What To Do About The Community
In Which: Community commissions are debated. A cafe gets top billing over a health clinic. And districting is coming whether you like it or not.
We got a masthead! Hope you like the banner. It was designed by a Hayward local and will be part of the Herald’s branding going forward.
Appointed Bodies Re-Examined
The City Council has been thinking about re-evaluating and reshaping some of the Commissions and Task Forces for a while now. Most of the focus seems to be on the Keep Hayward Clean and Green Task Force (KHG) and the Community Services Commission (CSC). And while some of the changes put forward by Staff were severe, there were two questions that Council needed to answer:
Should a Council Committee be put together to look at appointed bodies?
Should the recruitment for KHG and CSC be put on hold for this year?
One of the big issues is membership size. KHG has 20 members and the CSC has 17, and while both have good reason to be so big, they’ve had issues in the past with attendance—if too many people don’t show up, they can’t do anything.
Pleading To Be Involved
Members of the CSC, KHG, and even the Youth Commission showed up to uplift all they do. With the potential for KHG to be eliminated entirely, four members of that group showed up to state the case for their continued existence.
The Chair of KHG gave comment highlighting how they’ve been able to meet quorum recently with the group they have and have been doing a lot of both policy development and additional initiatives—they oversee the Adopt-A-Block program, a yard cleaning program for the elderly, and the Beautiful Yard contest.
The members of the CSC highlighted the policy work that the CSC has done for the City, on top of the funding work: they drafted the apology that the City put forward over Russell City and pushed for the Russell City Reparative Justice Steering Committee. They highlighted that any discussion of the role of the CSC should ensure that it wouldn’t prevent work like that from happening again.
On The CSC
Feelings Overrule Reality
In alignment with many of Council’s previous statements, the CSC received the lion’s share of criticism from some members of the City Council. After making recommendations to change the Community Advisory Panel to the Chief of Police—a body which had been both reduced to 1/4 of its active membership and had still been used to justify HPD policy recommendations—many on Council seemed to view it as overstepping its authority.
Unfortunately, that same recommendation was also plagued with mischaracterizations from the City Manager and some members of the City Council. What had begun as a request to meet with had somehow become a demand that they show up. A recommendation that the body be re-examined turned into a demand that the Council was somehow obligated to accept. At the end of the day, City Council is the only body with any authority to configure anything—much like Staff recommendations, CSC recommendations can be implemented or not at the Council’s pleasure.
“I do have some issue when another body is configuring another body,” Councilmember Andrews said. “That I have a problem with.” The CSC attempted to follow the law that pertains to them which states that the CSC has the power and duty to “By persuasion and conference seek to arrive at voluntary solutions designed to discourage and prevent any and all recognized discriminations.” If a body that is supposed to represent the community to the Chief of Police—especially after the Movement for Black Lives in 2020—has become a justification for police policy at 1/4 of its membership, that sounded to the group like a big issue—especially with one CAP member actively calling for changes.
But even understanding the CSC’s purview is clearly running into the difference between what some feel it should be as opposed to what it is. “There seems to be a huge disgruence [sic],” Councilmember Bonilla Jr. said, “between what I think—what we’ve agreed to as council and previous councils have agreed to, and where some of our current commissions are heading.” He, and other members of Council, have previously expressed an interest in the CSC focusing solely on the funding process. Councilmember Bonilla Jr. also pushed for the bodies to be as “efficient as possible” and for “effective and efficient government.”
While it’s fair to ask the bylaws of any appointed body align with the relevant Municipal Code, making changes based on beliefs about what the body should do informed by summaries on the city website isn’t good governance. And if, as Councilmember Andrews suggested, the Council decides to restrict the CSC solely to the funding process, they’d need to remove 9 of the 10 things that the CSC is empowered to do under the law.
Please, Sir, May I Have Direction?
On no fewer than three occasions, the Chair of the CSC has asked members of the City Council during public meetings for direction: during the February and March CSC meetings and during the April 2nd City Council meeting. The only response they received, from Councilmember Goldstein, was that the CSC should focus solely on the funding process.
