Residents Feel Safe According To Survey
In Which: Staff reveal that the City Clerk is subject of internal investigation; Mayor Salinas alleges that Black residents feel safe; And Council tells services to get out and hustle for funding.
City Clerk Subject Of Internal Investigation
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article said that the City Clerk was receiving a $17.82 raise, when it was in fact 17.82%. The article has been corrected and we regret the error.
During what was expected to be a routine approval of the new Salary Plan, multiple City Staff gave public comment opposing the proposed raises to the City Clerk, Miriam Lens, and revealed she is the subject of an ongoing internal investigation.
Briea Allen, a member of the City Clerk’s Office, revealed the allegations during her comment. She expressed “disappointment regarding staff’s recommendation for a 17.82% salary increase for the City Clerk, particularly when she is reportedly under investigation.” She referenced a letter she had sent to City Council on April 9th highlighting the issues, which allegedly received no answer.
Of particular concern were Ms. Lens’s “leadership, lack of transparency, performance, and understanding of her responsibilities,” Ms. Allen said. “Overcompensating someone under these circumstances sends the wrong message to both staff and residents.”
SEIU 1021 Clerical President Evelyn Olivera said that the situation has not been resolved internally, despite the Staff’s best efforts. “Despite our persistent efforts with [Human Resources] HR, we have seen little progress.” She alleged deep dysfunction within the office. “How can we possibly justify rewarding failure by ignoring the alarming staff exodus and the devastating collapse of morale?” Ms. Olivera alleged high turnover, not taking action on recommendations from a costly consultant, among other issues.
An email sent to City Council on the item by Amber Parras, who worked in the City Clerk’s Office for six years, alleged issues with clear roles and consistent training. “Since 2021, I was told I would be trained on certain responsibilities,” the letter reads, “yet those tasks sat untouched while newer employees were trained ahead of me.” The letter also alleges a toxic work environment “where input was regularly dismissed and valid concerns were brushed aside” and a lack of compassion around leave requests.
The requests from the speakers was to delay the salary increase until the investigation is completed.
However, some former Staff from the City Clerk’s Office spoke in support of Ms. Lens. Denise Chan, who worked in the City Clerk’s Office for 13 years before retiring, spoke glowingly of Ms. Lens and suggested that the current Staff are still learning their jobs and may not want to work as a team. She also cast doubt on the allegations of high turnover, going so far as to explain several of them, including her own.
Avinta Madhukansh-Sing, a former Staffer in the City Clerk’s Office who is now the City Clerk of Rocklin, submitted a letter of support. The letter says that they learned a great deal under the City Clerk and that she is currently serving as their official mentor. “Over the years, Miriam has served as a great role model to me,” they say, “and I can without a doubt say that I am in my current position as a City Clerk due to her coaching.”
Councilmember Syrop, the only Councilmember to address the allegations, said that the reason for the pay increase was to make the position more competitive with local jurisdictions. “That being said,” he said, “I take the concerns of our staff incredibly seriously.”
The City Council unanimously approved the salary increase.
Cost Of Living Top Of Mind For Residents
The City Council discussed the results of the 2025 Resident Satisfaction Survey at Tuesday’s night’s meeting. Put on every other year by FM3 Research, they interviewed a representative sample of 1,320 Hayward residents on a number of topics around City services. The results show broad satisfaction with the quality of life in Hayward, but also highlight issues that the City Council may want to pay closer attention to.
The Survey Highlights
The broad results of the survey were published with the Agenda, so if you’re extra you can read those for yourself. Residents were contacted by phone, email, text message, and post card, and the results have a margin of error of between 3% and 7%, depending on how you slice the data. Some of the questions have been asked regularly since 2008, though the City skipped 2023 due to the pandemic.
Overall satisfaction with the quality of life in Hayward is at 80%, the highest it’s been since 2014. According to FM3, quality of life feelings across the State dropped around 2016—they didn’t explain why—and continued to decline until 2021. It’s since popped back up again.
For issues residents are thinking about, the cost of housing is the top concern for 74% of residents, followed by freeway congestion, homelessness, and traffic on local roads/crime in general (both tied at 57%). Compared to previous years, the cost of housing is a concern for 9% more respondents than it was last year, and 14% more than in 2019.
When thinking about City Services, residents almost all valued fast emergency response (94%), safe neighborhoods (93%), and safe and well-maintained streets and sidewalks (89%). But many other issues were extremely or very important to over 70% of people, all the way down to “Easy access to information about my City government.”
The above chart lists a bunch of things ranked by how important they are to people and how satisfied they are by the service. The important stuff is above the horizontal line, and the things they aren’t satisfied with are to the left of the vertical line. Notably, Street Vending is the item of least concern, while things like encampment cleanups, affordable housing, crime, and streets and sidewalks are some of the more important things that people aren’t satisfied with.
