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The Morning Bun has touched on many topics that will be in front of Alameda City Council at its 7 p.m. meeting tonight. Here's a round-up of tonight's agenda items:

  1. Neighborhood Greenways
  2. Charging for auto parking in order to improve odds of finding a parking spot, reduce double-parking, and reduce the odds of vehicle break-ins
  3. Charging for auto parking at the new city aquatic center to reduce the cost of entry and of swimming lessons
  4. Systematically fixing our sidewalks because of costly legal settlements
  5. Tr*mp proofing California's right to marry
  6. Infrastructure and affordable housing should be democratically decided
  7. The city's relationship with Caltrans
Pictures of people — and animals — on Slow Streets around Alameda. Source: Bike Walk Alameda board, from a letter their board submitted to the correspondence packet.

Neighborhood Greenways

Regular Agenda Item 7-C is an update on transitioning most (but not all) of the current "Slow Streets" into permanent "Neighborhood Greenways." Councilmembers will be asked to perform two tasks this evening:

  1. receive an "update" on "implementation"
  2. "provide direction on removing select Slow Streets barricades in the immediate future"

When city staff brought these two questions to the city Transportation Commission, I gave remarks that Bike Walk Alameda clipped and shared via YouTube.

On this blog, I've shared many words — too many words! — previously:

An outdated parking payment kiosk on Park Street on Sept 5, 2024. Note the double parked cars in the background — the rear car is illegally parked in the bike lane.

Charging for auto parking in order to improve odds of finding a parking spot, reduce double-parking, and reduce the odds of vehicle break-ins

Consent Calendar Agenda Item 5-K will:

  1. replace broken and outdated parking payment machines around downtown Park Street and the Civic Center Parking Garage
  2. receive an update on the city's strategy to charge for parking at ferry terminal parking lots, and to utilize those revenues to pay for security patrol services to reduce the odds of vehicle break-ins

This blog has previously covered the first of those topics:

ARPD illustration showing the two-pool option with parking lots labeled by Bike Walk Alameda

Charging for auto parking at the new city aquatic center to reduce the cost of entry and of swimming lessons

Regular Agenda Item 7-B is titled "Recommendation to Approve the City Aquatic Center Design Concept with a 30-Meter Pool and Activity Pool and Provide Direction to Staff on Additional Design Features such as Lobby, Diving Well and
Springboards, Community Room, Building Storage, and Electrification"

This agenda item is also an appropriate opportunity for City Council to direct ARPD staff to:

  1. Hire a transportation demand management (TDM) consulting firm, just as any private-sector developer of a new retail or activity center in Alameda would do.
  2. Direct their cost-recovery consultant to study parking fees as an additional revenue source, with the goal of lowering costs of entry and swimming lessons.
  3. Take full advantage of the aquatic center's location, which is directly alongside the Cross Alameda Trail and directly adjoining existing office parking lots.

See "Alameda's new aquatic center should have paid parking" (August 14, 2024).

Consent Calendar Agenda Item 5-I concerns a topic I wrote about on May 18:

A bright spot in the mid-cycle budget draft is the Public Works department's request for an ADA coordinator position and $2 million dollars to fix sidewalks, particularly in residential areas where city-owned street trees have damaged the sidewalks. This will be especially beneficial for older residents, who are most at risk of injuring themselves on a trip hazard. (This investment will also decrease the number of lawsuits and settlements by the city when it has to take responsibility for those trip hazards.)

I think it's somewhat telling that the city is bold in its plans for pedestrians on permanent established concrete sidewalks — but timid in its plans for where pedestrians cross roadways, where cyclists ride in roadways, or where residential roadways currently encourage speeding by motorists.
Besides the "sidewalk falls," the settlement report for this recently concluded fiscal year also includes the following notable items:

A $11mm settlement with the estate of Mario Gonzalez and a $350k settlement with his mother for "police practices." Those settlements are covered by the city's participation in the California Joint Powers Risk Management Authority. These settlements were publicly announced by the city and widely reported.

A $22,500 settlement with John Brennan, a resident of Grand Street, for "writ of mandate/Brown Act" regarding his lawsuit against the city's Grand Street Safety Improvements and Pavement Resurfacing project. I am not aware of this settlement being previously reported publicly.

