Thanks to the 3 volunteers who listened to the Oct. 1 City Council meeting and skimmed the correspondence packets. Since none of the newcomer candidates spoke live or emailed in, this blog post is about the one candidate on the November ballot who did speak at the Oct. 1 meeting: Councilmember Trish Herrera Spencer.

This blog wonders if effectively understanding the former school board member, former mayor, sitting councilmember, and current candidate for re-election to City Council involves appreciating how Councilmember Herrera Spencer is the hardest working of the four current councilmembers.

This isn't a comment on the other three councilmembers. Being a councilmember is intended to be a part-time position, paid so little it's practically a volunteer activity. The goal is for a set of local residents to pool their senses of judgment on all our behalf, with the professional guidance of the full-time staff who actually operate the city and its many departments. Councilmember Herrera Spencer goes above and beyond the requirements of the role in her time commitment, her communication with constituents, and her strategic pursuit of her goals. For the moment, let's set aside her sense of judgement, even though that's the most important quality of an elected official...

Here are some examples of how hard and how strategically Councilmember Herrera Spencer works as an elected official:

Replying to constituents

When an Alameda resident creates an account on Nextdoor, Councilmember Herrera Spencer is often there to welcome them.

When an Alameda resident emails in to City Council with feedback on an agenda item, Councilmember Herrera Spencer replies. Here's one way in which she responded to one of my public comment emails in 2022 that is an informative example:

First, note that she copies in the City Manager and the City Attorney. Why are they relevant to this email? They aren't. Regardless, to a resident who may be new to this process, having a councilmember share your email with Important Sounding People may feel like a considerate and impactful action by that councilmember.

Also, notice that while she responded with "I will consider your comments in my decisions," at the actual City Council meeting she voted against everything I was advocated for in my email.

What a smart (and shameless) move to reply to all the constituents who emailed City Council in support of protected bike lanes on Grand Street. How many emailed in support but didn't show up to the meeting at a very late hour of the night to find out that this councilmember didn't ever actually share their goals?

Adding items to the agenda

Another tactic that Councilmember Herrera Spencer uses on behalf of constituents is to turn their emails into "referrals" that are added to the end of City Council agenda. That's the vector by which she recently became "the parks administrator on Alameda City Council" in the words of this blog.

Skim the agenda packets for the previous ~4 years and you'll find many referrals that are no more than Councilmember Herrera Spencer taking one constituent's question and turning it into a potential agenda item. (Vice Mayor Tony Daysog also used to do this much more often on behalf of constituents, but these days he doesn't seem to be doing that — or much else in his elected capacity.)

A side effect of this tactic is a crowded agenda that may not be prioritizing the greatest needs of the greatest number of residents and stakeholders. This process also side-steps and complicates staff member's more systematic means of handling public issues.

But the chosen subset of constituents feel like they're being well served by this elected official. And it does take effort on behalf of Councilmember Herrera Spencer to carry out this level of "constituent services" — no matter how strategically selective it is.

Attending public events

Councilmember Herrera Spencer puts in the time to attend many public meetings. A few transportation-related examples:

When I attended a couple City Council in-field meetings in 2023 (such as one at Tilden/Blanding and one to Lincoln Ave), I ended up chatting with city consultants and staff for so long that at both events that I recall looking up and realizing that I was one of the few left. Both times as I saw the remaining people, I tried mentally tallying who was being paid to be there and who was there out of their own interest. Both times there were only two people who weren't on the clock: Councilmember Herrera Spencer and me. (I also took that as a sign that it was time for me to let the staffers get back to City Hall, the consultants to clock out, and to hopefully not overstay my welcome :)

Councilmember Herrera Spencer also recently attended in person the August 28 meeting of the Transportation Commission meeting, when members were receiving an update on the Neighborhood Greenways program. If I recall correctly, she left before the Caltrans presentation on Otis Drive, so I'm not sure why she was speaking in support of Caltrans's opposition to a road diet on Otis Drive at a recent City Council meeting and citing her attendance at the relevant TC meeting. Regardless, listening live to the public comments and TC member comments on Neighborhood Greenways probably helped her to prepare her own strategy when that same item next came to City Council. One must give her credit for putting in the time to show up to these meetings.

No doubt that beyond just this topic of transportation there are many more public events where she's attending, participating, and chatting with members of the public.

Preparing for City Council meetings

One would hope that all City Council members would prepare for City Council meetings. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. (With all due respect, Vice Mayor Daysog appears to be phoning it in during the majority of council meetings this term.)

Councilmember Herrera Spencer is definitely prepared. She often emails staff in advance to drill down into details. Earlier this year, this blog skimmed 49 pages of pre-meeting emails and dubbed her "the traffic engineer on Alameda City Council."

This preparation enables her to frame her opposition against an entire project as something specific that she is for. For example, she wasn't against parklets on Park Street. She was for safety — albeit an extremely narrow definition of safety dependent upon there being no actual parklets. This preparation also enables her to turn bland and reactionary NIMBY positions into extremely technical gotcha question: for example, are the barricades around the parklets compliant with "MUTCD"? were the plans "stamped" by a certified "Professional Engineer"?