When it comes to contacting the City in the last year, residents age 50+ and in higher-income households were most likely to do so and the most often contacted office was the Police. Though the consultant noted that Library services are often viewed as separate from City services, despite being City services.
When it comes to safety in general, 58% of people said they feel safe, with 56% saying they feel safe walking in their neighborhoods. Feelings of safety in general have increased, especially when it comes to walking in neighborhoods. That being said, people feeling safe interacting with Police has decreased 4% over last year, and is slightly lower than a 2020 Public Safety Survey.
Of the people who feel unsafe—only 322 people—what they said would make them feel more safe was more visible policing (32%) and fewer unhoused people (18%), followed by tougher on crime (14%). These were open-ended questions that FM3 organized into categories, though, so some nuance may have been lost.
One of the least surprising results was asking if residents knew about the change to Districts. A whopping 78% of respondents had not seen or heard about it at all. This was fairly consistent across Council Districts, though Districts 2, 3, and 6 had slightly higher awareness (around 20%), with Districts 4 and 5 around 12%.
Housing More Important To Renters
The Survey also highlighted how differently housing is viewed depending on whether the person is a renter or a homeowner. Overall, 74% of people viewed the cost of housing as either an extremely serious or very serious problem. However, for homeowners that dropped to 57%, while for renters it was 87%.
Renters were also more likely to believe that an adequate number of affordable places to live and minimizing evictions was extremely or very important (93% and 71%, respectively). Renters are also less satisfied with existing renter protections and the City’s efforts to create more affordable housing (43% and 49% being dissatisfied).
The focus on affordable housing is also important given the demographics of those surveyed—bearing in mind they are meant to be representative of the City. 26% said either themselves and/or a friend or family member had experienced a period of homelessness, and 2% admitted that they don’t have stable housing.
Beyond that, 53% of respondents said their household income was under $100,000 per year. That, according to the State Housing and Community Development Office, puts most households in the Low Income category. And according to the Census Bureau, the median per-capita income is only around $44,000. This makes housing affordability an important way to protect renters from becoming homeless—perhaps for a second time—and also a way to support the majority of the people living in Hayward.
Council Loves The Data
Councilmember Roche wondered why the questions around eviction prevention was asked in general terms and didn’t specifically mention the Residential Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RRSO) or Shallow Rent Subsidy program. The consultant said “We have to pick and choose” due to time limits and try to use everyday language to prevent having to spend time explaining City programs.
Multiple Councilmembers asked for regional comparisons. Councilmember Roche asked broadly about the satisfaction and safety results, which the consultant said was pretty consistent across the State. Councilmembers Syrop and Golstein also wanted to see data comparing Hayward with other local cities.
Councilmember Syrop framed the data as being important for data-driven decision making and even suggested adjusting the strategic roadmap to align with the Survey results. This idea was supported by Councilmembers Bonilla and Goldstein. “With all the uncertainty that’s going to be facing our community,” Councilmember Bonilla said, “maintaining these increasing services is going to be something that all of us are going to have to be very focused on.”
Councilmember Zermeno asked if there was any data on people who are dissatisfied with things. He was concerned why the only follow-up questions focused on those who felt unsafe. The consultant said they could analyze the data to try to find geographic commonalities with respondents. And the Communications Manager said the City could do focus groups focusing on that, though it would cost money to do so.
Councilmember Goldstein asked if there could be a focus on the business environment in the City, but also wanted more data on housing issues, as well.
Councilmember Andrews focused on roads and infrastructure in her comments. She asked about the data on bike safety, and the consultant said that a large portion of respondents (28%) said it didn’t apply because they aren’t cycling. Councilmember Andrews then suggested that bike lanes were contributing to the dissatisfaction with traffic on local streets and roads.
However, the Communications and Marketing Manager said that there is an issue with roads being influenced by regional perceptions. “When they exit the freeway in our city,” he said, “they tend to think that that is the City of Hayward.” When in reality, ownership and maintenance of roads is much more complicated.
Different Ideas On Sharing Responsibility
Councilmember Bonilla highlighted the fact that 53% of respondents viewed the quality of public education as a serious problem. “Education is a shared responsibility of all of us,” he said, “not just our school districts.” He suggested collaborating with local agencies to support students and their education.
Mayor Salinas agreed with the idea of sharing the responsibility of education. “Clearly,” he said, “the City is looking at schools as a shared responsibility.” His past comments have been critical of HUSD for not investing enough resources in certain areas tied to students, despite them now having a smaller budget than the City. The Mayor then immediately pivoted to school safety and SROs. “Whether it’s the SRO programs or some other arrangements of the SRO programs,” the Mayor wanted to invest in “good engagement and substantive interactions” with the Police Department.