However, now that the item was up for discussion, Councilmember Andrews had a number of items for the CSC to address. “There are some things that I identify as community problems that I don’t see the CSC necessarily looking at that they could be looking at,” she said. “We should be looking why are kids missing… about overrepresentation of the black population in homelessness… Why isn’t the CSC looking at that representation?” She continued, “If the CSC would like to look at what are the community services operating around Weeke’s [Park], can we look at why does Weeke’s [Park] look like that? That would be helpful.”
These are all great things to look into. I have no doubt that the CSC would have loved to get some direction like that back in February when they asked. They received a presentation from the Housing department in November, but that request came from within the Commission. At the same time, one shouldn’t blame the Commission for being reticent to try another initiative, when the last one was largely received with visible condemnation.
At the end of it all, most of Council was less hardline on the matter. Councilmember Roche suggested that the CSC shouldn’t be an advocacy group, also suggesting that the Chamber of Commerce is a community group—when it is a business network that is only open to business owners. However, if the CSC is to comply with 2.3.93.8 of the HMC and “Make recommendations which will help to develop a sense of community among those concerned with people serving efforts in Hayward and to create awareness and cooperation between the City and those groups doing social service work in the area,” then that requires some advocacy.
Ultimately, the City Council voted to put together an ad hoc committee to decide what happens. Given the comments, what happens to the CSC will largely depend on who is on that committee. Providing direction is something the CSC has been asking for, but time will tell whether the CSC becomes a body that addresses community issues, or a body that meets for 3 months out of the year to allocate funding.
One More Thing…
During his comments, Mayor Salinas pushed for the adoption of a Code of Conduct. Without naming any particular person or instance, he said, “…advocacy crosses the line to beating us [Council] up on social media when they don’t get want on a particular issue.” He suggested that some of the people responsible weren’t on a committee anymore, but reiterated that he wanted to address, “some of the horrible things written about us.” This seemed to be in reference to members of the CSC, in particular.
Having a Code of Conduct is absolutely something worth having for every body in government. Having clarity on what is acceptable behavior is important to making sure people adhere to those expectations. There are multiple cities that have codes of conduct and this great idea shouldn’t be limited to the Appointed Bodies. The City Council should have a Code of Conduct, like many other cities do.
It’s possible that there is a Code of Conduct in the most recent Council Handbook, but I can only find the old one which just covers decorum during a meeting—something that wouldn’t address the Mayor’s concerns. There are also issues around 1st Amendment rights of Free Speech, but I’m sure the City’s lawyers will take that into account.
Library Commission and KHG
When the Library Commission was brought up, some on Council noted that it had mostly just listened to reports in recent months. More than one Councilmember floated the idea of folding it into the CSC—in direct opposition to the idea of limiting it to Funding Only—or at least modifying it in some way to make it more meaningful.
Everyone was in favor of keeping KHG, but there was a lot of discussion around membership size. Both the Chair of the KHG and the liaison to the KHG, Councilmember Andrews, suggested that the current membership was fine and that there was a need to have higher numbers due to the nature of the work. Although the Staff Report pointed out that they, too, had been dipping their toes into policy and advocacy, there was no effort made to curtail their activities.
There’s every possibility that the public won’t know who is on the ad hoc committee until it delivers recommendations to the full Council, but the Mayor, Council, and City Staff wanted to make sure that the recommendations come quickly. In the meantime, recruitment for KHG and the CSC are going to be paused for the year.
The Stack Center Needs More
The Stack Center, a large complex which is being built on the former sites of the Matt Jimenez Community Center, Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center, and Silva Pediatrics Medical Clinic on the corner of Tennyson and Russ, is running out of time for funding.
The second phase of the ~$33,000,000 project, and the largest, needs to either fill a $14,000,000 funding gap or cut costs massively before it loses over $8,000,000 in funding from the State Library. The suggested source of funding is to borrow from Measure C funds and either back-fill it by selling some City land—like the former site of the City Center Building off of Foothill—or, if the Measure C extension is passed, just not worry about it.
Some of you may be wondering why the Stack Center, which focuses primarily on community health services and is not a library, got funding from the State Library. According to City Staff, the Stack Center will focus as a “satellite location of Weeke’s Branch” by including a makerspace and some other services. There was no mention of additional funding for the library to staff this location.
