Library Continues to Fight Mission Creep
In Which: A new Hayward Monument is revealed, Mayor and Zermeño stand alone against street vendors, and Hayward is bottom on Library spending.
Speculation Station: Evaluation and Negotiation
There’s not a whole lot of interest in the Closed Session this week, but the two things that are there are worth looking at briefly:
The City Clerk is up for evaluation, still. This evaluation has been on a lot of Closed Session agendas. It’s impossible to really know why that’s the case, but in my experience long evaluations usually aren’t good. But maybe it’s just complicated by the Districting process, which lives entirely with the City Clerk. She got glowing remarks from Council during the May 11 budget session (more below!).
All staff bargaining groups are still under negotiation. After their showing at the May 7th meeting, they’re doubtlessly hoping for some movement in their direction. Their public asks were, unsurprisingly, wage increases, but with a deficit budget coming up Council is sure to push back on too many increases.
Interesting Things Which Won’t Get Discussed
This week has a packed Consent Calendar, with 14 items on it. Most of them are approving contracts for things like wastewater trash capture construction or environmental services for the Hayward Airport. But below are a few that looked worth taking a closer look at.
Homelessness Task Force Extended For 1 Meeting
At the end of April, the Homelessness and Housing Task Force (HHTF) was up for its annual review and extension. Unfortunately, two of the three people who are on the HHTF seemed primed to shut it down. Luckily, the rest of City Council thought better of it.
So now the Council will approve one more HHTF meeting sometime in June—no specific date is set yet—where Staff will discuss the future of the HHTF with its members. The final plan will be hashed out there and whatever they recommend will be approved by Council in August.
HARD and the City Deepening Ties
The City has an agreement with the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District (HARD) where the City owns the park and HARD takes care of it—obviously paid for by the City. The parks affected by this include Twin Bridges Park, Gordon E. Oliver Eden Shores Park, Alden E. Sports Park, and the SoHay Park.
The agreement between HARD and the City has been renegotiated with an effort to “[extend] their working relationship to provide equitable services throughout the City,” according to the Staff Report. HARD has already approved it, so this will seal the deal for the next 5 years.
The importance of this is that, ever since Sara Lamnin moved from City Council to the HARD Board of Directors, there seems to have been a bigger desire for cooperation between the two agencies. There has been some friction surrounding La Vista Park, which will be another City-owned park that’ll be HARD’s responsibility to maintain. Keeping things close will likely work out better for all the residents of Hayward, but the two bodies still seem to be working out how to make that relationship work effectively.
First Look At New Jackson Monument
Much to the relief of both Councilmember Julie Roche and Angela Andrews, the City will start taking bids on a new Monument on the corner of Jackson and Silva. The existing sign has apparently been on both Councilmember’s hit lists ever since they moved to the City—less than 10 years ago, if clues are to be believed. Below is a rendering of what the new Monument will look like.
The Staff Report indicates that the new Monument will have native plants, a waterfall, new lighting, and will be designed to match the Mission Boulevard Gateway Sign—which I believe is in South Hayward. It’s also worth noting that this project was pushed forward by the two Councilmembers last year and will be paid for by the use of General Fund Reserves—reserves that the City is quickly losing.
The project is scheduled for completion in June of 2025.
Creek Repairs To Begin
Repairs to a section of privately-owned land on the shores of the San Lorenzo Creek will be paid for—in part—by the City of Hayward. After the washout of A Street a few years ago, there’s been a section of property along the shores of the San Lorenzo Creek where an outflow pipe is continuing to make the bank unstable.
One of the former Route 238 properties, it is currently owned by Dutra Enterprises Inc. According to the Staff Report, a discharge pipe that funnels drainage from approximately 16 acres of residential land into the creek is at risk of washing out the hillside and impacting a different section of A Street.
Not sure what I mean by all that? Look at the picture below and imagine that whole hillside to the right of the pipe falling into the creek.
That’s what the City is looking to fix. The City will be paying for half of the repairs—with Dutra covering the other half—at a cost of up to $400,000. This will both make the land more usable for Dutra and prevent A Street from washing out again—or worse, causing massive floods upstream.
