HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-03-14 Human Relations Commission Action MinutesADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting.
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HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Community Meeting Room
Palo Alto Civic Center
250 Hamilton Avenue
7:00 PM
REGULAR MEETING
ROLL CALL:
Commissioners Present: Brahmbhatt, Kralik, Lee, O’Nan, Stinger, Xue
Absent: Smith
Council Liaison:
Staff: Minka van der Zwaag, Mary Constantino
I. ROLL CALL
Chair Kralik: [video started mid-sentence] …body of the public in many, many faces who I’m
sure busy helping out in the human relation work of our City and so we thank you up front.
We’re going to have a roll call.
II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, DELETIONS
Chair Kralik: Agenda changes, requests, and deletions? Not hearing any.
III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS
Chair Kralik: We’ll move on to oral communications. We have communications in the context of
the CDBG Grants and also the HSRAP Grants. If there are other communications outside of
those, we’re ok to move forward with those. Does anyone have any communication outside of
those? Ok, not hearing any.
[The Commission returned to this item during Agenda Item Number Two]
Chair Kralik: Ok, very well, sure.
Ms. van der Zwaag: It’s the gentlemen right there. Sir? It’s your time.
Mr. Drake A. Mitchell: Thank you.
Chair Kralik: Just tell us your name. I didn’t pick that up from here.
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
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Mr. Mitchell: Drake A. Mitchell.
Chair Kralik: Drake, good evening and welcome to the Commission.
Mr. Mitchell: Thank you so much. I hail from the east coast originally, my college days, Boston.
I wish I’d gone to Harvard like my high school buddy John. Instead, I went down the street
where they say either – I’ll leave the old joke behind but I went to MIT; loved robot languages.
Seems to be coming back around to that and sometimes it helps to plant seeds a long time ago.
Then you find 20-30-years down the road that Seattle all of a sudden really needs robot language
contractors and my 90 -seconds that I asked for tonight, I wish to address a contractor’s
perspective on tonight’s agenda topic; resource allocation. Right now, the contractor community
that I’m familiar with likes to drink coffee between 5:00 and 6:00 AM at a locate Starbucks or at
Peet’s. We like to network before the 9:00 AM rush hour, all that madness rolls up. We’re very
intrigued by Cal Fire’s declaration of 94,000 acres of deadwood preferable cleared by the end of
the summer. There are some established contractors like McGuire and other landscaping
companies that are looking to clean up probably; I’m just going to guess, between a million and
ten million dollars of cordwood sold by the end of October. If we clear 94,000 acres of
deadwood, Cal Fire will probably experience a 40 to 80 percent reduction in wildfire hazard
measured by deadwood that hasn’t been cleared from typical civilian dwellings in forestry areas.
I’m trying to spearhead an event – a PAL event that might lead to 90 seconds of coverage on the
evening news sometime in the next 2-weeks. Station 6, Menlo Park Fire Department is a very
photogenic location. We expect our Battalion Chief to break down the opportunity in probably a
less than 9-minute event that might get coverage by NBC. Thank you.
Chair Kralik: Thank you for coming in. I appreciate your patience.
[The Commission moved back down to Item Number Two]
IV. BUSINESS
1. Recommendations to Finance Committee for Community Development Block Grant
(CDBG) Funding for Fiscal Year 2019-20 and FY 2020-21
A. Questions from the Commission to the Staff
B. Oral communications from Applicants
C. Discussion and consideration of HRC - Selection Committee’s Funding
Recommendations & Contingency Plan
D. HRC recommendation to the Finance Committee
Chair Kralik: We’ll move forward to the business of the meeting. The first is the CDBG
presentation. It relates to funding requests, Community Development Block Grant. We’re going
to hear first from the Staff just to explain the process that they’ve gone through, we’ll then take
questions from the Commission, that is the members here at the table, to the Staff, and then we’ll
call on applicants with their oral communications. Subsequent to that we’ll have discussion,
consideration, and then we’ll move forward with recommendations if any. Please introduce
yourself.
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
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Page 3 of 82
Ms. Erum Maqbool: Sure. Good evening Commissioners, my name is Erum Maqbool, I am the
CDBG Staff Specialist, with me is Marilyn Rauf and she’s our CDBG consultant. We are here
tonight to give you a brief overview of the Fiscal Year 2019-2020 CDBG allocation process. A
little background in the CDBG Program, it is a principal federal program, the City of Palo Alto
receives annual funding from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development as an
Entitlement City under this program. Activities funded through this program must meet one of
the three national objectives: 1) benefit low and very low-income persons, 2) aide and prevention
or elimination of slum or blight, and 3) meet other community needs that are particularly urgent
for the low-income community. All of the activities funded by the City meet the first objective.
