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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2022-06-28 City Council Emails 701-32 DOCUMENTS IN THIS PACKET INCLUDE: LETTERS FROM CITIZENS TO THE MAYOR OR CITY COUNCIL RESPONSES FROM STAFF TO LETTERS FROM CITIZENS ITEMS FROM MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS ITEMS FROM OTHER COMMITTEES AND AGENCIES ITEMS FROM CITY, COUNTY, STATE, AND REGIONAL AGENCIES Prepared for: 06/28/2022 Document dates: 06/20/2022 – 06/28/2022 Note: Documents for every category may not have been received for packet reproduction in a given week. From:Eileen Kim, PharmD To:Transportation; City Mgr; Council, City Cc:Hur, Mark; onlinelissues@duncansolutions.com Subject:Re: Duncan Solutions taking 10 days for approving RPP parking permit whilst resident potentially gets ticketed 10 days is unacceptableFwd: RPP (Residential Preferential Parking) Program Sticker Date:Monday, June 27, 2022 9:04:30 AM Attachments:image003.png image011.png image012.png image013.png image014.png Receipt RPP.pdf IMG_2786.HEIC Dealer Palo Alto City, We live in downtown Palo Alto and must park our car on the street. Recently my husband got a $53 parking ticket for an expired pass. There was no warning letter. Back in 2021 fall of 2021 I sent an email asking the city about renewing the parking permit and was told the RPP parking permit would be valid until March 2022 even though I would have preferred to have purchased the parking permit in the fall of 2021 (to ensure I didn't forget to purchase one in March 2022). Because of my husband's parking ticket, today at 5:30 am I went onto the Duncan Solutions website and submitted all our documentation and application for a parking RPP permit for downtown Palo Alto. Surprisingly, the website said it would take up to 10 days for applications to process, so I then waited until 8 am to call Duncan Solutions. I was told via phone by Duncan Solutions there is nothing more they can do to expedite the application and to wait for the application to undergo approval which can take up to 10 days. I then called Mark Hur in City of Palo Alto Transportations and was pointedly asked why I didn't renew my RPP parking permit in April (spring) of this year and told how the City of Palo Alto had been kind enough to give residents a 3 month grace period. He didn't really help me with the issue of waiting 10 days and potentially being ticketed by the City of Palo Alto while I wait for Duncan Solutions to process my application. Instead I was told I need to wait for Duncan Solutions to take the 10 days to review my application and get a permit for parking. One can assume given the pandemic people can forget not renewing their RPP application in time. I can even understand the city saying they won't give out a warning first and instead of just ticking the first offense. But to ask a resident to risk getting a $53 parking ticket for 10 more days while Duncan solutions "reviews" my application is unacceptable. That is a potential $530 dollars of parking fines while Duncan Solutions takes time to review my parking permit application (assuming they count day 1 as today) while I wait for a RPP parking permit approval. The company should be called Duncan NO SOLUTIONS. Also, a 3 month grace period is useless if there is no mailer warning the resident the parking permit is expiring and City of Palo Alto will ticket people. Instead a warning letter on the windshield would have been much more efficacious and a 2 week grace period would have been sufficient (not a 3 month grace period). Please consider using a different 3rd party platform that is more efficient than Duncan Solutions, which takes up to 10 days to process a parking permit application while the resident checks their email on an hourly basis for an approval email. Please find a real solution to this problem. Also 10 days of parking tickets while Duncan Solutions works on my application seems highly unreasonable. Attaching my parking ticket for 1st offense and my application confirmation from 5:40 am this morning (a process I started at 5am by creating an account after fruitlessly trying to figure out my account number because City of Palo Alto website didn't say there was a new RPP process in place). Sincerely, Eileen Kim 650-283-8207 Eileen Kim, PharmD eileen.rph@gmail.com ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Hur, Mark <Mark.Hur@cityofpaloalto.org> Date: Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 11:45 AM Subject: RE: RPP (Residential Preferential Parking) Program Sticker To: Eileen Kim, PharmD <eileen.rph@gmail.com> Hello Eileen, Thank you for contacting the Office of Transportation. As of October 1st, all vehicles must display a permit to park longer than two hours in the district. If you have a valid permit, expiring March 31, 2021, you can use this permit until March 31, 2022. No further action is needed for the extension. Our enforcement staff will honor permits with the old expiration date until next Spring. Please let me know if you have any questions. Mark Hur Operations Lead Office of Transportation (650) 329-2520 | mark.hur@cityofpaloalto.org www.cityofpaloalto.org/parking Please think of the environment before printing this email Use Palo Alto 311 to report items you’d like the City to fix!! Download the app or click here to make a service request. From: Eileen Kim, PharmD <eileen.rph@gmail.com> Sent: Sunday, September 5, 2021 3:03 PM To: cityofpaloalto@service.govdelivery.com; Transportation <Transportation@CityofPaloAlto.org> Subject: Re: RPP (Residential Preferential Parking) Program Sticker CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious ofopening attachments and clicking on links. Hello, We live at 651 Homer Avenue, Palo Alto, CA, 94301. We are allowed 1 free RPP permit sticker per year. The update PDF sent from the city stats our permit on our car expiring March 2021 will be extended to March 2022. However, the city website states that starting October 1st, 2021, tickets will be given out. Do we need a new sticker/permit for 2021? I do not want us to be ticketed starting October 1, 2021. Thank you, Eileen Kim 650-283-8207 Eileen Kim, PharmD eileen.rph@gmail.com On Thu, Mar 18, 2021 at 7:49 PM City of Palo Alto <cityofpaloalto@service.govdelivery.com> wrote: Hello RPP Participant, Please review the attached flyer for an update on the Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) program. Thank you, City of Palo Alto, Office of Transportation Spring RPP Update.pdf The City has a variety of e-news topics that may be of interest to you. Join other e-news topics, update your subscriptions, modify your password or e-mail address, or stop subscriptions at any time on your Subscriber Preferences Page. You will need to use your e-mail address to log in. If you have questions or problems with the subscription service, please contact subscriberhelp.govdelivery.com. This service is provided to you at no charge by the City of Palo Alto. This email was sent to eileen.rph@gmail.com using GovDelivery Communications Cloud on behalf of: City of Palo Alto · 250 Hamilton Ave · Palo Alto, CA 94301 · 650-329-2100 6/27/22, 8:13 AM https://duncanimageenforcement.com/PernritSites/PaloAltoPetmits/Home/Receipt Thank you! Your confirmation number is 202212845 IMPORTANT: Print this order confirmation for your records. A receipt has also been emailed to you. Your order will be reviewed and you will be notified of the approval outcome within 10 business days. Once your order has been approved you may log back into this site to pay for this order. Contact Information EILEEN KIM Order Summary Order Number 202212845 Purchase Date 6/27/2022 Convenience Fee (per permit) $1.00 Purchase Total $51.00 Type 2022-23 DOWNTOWN ANNUAL RESIDENT VIRTUAL Start Date 4/1/2022 End Date Fee 3/31/2023 $50.00 Status Approval Requested Status Date 6/27/2022 Vehicle 8DZR189 FAQ Contact Us Privacy Policy Select Language Si' Powered by Google Translate https://duncanimageenforcement.com/PermitSites/PaloAltoPemvts/Home/Receipt 1/1 From:Allan Seid To:DENNIS LEE Subject:Fwd: From the New Yorker: The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin Date:Friday, June 24, 2022 10:45:44 AM Attachments:The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin The New Yorker.pdf CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Allan Seid <allanseid734@gmail.com> Date: Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 6:58 AM Subject: Fwd: From the New Yorker: The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin To: Channing House Bulletin Board <CHBB850@googlegroups.com>, CHOpinion CHOpinion <CHOpinion@googlegroups.com> From: ALLAN SEID, Dirk Bennett Date: Thu, Jun 23, 2022 at 8:13 PM Subject: From the New Yorker: The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin Source: New Yorker-6/23/22 https://bit.ly/3tZlwtE Please note: PDF of this article is at bottom of this message. The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin Chin’s killing, forty years ago, has inspired documentaries, television, young-adult books, and countless works of scholarship. What do we want from his story, and the people who tell it? By Hua Hsu June 23, 2022 Helen Zia moved to Detroit in 1976. She was a twenty-four-year-old medical-school dropout who had spent the previous few years as an organizer in Boston, working to desegregate construction sites in the South End. She ended up in the Midwest because friends had told her to go to “the heartland” if she wanted to truly understand social change, and upon arriving she found work at an auto plant. These were difficult yet coveted jobs that often got passed through families, and the steady rise of the car industry in the United States meant that workers with little more than a high-school diploma could receive good benefits and healthy pensions— maybe even enough money for a vacation home, or an R.V. Detroit’s Asian American population was small and scattered, but this didn’t bother Zia as much as the lack of good Chinese food. At the time, American automakers were starting to face grave troubles. Gas prices had abruptly spiked in 1974, owing to the oil crisis, and consumers had begun looking to imported, fuel-efficient cars from Germany and Japan. Detroit’s inability to adapt—dramatized by several high-profile failures, such as the Ford Pinto and the Chevrolet Vega—exposed systemic problems that had been easy to ignore during boom times. Struggling corporations blamed workers and their unions, and workers pointed to deteriorating factories that hadn’t been modernized in decades. Politicians paved the way for American jobs to be shipped overseas, but continued to point fingers at Middle Eastern oil suppliers and Japanese automakers. “I could just see the decay and despair everywhere,” Zia told me, from her home in the Bay Area. Today, she’s a prominent journalist, activist, and author. But in 1980, she was just another laid-off auto worker, trying to make ends meet. She stood in unemployment lines that wrapped around city blocks, even in the dead of winter. Homes were abandoned. If a car was left out for too long, it would be stripped down in no time. “This was the Motor City,” she said. “People know how to build cars, and they knew how to take them apart.” She heard rumors of motorists getting shot at on the freeway for driving Japanese-made cars. A local radio d.j. offered frustrated Detroiters the chance to take their aggressions out on a Toyota with a sledgehammer. It wasn’t unusual for politicians or business leaders to reference Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima when talking about trade tensions with Japan. Foreign cars were prohibited from entering the parking lot of the United Auto Workers’ headquarters. Zia was scanning the headlines on July 1, 1982, when she came across something she had never seen before in a Detroit newspaper: an Asian face. It was the tragic story of Vincent Chin, a twenty-seven-year-old draftsman who had been out at his bachelor party the previous weekend. He got into a “scuffle” at a strip club with a white man in his forties named Ronald Ebens and his twentysomething stepson Michael Nitz. Afterward, Ebens and Nitz chased Chin to a nearby McDonald’s parking lot, where Ebens beat him unconscious with a baseball bat. Chin died four days later. Among the two dozen witnesses to the attack were two off-duty cops. “We’re not sure exactly what happened,” a local detective said at the time. Zia clipped the article. “There was nothing about his race,” she recalled, beyond mention that Chin worked part time at a Chinese restaurant. “But there was a picture of him.” Ebens, a foreman at a Chrysler plant, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and Nitz, who was working at a furniture company, pleaded no contest. They claimed that Chin had started the brawl by punching Ebens. At the sentencing, there were no prosecutors present to speak for Chin. Judge Charles Kaufman, the presiding judge for Wayne County, ordered Ebens and Nitz to each pay a three-thousand-dollar fine along with court costs and serve three years’ probation. “We’re talking about a man here who’s held down a responsible job with the same company for 17 or 18 years and his son, who is employed and a part-time student,” Kaufman told reporters. “These men are not going to go out and harm somebody else.” Many were appalled by the lenient sentence. Zia sought out leaders from Detroit’s Chinatown and local lawyers to support Lily, Chin’s grieving mother. “There was absolutely no national voice for Asian Americans back then,” Zia said, and Detroit’s Asian American population was fractured according to ethnicity and nationality. Zia and a group of community leaders—including Kin Yee, a Detroit Chinatown fixture, and Roland Hwang, a local attorney—formed American Citizens for Justice to pressure the federal government to investigate Chin’s killing as a civil-rights violation. Liza Chan, an attorney, represented A.C.J. Zia, who shortly thereafter got a job at a local magazine, worried that her advocacy would jeopardize her journalistic career. She wrote an article about the case under a pseudonym for a different publication, to stir up interest. “There was a lot of hesitation about coming together initially,” Zia said, describing an early A.C.J. meeting of Detroit’s Asian American community at Ford’s world headquarters, where someone had access to a large dining room. Young professionals from the suburbs, elderly conservatives, and Marxist activists all came to learn about what could be done. A representative from the Department of Justice explained the burden of proof required for a civil-rights case: they would have to establish that the attack was in some way racially motivated. At the time, legal experts were skeptical that civil-rights law could apply to the beating of an Asian American. After the D.O.J. representative left, the attendees debated their options. Everyone was already in agreement that the culprits had been let off easy because they were white. Ebens and Nitz had driven around for a half hour searching for Chin, at one point paying a third man to help find him, suggesting that this was more than a heat-of-the-moment dispute gone bad. Yet Judge Kaufman said that Ebens and Nitz “aren’t the kind of men you send to jail.” Some people at the meeting expressed wariness about bringing up racism, fearful that their community would now be branded as troublemakers. Zia recalled an older man, an engineer at General Motors originally from Hong Kong, who got up to speak. “I have worked at this company all my adult life,” Zia remembered him saying. “I have trained every supervisor I’ve ever had . . . all of these young white guys. I had to train them to be my boss. And I knew more than every one of them put together. They never once considered me. It hurt, but I never said a thing. This time, I have to speak up. This time, we all have to speak up, because this could be any one of us being killed.” Forty years later, the killing of Vincent Chin remains a definitive turning point for Asian Americans. This month, A.C.J. hosted a four-day commemoration in Detroit, honoring Chin’s life and the movement that arose to seek justice for him. Even before the recent spate of incidents of anti-Asian violence, Chin was a versatile, iconic presence in virtually any discussion of Asian American history, meaningful across political and geographical divides. Asian American fraternities have restaged aspects of the attack on Chin as a way to forge brotherhood, and law students reënact the subsequent trial as a way of casting light on the blind spots of jurisprudence. In recent years, interest in Chin has surged, not just as context for the attacks on Asian Americans but as a ripped-from-the- headlines story that artists and content creators are eager to revisit. Multiple Chin-inspired scripts have floated around Hollywood. Last year, the producers for one of them, “Hold Still, Vincent,” faced controversy when they released a podcast version of their script without contacting Chin’s estate, which Zia now oversees. Chin has come to represent an origin story for Asian Americans, but also a kind of myth that gains resonance as it is shorn of details. The filmmaker Christine Choy was reading a newspaper in New York’s Chinatown in 1983 when she learned of the campaign that emerged in protest of Kaufman’s verdict. Choy, an experienced documentarian inspired by leftist liberation movements, volunteered to make a short film for A.C.J.’s fund-raising efforts. Upon arriving in Detroit, though, she realized that the case was much more complex than she’d initially assumed. She secured funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to make a full-length documentary. The Chin campaign had a galvanizing effect on Asian American communities throughout the eighties. Lily Chin travelled around the country, sharing her story. She had moved to Michigan after the Second World War, as the bride of C. W. Hing Chin, who had served in the U.S. Army. They worked in a small laundry together. Lily was unable to have children, so they adopted Vincent from a Chinese orphanage. When he was killed, she was still mourning the passing of her husband, who had died in 1981. She wasn’t a particularly political person prior to her son’s death, and was much more comfortable speaking Chinese than English. But those around her drew inspiration from her unrelenting, impassioned pleas for justice. Preparation for the federal civil-rights suit revealed just how sloppy the initial investigation had been. The police had neglected to interview Angela (Starlene) Rudolph and Racine Colwell, two of the dancers who had been at the club that night. Rudolph, who is Black, recalled that the encounter had begun when Ebens referred to Chin as “boy.” (Later, Ebens would claim that he was defending Rudolph’s honor, and that Chin and his party were disrespecting her, possibly because of her race.) Colwell, who is white, alleged she had heard Ebens tell Chin and his friend Jimmy Choi that it was “because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work,” raising the possibility that they had been targeted for their race. There was evidence that Ebens had called Chin a “Chink” and a “Nip.” In the 1984 federal trial, Ebens was sentenced to twenty-five years for violating Chin’s civil rights, and Nitz was acquitted of all charges. But, in 1986, Ebens’s conviction was overturned after an appeals court ruled that lawyers had improperly coached prosecution witnesses. Because of the local publicity around Chin’s case, the retrial was held in Cincinnati, where a jury cleared Ebens, in May, 1987. Choy approached Ebens with her camera as he left the courthouse. “I think he was a little shocked to see me,” Choy told me. “And he came down and he said, ‘Oh, you’re the one who keeps asking me to be filmed.’ ” She said that he invited her to a “celebration” he was having at a nearby bar. Choy wasn’t allowed to film the victory party, but a few weeks later she went to Ebens’s house for a sitdown. After four years of waiting to speak with him, Choy felt “completely numb,” if a little anxious—her equipment began malfunctioning just as she hit Record. She found him arrogant and smug. “I felt like a real jerk, being in jail, knowing the next day was Father’s Day,” Ebens explains to her in the footage from that day. For Lily Chin and A.C.J., the only legal recourse that remained, after Ebens had seemingly escaped harsh punishment in both local and federal criminal court, was a civil suit for wrongful death. Nitz reached a settlement in March, 1987, to pay Chin’s estate $65,600. In a separate settlement four months later, Ebens agreed to pay Lily Chin a total of $1.5 million, giving over a percentage of his monthly wages so long as he was employed. “It is my fervent wish,” Ebens told Michael Moore, in an article for the Detroit Free Press, “that I live long enough to pay off the entire amount.” At this point, Ebens hadn’t had a job in five years, and he hinted to Moore that he felt no motivation to find one. (“That’ll be when I’m 672 years old.”) He told Moore that he didn’t understand the supposed “plight” of Asian Americans, saying, “The only ones I had ever met are the ones in the Chinese restaurants, and they were always nice and I was always nice to them.” For many, the “plight” faced by Asian Americans was just now coming into focus. The Chin campaign was the first national, cross-generational, pan-ethnic mobilization of Asian American identity, a category that had arisen only in the late sixties. There would be other victims of attacks that seemed racially motivated: Thong Hy Huynh, a seventeen-year-old high- school student in Davis, California, who was stabbed during a brawl with white students; Paul Wu, a thirty-nine-year-old Chinese American who was taunted and then stabbed to death after a dispute in San Francisco; the defacing of various Asian churches; the harassment of Vietnamese fishermen in the Bay Area, Monterey, and Texas; the 1989 Cleveland School shooting in Stockton, California, when a twenty-four-year-old white man, who resented Asian immigrants, opened fire on an elementary-school playground, killing five children, all Southeast Asian, and wounding many others. As a result of the movement that emerged after Chin, more people began wondering if these events were scattered and isolated, or part of a wave—a history unto itself. Chin’s story became a source of inspiration for artists, writers, and activists. The pianist Jon Jang dedicated his 1984 album, “Are You Chinese or Charlie Chan?,” to Vincent and Lily Chin and “all Asian brothers and sisters who are struggling together to create a better world for all people.” The following year, “The Twilight Zone” featured an episode titled “Wong’s Lost and Found Emporium,” adapted from a short story by the writer William F. Wu, in which an embittered Chinese American character explores a mystical emporium in search of his lost “compassion.” He explains to a fellow-wanderer that it disappeared after he learned about Vincent Chin. The case also made Asian American lives accessible to other communities. Jesse Jackson was an early supporter of the campaign, famously appearing alongsideLily at an event in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In 1987, David Dinkins, then the Manhattan borough president, and the civil-rights leader Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., each likened Chin’s killing to that of Michael Griffith, a twenty-three-year-old Black man who was beaten by a group of white youths in the Howard Beach section of Queens. Armed with tire irons and bats, the teen-agers chased Griffith onto the highway, where he was struck by a car and killed. But “people did not just magically come together,” Zia said. She recalled going on a popular Black radio talk show with Chan, the attorney, to share Chin’s story. “When we met with people in the Black community, we were asked a lot of valid questions, like, ‘Where were you when we were fighting for civil rights?’ ” She would point to histories of connection and solidarity between their communities. “Today, we don’t even have these conversations.” The documentary “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” premièred at film festivals in 1988, and aired nationally on PBS the following year. Choy and her co- director, Renee Tajima-Peña, immersed themselves in the nuances of the case, resisting the temptation to turn Chin’s death into a simple parable of victimhood. Instead, they sought a “Rashômon”-like approach, weaving together as many perspectives as possible, from Chin’s family and friends to Ebens and Nitz. “At first, we all thought Vincent was just minding his own business, and they came up and beat him to death and then got off with no jail time,” Tajima-Peña, who teaches at U.C.L.A. and has since made a series of award-winning documentaries about the Asian American experience, said. In reality, Chin defied stereotype, a confident former football player who, according to spectators, was more than holding his own against both Ebens and Nitz in their initial fight outside the club. He wasn’t an engineer, as was often reported, or a high-achieving exemplar of the model-minority myth; he was a draftsman who had gone to vocational school. In the film, Ebens and his supporters maintain that the incident was a barroom brawl gone bad, not a hate crime. As Tajima-Peña pointed out, Ebens had a good job, a family, and no criminal record: “Why would he hunt somebody down for maybe forty minutes and beat his brains out? Why would he take that kind of risk?” Could hate really have been the sole answer? “There were the personalities, the drinking, the testosterone in the room,” she said. She thinks race can be a trigger, “turning a yellow light into a green light.” It becomes complicated trying to apply the legal category of the hate crime, and its necessary burden of proving intent, to such a moment. Maybe it was the shame of getting upstaged by Chin and his boisterous friends, and then, as Tajima-Peña put it, “getting whupped by this Asian guy,” that spurred Ebens’s ultimate flash of rage. “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” was an instant classic, a film that still feels shocking and relevant to every new generation of viewers. Many have come to see it as the definitive chronicle of how the Asian American community came together. Choy, who currently teaches at N.Y.U., doesn’t feel that connection herself. “I never identify myself as an Asian American,” she explained to me. “I’m an immigrant.” Although many supporters saw themselves in Vincent Chin, Choy felt more affinity for his mother, who moved back to China in the late eighties, having exhausted her legal options. Lily had lived in the U.S. for more than thirty years, but said that it was too sad for her to remain there. “It was nominated for an Oscar,” Choy said of her documentary, “and we didn’t get shit.” The Best Documentary Feature award went to Marcel Ophuls’s “Hotel Terminus.” “I was so disappointed. I didn’t know what to say. I just cried all night. I didn’t even go to the party. I was sad for Lily.” There are now books about Chin’s story for young adults, as well as countless chapters in history books and academic monographs. Besides Choy and Tajima-Peña’s 1988 classic, there is also Curtis Chin’s 2009 documentary, “Vincent Who?,” which updates the story for millennial viewers. The 2019 short film “Justice for Vincent” dramatizes the night and the case, inventing a male protagonist inspired by Zia and Chan, as well as the justice movement’s “many lesser known male figures.” A recent episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” centered on an anti-Asian hate crime makes reference to Chin, with a scene of Asian doctors discussing their “long history of being outsiders.” Years ago, when Tajima-Peña started work on a series about Asian American history for PBS, she toyed with the idea of going beyond Chin’s story—not because its importance had diminished but because she wanted to shed light on lesser-known moments of anti-Asian violence, such as the 1989 Cleveland School shooting, or the 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Chin is a dominant figure in any discussion of Asian American identity, yet he is largely unknown outside of it. Tajima- Peña and the producers eventually agreed that Chin represented a “tipping point” for the community. “We had to do it,” she said. But, as Chin’s story has become widely known, it’s also become a kind of political Rorschach test among Asian Americans. For some of us, the campaign for justice is a reminder of the necessity of pan-Asian solidarity and multiracial alliance. Others focus more closely on Chin, seeing him as a victim of a uniquely anti-Asian xenophobia and his death as a reason for Asian Americans to close ranks and take matters into our own hands. Chin’s death is invoked by both Asian American prison abolitionists and pro-cop community groups; it has been summoned as a point of comparison for both the killing of George Floyd and the conviction of Peter Liang, the New York City police officer who killed Akai Gurley, an innocent, unarmed Black man in a Brooklyn housing project. Tajima-Peña, for her part, has grown wary of how Asian Americans “sometimes cherry- pick what we see as anti-Asian racism.” She continued, “It bothered me that Asian Americans were using the case as grievance: ‘we’re being targeted, people don’t like us, we need to be protected.’ ” As the appetite for Asian American stories grows—spurred by increased visibility in the wake of anti-Asian violence, or corporate pushes for easy- to-follow race-explainer content—we are sure to see more viral retellings of Chin’s killing that strip away some of the night’s complexity. For years, Ebens and Nitz have been identified as unemployed auto workers, even though they were both working at the time they attacked Chin. Of the two photos that often circulate of Chin, one, which features him in thick glasses, a suit, and an innocent grin, was taken in high school. The other— without glasses, and with shaggier hair and a more cocksure expression—is closer to how he looked the night of his beating. Zia wonders if outlets or activists who use the former photo are trying to make him appear more of a respectable “model minority.” Zia has seen a notable uptick in interest in the story over the past few years. Last year’s controversy around “Hold Still, Vincent,” the podcast and proposed film backed by some of Hollywood’s Asian American élite, highlighted some complications of this new attention. “The death of Vincent Chin occurred during a dark time in America’s history with unsettling parallels to what we have seen happen over the past year with the stoking of hatred towards Asians and the scapegoating of Asians for Covid- 19,” the actress Gemma Chan, one of the project’s producers, told Deadline in April, 2021. “It feels more urgent than ever to bring Vincent’s story to a wider audience.” The podcast, which features Chan, Kelly Marie Tran, Stephanie Hsu, and David Harbour, was released in late May, 2022. But it was pulled about a week later, after Zia, among others, criticized the producers for not at least checking in with “community people who lived these experiences.” Zia didn’t find out about the podcast until the episodes, in which she was portrayed by Tran, were published, and she started receiving congratulatory messages from friends who’d assumed she was involved. Annie Tan, one of Chin’s cousins, tweeted that she found the title triggering. “One of the guys held him down while the other bashed my cousin’s brains into the street,” she wrote. “I honestly don’t know why this podcast is called ‘Hold Still, Vincent.’ ” Everybody knows who killed Vincent Chin. But the narrative of why it happened, and the significance of what came next, remains convoluted. It has become a microcosm of the Asian American community’s experience, and not just for what the events of the eighties evoke about discrimination, the potential for violence, and the struggle for justice. It’s also a story about the ongoing quest for visibility, the desire to make an oft-overlooked experience relatable or resonant to those outside of it. Zia and Tajima-Peña have expressed some weariness over the proliferation of Chin-related media, such as “Hold Still, Vincent.” This might seem ironic, given their role in keeping his memory alive. (Zia is currently developing her own television series, drawing from her experiences.) But their concern is with the single-minded focus on Chin’s victimhood. “One of the reasons that I continue to talk about all this is because I don’t want the legacy of Vincent Chin to stay in the experience of racism and injustice,” Zia explained to me. “That’s not the only part of his legacy. The major part is that our community did something about it. We came together.” When I learned about Chin, as a college student in the mid-nineties, I took that togetherness for granted. The brutality of the attack seemed to translate easily within the community—my parents, who came to the U.S. in the seventies and had little awareness of Asian American milestones, remembered reading about it in the Chinese-language newspapers—and beyond. When my peers and I protested the killing of Kuan Chung Kao by the Rohnert Park police, in 1997, maybe we were seeking our own Chin- like moment, too—a moment of injustice so egregious that it could make a community of disparate groups feel coherent and unified. That desire for a straightforward, paradigm-shifting moment persists today; perhaps it’s even stronger in the age of #StopAAPIHate and the pursuit of the stickiest, most viral hashtags and clearest instances of outrage. Stories such as Chin’s can make Asian Americanness legible to outsiders, and also to ourselves. It could have been any one of us—this was the realization which compelled so many Asian Americans in the early eighties, many of whom had rarely thought about the injustices of racism, to come together and wonder what could be done. That same sentiment has roused many Asian Americans over the past few years, inspiring some of us to seek solidarity and coalition, and others to take up arms in self-defense. But the memory of Chin isn’t sustained solely by the shock of violence, the terror of that one night in Detroit. We remember because of the relationships that grew out of that trauma, and the slow, boring organizing that gets retold from a distance as a spontaneous, united uprising. The legacy persists because of the journalistic career Zia put on hold to devote her time to Chin’s case, because of a difficult, tedious meeting in a Ford dining room among immigrants from different countries who felt like they shared little in common—because of the conversations among families and strangers about why Chin’s death could not be in vain. It could have been any one of us. It can be all of us, together. ♦ 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 1 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…477f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B Essay The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin Chin’s killing, forty years ago, has inspired documentaries, television, young-adult books, and countless works of scholarship. What do we want from his story, and the people who tell it? By Hua Hsu June 23, 2022 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 2 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…477f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B H Illustration by Ran Zheng; Source photograph courtesy The Estate of Vincent and Lily Chin elen Zia moved to Detroit in 1976. She was a twenty-four- year-old medical-school dropout who had spent the previous few years as an organizer in Boston, working to desegregate construction sites in the South End. She ended up in the Midwest because friends had told her to go to “the heartland” if she wanted to truly understand social change, and upon arriving she found work at an auto plant. These were difficult yet coveted jobs that often got passed through families, and the steady rise of the car industry in the United States meant that workers with little more than a high-school diploma could receive good bene"ts and healthy pensions—maybe even enough money for a vacation home, or an R.V. Detroit’s Asian American population was small and scattered, but this didn’t bother Zia as much as the lack of good Chinese food. At the time, American automakers were starting to face grave troubles. Gas prices had abruptly spiked in 1974, owing to the oil crisis, and consumers had begun looking to imported, fuel-efficient cars from Germany and Japan. Detroit’s inability to adapt— 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 3 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…477f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B dramatized by several high-pro"le failures, such as the Ford Pinto and the Chevrolet Vega—exposed systemic problems that had been easy to ignore during boom times. Struggling corporations blamed workers and their unions, and workers pointed to deteriorating factories that hadn’t been modernized in decades. Politicians paved the way for American jobs to be shipped overseas, but continued to point "ngers at Middle Eastern oil suppliers and Japanese automakers. “I could just see the decay and despair everywhere,” Zia told me, from her home in the Bay Area. Today, she’s a prominent journalist, activist, and author. But in 1980, she was just another laid-off auto worker, trying to make ends meet. She stood in unemployment lines that wrapped around city blocks, even in the dead of winter. Homes were abandoned. If a car was left out for too long, it would be stripped down in no time. “This was the Motor City,” she said. “People know how to build cars, and they knew how to take them apart.” She heard rumors of motorists getting shot at on the freeway for driving Japanese-made cars. A local radio d.j. offered frustrated Detroiters the chance to take their aggressions out on a Toyota with a sledgehammer. It wasn’t unusual for politicians or business leaders to reference Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima when talking about trade tensions with Japan. Foreign cars were prohibited from entering the parking lot of the United Auto Workers’ headquarters. Zia was scanning the headlines on July 1, 1982, when she came across something she had never seen before in a Detroit newspaper: an Asian face. It was the tragic story of Vincent Chin, a twenty-seven-year-old draftsman who had been out at his bachelor party the previous 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 4 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…477f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B weekend. He got into a “scuffle” at a strip club with a white man in his forties named Ronald Ebens and his twentysomething stepson Michael Nitz. Afterward, Ebens and Nitz chased Chin to a nearby McDonald’s parking lot, where Ebens beat him unconscious with a baseball bat. Chin died four days later. Among the two dozen witnesses to the attack were two off-duty cops. “We’re not sure exactly what happened,” a local detective said at the time. Zia clipped the article. “There was nothing about his race,” she recalled, beyond mention that Chin worked part time at a Chinese restaurant. “But there was a picture of him.” Ebens, a foreman at a Chrysler plant, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and Nitz, who was working at a furniture company, pleaded no contest. They claimed that Chin had started the brawl by punching Ebens. At the sentencing, there were no prosecutors present to speak for Chin. Judge Charles Kaufman, the presiding judge for Wayne County, ordered Ebens and Nitz to each pay a three-thousand-dollar "ne along with court costs and serve three years’ probation. “We’re talking about a man here who’s held down a responsible job with the same company for 17 or 18 years and his son, who is employed and a part-time student,” Kaufman told reporters. “These men are not going to go out and harm somebody else.” Many were appalled by the lenient sentence. Zia sought out leaders from Detroit’s Chinatown and local lawyers to support Lily, Chin’s grieving mother. “There was absolutely no national voice for Asian Americans back then,” Zia said, and Detroit’s Asian American 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 5 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…477f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B population was fractured according to ethnicity and nationality. Zia and a group of community leaders—including Kin Yee, a Detroit Chinatown "xture, and Roland Hwang, a local attorney—formed American Citizens for Justice to pressure the federal government to investigate Chin’s killing as a civil-rights violation. Liza Chan, an attorney, represented A.C.J. Zia, who shortly thereafter got a job at a local magazine, worried that her advocacy would jeopardize her journalistic career. She wrote an article about the case under a pseudonym for a different publication, to stir up interest. “There was a lot of hesitation about coming together initially,” Zia said, describing an early A.C.J. meeting of Detroit’s Asian American community at Ford’s world headquarters, where someone had access to a large dining room. Young professionals from the suburbs, elderly conservatives, and Marxist activists all came to learn about what could be done. A representative from the Department of Justice explained the burden of proof required for a civil-rights case: they would have to establish that the attack was in some way racially motivated. At the time, legal experts were skeptical that civil-rights law could apply to the beating of an Asian American. After the D.O.J. representative left, the attendees debated their options. Everyone was already in agreement that the culprits had been let off easy because they were white. Ebens and Nitz had driven around for a half hour searching for Chin, at one point paying a third man to help "nd him, suggesting that this was more than a heat-of- the-moment dispute gone bad. Yet Judge Kaufman said that Ebens and Nitz “aren’t the kind of men you send to jail.” Some people at the 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 6 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…477f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B F meeting expressed wariness about bringing up racism, fearful that their community would now be branded as troublemakers. Zia recalled an older man, an engineer at General Motors originally from Hong Kong, who got up to speak. “I have worked at this company all my adult life,” Zia remembered him saying. “I have trained every supervisor I’ve ever had . . . all of these young white guys. I had to train them to be my boss. And I knew more than every one of them put together. They never once considered me. It hurt, but I never said a thing. This time, I have to speak up. This time, we all have to speak up, because this could be any one of us being killed.” orty years later, the killing of Vincent Chin remains a de"nitive turning point for Asian Americans. This month, A.C.J. hosted a four-day commemoration in Detroit, honoring Chin’s life and the movement that arose to seek justice for him. Even before the recent spate of incidents of anti-Asian violence, Chin was a versatile, iconic presence in virtually any discussion of Asian American history, meaningful across political and geographical divides. Asian American fraternities have restaged aspects of the attack on Chin as a way to forge brotherhood, and law students reënact the