Budget Discussion: Part Deux
When last we left the Budget Session from May 11th, we’d covered the Finance, Police, Fire, Maintenance, and Human Resources Departments. And we were still a little less than half done! Let’s see what the rest of this meeting has in store!
Development Services
This is a big division containing: Housing, Planning, Code Enforcement, and Building. Basically, if it has to do with buildings, it lives here. They’re losing one staffer, but only because one of them was a grant-funded position that they could never fill, so it’s really more of a “stay the course” staffing—though they did add someone to permitting who was apparently already doing the work as a clerk.
The big deal for the General Fund is that the Department managed to add over $1,000,000 to the budget through some “adjustments of revenues and entitlements”. Permits cost, but the City does reap the benefits of it.
Councilmember Zermeño started off the discussion by asking for more people in Code Enforcement. This works both of his particular issues: absentee landlords and street vendors. Code enforcement currently has 8 people, but they’re still behind in a lot of ways. Plus, enforcing codes tends to make the City some money so it’d be interesting to see the cost/benefit analysis of that sometime.
Speaking of limited time and effort, Councilmember Bonilla asked what the Department thought the best use of their time was. He started a string of comments that downplayed the issues with street vendors. Councilmember Bonilla also pushed for more education as opposed to police action for the vendors, taking a “care and support” point of view.
This was echoed by Councilmember Roche confirmed that the majority of the problem with vendors is with the County. Staff reiterated that vendors need a Mobile Food Facility (MFF) permit from the County, which can be a long, expensive, and complicated process. They stressed that the County doesn’t have the resources to meet demand. For context, there are less than 5 people who can approve these permits for the entire county.
Staff finally commented that it would be a better use of their time to focus on vacant properties as a more efficient use of their time and energy.
Mayor Salinas then took the privilege of interjecting on the subject of street vendors. He alleged that it is “getting dangerous” and tied the vendors to environmental harm. The Mayor leaned into an enforcement frame of mind, but seemed to say that the only thing holding that back more forcefully is the PR. “Nobody wants to see PD out there closing shops down,” he said, “Nobody wants to see those YouTube videos or Instagram pictures… we’re gonna be targets for all of that.”
Councilmember Zermeño then jumped in and alleged that some brick-and-mortar businesses have blamed up to 20% losses on street vendors alone. This, again, doesn’t take into account the punishing inflation, especially around food. He also alleged, without evidence, that the City would be liable for any illnesses from street vendor food sales.
Councilmember Syrop then countered the Mayor’s long-standing assumption that the purpose of the Ordinance was to push street vendors into brick-and-mortar business. “[Street vendors] may not want to be a brick-and-mortar.” Councilmember Syrop said that the primary purpose of the ordinance is to capture the taxes and fees that all business should be paying. “Personally, I think it’s great when you start to see organic commerce in a neighborhood. That’s culture. That’s liveliness.”
The conversation then briefly turned to landlords, when Councilmember Syrop cited the role of code enforcement in helping tenants in substandard living conditions.
But the conversation immediately went back to street vendors when Councilmember Andrews called street vendors an “ongoing issue.” She recommended that Staff look into the Avenue 26 Night Market as an example of some future direction, though she admitted that even that project faced community pushback.
She pivoted the conversation to landlords, taking a more conciliatory tone than many in regards to vacant property owners. Councilmember Andrews expressed a desire to “help us help them.” She said, “How do we bring property owners to the table without being aggressive.”
Councilmember Goldstein lifted the voice of developers and lauded Staff on their automated permitting system, citing the “benefit for housing developers.”
Information Technology
As you may or may not be aware, earlier this year the City was the victim of a cybersecurity attack. This, of course, brought IT a massive workload. Although they aren’t recommending any additions at this time, IT does want more staff. “Relative to our peers, we’re behind,” Staff said. “[We’re] finding ways to make do.”
However, as things get increasingly automated and technology-dependent, IT’s workload increases. “Public Safety is always looking to adopt new technologies and with that comes costs.” Staff also cited issues with cybersecurity training, mostly because of turnover, and that they are implementing an IT Governance body because so many projects are coming though for so many different departments.
