Speculation Station and Community Funding
I try to predict the future, People disagree over money, and The CSC pushes back on City Council comments.
Speculation Station
Choo choo, Haywardistes. The train is pulling in to Speculation Station, where I’ll be speculating wildly on what could be going on with the City.
Referral Deferred
Because there’s no City Council meeting this week—more on that below—I wanted to speculate on the referral that Councilmember Angela Andrews has been teasing for several weeks. Her and Councilmember Julie Roche have allegedly put together a referral that will revitalize Foothill Boulevard. From a systemic standpoint, there’s a lot to fix there, but it’s all big infrastructure projects.
So what could the referral possibly cover? The Community Services Commission has been meeting about funding local services the last few months—also more on that below—and one of those is a group called Plethos Productions. They’ve been looking for money to land a location in Hayward as their home base—they’ve been a roving outdoor production house for some time.
Then, I was perusing the Tri-City Voice and noticed that they were the top story. In that story, they dropped that Plethos was looking to move into the old Chalk It Up pool hall on Foothill that caught fire a while back. Councilmember Andrews is always an ardent supporter of businesses owned by women of color, especially Black women. It’s possible that the referral is to give Plethos some kind of direct assistance.
Their fundraising page also references leveraging “city grants that are earmarked for live performing arts” which could mean CSC money or something a bit more targeted. Since they aren’t an incorporated 501(c)3, nor did they have a fiscal sponsor, it would make sense for them to pursue something more guaranteed. Only time will tell.
Big Bargaining Continues
The only thing going on this week with City Council is a closed session focused on collective bargaining. All units are involved once again—though with the budget outlook from the Council Retreat, on top of the new hires that will be needed, and with current cost of living on the rise, they’re set to be some intense negotiations.
If anyone from the City’s SEIU local wants to chat about the situation, I’d love to know more. Please reach out to me at haywardherald(at)protonmail.com. Goodness knows HPD could stand to let go some of its over 40 vacant Sworn Officer positions to help expand things like housing and social services.
Council Meeting Cancelled!
Even as recently as last week there was talk from members of City Staff about things being on the upcoming February 27 City Council agenda. Then Thursday night, the agenda dropped that the meeting was cancelled. I can think of a few possibilities, but the most likely one may have to do with the hate speech from the last meeting.
Although they’re well within their legal rights to stop taking public comment online, it’s not worth the cost to the community. So many Councilmembers and Commissioners push for community engagement—I’d be willing to be that Council engagement has never been higher. I hope there isn’t an over-correction on this.
But hey, maybe the City Manager is still out of town because of a flight delay or something. We may never find out.
CSC Does The Thing
If you’ve been keeping tabs on the Community Services Commission (CSC) here for the last few months, you know that one of their jobs is to allocate funding to different organizations in the community. There are 3 different categories, listed below, that orgs apply for funding in. The groups of CSC members interview the orgs and then put together recommendations for how to divide the money.
Usually, there’s not enough money to meet need—that’s been the case for the last several years. So the deliberations can be tense. There’s also some guidelines for different categories around funding, but no matter what, nobody can be given more money than they asked for.
This past week was the first meeting since the small group deliberations. Different orgs showed up for public comment or got people to write in to lobby for more funding. But let’s get into what went down.
Economic Development and Infrastructure
This category contains anything that is either a one-time infrastructure expense—usually building or repairing something, or a workforce development project—helping people get jobs. This group has the most money because it comes from the Federal government.
The first thing you’ll notice is that some didn’t get any money—or very little. The big ones are St. Rose and South Hayward Parish. Both of these agencies got money in the past and haven’t spent it out yet. Unfortunately, because of Federal rules, if the City gives out too much money that doesn’t get spent then the Feds will just… stop giving the City money.
So to keep that from happening, the CSC recommended giving them time to spend the money they already have. South Hayward Parish got a little bit of money to take care of one discreet laundry room project, so hopefully that can be spent quickly.
WeeCare was another one that didn’t get any money. That’s because they’re a for-profit company. Their rep called in to the meeting to say that it wasn’t fair to deny them funding because of that and that they followed Federal application guidelines. City Staff pointed out that the City has their own guidelines which they told them about but they ignored—they didn’t share their agency budget or demographics of who they serve, citing that it was proprietary.
Then one of the commissioners pointed out that they got $12,000,000 in Venture Capital funding in 2022 and could do that again. It didn’t seem like the rep liked that at all, but it sure felt weird to everyone to see a for-profit company asking for government funding like that.
Arts and Music
Arts and Music covers art and music programs. A lot of them are smaller outfits that have to take on a fiscal sponsor to handle all of the reporting and bookkeeping that’s needed to accept the grant. This money comes exclusively from the City’s General Fund, so this is your city tax dollars at work.
There were two contentious items here. One, as you read above, is Plethos Productions. The main reason they didn’t get much money is because they haven’t done any productions in Hayward. They’ve done Castro Valley and Pleasanton and other areas, but not here. Lots of people wrote in to support them, but if they get a leg up from Council before the March meeting, that may take some urgency out of their complaints. The group did say they were open to supporting them more once they established a presence in the Hayward community.