Tr*mp proofing California's right to marry

Consent Calendar Item 5-P is described more in "Everyone belongs here: It's time to remove the remnants of Proposition 8" (September 6, 2024)

Infrastructure and affordable housing should be democratically decided

Consent Calendar Item 5-Q proposes that the City of Alameda support Proposition 5 in the upcoming November state-wide election.

A few generations ago, California voters decided that they — and now we — should not be trusted to make democratic decisions regarding public funds. Instead, future generations — now our generations — should be required to perform the difficult task of securing a 66.67% super-majority vote in order to raise a wide variety of public funds. These voters still trusted themselves to cut taxes, so they made sure that can may still be performed by a simple majority of 50% of voters. At its core, Proposition 13 was — and is — anti-democratic.

The same tendencies to not trust voters to make our own decisions was recently demonstrated by Vice Mayor Tony Daysog and Councilmember Trish Herrera Spencer when they voted against city staff's recommendation to feature an infrastructure general obligation bond on the November ballot. Recall that Daysog and Herrera Spencer's decision wasn't about their opposition to the bond — their decision was to not provide us as voters the option to vote for or against the bond.

By voting for Prop 5 in November, Alameda's voters will not directly overcome to roadblock of Vice Mayor Daysog to securing public funds to fix Alameda's aging infrastructure. (We will have to try again as 2026 approaches.) Nor will a vote for Prop 5 represent a vote for all future funding measures — it's not a blank check.

The City of Alameda's support for Prop 5 — and voter's approval of Prop 5 — will signal that we're willing to trust a majority of voters (actually 55% of voters) to make decisions with the same majoritarian spirit that guides so many other aspects of our democracy.

Previously on this blog:

The city's relationship with Caltrans

Consent Calendar Agenda Items 5-L, 5-M, and 5-N all touch on the City of Alameda's relationship with the California Department of Transportation (aka Caltrans).

While none of these agenda items directly concern Otis Drive, one of the agenda items does touch on the importance of lobbying Caltrans to shift course as soon as possible on their current State Route 61 project.

At the August 28 city Transportation Commission meeting, a Caltrans staffer suggested that if the City of Alameda desires a "road diet" to improve safety on Otis Drive, then the City could secure its own grant funding and perform another construction project on Otis Drive, after the current Caltrans project is completed. The Caltrans staffer literally suggested that the city rip up the roadway right after Caltrans rebuilds it in its current configuration!

This is relevant to tonight's City Council meeting as the Caltrans staffer offered Alameda's Central Ave as a point of comparison. Consent Calendar Agenda Item 5-L is moving forward the Central Avenue Safety Improvement Project, a "road diet" led by the City of Alameda on a Caltrans's owned "highway." This project has been in planning and design and contracting for over 10 years! That's how long it takes to accomplish a city-led project on Caltrans right-of-way... and it's not even done yet.

The City of Alameda shouldn't be fooled by Caltrans into giving up on Otis Drive. Alameda City Council — plus our county supervisor and our state lawmakers — should use this opportunity to lobby Caltrans District 4 to follow its own policies and implement a "road diet" on Otis Drive.

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The Morning Bun Opportunity/Challenge: Thanks to 3 volunteers for helping to capture any public comments made by City Council candidates at this evening's meeting. It may take us a couple days — expect another blog post later in the week or on the weekend with any of their emails or live comments...
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P.S. After pressing "publish," I realized that I forgot to mention the frivolous environmental-review lawsuit against the Alameda Food Bank. While this is not on tonight's City Council agenda, members of the public may speak speak in support of the Food Bank during the two "non-agenda public comment" periods: Agenda Item 4 and Agenda Item 9.

I checked with the City Clerk yesterday and she explained that non-agenda public comment is only accepted live and in-person. There is an option for in-person speakers to email an item in the packet (if they want to show a visual during their live comment), but emails are not accepted from people who are not also present in-person.

One of the plaintiffs told KTVU yesterday that where the Alameda Food Bank is planning its new facility is the "site of a historic parking lot" (!)

A round-up in advance of tonight's City Council meeting