Councilmember Bonilla was the first to talk, having a professional interest in risk management. He asked why there wasn’t a cybersecurity department and Staff responded that they prefer to have partners that are process focused and can help tackle specific issues over having someone in-house. And when Councilmember Bonilla suggested adding someone in-house, the IT Director stood firm by pointing out how well they had addressed the most recent incident.
Councilmember Bonilla then pushed for 100% cybersecurity training “as a condition of employment.” He said it would “eliminate that risk altogether.” Though it should be noted that 100% training isn’t a guarantee that the training will be 100% effective.
Councilmember Andrews asked about Access Hayward, which IT does play a part in. However, most of the workload isn’t in their department—it mostly comes from sorting out assignments and workflows that come from any changes that are made to the platform. She then asked if IT did anything more community facing, but Staff responded that they’re “much more of an internal service.”
Councilmembers Zermeño and Goldstein both lifted the importance of cybersecurity, with Councilmember Goldstein pushing for the 100% training target, as well.
Library
As a librarian by training, I’ve got Thoughts on the Library and how Council views it. All you have to do is mention “mission creep” to any librarian, and they’ll doubtless have stories to tell you about all the extra work they’re expected to do—from administering narcan to being the de-facto daycare for the City.
The Mayor introduced the Library Director by calling her, “Educator for the City.” He said, “When I think of Education City, I think of the Director of our Library.” Obviously, I don’t work for the City and the Library Director is a very political position. So when the Library Director said, “Education City, that is what we do,” I can hardly blame her.
However it’s worth pointing out that of the 40 Full Time Equivalent staff, only 5 are in Education Services and one of those is grant funded. They’ve also pulled grants for a Mobile Tech Lending Library, but still need over $230,000 from ARPA funding to round it out. The Director also expressed a desire to renovate the Weeke’s branch, though that is dependent on Measure C funding—more on that this Thursday!
Councilmember Andrews started the comments by asking if the Library had considered Little Free Libraries throughout the community. The Director said that there are already several, but they are resource strapped. Most of them become repositories for books nobody wants anymore. Councilmember Andrews then asked about an “Adopt-a-Block” lending library, which the Director initially took to mean a tool lending library—the library has neither the space nor the resources for that. But Councilmember Andrews clarified that she mostly meant the grabbers and bags used for Adopt-a-Block cleanups.
Councilmember Andrews then turned to the Weeke’s branch, and wondered if the Library could do something about the encampments in the park—which, to be clear, isn’t the Library’s responsibility, that’s HARD property. It also, as mentioned above, pushes the Library into the role of unhoused services provider without any increase in funding. This is classic “mission creep.”
Councilmember Syrop started by asking how many residents have library cards. The Director said that the State says Hayward has 159,000 people and the Library has 152,000 cardholders—though some of them aren’t Hayward residents. When asked about how often cards are used, the Director explained that many services don’t require cards to access—like story times—but estimates that 85% of cardholders are regular users.
Councilmember Syrop then expressed support for the idea of a tool lending library in South Hayward, including tables and chairs and surplus property that can be used for events—items which are otherwise very expensive. He also expressed a desire for the Library to make more use of the Library Commission, though he left what form that would take an open question.
Councilmember Bonilla had apparently “never thought about” a tool lending library, though the practice has been common for well over 15 years. He expressed a desire for the library to focus on education and literacy and expressed a desire for raw numbers for library targets as opposed to percentage increases—in fairness, it’s also more impressive for the Library that way.
The most pointed questions came from Councilmember Roche, who is also the Council Liaison for the Library Commission. She asked what the per capita spending for the library is. The Director responded that Hayward has the lowest per capita spending on library materials in the entire regional consortium (and the “region” is the whole state, though not every library).
For context, she said the average per capita spending is $7.84, the median is $6.46 and Hayward clocks in at a stunningly low $2.50—less than half the median. Councilmember Roche then suggested getting the library more money and potentially revisiting their budget mid-year.