This blog also gets down into the weeds and acronyms. I believe I am doing so in service of genuine traffic safety goals (and also in service of expanding our housing supply in an equitable and effective manner) and I believe that I am being open and candid in my writing, so that readers can get a sense for where I'm sharing mainstream third-party information and best-practices vs. where I'm adding my own "spin on the ball" as an opinionated advocate. I don't believe Councilmember Herrera Spencer honors similar commitments in her own comments on the dais, in her emails with constituents or city staff, or in her votes — but let's acknowledge her preparations, her strategic thinking, and her diligent pursuit of her goals.

Attending all candidate forums

While Alameda's councilmembers and mayors serve in non-partisan roles, it's not hard to discern to which national political party they each belong. So seeing Councilmember Herrera Spencer show up at the City of Alameda Democratic Club's candidate forum may be a bit of a head-scratcher. As she's clearly not a Dem, why try to earn that group's endorsement? Because Councilmember Herrera Spencer works hard to take her strategic messages to voters, wherever and whoever they are.

Her participation in that candidate forum (video on Facebook) accomplished at least two goals:

1. Always be present to shape the outcome. When the moderator asked what candidates would do to improve the tenor of City Council meetings, none of the newcomer candidates in attendance mentioned Councilmember Herrera Spencer's outsized responsibility for some of the worst dynamics at council meetings. She was right there next to them. They apparently didn't feel comfortable criticizing her (in her capacity as an elected official). Instead, the newcomer candidates all gave vague and general responses.
2. Tell people to be afraid — very afraid! Councilmember Herrera Spencer concluded that event by speaking about a particular crime statistic that is going up up up. Dedicated listeners to City Council meetings will also recognize that this is how she sometimes uses the open time at the very end of the meetings during the "council communications" agenda item: riffing about any one crime statistic that is going in the bad/awful/scary direction (while ignoring all crime stats heading in good directions; here's a recent Alameda Post article on how often some crime statistics fluctuate.) At the City of Alameda Dem Club event, she used her closing statement to link her chosen scary trend du jour with the upcoming recall vote on Alameda County's duly elected District Attorney, which she eagerly endorsed.

Did she earn the endorsement of the local Democratic Party club? Obviously not. Did she show up to utilize any and all the airtime offered to her to speak in front of local voters? Yes.

We need to work similarly hard

This blog post isn't written for Councilmember Herrera Spencer — I'm not here to argue with her.

This blog post is written for candidates for City Council and for "high information" voters who may not appreciate Councilmember Herrera Spencer as an elected official.

To try to better understand her as an elected official, you probably also need to respect her as an elected official — one who puts in a good deal of energy and thought.

Next, look closely at the tactics she uses to communicate with constituents and the strategies she uses to influence City Council meetings. Many of those tactics and strategies do require a lack of shame – but some just involve showing up at meetings, putting in the time to actually read the agenda packet, and creatively and strategically deciding how to frame one's support (or more often in her case: opposition) to each agenda item.

For the candidates for City Council: are you willing – and able – to put in a similar amount of preparation and effort? if you are elected alongside Councilmember Herrera Spencer, are you ready for this type of preparation and verbal jousting to be part of your life every 2 weeks for 4 years? or better yet: instead of just individually auditioning for departing Councilmember Malia Vella's open seat, are you strategically working together to get two fresh voices onto City Council in place of Councilmember Herrera Spencer?

For "high information" voters: We all already know that then-school-board-trustee Herrera Spencer voiced and voted with targeted bigotry against LGBT families. We all already know that as mayor she made offensive remarks about Filipino-Americans when welcoming visiting dignitaries. I mention that latter item because I thought about linking to a 2015 news article about it when I was writing about this week's City Council meeting and the noticed the agenda item for a "Proclamation Declaring October 2024 as Filipino-American History Month." But then I thought about it some more, deleted my snarky aside, and returned to this blog's agenda: We probably need to persuade voters based primarily on concrete recent city business, and we probably shouldn't get too snide in the process. "Low information" voters probably only care so much about actions from 2009 and 2015. When protecting marriage equality in California was discussed at the Sept 17, 2024 council meeting, Councilmember Herrera Spencer spoke up briefly and cheerfully to mention that as an elected official she can officiate weddings and she's glad to officiate at LGBT weddings! Note that she did not acknowledge or apologize for many years of her well-documented actions taken as an elected official against LGBT residents and families. What she did after making that fig leaf of a statement was to skip recording a vote against the city's endorsement of Prop 3. (Instead she and Vice Mayor Daysog both recorded votes against the city endorsing Prop 5, which would make the process of approving infrastructure bond measures more democratic.) Among the many skills that Councilmember Herrera Spencer has apparently improved over the years as an elected official is better concealing her tracks.

As more residents get interested in the City Council race, across multiple online forums I'm starting to read some posts that come across as laundry lists of dated talking points against Councilmember Herrera Spencer. If you are trying to persuade voters to cast their votes for two of the newcomer candidates and against Councilmember Herrera Spencer, think about which points of reference and which examples carry the most weight today in 2024.

To get two reasonable newcomer candidates on to Alameda City Council involves understanding Councilmember Herrera Spencer as an elected official and appreciating the effort that she puts in. I won't advocate for becoming similarly shameless. I also want to be clear that this post's implicit criticism of Councilmember Herrera Spencer and of Vice Mayor Daysog is about them serving in their public elected capacities (not about them as everyday private individuals). With those caveats, these examples and strategies ought to be motivation to newomer candidates and to advocates to work just as hard.