The other big one was The Kwanzaa Project. One of the commissioners, who was a part of the initial recommendation, felt that it was too “ethnically specific” and that kids “learn about this in school already.” This kicked off a long discussion and debate that almost veered into the whole Woke Kindergarten fracas, though that was cut off quickly.
There were other issues that people brought up with the application and not getting answers to questions from the interview. But when that same commissioner suggested that this program instead get money from the NAACP, when no other agency was told that, those other issues felt like they weren’t the primary reason.
When the actual dollar amount conversation happens next month, it’ll be interesting to see how these ones move.
Services
Sound vague? That’s because it is. This group is basically everything else—anything you think of as a “community service” is in here. There’s also several funding sources: some from the Feds, some from the City, and some from the nationwide Opioid settlement. All of them have different requirements. The group wanted to align with Council priorities and give preference to housing and food security for seniors.
Here, Big Brothers Big Sisters was the outlier that got no money. Mostly, the group was worried about duplication of services with other local mentorship programs. Love Never Fails got enough money to cover one Outreach Worker. They got less money because they’re huge and have gotten 10% of the total funding historically. One of the things the group wanted to do was leave some money for other agencies. Nobody argued with anything here, though.
There are so many agencies, it needs two images.
These organizations all applied for money that comes directly from the City Council General Fund—though certain orgs also got money from the Opioid settlement, if they qualified. It’s complicated.
There was some contention around the Freedom Store because it seems one of the commissioners in the group asked a question that landed in a way they didn’t intend. They apologized for their comments and clarified, so hopefully the air is a little more clear around that one.
The real contentious one was 05 Sikh Seva. They requested $259,166—the next lowest request was $161,000. Both of those programs were awarded only $10,000. One of the members of the CSC is Sikh and he, along with many other agencies who wrote in, wanted 05 Sikh Seva to be funded more. He framed the small amount as an insult to them considering what they asked for, despite that being what they received the year prior.
Nobody disputed—or can dispute—the good work that 05 Sikh Seva does. They give out thousands of meals and, dollar for dollar, they easily reached the most people by numbers. But, there were issues with reporting—they don’t collect any demographic data at all—and it seemed like they wanted the money primarily to fund a new food truck, which sounds like an Infrastructure request.
05 Sikh Seva had also been told the year before that they should improve data tracking, which they apparently didn’t, though it’s unclear why. It’s also important to say that nobody has ever been funded more simply because they asked for it. Obviously they can’t get more than they ask for, but there’s no proportionality consideration. One of Eden Youth and Family Center’s projects got nothing and they asked for the 3rd highest amount.
After the discussion about 05 Sikh Seva was put to bed, the Sikh member of the CSC left the meeting. It may have been for other reasons, but the timing felt significant. And this is the downside of having commissioners with skin in the game: they can—and should—pull for groups they feel strongly about, but there’s a chance it’ll feel personal if folks don’t go along.
There’s always next year and the CSC isn’t going anywhere—at least not yet—and hopefully 05 Sikh Seva can diversify their funding sources. Nobody is guaranteed to get a grant during this process—there’s almost twice as much need as available funding in Services alone. Hopefully the City can find some more money from a place it’s not being used and alleviate some of the contention next year.
CSC And City Council
During one item, Chair Austin Bruckner took extra care to point out that the invitation to the Russell City Restorative Justice Project Steering Committee was an invitation “if and only if she thinks it’s useful and helpful.” He also stressed that Chair Knowles was in no way “being forced” to report to the CSC. And if that sounds weirdly pointed, there’s a reason.
This was in reference to some earlier comments that the City Manager and City Council made around the CSC and the now-defunct Community Advisory Panel (CAP). The City Manager had framed an attempt by the CSC to meet with some members of the CAP as some kind of demand, though in reality it was a request to work with them and learn from them. Taking such pains to frame a meeting with the Russell City Steering Committee so as a request was definitely trying to head off similar criticism.
Councilmember Goldstein, who attends the CSC meetings as Council Liaison, then made sure to note that the Council Public Safety Committee had been formed. He also encouraged that any comments or petitions around Public Safety—even from the CSC—should be directed to that committee. He also shot down the idea of having non-voting members of the committee because of “some constitutional reasons,” though he did not elaborate on what those were.
That led to an interesting moment where Chair Bruckner pushed back on some of the phrasing that the City Council had used to describe the CSC. At the February 20th Council Retreat, Councilmember Dan Goldstein used the term “off the rails” to describe the work that the CSC had done around the CAP. Chair Bruckner stressed that language like that can be construed as dismissive of the year-long effort of numerous people.
Councilmember Goldstein responded, “If somebody says something that offends you, please bring it to my attention.” He continued, “I do try to pay attention and make sure that people are speaking respectfully,” he said. “If I missed it, and I don’t admonish that person, bring it to my attention so I can go back to that person and say ‘Hey, you offended my people.’” It’s unclear whether Councilmember Goldstein realized that he was the one who was being referenced.
Even in the most generous interpretation of the Council comments, the Council seems to think the CSC was unaware of what they were doing. Regardless, it’s difficult to not read the comments as somewhere between patronizing and admonishing. We’ll see how far Council reigns in the CSC and other Commissions/Task Forces when the item comes up sometime in March.