Councilmember Zermeño asked about the coffee shop that was, until recently, occupied by Hippies Brew. The Director said they’re working with Economic Development to find a new tenant. He then turned his attention to the Weeke’s branch, suggesting widening the fenced perimeter around the building to force the unhoused residents physically away. “If we take [the fence] further out from the building, I think folks would go in,” he said, “and feel better about going in because some actually feel scared.”
Councilmember Zermeño then seemed to place blame on South Hayward Parish for encampments in Weeke’s Park. “These folks will be there,” he said, “because we do have South Hayward Parish across the street that gives them free food.” This rhetoric feeds into the problematic assumption that people remain unhoused because of all the perceived “free benefits” they get, as opposed to things like the very cost of housing, mental health issues, crippling medical debt, escaping abusive households, or the myriad other real reasons people fall into homelessness.
Public Works and Utilities
Public Works is plagued by vacancies, with 31 different positions unfilled. That being said, they’re still looking to add 5 more, though with an extraordinarily low cost of $4,469 out of the General Fund. All of the rest is paid for by special revenue like wastewater funds and water funds.
Councilmember Roche started by asking about, you guessed it, La Vista Park. Staff said that they’re working with HARD on the Memorandum of Understanding—HARD will be the ones who maintain the park—and then will take the project out to bid.
Councilmember Syrop asked how it was going filling the vacancies. Staff responded that they’re working closely with HR to get them filled—even going so far as to use Public Works money to pay for a HR position specifically to help fill the vacancies.
Councilmember Zermeño also asked about the vacancies, and Staff said that some are harder to fill than others and there’s also an issue of upward mobility for existing staff, which is why they’re adding a few Senior positions.
In a stunning turn, Councilmember Zermeño then asked how long it would take until the positions are closed out and then given away to other departments—something that he’s never suggested for the Police Department that suffers from a similar number of vacancies. Staff countered that there’s still a need for them, especially since many are leadership positions that prevent projects from moving forward. He also pointed out that there would be no benefit to the General Fund—unlike with PD—if the positions were eliminated.
Councilmember Bonilla asked about the Safe Routes to School project for Palma Ceia, and Staff responded that there are issues with HUSD and the Alameda County Transportation Commission that are holding the project up. Staff also pointed out that the transportation division had recently received $9,500,000 in grants for other Safe Routes projects.
Councilmember Bonilla also wanted to clarify that La Vista Park will be 75% complete with Phase 1 construction by the end of FY 25. Staff responded by simply saying “yes.”
Councilmember Andrews highlighted all the work that this department does, “There are special districts that do one of these things, and you do all of them.” She then asked about electric charging stations, and Staff responded that the most recent project is Municipal Lot 4, behind the AT&T building at B and Foothill.
Finance
Okay, I thought finance had gone before, but I was wrong. It happens. There weren’t a lot of noteworthy updates, no additions, though they did have issues with financial reporting due to some key retirements. Staff stressed that wouldn’t be an issue this year, though. They’re also looking to expand financial transparency, which is music to my ears.
Councilmember Syrop highlighted the Employee Home Loan Program and expressed a desire to expand it. Staff said they’d look for partner agencies to help. He then pushed for workforce housing, and Staff said that Hayward is one of the few cities that kept at it after many other interested agencies backed away from the idea. But since it’s going well in Hayward, they’re hopeful more partners will show up.
Many on Council expressed a love of the long range financial model that was used this year—something the public was not allowed to see. Councilmembers Syrop, Roche, Zermeño, and Andrews all mentioned it and a desire to do more with it in the future.
“As a city, this is probably our single biggest responsibility,” Councilmember Bonilla said. He said that he used the budget to prepare for his application to be appointed to the City Council. He also expressed his love of grant funding, “Not saying we should be looking at grants just to cover general operating expenses…” Though as a close watcher of how many grants the City applies for, multiple staff members have nodded knowingly when I suggested that half of their job seems to be going for grants.
And that’s where we pause this week. Holy moly, I was hoping to get this all finished this time, but it’s already a monster of a post. Next up we’ll have the last few departments: Clerk, Attorney, City Manager, and Council itself. This meeting went on for almost 6 whole hours, but we’re in the home stretch.