subsequent trial as a way of casting light on the blind spots of jurisprudence. In recent years, interest in Chin has surged, not just as context for the attacks on Asian Americans but as a ripped-from-the-headlines story that artists and content creators are eager to revisit. Multiple Chin-inspired scripts have %oated around Hollywood. Last year, the producers for one of them, “Hold Still, Vincent,” faced controversy when they released a podcast version of their script without contacting Chin’s 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 7 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…477f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B estate, which Zia now oversees. Chin has come to represent an origin story for Asian Americans, but also a kind of myth that gains resonance as it is shorn of details. The "lmmaker Christine Choy was reading a newspaper in New York’s Chinatown in 1983 when she learned of the campaign that emerged in protest of Kaufman’s verdict. Choy, an experienced documentarian inspired by leftist liberation movements, volunteered to make a short "lm for A.C.J.’s fund-raising efforts. Upon arriving in Detroit, though, she realized that the case was much more complex than she’d initially assumed. She secured funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to make a full-length documentary. The Chin campaign had a galvanizing effect on Asian American communities throughout the eighties. Lily Chin travelled around the country, sharing her story. She had moved to Michigan after the Second World War, as the bride of C. W. Hing Chin, who had served in the U.S. Army. They worked in a small laundry together. Lily was unable to have children, so they adopted Vincent from a Chinese orphanage. When he was killed, she was still mourning the passing of her husband, who had died in 1981. She wasn’t a particularly political person prior to her son’s death, and was much more comfortable speaking Chinese than English. But those around her drew inspiration from her unrelenting, impassioned pleas for justice. Preparation for the federal civil-rights suit revealed just how sloppy the initial investigation had been. The police had neglected to 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 8 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…477f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B interview Angela (Starlene) Rudolph and Racine Colwell, two of the dancers who had been at the club that night. Rudolph, who is Black, recalled that the encounter had begun when Ebens referred to Chin as “boy.” (Later, Ebens would claim that he was defending Rudolph’s honor, and that Chin and his party were disrespecting her, possibly because of her race.) Colwell, who is white, alleged she had heard Ebens tell Chin and his friend Jimmy Choi that it was “because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work,” raising the possibility that they had been targeted for their race. There was evidence that Ebens had called Chin a “Chink” and a “Nip.” In the 1984 federal trial, Ebens was sentenced to twenty-"ve years for violating Chin’s civil rights, and Nitz was acquitted of all charges. But, in 1986, Ebens’s conviction was overturned after an appeals court ruled that lawyers had improperly coached prosecution witnesses. Because of the local publicity around Chin’s case, the retrial was held in Cincinnati, where a jury cleared Ebens, in May, 1987. Choy approached Ebens with her camera as he left the courthouse. “I think he was a little shocked to see me,” Choy told me. “And he came down and he said, ‘Oh, you’re the one who keeps asking me to be "lmed.’ ” She said that he invited her to a “celebration” he was having at a nearby bar. Choy wasn’t allowed to "lm the victory party, but a few weeks later she went to Ebens’s house for a sitdown. After four years of waiting to speak with him, Choy felt “completely numb,” if a little anxious—her equipment began malfunctioning just as she hit Record. She found him arrogant and smug. “I felt like a real jerk, being in jail, knowing 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 9 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…477f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B F the next day was Father’s Day,” Ebens explains to her in the footage from that day. For Lily Chin and A.C.J., the only legal recourse that remained, after Ebens had seemingly escaped harsh punishment in both local and federal criminal court, was a civil suit for wrongful death. Nitz reached a settlement in March, 1987, to pay Chin’s estate $65,600. In a separate settlement four months later, Ebens agreed to pay Lily Chin a total of $1.5 million, giving over a percentage of his monthly wages so long as he was employed. “It is my fervent wish,” Ebens told Michael Moore, in an article for the Detroit Free Press, “that I live long enough to pay off the entire amount.” At this point, Ebens hadn’t had a job in "ve years, and he hinted to Moore that he felt no motivation to "nd one. (“That’ll be when I’m 672 years old.”) He told Moore that he didn’t understand the supposed “plight” of Asian Americans, saying, “The only ones I had ever met are the ones in the Chinese restaurants, and they were always nice and I was always nice to them.” or many, the “plight” faced by Asian Americans was just now coming into focus. The Chin campaign was the "rst national, cross-generational, pan-ethnic mobilization of Asian American identity, a category that had arisen only in the late sixties. There would be other victims of attacks that seemed racially motivated: Thong Hy Huynh, a seventeen-year-old high-school student in Davis, California, who was stabbed during a brawl with white students; Paul Wu, a thirty-nine-year-old Chinese American who was 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 10 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…77f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B taunted and then stabbed to death after a dispute in San Francisco; the defacing of various Asian churches; the harassment of Vietnamese "shermen in the Bay Area, Monterey, and Texas; the 1989 Cleveland School shooting in Stockton, California, when a twenty-four-year-old white man, who resented Asian immigrants, opened "re on an elementary-school playground, killing "ve children, all Southeast Asian, and wounding many others. As a result of the movement that emerged after Chin, more people began wondering if these events were scattered and isolated, or part of a wave—a history unto itself. Chin’s story became a source of inspiration for artists, writers, and activists. The pianist Jon Jang dedicated his 1984 album, “Are You Chinese or Charlie Chan?,” to Vincent and Lily Chin and “all Asian brothers and sisters who are struggling together to create a better world for all people.” The following year, “The Twilight Zone” featured an episode titled “Wong’s Lost and Found Emporium,” adapted from a short story by the writer William F. Wu, in which an embittered Chinese American character explores a mystical emporium in search of his lost “compassion.” He explains to a fellow-wanderer that it disappeared after he learned about Vincent Chin. The case also made Asian American lives accessible to other communities. Jesse Jackson was an early supporter of the campaign, famously appearing alongside Lily at an event in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In 1987, David Dinkins, then the Manhattan borough president, and the civil-rights leader Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., each likened Chin’s killing to that of Michael Griffith, a twenty-three-year- old Black man who was beaten by a group of white youths in the 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 11 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…77f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B Howard Beach section of Queens. Armed with tire irons and bats, the teen-agers chased Griffith onto the highway, where he was struck by a car and killed. But “people did not just magically come together,” Zia said. She recalled going on a popular Black radio talk show with Chan, the attorney, to share Chin’s story. “When we met with people in the Black community, we were asked a lot of valid questions, like, ‘Where were you when we were "ghting for civil rights?’ ” She would point to histories of connection and solidarity between their communities. “Today, we don’t even have these conversations.” The documentary “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” premièred at "lm festivals in 1988, and aired nationally on PBS the following year. Choy and her co-director, Renee Tajima-Peña, immersed themselves in the nuances of the case, resisting the temptation to turn Chin’s death into a simple parable of victimhood. Instead, they sought a “Rashômon”-like approach, weaving together as many perspectives as possible, from Chin’s family and friends to Ebens and Nitz. “At "rst, we all thought Vincent was just minding his own business, and they came up and beat him to death and then got off with no jail time,” Tajima-Peña, who teaches at U.C.L.A. and has since made a series of award-winning documentaries about the Asian American experience, said. In reality, Chin de"ed stereotype, a con"dent former football player who, according to spectators, was more than holding his own against both Ebens and Nitz in their initial "ght outside the club. He wasn’t an engineer, as was often reported, or a high-achieving exemplar of the model-minority myth; he was a draftsman who had gone to vocational school. 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 12 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…77f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B In the "lm, Ebens and his supporters maintain that the incident was a barroom brawl gone bad, not a hate crime. As Tajima-Peña pointed out, Ebens had a good job, a family, and no criminal record: “Why would he hunt somebody down for maybe forty minutes and beat his brains out? Why would he take that kind of risk?” Could hate really have been the sole answer? “There were the personalities, the drinking, the testosterone in the room,” she said. She thinks race can be a trigger, “turning a yellow light into a green light.” It becomes complicated trying to apply the legal category of the hate crime, and its necessary burden of proving intent, to such a moment. Maybe it was the shame of getting upstaged by Chin and his boisterous friends, and then, as Tajima-Peña put it, “getting whupped by this Asian guy,” that spurred Ebens’s ultimate %ash of rage. “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” was an instant classic, a "lm that still feels shocking and relevant to every new generation of viewers. Many have come to see it as the de"nitive chronicle of how the Asian American community came together. Choy, who currently teaches at N.Y.U., doesn’t feel that connection herself. “I never identify myself as an Asian American,” she explained to me. “I’m an immigrant.” Although many supporters saw themselves in Vincent Chin, Choy felt more affinity for his mother, who moved back to China in the late eighties, having exhausted her legal options. Lily had lived in the U.S. for more than thirty years, but said that it was too sad for her to remain there. “It was nominated for an Oscar,” Choy said of her documentary, “and we didn’t get shit.” The Best Documentary Feature award went to 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 13 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…77f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B T Marcel Ophuls’s “Hotel Terminus.” “I was so disappointed. I didn’t know what to say. I just cried all night. I didn’t even go to the party. I was sad for Lily.” here are now books about Chin’s story for young adults, as well as countless chapters in history books and academic monographs. Besides Choy and Tajima-Peña’s 1988 classic, there is also Curtis Chin’s 2009 documentary, “Vincent Who?,” which updates the story for millennial viewers. The 2019 short "lm “Justice for Vincent” dramatizes the night and the case, inventing a male protagonist inspired by Zia and Chan, as well as the justice movement’s “many lesser known male "gures.” A recent episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” centered on an anti-Asian hate crime makes reference to Chin, with a scene of Asian doctors discussing their “long history of being outsiders.” Years ago, when Tajima-Peña started work on a series about Asian American history for PBS, she toyed with the idea of going beyond Chin’s story—not because its importance had diminished but because she wanted to shed light on lesser-known moments of anti-Asian violence, such as the 1989 Cleveland School shooting, or the 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Chin is a dominant "gure in any discussion of Asian American identity, yet he is largely unknown outside of it. Tajima-Peña and the producers eventually agreed that Chin represented a “tipping point” for the community. “We had to do it,” she said. But, as Chin’s story has become widely known, it’s also become a kind 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 14 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…77f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B of political Rorschach test among Asian Americans. For some of us, the campaign for justice is a reminder of the necessity of pan-Asian solidarity and multiracial alliance. Others focus more closely on Chin, seeing him as a victim of a uniquely anti-Asian xenophobia and his death as a reason for Asian Americans to close ranks and take matters into our own hands. Chin’s death is invoked by both Asian American prison abolitionists and pro-cop community groups; it has been summoned as a point of comparison for both the killing of George Floyd and the conviction of Peter Liang, the New York City police officer who killed Akai Gurley, an innocent, unarmed Black man in a Brooklyn housing project. Tajima-Peña, for her part, has grown wary of how Asian Americans “sometimes cherry-pick what we see as anti- Asian racism.” She continued, “It bothered me that Asian Americans were using the case as grievance: ‘we’re being targeted, people don’t like us, we need to be protected.’ ” As the appetite for Asian American stories grows—spurred by increased visibility in the wake of anti-Asian violence, or corporate pushes for easy-to-follow race-explainer content—we are sure to see more viral retellings of Chin’s killing that strip away some of the night’s complexity. For years, Ebens and Nitz have been identi"ed as unemployed auto workers, even though they were both working at the time they attacked Chin. Of the two photos that often circulate of Chin, one, which features him in thick glasses, a suit, and an innocent grin, was taken in high school. The other—without glasses, and with shaggier hair and a more cocksure expression—is closer to how he looked the night of his beating. Zia wonders if outlets or activists who 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 15 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…77f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B E use the former photo are trying to make him appear more of a respectable “model minority.” Zia has seen a notable uptick in interest in the story over the past few years. Last year’s controversy around “Hold Still, Vincent,” the podcast and proposed "lm backed by some of Hollywood’s Asian American élite, highlighted some complications of this new attention. “The death of Vincent Chin occurred during a dark time in America’s history with unsettling parallels to what we have seen happen over the past year with the stoking of hatred towards Asians and the scapegoating of Asians for Covid-19,” the actress Gemma Chan, one of the project’s producers, told Deadline in April, 2021. “It feels more urgent than ever to bring Vincent’s story to a wider audience.” The podcast, which features Chan, Kelly Marie Tran, Stephanie Hsu, and David Harbour, was released in late May, 2022. But it was pulled about a week later, after Zia, among others, criticized the producers for not at least checking in with “community people who lived these experiences.” Zia didn’t "nd out about the podcast until the episodes, in which she was portrayed by Tran, were published, and she started receiving congratulatory messages from friends who’d assumed she was involved. Annie Tan, one of Chin’s cousins, tweeted that she found the title triggering. “One of the guys held him down while the other bashed my cousin’s brains into the street,” she wrote. “I honestly don’t know why this podcast is called ‘Hold Still, Vincent.’ ” verybody knows who killed Vincent Chin. But the narrative of why it happened, and the signi"cance of what came next, 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 16 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…77f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B remains convoluted. It has become a microcosm of the Asian American community’s experience, and not just for what the events of the eighties evoke about discrimination, the potential for violence, and the struggle for justice. It’s also a story about the ongoing quest for visibility, the desire to make an oft-overlooked experience relatable or resonant to those outside of it. Zia and Tajima-Peña have expressed some weariness over the proliferation of Chin-related media, such as “Hold Still, Vincent.” This might seem ironic, given their role in keeping his memory alive. (Zia is currently developing her own television series, drawing from her experiences.) But their concern is with the single-minded focus on Chin’s victimhood. “One of the reasons that I continue to talk about all this is because I don’t want the legacy of Vincent Chin to stay in the experience of racism and injustice,” Zia explained to me. “That’s not the only part of his legacy. The major part is that our community did something about it. We came together.” When I learned about Chin, as a college student in the mid-nineties, I took that togetherness for granted. The brutality of the attack seemed to translate easily within the community—my parents, who came to the U.S. in the seventies and had little awareness of Asian American milestones, remembered reading about it in the Chinese-language newspapers—and beyond. When my peers and I protested the killing of Kuan Chung Kao by the Rohnert Park police, in 1997, maybe we were seeking our own Chin-like moment, too—a moment of injustice so egregious that it could make a community of disparate groups feel coherent and uni"ed. 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 17 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…77f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B That desire for a straightforward, paradigm-shifting moment persists today; perhaps it’s even stronger in the age of #StopAAPIHate and the pursuit of the stickiest, most viral hashtags and clearest instances of outrage. Stories such as Chin’s can make Asian Americanness legible to outsiders, and also to ourselves. It could have been any one of us—this was the realization which compelled so many Asian Americans in the early eighties, many of whom had rarely thought about the injustices of racism, to come together and wonder what could be done. That same sentiment has roused many Asian Americans over the past few years, inspiring some of us to seek solidarity and coalition, and others to take up arms in self-defense. But the memory of Chin isn’t sustained solely by the shock of violence, the terror of that one night in Detroit. We remember because of the relationships that grew out of that trauma, and the slow, boring organizing that gets retold from a distance as a spontaneous, united uprising. The legacy persists because of the journalistic career Zia put on hold to devote her time to Chin’s case, because of a difficult, tedious meeting in a Ford dining room among immigrants from different countries who felt like they shared little in common—because of the conversations among families and strangers about why Chin’s death could not be in vain. It could have been any one of us. It can be all of us, together. ‖ New Yorker Favorites 6/23/22, 5(49 PMThe Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin | The New Yorker Page 18 of 19https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vin…77f4ff7323f8f46&esrc=Auto_Subs&mbid=CRMNYR062419&utm_content=B A buried Viking treasure was worth a fortune—but it became a nightmare. How the idea of Hell has reshaped the way we think. A slightly unreal pandemic pregnancy. The creation of Cleopatra. A trip to St. Kilda, Scotland’s lost utopia in the sea. Humor by Mindy Kaling: “A Perfectly Reasonable Request.” Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. Hua Hsu is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the forthcoming memoir “Stay True.” More:Asian-Americans Detroit Race Deaths Attacks From:Tony Caruthers To:Council, City Subject:Legal right to delay responding to Israel Date:Thursday, June 23, 2022 11:16:40 AM Some people who received this message don't often get email from tonycaruzz@gmail.com. Learnwhy this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Mark Zuckerberg & his Martian naritive is Code red...the fluids in our body give him no right to turn his head as California fires & Animal cruelty & property destruction & mass shootings occur...Mark is.affecting our "Gross income" in America & Israel & individual homes From:Allan Seid To:CHOpinion CHOpinion Subject:Fwd: "Oppose SB 1363" Communications Package Date:Thursday, June 23, 2022 9:12:15 AM Attachments:6-22-22 California AAPI Legislative Caucus Opposes SB 1363 and Demands Actions over Promises for the AAPI Community.pdf Letter Template - Oppose SB1363 - 6.22.22.docx Oppose SB 1363 - Social media and talking points.docx Graphic - Oppose SB 1363.png CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. From: ALLAN SEID, RON TOM Date: Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 12:03 PM Subject: Fwd: "Oppose SB 1363" Communications Package Source: Stepanie.Tom@asm.ca.gov Hello- Please find the following documents attached per your request to support the AAPILC in our fight against SB 1363. We greatly appreciate your help sharing these documents broadly within your networks! 