Community Services Commission and Consent Calendar
CSC recommends accountability for Police body, New leadership for CSC should keep the course, Public Works department short-handed
CSC Flexing Power and Voting New Leadership
The Community Services Commission (CSC) is an advisory body to the City Council that takes on issues surrounding community services in the City. Although one of their most prominent functions is to recommend disbursing funds to nonprofits, in recent years they’ve taken a more expansive take on their charge, including drafting the apology to the residents and descendants of Russell City and investigating the Community Advisory Panel (CAP).
CSC Recommends the City Changes Its CAP
The Community Services Commission (CSC) has spent the last several months diving deep into the Police Department Community Advisory Panel (CAP). A subset of members from the CSC attempted to meet with members of the CAP to get some clarity about this obscure and relatively covert appointed body which has a direct ear to the Police Chief.
The CSC subcommittee came back with some recommendations which will be presented to the City Council (the only body with the power to do anything about the CAP) which are the following:
The CAP should be a Brown Act meeting body: This would mean public meeting requirements and was a primary ask of the CSC from the beginning
Members of the CAP file a Form 700: This means filing public documents that list financial conflicts of interest which all current commissions are required to fill out
Interviews to fill CAP vacancies be public: Currently they are conducted almost entirely in secret
A lot of discussion took place, with most of it re-hashing the context of the CAP discussion (this is largely because 8 of 17 members are brand new to the body as of this year). The CSC was in favor of the three recommendations, though the final one was changed slightly to include more privacy in the interview process: the names of all applicants would be made public, but the interview would be closed-door and conducted by the Police Chief, the City Manager, the Mayor, and a member of the City Council appointed by the full Council. The vote on the recommended appointees would also be made publicly by the full Council.
If that sounds confusing, it’s okay. It is. The change to a more confusing process was made, essentially to give the recommendations a fighting chance in the City Council.
A topic on which the CSC was in agreement was the importance of resident input. Having members of the community who are able to give substantive input and policy feedback about how their Police Department operates is essential for equity. True community input requires both accountability and residents having a seat at the table.
An interesting development occurred when a current member of the CAP who was not on the subcommittee, HUSD Board Trustee Sara Prada, called into the meeting to outline her thoughts on the CAP.
She was concerned that the CAP was being used as an astroturfing device to manufacture community input on things like the drone program (the CAP’s approval of the policy was referenced in the staff report at the time, though the CAP had internal disagreement on the matter).
We spent days going through recommendations, going through information, we, ourselves created a subcommittee to go deeper into the editing of policy and to give advice and it was almost like it was a joke and a waste of time because there’s no power in the current structure of the CAP.
She also said that the lack of diversity of voice on the CAP (it only has 4 of its original members still on the body) is due to the lack of ability to do anything substantive. “The original point of this body was to bring transparency,” she explained. Trustee Prada alleged that the current Police Chief Chaplain, who was not Police Chief at the time of the CAP’s creation, was “actually shocked that our current structure of CAP had no power.”
Overall, she was extremely supportive of making changes to the CAP to increase transparency and oversight: “The current setup does not work. At all. So if we can have something that will bring transparency and accountability, like the Brown Act, I am 100% for it.”
Some, including members of the CSC and the City Council, seemed concerned that the work surrounding the CAP was outside of the CSC’s purview. Parliamentarian Thormoto read Section 102 of the CSC Bylaws which outlines its Mission, specifically Subsection 6 which reads:
Create and sustain an environment which will encourage and bring about mutual understanding and respect and to discourage and prevent any and all recognized discriminations based upon race, sex, religion, national origin, age, handicap, sexual orientation, and all other protected categories of persons, if any, under federal and state law, and particularly those discriminations in the areas of housing, employment, and education.
Incoming Chair Bruckner Carrillo stressed that the discussion surrounding CAP was not impacting the other work the CSC is required to do, and believed that policymakers do not, generally, like having open government. He also worked hard to get the CSC to approve the recommendations unanimously to show the strength of intention behind the recommendations.
The vote for the three changes outlined above went through, though not without pushback. Multiple members of the CSC expressed a desire to push for a full community oversight body with this set of recommendations. However, multiple other members urged a piecemeal approach, despite their agreement, due to concerns that City Council would not approve the creation of an oversight body at this time.
The recommendations will go before City Council on the October 24th City Council Meeting as one of thee big items on the agenda. So watch out for coverage of that.
New Leadership, Same Direction
Every year, commissions vote for new leadership for their commissions. Most of it is related to who actually runs the meetings and isn’t that exciting. But there is some soft power in being the Chair as you can decide who gets to speak and can appoint subcommittees to pursue special topics (like the CAP).
