Traffic Dominates Consent Items

HPD Chief Workers' Comp Case is discussed, Traffic flow environmentalism debunked, Commissioners resign, and HPD locker rooms

Speculation Station: Worker Compensation

There’s two different items of real interest this week that you may want to keep an eye on:

Police Chief Tony Chaplin has been on medical leave since at least October of 2022, and it would only make sense that the City is looking to replace him with someone who is able to fulfill the duties of the job that Acting Chief Matthews has been doing for over a year. But it’s looking like it may not be so cut-and-dried if there’s a Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board case in the works between the City and Chief Chaplin.

There’s also a very cryptic discussion going on in Closed Session regarding “Discussion of matters posing a threat to the security of essential public services.” Whether there’s an actual potential threat to our essential public services or this is another time that Councilmember Ray Bonilla Jr. is seeking to apply his “business resilience” training to the City, we will likely never know.

Consent Item Dessert Potluck

Consent items are things that the Council usually doesn’t bother to debate at length and approves in one big group. This means they don’t often get a lot of air-time, even though a lot of important stuff (read: Money) gets handled here.

Mini Traffic Light Upside-Down Cake

A new set of traffic lights is coming soon along Winton Ave/D Street. As those of you who drive in Hayward know, it’s already a big thoroughfare for those looking to escape the parking lot of 880 and cut directly through Hayward to get to 580. It regularly backs up during commute times with locals and though-drivers alike.

For $812,000, the City wants to buy fancy new traffic lights that will make it faster to drive through Hayward. This is, frustratingly, also listed in the City’s Strategic Plan to “obtain funding for projects that improve traffic flow on arterials and reduce vehicle idling.” The idea is that the less time that cars spend idling at a stoplight, the better our environment will be. This makes sense if you assume that the number of cars driving on the roads stays the same.

But, as you might have guessed, if it suddenly becomes even faster and more convenient to drive on Winton/D Street to avoid traffic on 880 and 238, we’re almost certainly going to see an increase in traffic volume that will completely eliminate any “environmental benefit” that comes from stopping the cars idling. This is called induced demand and while it’s normally used to combat the idea of widening highways to reduce congestion, the same logic almost certainly applies here. The only difference is that instead of widening the road and adding more lanes, we’re using a technocratic solution to improve traffic flow, but the result will largely be the same:

Easier traffic drives demand for that corridor which will then increase traffic until it reaches the same traffic equilibrium: just enough traffic that only some people find it worthwhile to try using it over the freeway.

If we want to reduce traffic and improve the environment, we need to narrow the roads and, counterintuitively, make it worse to drive there to force cars back onto the freeway. This video from Jeff Speck, a city planner, outlines the general theory. Unfortunately, if we continue to list “improving traffic flow” in our Climate Action Plan, we’re going to fail to meet both the environmental spirit of the Plan as well as the practical goal of decreasing traffic.

Locker Room Crumble

The Hayward Police Department will be getting a new locker room in their HQ building on Winton Avenue. The same one that they’ll be vacating in a few years, once construction of the new one, slated for further down Winton by the new Fire Station, is completed. The cost will be about $7,500,000. There have been reports about the dismal conditions of the locker room for months, if not years, now, but it feels really bad that we’re likely going to get an extension on a soon-to-expire sales tax to fund the construction of a whole new Police HQ, while at the same time spending millions on a locker room that will be vacated in just a few years.

People deserve a safe work environment, even police. Nobody should have to deal with leaky roofs and potentially not having a bathroom that matches your gender identity. But considering that the entire infrastructure funding available to pay for infrastructure and economic development projects for local social services nonprofits in FY24 was only $978,000, it’s hard to swallow spending over seven times that on a single locker room project.

Industrial Blvd. Pavlova with Bike Safety Drizzle

At the intersection of Industrial and Huntwood, the City is planning on installing improved signals, also with the intention of reducing time spent at the light. Part of it has to do with the complications of the industrial area including train tracks, large trucks, and other vehicles, and part of it, apparently, has to do with improving bicycle safety.

I’m not personally sold on the idea of using “video bicycle detection” to improve bicycle safety, considering that should, at best, make it easier to cross the intersection. The main issues I’ve always had with that area is that the bike lane is miniscule, trucks frequently park in it, and the speed limit is between 30 and 40 mph, depending on who you are. Thankfully there is a separated bike trail that parallels Industrial, but it has no easy connections to the other side of the road where people actually live. Hopefully the City can invest more in separated bike paths/trails that connect to residential areas so that cyclists can be safer and away from vehicle traffic.

Baked Consultant Surprise

The City is also spending $290,000 on various consultants to figure out what residents would want the City to prioritize the funding that they’ll be getting from the continuation of the Measure C funding (paid for by a continued half-percent sales tax). While having resident input is vitally important, especially for the measure to pass, it would be really great if there was staff funding and availability to do these kinds of resident outreach efforts in-house. It’s not like the City doesn’t do this kind of thing all the time and then we’d have permanent, city-specific knowledge that we could leverage for all kinds of prioritization projects.

Mint Resignation Torte

Long-serving Community Services Commissioner Artavia Berry is finally making her resignation from the body official. In her official resignation letter, Ms. Berry expressed pride in all the work that the CSC achieved during her tenure, with a special focus on the non-funding related tasks:

It has been especially rewarding facilitating the change from our Commission focusing solely on funding allocations to becoming an active voice on many issues impacting our community, as noted in the CSC [bylaws].

This stands in stark contrast to desires of the City Council, including language in the official Appointed Officers Handbook: “Council appointed members should not oversee subject matter already overseen by other commissions, task forces, or committees.” What the CSC will do with this new clarification will be interesting to see.

Planning Commissioner Arti Garg has also resigned from the Planning Commission. In her resignation letter, she explained that her work schedule did not allow for her continued participation. Of note, her spotty attendance was a point of contention with Council Members, especially since 3 of them had moved from that Commission directly to Council.

Commissioner Garg is being replaced by Ron Meyers. We covered Mr. Meyers when he applied for the Commission and was made the alternate. He’s a member of Hayward Concerned Citizens and a current landlord/realtor. He expressly stated his political intentions during his interview, tying his direct jump into the Planning Commission with how politically involved he’s been as a private resident. This prompted Mayor Salinas to comment, at the time, about how disappointed he was with how political the Planning Commission appointments had become. Maybe if we get some new political blood in the mix, this wouldn’t be so much of an issue.

Time will tell how Mr. Meyers’ political ambitions and landlord-friendly disposition will impact the single most powerful Commission in the City.