1. Press statement - Link is here: https://aapilegcaucus.legislature.ca.gov/products/california-aapi-legislative- caucus-opposes-sb-1363-and-demands-actions-over-promises-aapi 2. Letter Template 3. Talking Points 4. Social media graphic Thanks! -S Stephanie Tom Chief Consultant CA Asian American & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus (AAPILC) Assemblymember Evan Low AD 28, Vice-Chairperson Mobile: 916-834-5850 -----Original Message----- From: RON TOM <rtom902677@aol.com> Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2022 11:40 AM To: Tom, Stephanie <Stephanie.Tom@asm.ca.gov> Cc: Joel Wong <joelwong@comcast.net>; Dennis Wu <wu.dennis888@gmail.com>; Albert Wang <aybwang@comcast.net>; Andy Li <andy.j.li@gmail.com>; Sandy Chau <MNTNTP@gmail.com> Subject: Please send press statement to following who will distribute to their networks Thank you Sent from my iPhone From:John Kelley To:Council, City Cc:Planning Commission Subject:PA-Questions regarding implementation of 2022 Tree Ordinance and Canopy contract amendment Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 5:53:29 PM Attachments:Letter to PACC re Oral Communications and Canopy Contract-2022-06-21.pdf CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Palo Alto City Council (city.council@cityofpaloalto.org) Special Meeting, Tuesday, June 21, 2022, 3:00 PM Council Chamber & Virtual PUBLIC COMMENT (4:30 – 4:45 PM) and CONSENT CALENDAR, Item #1 “Approval of Amendment Number 2 to Contract #C21180324 with Canopy to Add to the Scope of Services, Extend the Term through June 30, 2024, and Increase the Not-to-Exceed Amount of the Contract by $742,210, for a New Not to Exceed Amount of $967,720; and Approval of a Budget Amendment in the General Fund in FY 2023,” Staff Report ID # 14389, 6/21/22 Dear Mayor Burt, Vice Mayor Kou, and City Council Members, Please see the attached letter, which expands upon my oral comments earlier tonight. Respectfully submitted, John Kelley Palo Alto City Council (city.council@cityofpaloalto.org) Special Meeting, Tuesday, June 21, 2022, 3:00 PM Council Chamber & Virtual PUBLIC COMMENT (4:30 – 4:45 PM) and CONSENT CALENDAR, Item #1 “Approval of Amendment Number 2 to Contract #C21180324 with Canopy to Add to the Scope of Services, Extend the Term through June 30, 2024, and Increase the Not-to-Exceed Amount of the Contract by $742,210, for a New Not to Exceed Amount of $967,720; and Approval of a Budget Amendment in the General Fund in FY 2023,” Staff Report ID # 14389, 6/21/22 Dear Mayor Bur t, Vice Mayor Kou, and City Council Members , This letter clarifies and expands upon my comments this evening during the following portions of your meeting: (a) public comments and (b) Consent Calendar item 1, “: Approval of Amendment Number 2 to Contract #C21180324 with Canopy…” ($742,210 Canopy Contract Extension for July 2022-June 2024). I would be grateful if you would please refer these questions to City Staff. Public Comment The City Council having approved the “Ordinance Amending Ch 8.04, Ch 8.08, Ch8.10, and Ch2.25 and Making Related Changes to Ch 2.25, Ch 9.56, and Title 18 of PAMC” (2022 Tree Ordinance), June 20, 2022 Packet Page 527 , I have a few questions for the Public Works and Development Services departments, which, according to the “ Supplemental Report - SECOND READING: Update to the Tree Protection Ordinance, Title 8 of Palo Alto Municipal Code ” dated June 20, 2022, “are coordinating on a system for identifying and responding to any unanticipated issues that arise during the implementation of the new ordinance,” processes that would seem to include working “to address issues as needed through the Planning and Transportation and Parks and Recreation Commissions.” P. 2. 1. As currently envisioned, will the data being collected in connection with the implementation of the 2022 Tree Ordinance be sufficient to answer the question posed a little over two weeks ago by Councilmember Eric Filseth: “How many trees a year are we currently losing between 15 and 36 inches?….I really wish I knew sort of how big the problem is right now. Do we have any data on this?” ( 6/6/22 @~4:25:33f.) a. If so, when will such data be available, how will it be made available, and will it also be available online? b. If so, will such data distinguish between (i) trees that are legitimately being removed and (ii) trees that are being removed without proper permits, and, if so, how will such distinctions be made? c. If not, why not? These questions relate in part to comments made by Councilmember Alison Cormack during the vote on the Consent Calendar on June 20, 2022. It is not clear to me that, despite spending what may be hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to implement the 2022 Tree Ordinance, Palo Page 1 Alto will be gathering data sufficient to tell how many such trees, if any, are being removed without proper permits. 2. As currently envisioned, will the data being collected in connection with the implementation of the 2022 Tree Ordinance be sufficient to identify redwoods, oaks, or other protected trees, whether city trees or private trees, that are being, or that will need to be, removed as a result of California’s megadrought? a. If so, when will such data be available, how will it be made available, and will it also be available online? b. If so, will such data distinguish between city trees and private trees? c. If so, will such data allow for aggregation of such trees by species? d. If not, why not? For reference, here are images of two large trees in the Leland Manor neighborhood that appear to be suffer from California’s megadrought and that may be legitimate candidates for removal. (Please note the relatively thin canopies and what appear to be dead or diseased limbs.) For additional reference, please see the comments of the both our current and our former Urban Forester as reported in Dremman, S., “ As state drought persists, local redwoods face a precarious future, This summer could start years of decline for the evergreens in the Bay Area” ( Palo Alto Online , June 25, 2021). // // // // // // Page 2 3. Do past, present, and future practices of the City of Palo Alto in constructing new buildings near protected trees and in caring for protected trees establish norms and standards that will be followed by Urban Forestry and future “Designated arborists” in applying the 2022 Tree Ordinance? a. If not, why not? For reference, here is an image of a tree near the intersection of Embarcadero and Newell. (Please note the relatively large trunk diameter and the close proximity to the new fire station..) // // // Page 3 CONSENT CALENDAR, Item #1 The sole item on tonight’s Consent Calendar appears to relate to the 2022 Tree Ordinance. 1. Does any portion of the $742,210 Canopy Contract Extension for July 2022-June 2024 relate to the 2022 Tree Ordinance? a. If so, which portions and in what amounts? b. If so, what is the total expected implementation amount per year for the 2022 Tree Ordinance for each of the following two periods: (i) July 2022-June 2023, and (ii) July 2023-June 2024? c. If so, were these amounts included in the anticipated implementation costs for the 2022 Tree Ordinance in the June 20, 2022 Staff Report? i. If not, why not? 2. For reference, please consider these statements: a. From the June 6, 2022 Staff Report , at Packet Page 99 i. “Staff analyzed the expected increases in workload and is recommending addition of 2.48 Full Time Equivalency (FTE) employees: 1.0 FTE Project Manager, 1.0 FTE Building Planning Technician, and 0.48 FTE hourly Staff Specialist. The annual cost for these positions is estimated to be approximately $300,000. It is anticipated that revenues from increase[d] fee revenues would ultimately offset about 50 percent of the ongoing cost.” b. From the June 21, 2022 Staff Report, at Packet Page 28. i. “Important new UFMP projects in this amendment include a targeted marketing and outreach campaign for the updated Tree Protection Ordinance (UFMP programs 6.D.iii, 6.C.i, 4.A.vii, 6.B.viii) and a new digital tree health survey for the South Palo Alto Tree Initiative (UFMP programs 5.B.i, 6.D.ii). [¶] The marketing and outreach campaign will be focused on updating the public, local arborists, and the development community about the new rules and requirements contained in the updated Tree Protection Ordinance and the new Tree and Landscape Technical manual. This Outreach and education component is critical to the success of the updated ordinance.” Thank you very much for your kind consideration of my comments and this letter. Respectfully submitted, John Kelley Page 4 Palo Alto City Council (city.council@cityofpaloalto.org) Special Meeting, Monday, June 20, 2022, 3:00 PM Council Chamber & Virtual CONSENT CALENDAR, Item #27 “SECOND READING: Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Title 8 of the PAMC to Expand Tree Protection….” Staff Report ID # 14504, 6/20/22 Dear Mayor Bur t, Vice Mayor Kou, and City Council Members , I write to express my concern regarding Attachment 27.a to the packet for the June 20, 2022 City Council meeting, “Attachment A Ordinance Amending Ch 8.04, Ch 8.08, Ch8.10, and Ch2.25 and Making Related Changes to Ch 2.25, Ch 9.56, and Title 18 of PAMC” (Proposed Tree Ordinance), Packet Page 527. My concerns do not arise from a lack of appreciation for trees. I value trees greatly, understand and appreciate the ways in which they can mitigate some of the effects of global warming, and enjoy their aesthetic and psychological benefits. But we live in a city, not a forest, and while trees offer many benefits, they can also cause harm. Trees can and do sometimes cause structural problems, they can interfere with placement of ADUs or simple additions to homes, and they can block light on adjacent parcels. They can fall in the middle of the night or in a storm. They can burn. For decades Palo Alto has protected trees and expanded its arboreal canopy. That does not mean that every conceivable thing that could be done to further protect each and every tree in Palo Alto should be done. Some moderation is required. The way in which the Proposed Tree Ordinance has come to the City Council — without adequate consultation with local professionals in the design, construction, and real estate industries, and especially without having recently having been considered by the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) — has resulted in the adverse effects of the proposed ordinance being ignored and diminished. It is far from clear that there is any actual, let alone any acute, problem that the Proposed Tree Ordinance would remedy; the proposed ordinance has numerous adverse effects; and the Proposed Tree Ordinance is being adopted without adequate notice to or participation by numerous groups within the Palo Alto community. I strongly urge you to: ● remove the Proposed Tree Ordinance from the Consent Calendar, table the matter, and take no further action on it at this time; ● refer the Proposed Tree Ordinance to the PTC, recommending that the PTC solicit input from affected property owners, realtors, and architects and other design professionals; and ● direct City Staff to develop additional information concerning potential impacts of the Proposed Tree Ordinance on homeowners and other property owners, on future housing production, especially on accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and projects under SB9, and likely costs, including anticipated contractual costs associated with third-parties. Page 1 How severe are the problems that the Proposed Tree Ordinance purports to address, what are their causes, and how acute are they? Few if any data concerning actual threats to the health of Palo Alto’s urban forest have been accumulated, let alone presented to the City Council. Two weeks ago, Councilmember Eric Filseth raised an apt question: “How many trees a year are we currently losing between 15 and 36 inches?….I really wish I knew sort of how big the problem is right now. Do we have any data on this?” ( 6/6/22 @~4:25:33f.) Peter Gollinger, Palo Alto’s Urban Forester responded, Unfortunately we do not have any data on these size and types of trees…If you look at some canopy cover imagery, overall we are increasing in canopy, but you can see…certain locations where we have lost canopy. I couldn’t give you an exact number, but I think it’s definitely more than one every couple of years and probably significantly lower than a thousand a year.” ( 6/6/22 @~4:26:05f.) Urban Forester Gollinger’s candor in responding to Councilmember Filseth was admirable, but an estimate ranging over nearly three orders of magnitude is of scant quantitative value. Furthermore, that response was doubly uninformative, because it also fails to explain why — despite overall canopy growth — some particular locations may have lost canopy. As Urban Forester Gollinger and former Urban Forester Walter Passmore noted last year, Palo Alto’s iconic redwoods are dying as a result of persistent droughts. "As summer progresses, we'll start to see more (redwoods dying) as it gets hotter and drier," new city Urban Forester Peter Gollinger said during a joint interview with outgoing forester Walter Passmore earlier this month. The decline of the redwoods is not a huge story — yet, Passmore said. But if drought persists, it could be. It generally takes three to five years or more before drought affects healthy redwoods. Weakened trees and those without irrigation would be the first to go. Dremman, S., “ As state drought persists, local redwoods face a precarious future, This summer could start years of decline for the evergreens in the Bay Area” ( Palo Alto Online , June 25, 2021). As councilmembers observed during the June 6th meeting, ideally the right tree should grow at the right location. The fact that some trees are being removed — perhaps because they are dying during California’s megadrought — simply fails to demonstrate a need to change the existing tree ordinance. The data that we do have fail to evince any acute problem. The third slide in City Staff’s June 6th presentation made clear that Palo Alto’s tree protection ordinance has evolved over decades. When reviewed in that chronological context, our urban forest has expanded exponentially under the current regulatory framework. As Randy Popp explained in a June 16, 2022 email to the City Council, “We are not witnessing an epidemic of tree removals.” As evidence, I wanted to share some images lifted using Google Earth Pro. Both are of the same location. The first is a photo taken in 1948 and the second is current day. I think this shows clearly that, in contrast to some of the statements made about how severe the impact of tree removal has been, the canopy has actually increased enormously over the last 70+ years…. Page 2 This data from Google Earth shows that Palo Alto’s urban forest is thriving, which is quite consistent with Urban Forester Gollinger’s statement that “overall we are increasing in canopy…” The Proposed Tree Ordinance addresses a non-substantiated problem. Any slight loss of canopy in some areas is likely the result of California’s megadrought; anecdotal reports of particular trees being removed are unpersuasive. No reliable data have been presented demonstrating that the Proposed Tree Ordinance must take effect before stakeholders have the opportunity to present their concerns to the PTC and the City Council. Page 3 Would the Proposed Tree Ordinance adversely affect the community ? City Staff’s analysis of the adverse effects associated with the proposed Tree Ordinance was facially incomplete, focusing primarily on implementation costs, and apparently failing to account for all of them. Increased Implementation Costs . The penultimate slide in City Staff’s June 6th presentation evaluated “RESOURCE IMPACTS,” recommending hiring an additional “2.48 Full Time Equivalency (FTE) employees….” (For comparison, this seems to be about a third, or perhaps more, of all of the line building inspectors listed on Palo Alto’s “ Building Inspection ” web page.) During his preliminary comments on June 6th, Councilmember Filseth asked another important question: “[I]s it really worth a half million dollars a year of staffing costs to monitor this?” ( 6/6/22 @~4:25:48f.) In fairness to the proponents of this measure, the Staff Report estimated that the net annual cost would be about $150,000: Staff analyzed the expected increases in workload and is recommending addition of 2.48 Full Time Equivalency (FTE) employees: 1.0 FTE Project Manager, 1.0 FTE Building Planning Technician, and 0.48 FTE hourly Staff Specialist. The annual cost for these positions is estimated to be approximately $300,000. It is anticipated that revenues from increase fee revenues would ultimately offset about 50 percent of the ongoing cost. Packet Page 99. Some might find it more reasonable to pay $150,000 per year, rather than $300,000 annually, to potentially increase protection for new species of trees, but nothing at the June 6th hearing established how many trees would subsequently be better protected, nor how many would, nonetheless, be removed because they are dying from the megadrought or for other legitimate reasons. But a more recent Staff Report has re-opened the basic issue of appropriate fiscal supervision by the City Council. While over 25 items are grouped on the Consent Calendar for today’s City Council, Special Meeting, Monday, June 20, 2022 , a sole additional item appears on the Consent Calendar for tomorrow’s meeting, City Council, Special Meeting, Tuesday, June 21, 2022 : 1. Approval of Amendment Number 2 to Contract #C21180324 with Canopy to Add to the Scope of Services, Extend the Term through June 30, 2024, and Increase the Not-to-Exceed Amount of the Contract by $742,210, for a New Not to Exceed Amount of $967,720; and Approval of a Budget Amendment in the General Fund in FY 2023 Late packet report added (Emphasis in the original.) That “Late packet report” (ID # 14389) establishes a direct connection between the Proposed Tree Ordinance and at least some part of the requested additional, two-year, $742,210 funding for Canopy: Important new UFMP projects in this amendment include a targeted marketing and outreach campaign for the updated Tree Protection Ordinance (UFMP programs 6.D.iii, 6.C.i, 4.A.vii, 6.B.viii) and a new digital tree health survey for the South Palo Alto Tree Initiative (UFMP programs 5.B.i, 6.D.ii). [¶] The marketing and outreach campaign will be focused on updating the public, local arborists, and the development community about the new rules and requirements contained in the updated Tree Protection Ordinance and the new Tree and Landscape Technical manual. This Outreach and education component is critical to the success of the updated ordinance. Page 4 Packet Page 28. How much of the $742,210 in additional funding for Canopy, an average of more than $370,000 per year, will be spent on the “targeted marketing and outreach campaign for the updated Tree Protection Ordinance…”? The “Late packet report” does not appear to answer that question. There may again be three orders of magnitude of uncertainty. Presumably it is a non-zero amount, and presumably that amount was not included in the $300,000 gross amount presented in the June 6th packet. The most that perhaps can be said right now is that no one knows for certain how much the implementation of the Proposed Tree Ordinance will cost, and that it may be several times the cost indicated at the June 6th meeting. Decreased Residential Property Values . Perhaps because the Proposed Tree Ordinance reached the City Council without having recently been considered by the PTC, the Staff Report did not appear even to begin to address how the Proposed Tree Ordinance might affect residential property values in Palo Alto. Current macroeconomic trends are clear: interest rates are rising, and housing starts are falling. See , e.g., Shaban, H. and Gregg, A., “Recession fears grow as Dow closes below 30,000 and mortgage rates spike,” The Washington Post (June 16, 2022). For many Palo Alto homeowners, (a) the majority of their home equity derives from the land on which their homes rest, rather than the structures in which they live, and (b) the marginal prices of their properties will be determined, to a large extent, by the available, buildable areas upon which new additions or new dwellings can be constructed. Therefore, any material changes in either (a) the extent to which prospective buyers can remodel or add on to existing housing stock, or (b) the time necessary to secure a building permit will likely depress the value of a particular property, especially in an era of rising, and already substantial, interest rates. By also creating both considerable uncertainty — especially when the standards to be applied by, and the norms for working with, a new group of city-approved arborists remain in doubt — and significant delays — resulting from the proposed neighborhood notice procedures — one might expect those deleterious effects to be magnified. One cannot accurately estimate the magnitude of such effects today. One can predict, however, that those effects will be felt by many members of the community, and that those effects will be distributed unevenly. Many members of the community will be affected, because City Staff have estimated