Mayor Says Black People Feel Safe
Mayor Mark Salinas said, “Black residents feel safer in general than residents of other racial or ethnic groups.” He was told by the consultant that he was reading from an old slide not made available to the public, so the Herald can neither confirm nor deny this claim.
“This is pretty significant,” the Mayor said. He then asked if that rate was trending up or down, and the consultant said it was fairly static aside from walking in their own neighborhoods. The Mayor then said that most residents feel safe interacting with the police. “That’s significant, right?” he asked the consultant. “It’s similar across racial and ethnic groups,” she said.
“We have been investing a lot in public safety,” Mayor Salinas said, “in community engagement… You see [the Police and Fire Departments] at street parties, you see them at National Nights Out.” He then called up Police Chief Matthews and Interim Fire Chief Vollmer to the podium to ask what they have been doing to get such high satisfaction results.
Police Chief Matthews said that Hayward PD is “always looking at innovative ways to connect with people.” He cited events like Coffee With A Cop at Starbucks, though HPD also frequently appears at schools and even small business openings. Notably, as of May of 2024, HPD had a full-time Community Engagement Specialist—something no other department has available to them.
Chief Matthews admitted that HPD may have to do more to win over the community. “There’s always going to be a little bit of difference in terms of feelings and interactions between Police and Fire,” he said. To drive the point home, Interim Chief Vollmer said that the Fire Department does not do any special outreach, relying on good hires and their day-to-day operations to influence their community engagement.
Mayor Salinas then restated how glad he was that Black residents feel safe, though he did not share disaggregated data on how safe Black residents feel interacting with the Police.
Council Says Look Elsewhere For Funding
While discussing the Community Agency Funding Process, which allocates both Federal and City money to nonprofit organizations that help the community, the City Council stressed that nonprofits should start looking elsewhere for funding. Citing the structural budget deficit, Council went so far as to suggest that the Community Services Commission (CSC) begin helping agencies find and prepare for grants, despite recently limiting their scope exclusively to allocating funds.
They Need To Start Looking At Other Places
Chair Wheeler of the CSC recognized the reality of City funding. “Many worthy nonprofits went unfunded or significantly underfunded,” she said. However, speaking for the CSC, she said that they were open to doing the work that Councilmember Andrews suggested. “We are ready to adapt,” she said.
Commissioner Wong from the CSC also highlighted the funding shortage. “If these recommendations tonight are adopted,” he said, “they still will not meet the need of the Hayward community.” He suggested that the Rental Registry could ensure that those helped by funded agencies don’t end up back on the streets or rely on services as much.
Councilmember Syrop tried to explain the situation. “What you’re hearing,” he said, “at least in my opinion, is a shift in the way that we’re looking at this funding. WE can’t be the singular source. It’s just not sustainable.”
However, Councilmember Syrop was open to increasing the funding. “I still am interested in us finding a way to increase at least the services funding.” Councilmember Bonilla agreed. “[We should be] looking for innovative ways to increase the funding pot for services.”
Councilmember Roche said that a lack of funding has always been an issue with the CSC. “All four years I was on it,” she said, “was full of angst on what we couldn’t do and what we couldn’t provide.” However, past Staff Reports indicate that prior to 2019, funding had more or less matched need, at least much more closely than in recent years. This year, for example, the requests were more than 5 times larger than the amount available for funding.
Councilmember Goldstein suggested that the City ensure its investments in community services are actually paying off. “We also need to keep up on some of the statistics that we’ve discussed,” he said, “to make sure that the dollar investments are actually doing the work.” However, Staff stressed that this kind of analysis can be difficult. For example, how does one compare providing one free meal to providing a months-long after school program for survivors of domestic violence?
“We don’t have enough money,” Councilmember Zermeno said, “but what we do is excellent.” He later suggested that nonprofits should do more to secure other funding. “They need to start looking at other places for funds, not just the City,” he said. “They really need to go out and hustle.”
Councilmember Andrews, one of the more vocal proponents of limiting the CSC’s scope, suggested she wanted Staff to address funding gaps and communicate other grants to service providers. Staff said that the CSC could do that, but “That’s not staff work.”
But after hearing support for yet another change in the CSC’s duties, Councilmember Andrews pressed on. “I’m looking forward to this new vision for the CSC,” she said, “in terms of potentially donor matching or skills training on how to obtain grants.” It is unclear if members of the CSC have the knowledge to perform these duties, as they have only been discussed, and some seem to believe agreed upon, by Council this month.