Café or No-Way
The Stack Center is set to include a café space and keeping it seems to be a remarkably high priority for some members of Council. “I think,” said Councilmember Andrews, “[the café] is the most important part of the whole project.” Which is something considering it’s supposed to include a low-cost health clinic and low-cost mental health services.
Councilmember Zermeño also pulled hard for the café, “I remember the very first meeting, eons ago, that Richard Valle held and I raised my hand and said ‘We need a coffee shop on Tennyson Road’ and he said ‘yes we do.’ So please, keep it.”
Sell City Center
The rest of Council also expressed a desire to keep the project on target, though perhaps with less enthusiasm for the café. “We really ought to deliver what we promised,” said Councilmember Goldstein.
Councilmember Roche said that it would be a “shame to scale down,” but also worried about the “risk” to Measure C funds. When asked if we could raise funds from the community, City Staff explained, “We are not as high a capital community as others around us.” This is a nice way of saying that rich people don’t live in Hayward.
Councilmember Syrop said, “We owe it to South Hayward to get the funding necessary,” and expressed support for selling the City Center property. Councilmember Bonilla felt similarly, saying “That property is blighted anyway, so it’s about time we got rid of it.”
Mayor Salinas was also supportive, saying “I really want to keep on schedule… this corridor deserves it.”
It was unclear whether the City Center property would be sold to directly fund the gap, or if the timeline is so short that Measure C will be used and back-filled, but look for the City Center property to be For Sale sometime soon.
Balkanization or Representation
Regardless of how you feel about it, it’s happening. Attorney Scott Rafferty is successfully forcing the City of Hayward to district, and it’s happening fast. Though just how fast is currently unclear. The staff report said that the City will, by law, have the Districts finalized by July 15, 2024, it’s unclear just when we’ll be able to use them in a vote.
The City is hoping to not use them until 2026, which benefits several of the City Councilmembers currently running and also will make the beleaguered Alameda County Registrar of Voters a bit more happy, I’m sure. The County “prefers” to have the districts 6 months in advance, but that doesn’t mean the can’t take it later.
Mr. Rafferty and the plaintiff who is suing the City, Jack Wu, want the districts to be in effect for this election. During public comment, Mr. Wu said he was pushing it because none of the Asians who put in for an appointment to what became Ray Bonilla Jr.’s seat on Council were ever interviewed. He also alleges that the majority of Council lives “far from the Asian majority districts,” though he did not elaborate where he was referring to.
It bears repeating that Councilmember George Syrop is, in fact, Asian American.
Mr. Rafferty, during public comment, was more conciliatory than during his last comment. He admitted that he’d been up and down the state, suing “majority white representation” cities under the California Voting Rights Act. He also pushed for the districts to be in effect for November, but also wanted community engagement—speed and engagement are often antithetical to each other.
HARD Director Sara Lamnin called in and offered up different resources for the Council to make use of during the redistricting process, including faith-based organizations. She also encouraged the City to work with HUSD, who is also being sued by Mr. Rafferty and being forced into districting, to pool resources during the process. She was, however, supportive of districting and pushed for an independent redistricting commission.
One community member came in and spoke against districting. Citing how open the current City Council had been to her and praising how they constantly think of the whole city, she feared “infighting” and “divisiveness” if districts move forward.
Council Grudgingly Moves Forward
Since there honestly isn’t much that can be done about it other than fight—and lose—a costly legal battle, the City Council voted to go forward with the districting by July 15. Of the comments, most encouraged community involvement and outreach, wanting a “community-centered process” as Councilmember Zermeño said.
Only Councilmember Goldstein pushed against the 2024 timeline, citing issues with implementation. Nobody else even mentioned it.
Mayor Salinas, however, was openly hostile to the whole thing. “I am not happy,” he said, “that we’re doing this. I don’t think this is what the framers of the California Voting Rights Act had in mind. I don’t think this is what Senator Richard Polanco [writer of the CVRA] had in mind.” He went on, “We are not just following the law. We are being forced to engage with this because of Mr. Rafferty and Mr. Wu.”
When it came to vote, Mayor Salinas was the lone No vote.
Expect a full staff blitz on districting to be coming in the next few months. This is going to be huge.