that (a) “the total tree population of the Palo Alto urban forest is approximately 600,000 trees,” excluding, importantly, “open space areas,” (b) the total of “All Private Proposed Protected trees” would increase from 81,720 to 224,100, and (c) this would represent “a nearly 3-fold increase in the total number of protected trees under the updated ordinance definition.” Dividing more than 140,000 newly protected trees by fewer than 20,000 single-family homes in Palo Alto might give one an extremely approximate average number of newly protected trees per R-1 lot, but the Staff Report does not appear to discuss how many of these trees are in residential, rather than commercial zones, nor how many are in single-family, as opposed to multi-family, areas. Absent other data, perhaps the best, extremely crude, metric would be to infer that for every currently protected — 80,000-plus — redwoods and oaks on private property in Palo Alto, there will be roughly twice as many newly protected trees if the Proposed Tree Ordinance takes effect. In that case, (a) there are likely at least a few thousand owners of single-family homes in Palo Alto whose rights to add on to their existing homes or to build ADUs or other new dwelling units on their properties will be materially constrained, and (b) concerned homeowners will probably need to spend at least a few thousand dollars in arborist and other professional fees even to begin to determine the areas on a particular lot that may now be subjected to additional, arboreal scrutiny. Because much of the canopy in North Palo Alto was established earlier, that may be an area in which homeowners will be most affected. It is difficult to offer more precise estimates at this time. What remains manifest, however, is that the Staff Report and the City Council’s deliberations on June 6th all but ignored these types of potential adverse effects resulting from the Proposed Tree Ordinance. Page 5 Decreased Housing Production. The factors identified above that will likely decrease property values for a great many homeowners in Palo Alto should the Proposed Tree Ordinance come into effect will likely also diminish housing production in Palo Alto. Escalating interest rates, reduced buildable areas, and new permitting requirements will also act as brakes on permitting and construction, slowing the production of new homes. There is no need to repeat the preceding discussion of macroeconomic effects. In assessing likely effects on housing production, rather than property values, it is relatively more important to examine the insidious effects of the detailed language in the Proposed Tree Ordinance. A thorough examination of such language may be offered in the future in a different context; for now, a high-level summary will suffice. ● Increased costs associated with “Designated arborist” requirements. Whereas initial compliance with the Proposed Tree Ordinance might cost homeowners thousands of dollars, if not more, should a homeowner seek to build a project opposed by a neighbor or one of the “principal urban forestry partner organization[s],” expected costs might rise by an order of magnitude, if not more. One would hope that this would not be a common occurrence, but that remains to be seen. ● Chilling effects of actual and potential complaints directed at applicants. Palo Alto’s ADU/JADU ordinance and SB9 interim ordinance purport to grant homeowners additional rights to build new housing, especially smaller units that are likely to be more affordable. The new disclosure, notice, and appeal procedures in the Proposed Tree Ordinance, among others, would create opportunities for confrontations between immediate neighbors, fellow members of local neighborhoods, and even people living not only in distant parts of Palo Alto but outside the city altogether. Judging by criminal threats that have sometimes been expressed towards Palo Alto’s elected officials, not to mention the declining civility of public discourse in our community, it is 1 2 not unreasonable to anticipate that harsh words may sometimes be expressed when homeowners seek to remove protected trees. By creating both individualized and city-wide, web-enhanced notice provisions, however, the potential adverse ramifications of seeking, quite 3 legitimately, to remove a protected tree to build an ADU, JADU, or SB9-duplex grow exponentially. The Proposed Tree Ordinance creates what might be called a “municipal, arboreal CEQA” or an “arboreal individual design review.” It creates a potent mechanism by which individuals monitoring the city’s website in the future can, relatively easily, identify and then seek to persuade neighbors or others “within 600 feet of the exterior boundary of the property containing the protected tree” to challenge decisions allowing for the removal of newly protected 4 trees. How this will ultimately play out in our community remains to be seen, but there may well be people whose efforts to build completely legitimate and urgently needed additional housing will be chilled by the prospect of neighborhood, municipal, or regional opposition. ● Equity. The costs and procedural complexities of the Proposed Tree Ordinance will inevitably treat capital-advantaged and non-capital-advantaged homeowners differently. It’s unlikely that the provisions of the Proposed Tree Ordinance will seriously impede the construction of new homes reaching Palo Alto’s maximum size on relatively large parcels. At the same time, the 4 PAMC 8.10.140(c)(2). 3 PAMC 8.10.140(b)(4)(iii). 2 See , e.g., Sheyner, G., “Housing plan stirs opposition in College Terrace, Proposal for three-story apartment building tests the limits of city’s new zoning tool,” Palo Alto Weekly (Feb. 12, 2021, p. 5) 1 Wagner, D., “America's public servants are being terrorized with death threats. The 'emotional toll' is lasting,” USA Today (Oct. 31, 2021). Page 6 From:John Kelley To:Council, City Subject:PA-Second Reading of Proposed Amendments to Tree Ordinance - I strongly urge you to remove the item from the Consent Calendar, etc. Date:Monday, June 20, 2022 6:32:23 PM Attachments:PA-PACC-letter to CPA re Tree Ordinance - 2022-06-20.pdf CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Palo Alto City Council (city.council@cityofpaloalto.org) Special Meeting, Monday, June 20, 2022, 3:00 PM Council Chamber & Virtual CONSENT CALENDAR, Item #27 “SECOND READING: Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Title 8 of the PAMC to Expand Tree Protection….” Staff Report ID # 14504, 6/20/22 Dear Mayor Burt, Vice Mayor Kou, and City Council Members, Please see the attached letter, which expands upon my oral comments earlier tonight. Respectfully submitted, John Kelley Proposed Tree Ordinance may discourage owners of smaller homes on smaller parcels from building ADUs or other forms of new housing, including new dwellings allowed under SB9. ● Modular, prefabricated, and manufactured housing. Because tripling the number of protected trees on lots throughout Palo Alto will make it more difficult to obtain clear, buildable regions, especially on smaller lots, modular, prefabricated, and manufactured housing, which may sometimes be much more cost-effective, will be increasingly disfavored, simply because the dimensions of such housing units are typically less flexible than custom construction. ● Frustrating the spirit and violating the letter of Gov.C. 65852.2(a)(3), which provides in part: (3) A permit application for an accessory dwelling unit or a junior accessory dwelling unit shall be considered and approved ministerially without discretionary review or a hearing, notwithstanding Section 65901 or 65906 or any local ordinance regulating the issuance of variances or special use permits. The permitting agency shall act on the application to create an accessory dwelling unit or a junior accessory dwelling unit within 60 days from the date the local agency receives a completed application if there is an existing single-family or multifamily dwelling on the lot….. There are three interrelated elements of this issue: the 60-day time limit; the prohibition on discretionary review or a hearing; and the standard of ministerial approval. First, Palo Alto currently rejects ADU and JADU building permit applications that are deemed incomplete during a formalized “pre-application” submittal process. Under the Proposed Tree Ordinance, a homeowner seeking to build an ADU or a JADU may be effectively barred from even applying for a building permit by a disgruntled neighbor who prevents a designated arborist acting on behalf of the homeowner from entering the neighbor’s property. Similarly, even if an applicant eventually — after petitioning the Urban Forester or other city officials to intercede — finds a way for a designated arborist to enter the neighbor’s property, any delays resulting from a lack of cooperation from such neighbors would make a mockery of the 60-day time limit. Creating an institutional mechanism that grants additional power to immediate neighbors opposing new housing is a fatal defect in the Proposed Tree Ordinance. Second, assembling an elaborate notice, hearing, and appeal procedure that can be invoked by any neighbors or others “within 600 feet of the exterior boundary of the property containing the protected tree,” especially one that can lead to sequential appeals to the Planning and Transportation Commission and the City Council, flatly violates Gov.C. 65852.2(a)(3)’s prohibition on discretionary reviews and hearings. The Proposed Tree Ordinance does not merely perpetuate existing discretionary reviews and hearings; it creates new ones. Third, and most fundamentally, even the initial review by the Urban Forester under subsection 8.10.050(b)(1) and (2) is itself fundamentally discretionary, and thus prohibited. That mere fact that the Urban Forester ’s determination can be appealed and reversed by the PTC or ultimately by the City Council shows, in itself, that the underlying determination is discretionary; otherwise, what possible basis for reversal would there be? Furthermore, determining whether either (1) The tree is so close to the proposed development that construction would result in the death of the tree, and there is no financially feasible design alternative that would permit Page 7 preservation of the tree, where financially feasible means an alternative that preserves the tree unless retaining the tree would increase project cost by more than twice the replacement value of the tree or 10% of the given project valuation, whichever is greater… or (2) The tree could be removed due to the conditions listed in Section 8.10.050(a)(1) and treatments or corrective practices are not feasible. Is a necessarily discretionary act. Simply reading the text of those provisions aloud to oneself, along with the referenced subsection 8.10.050(a)(1), is sufficient to convince one that interpreting that language and applying it are essentially discretionary acts. Fourth, the Urban Forester’s making such determinations cannot, in any sense, be deemed ministerial. The HCD has made clear that ministerial review is essential. Are ADUs permitted ministerially? Yes. ADUs must be considered, approved, and permitted ministerially, without discretionary action. Development and other decision-making standards must be sufficiently objective to allow for ministerial review. Examples include numeric and fixed standards such as heights or setbacks, or design standards such as colors or materials. Subjective standards require judgement and can be interpreted in multiple ways such as privacy, compatibility with neighboring properties or promoting harmony and balance in the community; subjective standards shall not be imposed for ADU development. Further, ADUs must not be subject to a hearing or any ordinance regulating the issuance of variances or special use permits and must be considered ministerially. (Gov. Code, § 65852.2, subd. (a)(3).) California Department of Housing and Community Development, Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook (updated December 2020), p. 15. The proposed decision-making by the Urban Forester is simply not objective. This conclusion is underscored by the way in which the HCD has clarified the meaning of “objective”: What does objective mean? “objective zoning standards” and “objective design review standards” mean standards that involve no personal or subjective judgment by a public official and are uniformly verifiable by reference to an external and uniform benchmark or criterion available and knowable by both the development applicant or proponent and the public official prior to submittal. Gov Code § 65913.4, subd. (a)(5) Ibid . Each of the operational phrases in subsection 8.10.050(b)(1) and (2) (“so close to the proposed development that construction would result in the death of the tree…,” “financially feasible means an alternative that preserves the tree unless retaining the tree would increase project cost by more than twice the replacement value of the tree or 10% of the given project valuation, whichever is greater ,” and “conditions listed in Section 8.10.050(a)(1) and treatments Page 8 or corrective practices are not feasible”) fails to meet the requisite standard for objectivity. The determinations of the Urban Forester (not to mention the decisions on appeal to the PTC or the City Council) are not “uniformly verifiable by reference to an external and uniform benchmark or criterion available and knowable by both the development applicant or proponent and the public official prior to submittal.” That the Urban Forester requires a report from a “Designated arborist” to even make this type of determination shows just how non-objective the standards in question are. While the Urban Forester and city-approved “Designated arborists” perhaps asked to testify at appeals will surely act in good faith, their prospective judgments cannot be uniformly verified as they must, and applicants cannot know what their determinations will be “prior to submittal.” Neither the Urban Forester nor any “Designated arborist” acting on behalf of the city can claim such incontrovertible objectivity, for their work is the product of art, as much as science. It would be as if an insurance company expected all cardiologists to reach the same diagnoses and to recommend the same courses of treatment for any patient with an ailing heart. Judgments based on professional skills and experience are simply not the same as “an external and uniform benchmark or criterion” that is publicly available in advance. Especially when taken together, all of these considerations demonstrate the insidious effects of the Proposed Tree Ordinance, both in curtailing and discouraging much needed housing production in Palo Alto, and also in violating California law. Have all affected citizens in Palo Alto had a meaningful opportunity to express their concerns regarding the Proposed Tree Ordinance? Judging by the alternative motion that failed on June 6th before the final motion adopting the Proposed Tree Ordinance passed, a majority of the City Council believes that all affected citizens in Palo Alto have had meaningful opportunities to express their concerns regarding the Proposed Tree Ordinance. Respectfully, I disagree. I reach a different conclusion based, in part, on the manner in which this matter has come before the City Council. While there was apparently at least one meeting of the PTC that addressed some of these issues years ago, and while there was also a recent Architectural Review Board meeting that examined some of them as well, in general, given the magnitude of the changes that this ordinance might cause, should it to go into effect, it appears that most members of the community have not considered it in detail. Proponents of the Proposed Tree Ordinance might argue that community approval is a foregone conclusion, asking, in effect, “Who doesn’t love trees?” As discussed above, however, one may love trees and still feel that a modicum of moderation is advisable. Some scientists might also argue that even urban forests are maintained principally by larger-scale climate conditions, actions, and regulations, and not by administrative determinations concerning individual trees. I would also ask members of the majority to consider a couple of counterfactuals: what if you, yourself, or friends of yours, were trying to build a home addition, were considering building an ADU, or had heard about splitting a 10,000-square-foot lot so that another family might have the opportunity to enjoy all of the benefits of our community? (Please imagine something much more complex than the relatively simple types of work described by Councilmember Filseth based upon his own personal experience at the June 6th meeting.) And now, please imagine further that your lot, or your friend’s property, has several trees on Page 9 it that are not currently protected, but that would gain protection under the new ordinance. Would you, or would your friend, feel that all of the ramifications of the Proposed Tree Ordinance had been adequately explained to the community? Treating these questions seriously requires that one envision a series of delays and complications, possibly strenuous and repeated objections from neighbors, greatly increased design and construction costs, final approved plans that diverge greatly from one’s original conception, and possibly great frustration with administrative decisions. With those counterfactual circumstances in mind, have you any hesitancy in saying that all of the concerns of all members of the community have been heard? As Palo Alto’s leaders, you all have responsibilities not simply to cast votes, but also to educate and to listen to the community. In this case, I, and I think others, believe that you have neither adequately educated nor reasonably listened to the community. This is especially true if you reconsider the questions astutely raised by Councilmember Filseth at the June 6th meeting. George Cantor is reputed to have said, “To ask the right question is harder than to answer it.” True enough. But elected officials must do more than ask questions before making important decisions; seeking and obtaining reasonable answers is important as well. We still do not have good answers to the questions that Councilmember Filseth posed. Therefore, the City Council would be acting prematurely in adopting the Proposed Tree Ordinance at this time. Conclusion No actual, acute problem will be solved by the Proposed Tree Ordinance. Its adverse effects — including its cost — have not been adequately presented to the council or the community. In effect, the proposed ordinance may be adopted without adequate notice to or participation by numerous groups within the Palo Alto community. I beseech you to: ● remove the Proposed Tree Ordinance from the Consent Calendar, table the matter, and take no further action on it at this time; ● refer the Proposed Tree Ordinance to the PTC, recommending that the PTC solicit input from affected property owners, realtors, and architects and other design professionals; and ● direct City Staff to develop additional information concerning potential impacts of the Proposed Tree Ordinance on homeowners and other property owners, on future housing production, especially on accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and projects under SB9, and likely costs, including anticipated contractual costs associated with third-parties. Respectfully submitted, John Kelley Page 10 Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of council, I live in Palo Alto. I am a home owner. I am also a Realtor. I am a huge fan of native plants. Our home is filled and surrounded by mature trees. My gardener is sick of me asking- can we plant one more here? There’s no more room. Trees are part of Palo Alto’s DNA and identity. But I am unable to support the proposed updates. My reasons are simple and I have suggestions and recommendations. The ordinance being proposed is to protect and promote trees. BUT, Lots with mature trees maybe seen as less desirable because our ability to build a new home or expand for future will be restricted. It could deter us from planting new trees. Why plant now to eventually cause tree troubles and result in loss in value. If a buyer thinks the barrier too high to cross and opt for other property. It’s a loss in desirability and hurts the seller and buyer. This ordinance is not about the value and desirability of a home. It should not. But it looks to impact a home’s value if the prospect of expansion is doubtful or out right impossible. It will hurt the valuation of the home. It will hurt its desirability. Palo Alto has been a leader in tree protection and is one of the greenest in the neighboring cities. I can see we want to continue to do well on our trees. With regard to the ordinance’s objective to protect and promote trees in the city, I would favor helping existing trees, mitigating danger from those under drought stress, and investing in replacing and planting for the future. Respectfully, Amy Sung A Palo Alto resident of 20+ years. From:amy sung To:Council, City Cc:Amy Connect Subject:Oppose Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Title 8 of the Municipal Code Date:Monday, June 20, 2022 3:19:10 PM Attachments:Tree ordinance.pages 2.pdf Some people who received this message don't often get email from amyconnect@gmail.com.Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of council, I write to OPPOSE ADOPTION OF AN ORDINANCE AMENDING TITLE 8 OF THE MUNICIPAL CODE. Specially, I am referring to the Tree Ordinance item on the Consent Calendar item #27. 