meaningful way. Representative democracy is important and good, but when it comes to people who have license to decide whether people live or die at a moment’s notice, the community has a right to make its voice heard for more than 3 minutes at a time.
And this is the missing piece in all of this. The CAP was a black box from which nothing emerged, but the Police Chiefs, to take them at their word, find value in direct community input. Creating a Council Subcommittee, while it will be public and allow Haywardistes to speak, doesn’t allow for them to be truly involved in the process of shaping how the Police behave within and interact with their community. I’d be willing to be I’m one of a single-digit number of people who watch Council Subcommittee meetings, and even then it’s after the fact.
Councilmember Goldstein closed the discussion by attempting to reassure the CSC that they had been heard. He actively looked at, presumably, members of the CSC in the audience and proclaimed, “You have been heard.” It was notable that no mention was made of being listened to.
The next staff report will determine whether the proposed Council Safety Committee will have any meaningful resident involvement.
Council Handbook Served Cold
This item was continued to the following meeting on November 7th.