Districting Lawsuits Coming For Hayward

In Which: Hayward is being sued over City Council Districts. The City pays $100k to get $260MM. And the difference between private and public land is explained.

Speculation Station

Districting Lawyers Up

Very little actual speculation needed this week, Haywardistes. Everything about this has to do with an item on the Tuesday Night agenda: Districting. We’ll get more into the specifics Thursday, but as we covered back in March, there’s an attorney named Scott Rafferty who is threatening to sue the City over the current at-large elections.

In his comment, he threatened legal action, and further legal action about alleged violations of the Brown Act for some of the past Closed Session items. And in what appears to be the most petty the City Lawyers can get, the item includes a paragraph’s worth of information on the case—as opposed to the usual vagaries.

There’s also an item called “Jack Wu, et al. v. City of Hayward” which also has to do with districting, as Jack Wu and Neighborhood Elections Now are mentioned in a staff report on the full agenda. Again, we’ll dive deeper into this on Thursday.

Landlord Discussions

There’s also a discussion with Property Negotiators around Lord Tennyson Apartments (2191 W. Tennyson Rd). In looking at the lawyer present, Rafael Yaquian’s bio says he helps with “structuring, negotiating and drafting acquisition and financing documents for complex affordable housing projects, tax credit transactions and other commercial and mixed-use developments.”

I can’t imagine the City would be so bold as to try to negotiate purchasing an entire apartment complex with the Economic Development Corporation—that would be far too bold—but it is an interesting addition to the team of City staff present.

Route 238 Properties

I’m not going to spend my time looking up every one of the dozens of parcels on this list, but it looks like they’re having some kind of discussion about every single Route 238 property (except group 7 which has already been developed into a Subaru dealership).

It might have something to do with the deadlines around offloading the properties—though I admit, I can’t remember what the timeline was. But if the City still has this many, the clock is doubtless ticking.

Funds for Water and Sewer

The City is getting a $600,000 matching grant to run a Nature Based Solution Feasibility Study—which is a long way of saying that they’re going to use $600,000 to study using nature-based solutions at the water treatment plant.

They’ll explore building levees and restoring wetlands which can be used to treat water that’s gone through the water treatment plant using grant money. The grant money has to have matching local funds, but apparently work that’s already been done on the water treatment plant counts for that already, so no new money needed!

The City is also spending $100,000 to apply—yes, just apply—for a $260,000,000 loan from the EPA to fund Phase II of the water treatment plant project. The project is expected to run up to $360,000,000—meaning the loan may not cover the whole thing—and our sewer and water rates may go up slightly to help pay back the loan. But nothing is certain yet, other than being out $100,000 for the application.

But even when getting a loan, it seems you have to spend money to make money.

Planning Commission

This meeting was mostly about updates to the Capital Improvement Program and the fancy new website that the City has put together to lay it all out. Using a new platform, the City’s CIP page is steeped in nerd shit, and it looks good, too.

If you want to know about some kind of infrastructure improvement project, this would be the place to look. You can find out how its paid for, what category it’s under, and how much it costs. Browsing around is straightforward and, so long as its maintained, this could be a good model for other funding documents going forward.

Most of the money is being spent on Water and Sewer projects (over $80,000,000), with Livable Neighborhoods coming next at $34,000,000. The Livable Neighborhoods category probably contains anything that you’d care about from streetlights to parks to sidewalks to buildings.

The City has identified about $1,000,000,000 in projects over the next 10 years and about $690,000,000 of that hasn’t had funding identified yet—though that also includes projects that will get paid for by the Measure C extension, so “not identified” is a relative term.

Charging Stations and Parking Lots

One of the topics that got the most discussion during this short meeting was the subject of charging stations. Commissioner Patterson asked about the public charging stations projects—only one has been identified so far, and that’s in Municipal Lot 4 behind the AT&T building downtown. But many more have been added by private businesses, including the Safeway parking lot on Jackson.

The City is doing its best to add things in where feasible, but it’s complicated and requires working things out with AVA Energy and getting funding and all that. It’s slow going.

Commissioner Franco-Claussen alleged that the City wasn’t being equitable with the locations of the charging stations. Planning Director Ameri tried to explain that most of the City-owned lots are downtown, but Commissioner Franco-Claussen seemed to conflate private development with public investment.

“Just in my neighborhood alone, the trees are actually alone, there’s no lighting in our shopping center,” she said, “but it would be nice to have charging stations at that shopping center… [that neighborhood] doesn’t have the same type of investment.” Planning Director Ameri then explained that the City has no control over where private investment in private property happens.

Regarding charging stations specifically, Director Ameri also pointed out that some private actors don’t like the idea of “tying up” parking spaces with charging stations, where cars will sit for hours at a time.

Street Evaluation

Commissioner Franco-Claussen also asked how the City prioritized pavement rehabilitation projects. Staff explained that they hire an outside consultant to look at and evaluate all of the streets, and then the City takes that information and prioritizes it based on a few factors, including the condition itself, the maintenance schedule, resident input, and an equity lens.

The Commissioner pushed back on the efficacy of the equity lens, citing her own neighborhood around Sleepy Hollow. While I understand the frustration with poor pavement quality—the street outside my complex is in seriously rough shape—the City has 657 miles of road to maintain. It’s a lot to keep up with and one of the many benefits to condensing the City—by eliminating single-family zoning—and making it more walkable: lower road maintenance costs.

I’d be surprised if the same people who lament the pavement condition would be open to the denser living conditions necessary to improve the roads. I’m reminded of public transit funding in the Bay Area: people are happy to fund public transit to get other people off the road. If we’re going to solve these problems, we need to think differently than simply repaving more frequently.