27. SECOND READING: Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Title 8 of the PAMC to Expand Tree Protection to Include Additional Protected Tree Species, Revise Grounds for Tree Removal, and Make Clarifying Changes and Amending Titles 2, 9, and 18 to make Clerical Updates Amy amyconnect@gmail.com 1 Bay Area Economic Update and Outlook—June 17, 2022—Payroll Job Growth Slumps but That is Not the Whole Story The Bay Area added 6,900 payroll jobs in May with substantial payroll declines in added jobs for each of the past four months. But this is not the full story of what happened in the Bay Area economy in recent months. The highlights: • Payroll job growth declined from 22,100 in February to 6,900 in May for a four month gain of 59,900 payroll jobs. • During this period the number of residents with jobs of all kinds increased by 92,200. • In May Bay Area unemployment levels and unemployment rates fell to record lows. • June 2022 brings major challenges to the global, national and regional economy with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, large increases in interest rates amidst continuing high inflation, the recent spike in Bay Area COVID cases and the ongoing Bay Area challenges of housing, transportation and competitiveness. Four Months of Declining Payroll Job Growth This is the chart shown in media around the region last weekend and it is accurate. Payroll job growth has declined substantially/ 22.1 15.2 10.7 6.9 0.0 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 Feb 22 Mar 22 Apr 22 May 22 Four Months of Declining Payroll Job Growth 2 But the Number of Residents with a Job Grew More These data come from the household survey, which is smaller than the payroll survey and more volatile month to month. But it is accurate over time. The inference is that workers are finding jobs in traditional self-employment and gig work. The discrepancy between payroll job and employed worker growth (59,200 versus 92,200 for the past four months) could be for many reasons. One is the difficulty in hiring in some industries from our high cost of housing. One could be a decline is jobs at tech startups. Workers unable to find jobs in declining sectors may be switching to self-employment. But these data offer a counterpoint to the disappointing payroll job trends. Unemployment Rates Fell to 2.2 in the Region in May 2022 from 5.7% in May 2021 and is now below the pre-pandemic level in February 2020 The lowest rates were in the San Rafael and San Francisco metro areas (1.8%) followed by the San Jose metro areas (1.9%) in May 2022. Unemployment Rates Metro Area Feb 20 Apr 20 May 21 May 22 Oakland 3.0% 14.6% 6.4% 2.6% San Francisco 2.2% 12.5% 5.2% 1.8% San Jose 2.6% 12.4% 5.0% 1.9% Santa Rosa 2.8% 15.4% 5.5% 2.3% Napa 3.2% 17.8% 5.9% 2.3% 60.9 47.5 -30.8 14.6 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 Feb 22 Mar 22 Apr 22 May 22 Change in Number of Residents with a Job 3 Vallejo 3.9% 15.7% 7.6% 3.5% San Rafael 2.4% 12.1% 4.6% 1.8% Bay Area 2.7% 13.7% 5.7% 2.2% Source: EDD The number of unemployed residents has fallen sharply from the April 2020 high of 543,500 to 90,500 in May 2022 well below the pre-pandemic level in February 2020. The Bay Area Trails the State and Nation in Payroll Job Recovery 114.5 543.5 225.1 90.5 0.0 100.0 200.0 300.0 400.0 500.0 600.0 Feb 20 Apr 20 May 21 May 22 Bay Area Unemployment (Thousabds) 96.5% 93.0% 80.8% 0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0% U.S.California Bay Area Payroll Jobs Recoverd by May 2022 as % of Losses 4 By May 2022 the region had recovered 80.8% of the payroll jobs lost between February and April 2020. This is a lower recovery rate than the state and nation, though the region has closed the gap in recent months. While the region has recovered just 80.8% of the non-farm payroll jobs lost between February and April 2020, it has recovered 88.0% of the decline in the number of residents with jobs. The explanation for the gap between the two measures is an increase in self-employment jobs, most likely gig work jobs. Payroll Job Growth Strong for the year Though Lagging Recently The Bay Area added 207,600 jobs in the past year (+5.5%) led by a gain of 86,400 in the San Francisco metro area though SF has recovered just 78.4% of the jobs lost between February and April 2020. The San Jose metro area added 56,600 jobs and by May 2022 had recovered 86.2% of the payroll jobs lost between February and April 2020. The Oakland metro area added 46,300 jobs during the past year. Metro Area Payroll Job Trends (Thousands) Metro Area Feb 20 Apr 20 May 21 May 22 % Recovered Oakland 1,201.9 1,003.6 1,123.5 1,169.8 83.8% San Francisco 1,204.7 1,017.9 1,077.9 1,164.3 78.4% San Jose 1,172.5 1,011.4 1,093.7 1,150.3 86.2% Santa Rosa 211.1 171.9 193.5 201.9 76.5% Napa 75.3 57.3 67.3 70.9 75.6% Vallejo 143.3 121.5 131.6 136.2 67.4% 80.8% 88.0% 75.0% 80.0% 85.0% 90.0% Non-Farm Payroll Jobs Employed Residents % Recovery Since April 2020 5 San Rafael 117.2 91.8 106.0 107.7 62.6% Bay Area 4,126.0 3,475.4 3,793.5 4,001.1 80.8% Source: EDD, non-farm wage & salary jobs seasonally adjusted But 102,900 Workers Have Not Rejoined the Workforce Since February 2020 Residents who are not in the labor force are not counted as unemployed. As a result, the number of unemployed residents can decline while some are still prevented by choice or lack of child care or work in industries that have not fully recovered. The number of residents not in the labor force has increased recently, perhaps in response to the rise of COVID cases in the region. Metro Area Labor Force (Thousands) Metro Area Feb 20 Apr 20 May 21 May 22 Oakland 1,402.2 1,332.2 1,350.2 1,371.7 San Francisco 1,043.3 978.0 959.3 1,015.1 San Jose 1,087.7 1,039.8 1,032.2 1,070.2 Santa Rosa 256.0 241.0 240.7 247.3 Napa 72.5 66.3 69.3 70.8 Vallejo 207.5 200.4 197.8 199.2 San Rafael 137.9 123.5 127.3 129.9 Bay Area 4,207.1 3,981.2 3,976.8 4,104.2 Source: EDD Industries Were Affected Differently Four sectors—Manufacturing, Transportation and Warehousing, Information and Professional and Business Services—exceeded pre-pandemic job levels in May 2022 and Construction and Education and Health Care Services were close to full recovery. On the other hand, the Leisure and Hospitality sector recovered only 74.7% of lost jobs by May 2022, though travel and tourism jobs are now in a strong recovery. The Government sector is now slowly recovering the jobs lost between February and April 2020. In the past two months Leisure and Hospitality and Government have shown the largest job growth. Note that these data are not seasonally adjusted. 6 San Francisco Bay Area Payroll Jobs Apr20-May 22 Feb 20 April 20 May 21 May 22 Job Change % Of Feb-Apr Loss Construction 215,600 152,300 205,700 213,800 61,500 97.2% Manufacturing 364,500 339,600 358,300 372,700 33,100 132.9% Wholesale Trade 115,500 103,800 106,000 107,900 4,100 35.0% Retail Trade 330,800 258,800 302,900 312,600 53,800 74.7% Transp. & Wareh. 112,100 99,500 106,800 114,900 15,400 122.2% Information 242,400 238,800 245,600 257,600 18,800 522.2% Financial Activities 201,900 190,800 191,500 192,900 2,100 18.9% Prof& Bus Serv. 798,300 740,600 764,400 809,900 69,300 120.1% Educ & Health Serv. 636,400 563,600 612,300 629,700 66,100 90.8% Leisure & Hosp. 441,200 208,500 298,000 382,300 173,800 74.7% Government 488,500 471,800 458,300 474,700 2,900 17.4% Total Non-Farm 4,093,000 3,468,700 3,770,300 4,004,800 536,100 85.9% Source: EDD not seasonally adjusted From:slevy@ccsce.com To:Steve Levy Subject:Bay Area economic update Date:Monday, June 20, 2022 2:56:28 PM Attachments:June 17, 2022 Economic Update.docx CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. The highlights: Bay Area Economic Update and Outlook—June 17, 2022—Payroll Job Growth Slumps but That is Not the Whole Story The Bay Area added 6,900 payroll jobs in May with substantial payroll declines in added jobs for each of the past four months. But this is not the full story of what happened in the Bay Area economy in recent months. The highlights: Payroll job growth declined from 22,100 in February to 6,900 in May for a four month gain of 59,900 payroll jobs. During this period the number of residents with jobs of all kinds increased by 92,200. In May Bay Area unemployment levels and unemployment rates fell to record lows. June 2022 brings major challenges to the global, national and regional economy with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, large increases in interest rates amidst continuing high inflation, the recent spike in Bay Area COVID cases and the ongoing Bay Area challenges of housing, transportation and competitiveness. Steve From:Boatwright, Tabatha To:Hoel, Jeff (external); Yuan, Dave Cc:Hoel, Jeff (external); Council, City; UAC; Batchelor, Dean; Shikada, Ed; De Jesus, Amanda Subject:RE: questions about the City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey Date:Tuesday, June 28, 2022 11:11:50 AM Attachments:image001.png image002.png image003.png image006.png Mr. Hoel, Thank you for reaching out. The surveys were sent out in batches; I am not certain how the batches were designed. The first batch was sent last Thursday, June 23rd. The second batch was sent out yesterday. June 27th. Batches will continue to be sent out until all of the surveys have been dispatched. There were two (2) sets of surveys sent out as well, Residential and Businesses. The surveys were sent to the email addresses associated with Utilities. If you have yet to receive your survey, I have the ability to send it to you. TABATHA BOATWRIGHT Utilities Administrative Assistant City of Palo Alto Utilities Department 250 Hamilton Ave | Palo Alto, CA 94301 O: 650.329.2326 M: 408.966.0838 E-mail: Tabatha.Boatwright@cityofpaloalto.org www.cityofpaloalto.org From: Jeff Hoel <jeff_hoel@yahoo.com> Sent: Monday, June 27, 2022 1:06 PM To: Yuan, Dave <Dave.Yuan@CityofPaloAlto.org> Cc: Hoel, Jeff (external) <jeff_hoel@yahoo.com>; Council, City <city.council@cityofpaloalto.org>; UAC <UAC@cityofpaloalto.org>; Batchelor, Dean <Dean.Batchelor@CityofPaloAlto.org>; Shikada, Ed <Ed.Shikada@CityofPaloAlto.org> Subject: questions about the City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Dave, Yesterday, Don Jackson forwarded to me an email message he had received From: City of Palo Alto <fiber@cityofpaloalto.org> Subject: City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey Date: June 23, 2022 at 11:39:25 AM PDT To: <dcj@clark-communications.com> inviting him to take a Palo Alto FTTP survey. Today, he forwarded to me another email message he had received From: City of Palo Alto Fiber Internet <invites@mailer.surveygizmo.com> Date: June 27, 2022 at 7:05:45 AM PDT To: don.jackson@gmail.com Subject: City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey also inviting him to take a Palo Alto FTTP survey. I haven't received either of these messages from the City yet. QUESTIONS: 1. To how many people was each of these messages sent? How did the City choose these people? I had the impression that the City was going to send such a message to essentially every residential premises and every business premises. What was the City's intent? If the City invited a smaller number of people to take the survey, how were they selected, and why does the City think that this set of people is "representative"? 2. I had the impression that each invitation email message contained a personal identifier, in effect permitting the recipient to take the survey. If I take the survey using Don's invitation email message, will it count? (I haven't done this yet. I did try to look through the survey without answering questions, but the survey wouldn't let me do that.) What will the City do with surveys received without the personal identifier? Please send me an email invitation to take the survey (assuming that's consistent with City policy). Thanks. 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boundary="--_NmP-3342c0133e9b11d1-Part_1"X-Ma4-Node: falseFrom: "cityofpaloalto.org" <city.council@cityofpaloalto.org>To: city.council@cityofpaloalto.orgSubject: ACH Invoice Payment B2603911 Cityofpaloalto at 28 June 2022 23:12:44Message-ID: <17988715-8184-c8fe-7675-4ef8c3c851c7@cityofpaloalto.org>Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2022 15:12:44 +0000MIME-Version: 1.0Return-Path: city.council@cityofpaloalto.orgX-EOPAttributedMessage: 0X-EOPTenantAttributedMessage: 68949a6d-ce6e-4230-8536-f3e1f8d5dfdd:0X-MS-PublicTrafficType: EmailX-MS-Office365-Filtering-Correlation-Id: f3aa97bc-7176-4d0e-431b-08da591b81a9X-MS-TrafficTypeDiagnostic: CO6PR09MB8117:EE_X-LD-Processed: 68949a6d-ce6e-4230-8536-f3e1f8d5dfdd,ExtFwdX-MS-Exchange-SenderADCheck: 1X-MS-Exchange-AntiSpam-Relay: 0X-Microsoft-Antispam: BCL:0;X-Microsoft-Antispam-Message-Info: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X-Forefront-Antispam-Report: CIP:203.183.42.114;CTRY:JP;LANG:en;SCL:1;SRV:;IPV:NLI;SFV:NSPM;H:wps04.wadax.ne.jp;PTR:wps04.wadax.ne.jp;CAT:NONE;SFS:(13230016)(4636009)(450100002)(508600001)(70586007)(2906002)(7246003)(5660300002)(356005)(31696002)(6966003)(2616005)(8676002)(235185007)(34206002)(26005)(956004)(7126003)(6266002)(7596003)(63370400001)(86362001)(15650500001)(33964004)(68406010)(63350400001)(31686004)(7636003)(83380400001)(336012)(217773002)(37006003)(36756003)(39450500005);DIR:OUT;SFP:1101;X-ExternalRecipientOutboundConnectors: 68949a6d-ce6e-4230-8536-f3e1f8d5dfddX-Auto-Response-Suppress: DR, OOF, AutoReplyX-MS-Exchange-ForwardingLoop: Greer.Stone@CityofPaloAlto.org;68949a6d-ce6e-4230-8536-f3e1f8d5dfddX-OriginatorOrg: cityofpaloalto.orgX-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Jun 2022 15:33:09.4751 (UTC)X-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-Network-Message-Id: f3aa97bc-7176-4d0e-431b-08da591b81a9X-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-Id: 68949a6d-ce6e-4230-8536-f3e1f8d5dfddX-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-AuthSource: BL0GCC02FT043.eop-gcc02.prod.protection.outlook.comX-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-AuthAs: AnonymousX-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-FromEntityHeader: InternetX-MS-Exchange-Transport-CrossTenantHeadersStamped: CO6PR09MB8117 From:Don Jackson To:Palo Alto Fiber Cc:UAC; Council, City Subject:Fiber/Internet Survey and "Submit a Deposit" programs Date:Monday, June 27, 2022 6:35:10 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. A few points about the recently announced Survey and “Submit a Deposit” initiatives regarding a potential fiber/Internet service: I suggest that you “lead” with the “Submit a Deposit” link and promotion, instead of only mentioning it at the end of the survey. I feel that a $50 deposit is a stronger indication of interest, and should be positioned/promoted as such: “To DEMONSTRATE that you are interested in a fiber/Internet service, submit a deposit. To inform our decision making, please also take our survey….” In addition, every day/week the running total of deposits that have submitted should be published on the Fiber website, so we can all see how that is going, similar to the “goal thermometers” often used to incentivize a community (see image below) The “Make a Deposit” program should be touted/featured in the weekly "Notice for City Council Meetings' Agendas and Reports” email and the “Weekly City Manager Blog” Another very direct way for Council to gauge voter interest would be to put an “advisory question” on the November election ballot, something to the effect of: “Should Council proceed to create a fiber/Internet service utility for residences and businesses in Palo Alto?” The section of the survey where the participant is asked to chose between 10 combinations of potential services is quite poorly done (in my opinion), for example, when asked for a preference between X Mbps fiber/Internet service from Palo Alto versus X Mbps from Comcast (for the same value of “X”), the context/explanation is not provided that the speed of the Palo Alto service would be symmetric (same speed up and down), and that a cable Internet service (from Comcast) might be X Mbps down, but will never be more than ~25 Mbps up, and this huge difference is not at all apparent in the current survey. Regards, Don Jackson 14G% E4% 709 sax 40% 30% 20% 14% From:Aram James To:Tannock, Julie; Figueroa, Eric; chuck jagoda; Enberg, Nicholas; Winter Dellenbach; Joe Simitian; robert.parham@cityofpaloalto.org; Roberta Ahlquist; Sean james; Joe Simitian; Raj; Council, City; Shikada, Ed; Angie Evans; cotton.gaines@cityofpaloalto.org; Human Relations Commission; ladoris cordell; Greer Stone; Tom DuBois; Cindy Chavez Subject:Abort the 6 Date:Sunday, June 26, 2022 3:21:50 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.________________________________ Sent from my iPhone From:Planning Subject:HEU: The County of Santa Clara begins 2023 – 2031 Housing Element Update Community Engagement Date:Thursday, June 23, 2022 7:43:50 PM Attachments:image001.png image004.png Some people who received this message don't often get email from planning2@pln.sccgov.org.Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. The County of Santa Clara is commencing the community engagementprogram this summer to seek community input on the 2023 – 2031 HousingElement Update. Engagement for the Housing Element Update will beginJune 2022 and will conclude in September 2022. The Housing Element is a mandatory element of the General Plan that primarily addresses the housing needs of unincorporated areas in Santa Clara County. Housing Element law requires local governments to adequately plan to meet their existing and projected housing needs, including their share of the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). The Housing Element must be updated on an eight-year cycle or as otherwise determined by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. The County of Santa Clara’s current Housing Element extends to 2022. Community engagement will include a series of stakeholder and community workshops hosted between June and September. Each workshop will be held virtually and will focus on either rural or urban housing needs. Please go to our webpage to sign up for updates. Meeting information and dates may be found on at our website at http://www.sccgov.org/housing-element. Inquiries regarding the Housing Element process can be emailed through the website. From:mark weiss To:Council, City Cc:Shikada, Ed; Tom DuBois; Alison Cormack; Kou, Lydia Subject:First Amendment vs commercialization of the commonsDate:Thursday, June 23, 2022 11:44:25 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.________________________________ My understanding is that a panhandler was asked to move away from the corner of Bryant and University by the new tenant at 300 University seemingly Adverse to his first amendment rights, as described by him, later, at Lytton Plaza. But now I notice at that same spot or 20 feet from where the panhandler was many, many times there is a sandwich board offering “20% off” for a sugared drink also a new tenant on the 300 block of University; see photo. And I notice a similar sandwich board and “help wanted” sign for their competitor I would think a relatively new tenant 500 block of Bryant like 50 yards Southwest.So is it true that in Palo Alto billionaire landlords and their millionaire or trillionaire tenants have more rights than the average citizen contrary to the constitution especially in the era of the dubious “citizen’s united”? Mark Weiss On Bryant Full disclosure: On Saturday upcoming June 25, 2022 which is also George Orwell’s birthday and at least one site in Palo Alto “world music day”, From 5 to 9 or sunset in terms of the music but I will be in and out of the plaza basically all day and I have procured from the planning department parking signs taped for 72 hours to poles and trees at Lytton Plaza, Marta Sanchez jazz quintet and Sylvie Simmons solo ukulele and voice And A apropos of the instant matter, I too will put out a sandwich board with the name of my company “Earthwise “ — but it is contiguous and potentially part of the plaza for which I have a permit, and I would argue is not acommercialization of the park or the commons or the crosswalk or the intersection. And we should be able to discriminate and distinguish based on something other than pure crass economic force. Sent from my iPhone From:Allan Seid To:Channing House Bulletin Board; CHOpinion CHOpinion Subject:Fwd: Letters: Don’t dismiss racism that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders face Date:Thursday, June 23, 2022 10:01:51 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. From: Allan Seid <allanseid734@gmail.com> Date: Thu, Jun 23, 2022 Subject: Letters: Don’t dismiss racism that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders face Source: San Francisco Chronicle: Letters to Editor 6/23/22 https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/letterstotheeditor/article/Letters-Don-t- dismiss-racism-that-Asian-17256400.php? utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headlines&utm_cam paign=sfc_opinioncentral&sid=5fefc058b042aa734736d79c Letters: Don’t dismiss racism that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders face June 22, 2022 Comments Demonstrators hold signs during a rally on June 14 demanding justice for Vicha Ratanapakdee, who died after being assaulted in San Francisco in January 2021. Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle Regarding “Unite to stop crime against everyone, regardless of race” (Letters to the Editor, June 19): The fact that you can have an opinion that is so dismissive of the struggles of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community is perhaps the reason why this community needs way more support. Are you aware that the AAPI community has some of the highest cancer rates? Are you aware that the highest income disparity is among AAPI groups? There is almost zero outreach to get data and actual income numbers from this excluded community. Are you aware that the history of this community is also almost never taught? Had the AAPI community not tracked hate incidents during the pandemic (more than 10,000), we would still be relying on whitewashed data. If the credible chance and fear of being racially attacked for being Asian isn’t the worst evil that one can endure, I don’t know what is. Kelly Leigh, San Francisco From:Aram James To:Pat Burt; Council, City; Human Relations Commission; Shikada, Ed Subject:Screenshot 2022-06-22 at 9.19.00 PM Date:Wednesday, June 22, 2022 9:19:39 PM Attachments:Screenshot 2022-06-22 at 9.19.00 PM.png CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links. ________________________________ Sent from my iPhone From:Aram James To:Shikada, Ed; Council, City; Human Relations Commission; Winter Dellenbach; Joe Simitian Subject:From the archives of aram Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 10:32:23 PM Attachments:image.png CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links. ________________________________ Sent from my iPhone From:Tran, Joanna To:Council, City Cc:Executive Leadership Team; ORG - Clerk"s Office; Gollinger, Peter Subject:Council Consent Question Item 1: 6/21/22 Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 2:13:10 PM Attachments:image001.png image003.png image004.png image006.png image007.png image008.png image009.png Dear Mayor and Councilmembers: On behalf of City Manager Ed Shikada, please view the following links for the amended agenda and staff response to a question from Councilmember Cormack regarding tonight’s Council Meeting: June 21, 2022 Amended Agenda Staff response to Consent Item 1 Thank you, Joanna Joanna Tran Executive Assistant to the City Manager Office of the City Manager (650) 329-2105 | joanna.tran@cityofpaloalto.org www.cityofpaloalto.org From:Cole, Cynthia To:Council, City Cc:Kwan, Karen Subject:palo alto art center notes Date:Monday, June 20, 2022 4:28:40 PM Attachments:image001.png image002.png image003.png image004.png image005.png image006.png image007.png Some people who received this message don't often get email from cynthia.cole@bakerbotts.com.Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. All My name is Cynthia Cole and I’m an attorney who works in Palo Alto and have been on the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation board since 2017. First of all I would like to thank you for the budget restorations to the Art Center that are included in the FY23 budget. These restorations are all revenue-generating, providing important revenue to the City of Palo Alto, and include contract dollars that will allow us to offer our popular adult studio classes, house manager and rental staffing to allow the Art Center to offer facility rentals to the public, and paid internship staff to provide support for our popular summer camp programs. The Art Center recently celebrated our 50th anniversary with more than 400 people in our community. We heard so many people share their feedback about how important the Art Center has been in their lives. Now is the time to continue to invest in this vital community resource We look forward to continuing to work with City Council to support investment in this community gem. Thank you Cynthia J. ColePartner Baker Botts L.L.P. cynthia.cole@bakerbotts.com T +1 650.739.7575F +1 650.739.7635M +1 408.775.4338 1001 Page Mill RoadBuilding One, Suite 200Palo Alto, CA 94304USA Confidentiality Notice: The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended only for the recipient[s] listed above and may be privileged and confidential. Any dissemination, copying, or use of or reliance upon such information by or to anyone other than the recipient[s] listed above is prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately at the email address above and destroy any and all copies of this message. Download Attachment Available until Jul 27, 2022 From:Aram James To:Bains, Paul; Pat Burt; Shikada, Ed; ladoris cordell; Council, City; Joe Simitian; Winter Dellenbach; Sean Allen; Kaloma Smith; Dennis Upton; Human Relations Commission; Binder, Andrew; Jeff Rosen; darylsavage@gmail.com; Vara Ramakrishnan; Council, City; Betsy Nash; Cecilia Taylor; city.council@menlopark.org; citycouncil@mountainview.gov; Joe Simitian; supervisor.ellenberg@bos.sccgov.org; Sajid Khan; Jay Boyarsky Subject:Aram James talks on Frederick Douglass Day ( July 4, 2020) on the steps of the PAPD —-from the archives of aram james Date:Monday, June 27, 2022 11:13:30 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links.  Click to Download IMG_6630.MOV 0 bytes Sent from my iPhone UPDATE You won't want to miss Monday's livecast with: Alex McFarland From:Richard Harris: Executive Director To:Council, City Subject:UPDATE Alex McFarland: What"s Next for America After Roe? Date:Monday, June 27, 2022 3:29:59 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious ofopening attachments and clicking on links. Alex McFarland has spoken in hundreds of locations throughout the US and abroad. He has preached in over 1,500 different churches throughout North America and internationally, and has been featured at conferences such as The Billy Graham School of Evangelism, Focus On The Family’s Big Dig, Josh McDowell’s True Foundations events, California’s Spirit West Coast, and many more. He is a contributor to the Biblical Worldview curriculum series for Andrew Wommack Ministries, and a frequent instructor at Charis Bible College. This Week's Topics: Overturning Roe v Wade LEARN MORE Religious Liberty The Church and America Tonights Hosts FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW TO WATCH THE LIVECAST! EVERY MONDAY @ 6PM MT / 8PM ET This Week's Articles Did You Catch Last Week's Livecast? WATCH NOW READ OUR SHOW NOTES LET PEOPLE KNOW YOU'RE WATCHING! Share Tweet Forward SUPPORT THE COALITION! Copyright © 2022 Truth & Liberty Coalition, All rights reserved. DONATE BECOME A MEMBER You are receiving this email because you subscribed on our website. Our mailing address is: Truth & Liberty Coalition 1 Innovation Way Suite B Woodland Park, CO 80863 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. From:Jeff Hoel To:Yuan, Dave Cc:Hoel, Jeff (external); Council, City; UAC; Batchelor, Dean; Shikada, Ed Subject:questions about the City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey Date:Monday, June 27, 2022 1:08:05 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Dave, Yesterday, Don Jackson forwarded to me an email message he had received From: City of Palo Alto <fiber@cityofpaloalto.org> Subject: City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey Date: June 23, 2022 at 11:39:25 AM PDT To: <dcj@clark-communications.com> inviting him to take a Palo Alto FTTP survey. Today, he forwarded to me another email message he had received From: City of Palo Alto Fiber Internet <invites@mailer.surveygizmo.com> Date: June 27, 2022 at 7:05:45 AM PDT To: don.jackson@gmail.com Subject: City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey also inviting him to take a Palo Alto FTTP survey. I haven't received either of these messages from the City yet. QUESTIONS: 1. To how many people was each of these messages sent? How did the City choose these people? I had the impression that the City was going to send such a message to essentially every residential premises and every business premises. What was the City's intent? If the City invited a smaller number of people to take the survey, how were they selected, and why does the City think that this set of people is "representative"? 2. I had the impression that each invitation email message contained a personal identifier, in effect permitting the recipient to take the survey. If I take the survey using Don's invitation email message, will it count? (I haven't done this yet. I did try to look through the survey without answering questions, but the survey wouldn't let me do that.) What will the City do with surveys received without the personal identifier? Please send me an email invitation to take the survey (assuming that's consistent with City policy). Thanks. Jeff ------------------- Jeff Hoel 731 Colorado Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94303 ------------------- From:Eddie Gornish To:Council, City Cc:gornish Subject:Did the City of Palo Alto send email about a Palo Alto internet survey? Date:Monday, June 27, 2022 11:43:55 AM Some people who received this message don't often get email from gornish@gmail.com. Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Did the City of Palo Alto send out this email? City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey There is a discussion about this on nextdoor.com. At first glance, the email looks legitimate, but then it asks for $50. If it's a scam, I fear that many residents will fall for it... thanks Eddie Gornish Palo Alto Download Attachment Available until Jul 27, 2022 From:Aram James To:city.council@menlopark.org; Council, City; Human Relations Commission; Winter Dellenbach; chuck jagoda; Joe Simitian; Sean Allen; Shikada, Ed; Greer Stone; Jeff Rosen; Binder, Andrew; Tannock, Julie; Roberta Ahlquist; epatoday@epatoday.org; Greg Tanaka; Sajid Khan; Enberg, Nicholas; Jethroe Moore; Vara Ramakrishnan Subject:From Frederick Douglass Day July 4, 2020 Date:Monday, June 27, 2022 11:02:42 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Click to Download IMG_6630.MOV 0 bytes Sent from my iPhone Download Attachment Available until Jul 27, 2022 From:Aram James To:Shikada, Ed; Council, City; Joe Simitian; Human Relations Commission; Winter Dellenbach; Sean Allen; chuck jagoda; Jeff Rosen; Tannock, Julie; Binder, Andrew; robert.parham@cityofpaloalto.org; Figueroa, Eric; Rebecca Eisenberg; Vara Ramakrishnan; Greer Stone; Cecilia Taylor; Betsy Nash; Jay Boyarsky; Enberg, Nicholas; Jethroe Moore; Sajid Khan; Raj Subject:Re: Frederick Douglass Day July 4 2020 ( 2020) Date:Monday, June 27, 2022 10:39:35 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links.    Click to Download Independence Day - Jul 4, 2020.mov 0 bytes Sent from my iPhone Download Attachment Available until Jul 27, 2022 From:Aram James To:Shikada, Ed; Council, City; Joe Simitian; Human Relations Commission; Winter Dellenbach; Sean Allen; chuck jagoda; Jeff Rosen; Tannock, Julie; Binder, Andrew; robert.parham@cityofpaloalto.org; Figueroa, Eric; Rebecca Eisenberg; Vara Ramakrishnan; Greer Stone; Cecilia Taylor; Betsy Nash; Jay Boyarsky; Enberg, Nicholas; Jethroe Moore; Sajid Khan; Raj Subject:Frederick Douglass Day July 4 2022 Date:Monday, June 27, 2022 10:38:42 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links.   Click to Download Independence Day - Jul 4, 2020.mov 0 bytes Sent from my iPhone From:Yahoo Mail.® To:Honky Subject:2000 MULES should result in 2000 ARREST WARRANTS of the USA election fraudsters and all that TV HEARINGS CRAP Date:Sunday, June 26, 2022 7:04:20 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Arizona State Senate Reviews 'True The Vote' Presentation on Ballot Harvesting 5/31/22 Rumble https://node-1.2000mules.com 2000 Mules (2022) - IMDb Arizona State Senate Reviews 'True The Vote' Presentation on Ballot Harv... Arizona State Senate and House Members Review 'True The Vote'Presentation on Ballot Harvesting in Maricopa and ... Rumble Rumble is your rights management video platform. Host, distributeand monetize all your professional, social and... 2000 Mules (2022) - IMDb 2000 Mules: Directed by Debbie D'Souza, Dinesh D'Souza, BruceSchooley. With Dinesh D'Souza, Catherine Engelbrec... From:Aram James To:epatoday@epatoday.org; Roberta Ahlquist; Rebecca Eisenberg; chuck jagoda; Angie Evans; Council, City; Shikada, Ed; Winter Dellenbach; Joe Simitian; Human Relations Commission; Sean Allen; Greer Stone; Binder, Andrew; Jeff Rosen; Jethroe Moore; Vara Ramakrishnan; Jay Boyarsky; Cindy Chavez; supervisor.ellenberg@bos.sccgov.org; supervisor.lee@bos.sccgov.org; Raj Subject:Homelessness is our durable hobby horse ( Mercury News) June 26, 2022 by Joe Matthew Date:Sunday, June 26, 2022 1:34:07 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links. ________________________________ Page: 13 https://edition.pagesuite.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?edid=d8b009fa-8410-4a19-b89b- 0883231059fc&pnum=13 Sent from my iPhone From:Gabe To:Palo Alto Fiber Cc:UAC; Council, City Subject:Palo Alto Fiber question Date:Sunday, June 26, 2022 11:36:03 AM Some people who received this message don't often get email from gamma888@yahoo.com. Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Hello there! Since I see that Palo Alto Fiber survey is being distributed to the public, I just have a question to ask... How much of % Palo Alto residents would give out a strong indication/vote that fiber being run by CPA is needed throughout the city? I look forward to receiving your response soon. Regards, Gabe Leung From:Anne Gregory To:Zero Waste Cc:Council, City Subject:your mailer - styrofoam Date:Saturday, June 25, 2022 1:44:01 PM Some people who received this message don't often get email from xagregoryx@yahoo.com. Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Dear Greenwaste: Your recent flyer that arrived with my Palo Alto Weekly states that styrofoam is not recyclable and to send it to the landfill. I was sorry to see this because Green Citizen in Burlingame DOES take styrofoam, for a small cost, and makes it into new products. I take styrofoam there every month or two. I wish you would direct your customers to organizations that do recycle/reuse instead of directing us to put more plastic in the landfill. Thank you, Anne Gregory From:Lynnette Jackson To:Council, City Subject:Public spaces should be a public matter! Date:Saturday, June 25, 2022 1:29:42 PM [Some people who received this message don't often get email from lnjackson1011@gmail.com. Learn why this is important at https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ] CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links. ________________________________ Dear City Council of the City of Palo Alto, In anticipation of your meeting on February 28th, we implore you to put the matter of streets and parklet usage to a wider public vote. The decision of how City property should be used — and how it can benefit the broadest possible group of residents — should be decided by members of our community. It should not be subject to a subset of influential few. After two years of increased public engagement on the social and health benefits of our streets, we urge you to consider this as a unique opportunity to further a sense of collective agency over our public spaces. A concerned citizen of our community, Lynnette From:Aram James To:Tannock, Julie; robert.parham@cityofpaloalto.org; Enberg, Nicholas; Human Relations Commission; Council, City; Sean Allen; chuck jagoda; Shikada, Ed; Winter Dellenbach; Joe Simitian; Figueroa, Eric; Binder, Andrew; Jeff Rosen; Jay Boyarsky; Jethroe Moore; Greer Stone; Perron, Zachary; Binder, Andrew; Alison Cormack; darylsavage@gmail.com; Planning Commission; Vara Ramakrishnan Subject:Tax loses support on council (Daily Post) June 22, 2022 Date:Friday, June 24, 2022 7:24:06 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. FYI: the mayor and I had some subsequent email correspondence on the same topic. All very much appreciated Regards, Aram  June 22. 2022 Hi Pat, I wrote this note to you before I saw your informative note on higher wages in Santa Clara, but figured I would send out my letter to you in any event. Hi Mayor Burt, I hope you enjoy a little summer break from all of the hard work you do as our mayor. I see in today's Daily Post( June 22, 2022) on page 26 that you are concerned that a “wave” of Palo Alto police may soon be leaving for the city of Santa Clara. I say let the officers go if they don’t want to be in Palo Alto—and good riddance. Is the wave of cops who want to leave Palo Alto the same ones who filed the frivolous and embarrassing lawsuit claiming the BLM mural created a hostile work environment? The story of this lawsuit in the aftermath of the George Floyd police execution was so outrageous that the cops racially loaded shenanigans were covered nationally….including by the Washington Post. Do these cops have no shame? Maybe the Palo Alto cops who are threatening to leave Palo Alto feel like the city of Santa Clara will require even less accountability for misconduct than the PAPD does. Even with an IPA Palo Alto cops rarely if ever suffer more than a slap on the hand for their outrageous acts of misconduct. We both know this is true. So unless the cops who are threatening to leave Palo Alto are really committed to good policing- constitutional policing….please just let them go. It is absolutely not necessary to pander to bad cops. The wages I made as a young public servant - public defender were not always the best -but it was the commitment to our constitution that kept me doing the work. As the years went on my wages were more than sufficient to support my family. The same is true for cops they are extremely well paid. As an aside….I was always happy to see fellow public defenders that were lazy or disrespecting our clients leave the office. So it's NOT just bad cops that disgust me -it's bad public servants across the board. So dig a little deeper. Are the cops that are threatening to leave really committed to equitable and constitutional policing? I doubt it. I’m guessing they’re first-class whiners wherever they go with an absence of any moral compass. Of course, I will concede, that I could be big-time wrong. But at least before you beg these cops to stay find out what you can about their work ethic, misconduct records, etc. I know that’s a funny one. In fact, good luck on that one….given all the inappropriate special protection cops are given to protect them from their misconduct ever being made public We are living in a police state. Please don’t make it worse by encouraging bad cops to stay. Are the cops that are threatening to leave the same rogue cops that have made the PAPD the laughing stock of law enforcement for decades? ….for their relentless record of racially discriminatory policing year after year-no matter how much it costs the city in lawsuits and moral bankruptcy. Do you think at least once we could have a progressive non-white police chief in Palo Alto? Do you even know which cops are threatening to leave? Is one of the cops that wants out the notorious Nicholas Enberg? The same cop who released a canine on a sleeping man ……repeatedly calling out for his weaponized canine to bite Joel Alejo again and again? Let Nicholas Enberg go —quick fast and in a hurry- if he is one of the cops wanting to depart Palo Alto. The PAPD is the same department that continues to employ Zack Perron at nearly $400,000 per year. When you look at the wages and benefits members of the PAPD earn it is difficult to make a credible argument ….that these officers don’t make extraordinarily generous salaries with retirement benefits that are amazing and a large cause for the huge debt owed by Palo Alto to the public employees' retirement fund. Ask a teacher if he/she would appreciate the same wages cops make for the critical job of educating our youth. And finally, leave it to your soon-to-be termed-out ( not too soon for me) colleague Eric “Dog Whistle” Filseth for his always uncritical support of cops no matter how vile they may act. . See his dog whistle comments in the same Post article you’re quoted in. Ok, one more request: please push the city manager to do the right thing and bring the three finalists for police chief into town for a full public vetting. This is the least we can do to show our continued commitment to police transparency. Don’t let Ed Shikada continue to run over our elected officials. Why are council members so afraid to take Ed Shikada on? It is past time the council stands up to our nonelected management team. Enjoy your vacation if you are able to take one. Best regards, Aram From:John Mark Leary Cox To:Council, City Subject:John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe Date:Friday, June 24, 2022 5:59:01 PM Some people who received this message don't often get email frombohemiansaltmines@gmail.com. Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Both John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe will be Free in 2023. Hence My Expectation is that JFK shall be Running for President in 2024 to be the Next US President wherein the Location of the Federal Government will have to be Moved from Washington DC to a Central Location of the Continental US. Mark Leary Cox (MahdiCain) From:kevin guibara To:Council, City Subject:Fwd: City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey Date:Friday, June 24, 2022 6:25:50 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Dear City Council, Palo Alto Utilities is the worst. The customer service is terrible and the utility service is worse than PGE. Your planning and building departments are so backed up and under staffed that basic functions take months and months to complete. This seriously harms economic activity in the City of Palo Alto. Please fix these non functioning departments before expanding services into internet as well. Kevin ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Palo Alto Fiber Internet <invites@mailer.surveygizmo.com> Date: Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 5:53 AM Subject: City of Palo Alto Internet/Broadband Services Survey To: <KEVINGUIBARA@gmail.com> Hello, The City of Palo Alto is exploring providing high- speed, broadband internet services directly to your home and business as part of the Palo Alto Fiber effort. Share Internet Service Preferences Today The City is seeking input from Palo Alto residents and businesses to learn more about your internet preferences and service needs. Input gained will define service details like pricing and help inform the City Council decision-making process and next steps. Take the survey by clicking the link below.  