This year was not particularly exciting, with only one person accepting nominations for Chair and Parliamentarian (Austin Bruckner Carrillo and Yours Truly, respectively). The Vice Chair had 3 nominations: Linda Moore, Tyne Johnson, and Jagdeep Singh all vying for the Vice Chair (the duties of which are to serve as Chair in the absence of the Chair and to serve on the Services Application Review Committee, which is the largest of the 3). Linda Moore won the vote with Johnson taking 3 votes and Singh taking 2.
Of particular note was a speech from Outgoing Chair Artavia Berry. She is stepping down from the CSC entirely because she was appointed to the Alameda County Reparations Commission.
I’ve been here four years. I’ve had people tell me ‘Your job is just to make the money recommendations. Why are you writing positions on Black Lives Matter? Why are you writing positions on making an apology? Why do you care about Russell City? Your job is singular, as a Community Services Commission.’ …I have been told, multiple times, over the four years I’ve been here that ‘this is your singular job.’
I want to impress upon us that your job is defined in the [bylaws]. …We’re able to exercise our autonomy and the authority that we actually do have through this commission. If you look prior to these four years, this commission exclusively figured out money situations and moved on. I beg you, in my last meeting as Chair, do not go back to that. You have the autonomy and authority to look across the City and make sure we are creating an environment that is inclusive for everyone.
With Incoming Chair Bruckner Carrillo, that seems very likely to be the case.
Speculation Station: Damage Accusation
There are three different cases that will be coming in front of City Council in Closed Session this week, but two of them are ongoing cases:
Mitchell Engineering v. City of Hayward: Still no idea what’s going on here, but our pet theory still revolves around the seemingly botched corners at the intersection of D Street and Watkins. Goodness knows the City has gotten into some fights with General Contractors before over bad work.
City of Hayward v. Alameda County, et al.: This is the continuing legal battle over the abducted child who was murdered due to, the City alleges, negligence on the part of the County.
Discussion of claim alleging property damage at 30800 Faircliff Street, Hayward: This may be nothing, as it’s “anticipated litigation”, but the ranch home located at the address above clearly thinks the City did something to it. Maybe they’re trying to get something from the city, maybe the city actually did something to their house like a botched tree trim job. Who knows?
Consent Item Highlights
$265,000 Granted to HPD for Traffic Enforcement
The State Office of Traffic Safety apparently has a “Selective Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP)” grant that HPD won. The money is going to be used for the following:
Impaired driving enforcement;
Enforcement focusing on distracted driving;
Seat belt enforcement;
Special enforcement encouraging motorcycle safety;
Enforcement and public education in areas with high bicycle/pedestrian collisions; and
Media outreach strategies designed to enhance public awareness, educate the public, and deter poor behavior.
We’re not opposed to this, though the idea that this supports “Invest[ing] in Multi-modal Transportation” seems to be a bit of a stretch. Since 5 of the 6 plans have include the word “enforcement”, that means it’s about ticketing drivers, not getting people out of their cars.
How this is going to work with a chronically under-staffed department that hasn’t decoupled traffic enforcement from their sworn officers, remains to be seen.
Public Works Seems Understaffed
Two of the Consent Items are asking for money to pay for outside consultants to do work which should fall under the Department of Public Works in construction inspection and transportation engineering. If you read this, or talk with us, you know we’re no fan of consultants in the City: they take a lot of money for short-term needs and don’t accrue institutional knowledge like paid City Staff. In the long run, Staff is cheaper and better for the City.
Unfortunately, the City seems to consistently rely on consultants to do work due to under-staffing. To get an idea of how much of your taxes are paying these outside consultants, one item asks for up to $700,000 (or $350,000 per firm for 2 different firms), and the other asks for up to $369,000 (for a total of up to $1,069,000). This money will be sent out of the city, perhaps even across the country, and the consultants will take the knowledge they’ve gained with them to other jobs and, perhaps, even charge us more for the privilege to use it in the future.
We sincerely hope that our City gets its staffing up again so that we can actually meet the day-to-day needs of our residents without relying on highly paid consultancy firms to plug the gaps.
Emergency Shelter Looking to Restock
Apparently some folks stole emergency equipment from the Matt Jimenez Community Center’s emergency shelter. Our sincerest hope is that they needed it more than the City did (and given the population of unhoused people in the Bay Area, that’s quite likely). Thankfully, the City has good insurance and they got reimbursed for the stolen items.
The Fire Department is looking to use the money to buy: pillows, blankets, sweatshirts, sweatpants, cases of bottled water, and fold-up cots for use in emergencies.