Click Here to Start the Survey Show Your Interest by Submitting a Deposit Strong community interest is an important factor for consideration as the City explores locally-controlled internet services. A new deposit program is one measure of many being used to design the fiber build out. Submit a $50 deposit today. Click Here to Submit a Deposit Get  Involved Today Learn more and connect with neighbors by visiting the Palo Alto Fiber Hub. Thank you for your time and feedback. The City of Palo Alto  This message was sent by Magellan Advisors, LLC, 999 18th Street Suite 3000, Denver, CO 80202. To unsubscribe, click below: Unsubscribe -- Sincerely, Kevin Guibara Millennium Flats www.millenniumflats.com 42 Arch St, Ste E Redwood City, CA 94062 Cell: 650-678-4859 (Primary) Office: 650-341-4332 DRE #01803236 From:Paul Gregory To:Council, City Subject:Palo Alto fiber survey Date:Thursday, June 23, 2022 10:17:13 PM [Some people who received this message don't often get email from pegrego@sonic.net. Learn why this is important at https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ] CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links. ________________________________ Hi, I just started to fill out Palo Alto's Fiber survey. I quit when it became apparent that the survey is not an honest attempt to measure opinion, but rather is designed to skew responses to get the desired outcome. Please don't make any decisions based on this "survey". Garbage in, garbage out. A waste of money. Nowhere was there an option "I'm very happy with my current internet provider, and I intend to continue with them". I have fiber service from Sonic. Sonic provides service over AT&T fiber. It would be better if Sonic had their own fiber, but that is unlikely to happen since the AT&T fiber is already there. This brings up another reason Palo Alto should not get into fiber to the home. AT&T has brought fiber to some neighborhoods in Palo Alto, and seems to be expanding service. They could expand faster if they saw the need. There is no reason to have two sets of fiber going to all neighborhoods. In other words, Palo Alto is late to the game. Palo Alto should instead concentrate on doing things that only they can do. For example, finally make some actual decisions about building grade separations at Caltrain crossings, and get construction underway. Our neighboring cities have plans, and will probably get funding long before Palo Alto stops dithering. Paul Gregory 3880 La Donna Ave From:Matt Bryant To:Council, City Subject:Palo Alto - El Camino Real streetscape plan Date:Thursday, June 23, 2022 1:54:41 PM Some people who received this message don't often get email from drmattbryant@gmail.com.Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Dear council members, I would like to encourage the Palo Alto City Council to adopt an El Camino Real streetscape plan similar to Mountain View (link below) with the goal to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety. The ECR safety plan would include improved pedestrian crosswalks and add new bicycle lanes. Besides improving the lives of Palo Altans, the new infrastructure would allow others to safely use ECR as a commuter route and safely visit businesses on ECR by foot or bicycle. The new streetscape plan would coincide with the planned Caltrans repavement of ECR project. Many other cities along ECR have plans to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety in coordination with Caltrans. https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/pw/transport/gettingaround/el_camino_real_streetscape _plan.asp Thank you for reading, Matt Dr. Matt Bryant 471 Pepper Ave Palo Alto, CA From:John Kelley To:Stump, Molly Cc:City Attorney; Council, City; Planning Commission; ADU Task Force; Popp, Randy Subject:PA-What will be the effective date of the 2022 Tree Ordinance? Date:Wednesday, June 22, 2022 6:32:39 PM Some people who received this message don't often get email from jkelley@399innovation.com. Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links. June 22, 2022 Molly Stump, Esq. City Attorney City of Palo Alto 250 Hamilton Ave. Palo Alto, CA 94301 RE: Effective date for the 2022 Tree Ordinance? Dear City Attorney Stump, In light of the passage of the Consent Calendar at the Palo Alto City Council meeting on June 20, 2022, including item number 27, "SECOND READING: Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Title 8 of the PAMC to Expand Tree Protection to Include Additional Protected Tree Species, Revise Grounds for Tree Removal, and Make Clarifying Changes and Amending Titles 2, 9, and 18 to make Clerical Updates” (2022 Tree Ordinance), and in order to avoid any misunderstandings, I’d be grateful if you would please let me know what the effective date of the 2022 Tree Ordinance will be. Thank you very much for your kind consideration of this request. Sincerely yours, John Kelley From:Allan Seid To:Channing House Bulletin Board; CHOpinion CHOpinion Subject:Fwd: Discovering Vincent Chin Date:Wednesday, June 22, 2022 4:57:05 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Allan Seid Date: Wed, Jun 22, 2022 Subject: Fwd: Discovering Vincent Chin Source: UCLA Asian Studie Department If you're having trouble viewing this email, you can see it online. 1080x1350%20(5).jpg Marcine, It has been 40 years since Vincent Chin’s tragic murder. To commemorate this somber milestone, our friends at NextShark are hosting a series of virtual conversations with key players in the Vincent Chin case who helped make it a pivotal and historic landmark movement. Featuring Gary Koivu (Vincent's Best Friend), Christine Choy (Director of "Who Killed Vincent Chin?"), and Theodore Merritt (Federal Prosecutor for Detroit Federal Trial). Conversations will be moderated by Alle Hsu and Anthony Ma. Tune in on Facebook Live or join us on Zoom, Thursday, June 23rd, 2022, beginning at 4:00 pm PT. Each conversation will end with a live Q&A for attendees. For more info and registration: https://bit.ly/discovervincentchin CAMDC_d.jpg 1218 16th St. N.W. Washington, DC 20036 This email was sent to marcine@seidlawgroup.com. Click here to unsubscribe. From:D Martell To:Council, City Cc:Shikada, Ed; Stump, Molly; Jonsen, Robert; Supervisor Simitian; anne.ream@mail.house.gov; AnnaEshoo@mail.house.gov Subject:NEWS FLASH --- 5th COVID case at Lytton Gardens Assisted Living facility Date:Wednesday, June 22, 2022 2:17:43 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. June 22, 2022: a 5th case of Covid case at LG Assisted Living facility in the past month (!!). -Danielle Martell From:Loran Harding To:Loran Harding; Doug Vagim; kfsndesk; newsdesk; tsheehan; Mayor; Mark Standriff; Council, City; Scott Wilkinson; Joel Stiner; dennisbalakian; David Balakian; Steve Wayte; huidentalsanmateo; hennessy; Dan Richard; Daniel Zack; Cathy Lewis; leager; margaret-sasaki@live.com Subject:Fwd: Tues. June 21, 2022 "Jan. 6 Hearing". Date:Wednesday, June 22, 2022 3:18:10 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Loran Harding <loran.harding@stanfordalumni.org> Date: Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 2:41 AM Subject: Fwd: Tues. June 21, 2022 "Jan. 6 Hearing". To: Loran Harding <loran.harding@stanfordalumni.org> ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Loran Harding <loran.harding@stanfordalumni.org> Date: Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 2:34 AM Subject: Fwd: Tues. June 21, 2022 "Jan. 6 Hearing". To: Loran Harding <loran.harding@stanfordalumni.org> ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Loran Harding <loran.harding@stanfordalumni.org> Date: Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 2:24 AM Subject: Tues. June 21, 2022 "Jan. 6 Hearing". To: Loran Harding <loran.harding@stanfordalumni.org> June 21, 2022 Doug- At 3:18 three hours, 18 minutes, so near the end of this vid- Pierre Thomas talks about what the Justice Dept. is doing: DOJ is not sitting on their hands. LIVE: January 6 Hearing: House Select Committee Presents Capitol Attack Investigation Findings - YouTube BTW, remember Fresno Co. Clerk/ Registrar of voters, Brandi Orth. She announced her retirement on Tuesday, January 12, 2021, six days after the riot. Retirement to be effective Feb. 28, 2021. How about that timing! I wonder if she was hearing about all of the stuff Trump and his people were doing in states where the election was close?! Geez. She had to know some of the people who were on the receiving end of all of that. Even if she didn't know them, the whole elections apparatas in the US had to be just alive with news of what was going on. Fresno County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Brandi Orth announces retirement | KMPH If you watch today's hearing, you get a real civics lesson. You see just how important all of the people involved in elections really are- their integrity. It's a lesson for a lot of Americans who could not care less about elections. It is a good lesson too for people in those roles in the future, if any are willing to get involved after this. But those people, like State Secretaries of State, are really the bulwark that keeps our democracy safe. All up and down the elections system, from poll workers, ballot processors, State officials, clear up to the electors and the VP certifying the electors. That is a huge lesson from today's hearing. I wonder if the committee realizes the importance of the lesson their investigation is teaching! It should all be put on DVD and shown in every high school in the US. Every HS student should sit through it once. It should always carry the statement that the Speaker of the House refused to have Republicans on the committee unless they were hostile to Trump. BTW, the next hearing is Thursday, June 23, 2022, at noon PT. 3PM ET. L. William Harding Fresno, Ca. From:Aram James To:Josh Becker; Jeff Rosen; Jay Boyarsky; Council, City Subject:Walk the walk-Not just talk the talk Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 9:21:22 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious ofopening attachments and clicking on links.   m June 21, 2022 Dear City Council, City Manager, et al: After the “blue ribbon commission” made up of city executives, residents, business owners, church leaders, educators and other law enforcement officers interview candidates for Palo Alto’s next police chief( on June 23-& 24, 2022-source Daily Post, by Braden Wainwright- May 25, 2022)….please follow the lead of former city manager James Keene and, as he did, in 2009, release the names of the three finalists for chief so the community will have adequate time to research and investigate the law enforcement background and character of the three finalists —-before one of the candidates is selected for chief by city manger Ed Shikada… subject, of course, to the approval of the city council. A little more than two years ago after the police execution of George Floyd there were unprecedented national and international calls for police reform, police accountability, police transparency and a call for racial justice in all aspects of policing. Palo Alto had its own protest actions over the police murder of George Floyd. Our city promoted a Black Lives Matter mural and this very city council had multiple meetings all directed at meaningful police reform — including calls for more police transparency. Now is one very significant opportunity- to not just talk the talk- but to walk the walk- by implementing transparency….. by releasing the names of the three finalists for police chief…and allowing members of the community to interview and investigate all three candidates with the goal of selecting the very best person for our next police chief. Sincerely, Aram James ****See below Gennady Sheyner’s article- from 2009 -re the precedent for releasing the names of the three finalists for Palo Alto police chief…. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2009/07/27/three- palo-alto- police- chief- finalists- announced From:Iris Zhang To:Council, City Subject:Information from City during extreme weather? Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 5:45:15 PM [Some people who received this message don't often get email from ihzhang@stanford.edu. Learn why this is important at https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ] CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links. ________________________________ Hi Palo Alto City Council, I hope everyone is staying cool. I just wanted to express some concern that I have found no information—whether on Twitter, Nextdoor, or the City website—to residents about staying safe during this extreme weather event. In the past, at least the city shares information about cooling centers and where to get help during extreme heat but not today, when temperatures are reaching 100. This is really concerning because this weather can be life-threatening for many vulnerable groups in our community, and it might also be useful to remind people to reduce electricity usage (rather than have everyone crank up their AC) during this time. Best, Iris (college terrace) From:Aram James To:Shikada, Ed; Council, City; Human Relations Commission; Winter Dellenbach; chuck jagoda; Sean Allen; Binder, Andrew; Roberta Ahlquist; Jeff Rosen; Jeff Moore; Greer Stone; Vara Ramakrishnan; Rebecca Eisenberg; Lewis. james; Stump, Molly; Tanner, Rachael Subject:Walk the walk-Not just talk the talk Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 4:20:09 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. June 21, 2022 Dear City Council, City Manager, et al: After the “blue ribbon commission” made up of city executives, residents, business owners, church leaders, educators and other law enforcement officers interview candidates for Palo Alto’s next police chief( on June 23- & 24, 2022-source Daily Post, by Braden Wainwright- May 25, 2022)….please follow the lead of former city manager James Keene and, as he did, in 2009, release the names of the three finalists for chief so the community will have adequate time to research and investigate the law enforcement background and character of the three finalists —-before one of the candidates is selected for chief by city manger Ed Shikada… subject, of course, to the approval of the city council. A little more than two years ago after the police execution of George Floyd there were unprecedented national and international calls for police reform, police accountability, police transparency and a call for racial justice in all aspects of policing. Palo Alto had its own protest actions over the police murder of George Floyd. Our city promoted a Black Lives Matter mural and this very city council had multiple meetings all directed at meaningful police reform —including calls for more police transparency. Now is one very significant opportunity- to not just talk the talk-but to walk the walk- by implement transparency….. by releasing the names of the three finalists for police chief…and allowing members of the community to interview and investigate all three candidates with the goal of selecting the very best person for our next police chief. Sincerely, Aram James ****See below Gennady Sheyner’s article- from 2009 - re the precedent for releasing the names of the three finalists for Palo Alto police chief…. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2009/07/27/three- palo-alto-police-chief-finalists-announced From:Tony Caruthers To:Council, City Subject:This is not a myth, the Arabics in America & Mark Zuckerberg are Challenging this Destroyer Angel...the reason military exhibitions are happening because someone other than me, in America has to SPEAK UP on Facebook sending the money to me & Israel and... Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 3:28:44 PM Some people who received this message don't often get email from tonycaruzz@gmail.com. Learnwhy this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. "Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism: Angel of Death I: Malach ha-Mavet, Severe Agent of God" http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/01/angel-of-death-i-severe-agent-of-god.html? m=1 From:Palo Alto Forward To:Council, City Subject:Thank you! 2850 West Bayshore Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 1:57:13 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Hello! I just wanted to reach out to say thank you for approving the project for 2850 West Bayshore last night - Palo Alto Forward has obviously given public comment on why this project is important in terms of the housing element and as we try to convert more office space into homes. On a personal note, this project is one block from my childhood home, it's a wonderful neighborhood and I grew up in a multifamily home and surrounded by a lot of affordable housing. In the last several years more homes have replaced empty lots and offices, and each time it makes the neighborhood feel safer, cleaner, more communal and things like the bike lanes are improved. I'm so glad this project was approved (along with the bike lanes being improved!) it never made sense to have an office on that lot and such a fantastic community and more families will now have access to it! Katie Causey Community Engagement Manager Palo Alto Forward From:Becky Richardson To:Council, City Subject:Question/concern about RPP Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 1:53:02 PM Some people who received this message don't often get email from becky.richardson@gmail.com.Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Dear City Council Members, I'm writing with concerns about the return of the RPP and especially with two recent changes: 1) not allowing households a free vehicle, and 2) the contracting out of this registration process to Duncan. First, I'm troubled by the elimination of the old policy of allowing each household one free vehicle registration. Because these parking programs disproportionately affect renters -- who do not tend to have garages or driveways to park in -- these fees act like a regressive tax. Households should have at least the one free permit in recognition of this fact. Second, Duncan is a terrible company to contract this program out to. Their services are clunky and full of red flags with privacy concerns. Nextdoor was flooded with older residents struggling to figure out how to upload the required information. Even for my partner and myself, both relatively tech savvy, we had to re-apply after our applications were initially rejected -- because the applications were missing a document that the form had never asked for. When I called Duncan to inquire -- because the rejection came with no info. about what had gone wrong -- they offered the opposite of customer service: no acknowledgement that the system needed to be updated to reflect their actual documentation needs, and no reassurances that our applications would be more quickly processed due to this delay that had resulted from their own ineptitude. I'm also very concerned about the privacy and security issues -- Duncan's site is clunky and does not inspire me with confidence. Yet Palo Alto has required all of us to upload sensitive information -- drivers' licenses and vehicle registrations -- to a company that has made no promises to secure and keep this information safe. Finally, a further nail in the coffin: the digital registration system doesn't even seem to work that well. I already know of two neighbors who have received tickets after duly registering their vehicles with Duncan. I'd love to see the City Council reconsider this program. It's not clear to me that we really need it -- especially as we seemed to do okay without it during the first years of the pandemic. If we must have it, we should be administering it with more of an eye to equity, & using the revenue for something that increases equity and inclusivity in the city -- not giving residents' money away to a terrible company like Duncan. Sincerely, Rebecca Richardson From:Georgia Macdonald To:Council, City Subject:Signature requested on "Court Order Agreement" Date:Tuesday, June 21, 2022 7:47:02 AM Some people who received this message don't often get email from adobesign@adobesign.com.Learn why this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Adobe Acrobat Sign Adobe Georgia Macdonald requests your signature on Court Order Agreement Review and sign Please review and complete Court Order Agreement. GEORGIA MACDONALDgeorgia.macdonald@cherishloans.com After you sign Court Order Agreement, all parties will receive a final PDF copyby email. By proceeding, you agree that this agreement may be signed using electronic or handwritten signatures. To ensure that you continue receiving our emails, please add adobesign@adobesign.com to your address bookor safe list. Terms of Use | Report Abuse © 2022 Adobe. All rights reserved. From:Bruce Boyd To:Council, City Subject:Public spaces should be a public matter! Date:Monday, June 20, 2022 7:12:41 PM Some people who received this message don't often get email from bruce.boyd@gmail.com. Learnwhy this is important CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. Dear City Council of the City of Palo Alto, In anticipation of your meeting on February 28th, we implore you to put the matter of streets and parklet usage to a wider public vote. The decision of how City property should be used — and how it can benefit the broadest possible group of residents — should be decided by members of our community. It should not be subject to a subset of influential few. After two years of increased public engagement on the social and health benefits of our streets, we urge you to consider this as a unique opportunity to further a sense of collective agency over our public spaces. A concerned citizen of our community, [ your name]