So, CDBG federal appropriation for Fiscal Year ‘19- ‘20 have not yet been determined. For
budgeting purposes, City Staff has estimated the City’s HUD Entitlement Grant of Fiscal Year
‘19- ‘20 based on a 10 percent reduction in funds from Fiscal Year 2018 and ’19. The estimated
CDBG Entitlement Grant amount is $436,335 which is a 10 percent reduction of the current
CDBG Entitlement Grant of $484,816. The total estimated funding available for allocation in
Fiscal Year 2019- ‘20 is $661,045 which consists of estimated Entitlement Grant of $436,335,
estimated program income of $136,049, and $88,661 in prior year resources. CDBG has five
funding categories in which to allocate funds: 1) Public Services 2) Planning and Administration
3) Economic Development 4) Housing Rehab and 5) Public Facilities. According to federal
regulations, there is a maximum spending cap on Public Services and Planning and
Administration. Public Services has a maximum spending cap of 15 percent of the entitlement
grant and 15 percent of actual program income received during the previous fiscal year.
Therefore, the maximum that can be allocated for Public Service is for Fiscal Year ‘19- ‘20 is
$80, 874. The agencies that have applied for funding under this category are Palo Alto Housing
Corp, Catholic Charities, LifeMoves, YWCA, and Silicon Valley Independent Living. Planning
and Administration which includes the administrative costs associated with managing the CDBG
Program has a 20 percent spending cap based on the Entitlement Grant and the estimated
program income. Therefore, the maximum that can be allocated for Planning and Administration
in Fiscal year ‘19- ‘20 is $114,476. Project Sentinel and City of Palo Alto for the administration
of this program has applied under this category. The Staff received applications under the
Economic Development category from Downtown Streets Team and from Mayview Community
Health for the renovation for a dental clinic under the Public Facilities category. So, the CDBG
Program operates under a 2-year funding cycle, Fiscal Year ‘19- ‘20 is the first year of the 2-year
funding cycle. Recommendations for funding are now required for Fiscal Year ‘19- ‘20. The
HRC Selection Committee consisting of Commissioner Lee, Commissioner Brahmbhatt and
Commissioner…
Ms.Rauf: Stinger.
Ms. Maqbool: Stinger, yes. We met on February 25th, 2019 and made funding recommendations
which are provided as Attachments Community of the Staff memo. Since the City has not
received its entitlement amount from HUD, it is necessary to come up with a contingency plan in
the event that there is an increase or decrease in funds. The HRC Selection Committee
recommended that the increase in funds be distributed according to the following contingency
adjustment. For Public Services, in case of funding increase, maintain recommend funding levels
for Catholic Charites and YWCA. Prioritize funding for Silicon Valley Independent Living from
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting.
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recommended $6,000 to $12,000. Once SVIL is at $12,000 distribute the additional available
amount between LifeMoves and Palo Alto Housing Corp equally. In the Planning and
Administration category it was recommended to distribute the additional available amount
equally between Project Sentinel and the City of Palo Alto. For the remaining two categories, in
case of funding increase, three parts of the additional available funding should be provided to
Downtown Streets Team and one part to Mayview Community Health. Again, for budgeting
purposes, we have estimated that these Entitlement Grants for Fiscal Year ‘19- ‘20 based on a 10
percent reduction in funds from Fiscal Year ‘18 and ‘19. However, after the Selection Committee
meeting, we decided to request a contingency plan for the decrease because we were going
through some documents and we noticed once there was a 17 percent decrease. It was just once
but in order to avoid another public hearing we thought we might request the HRC to come up
with a contingency plan in case of a decrease in funds. I will request to open the public hearing,
take public comments, and recommend funding allocations and a funding contingency plan for
when the allocation is finalized. Thank you.
Chair Kralik: So, now we’re…
Ms. Minka van da Zwaag, Human Services Manager: Microphone, Chair, please. Thank you, sir.
Chair Kralik: Valerie or Steve, do you want to lead your charge here and maybe begin with some
questions? I know that you’ve spent a lot of time reviewing these applications and do you have
any clarifying questions that might help. I think you should ask a few that would summarize the
work that was done and where we currently stand.
Commissioner Stinger: I can make some comments. Thank you. I’m not sure that I have any – let
me try to think of – a way to phrase that into a question to…
Chair Kralik: Well, as an example, the funding worksheet in Attachment C. Maybe you could
just clarify these columns and help us to understand what’s being requested.
Commissioner Stinger: I’d like to try to do that because we did look at these applications very
carefully. We say this every year, that it’s really hard to try to satisfy all the needs and do justice
to the good work that’s being done. I guess beginning from the YWCA of Silicon Valley and the
Catholic Charities which are the smaller of the grants. We were trying to respect the work that
they did uniquely in the community. Catholic Charities being an ombudsmen program, the
YWCA being a hotline for domestic violence. They were unique programs and we wanted to
respect them and try to meet their needs and have a minimum that would make it worth their
while. There was an administrative cost to accepting a grant and we wanted to at least make that
minimum level.
Chair Kralik: So, in connection with these numbers where it says request for Fiscal Year 2019, is
that the amount that the subcommittee decided upon or is that…
Commissioner Stinger: Oh, I’m sorry.
Chair Kralik: … the amount that was being requested by…
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
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Page 5 of 82
Commissioner Stinger: That was the application amount. The amount requested in their
application to CDBG.
Chair Kralik: I see and…
Commissioner Lee: I may have a question that may help explain that, a question to Staff. So, if
you could go over the initial equation you had presented to the Committee in terms of taking the
difference between how much funds we expected to have, how much money was requested, and
then that 47 percent reduction. Could you explain that to the Commission and then from there we
can provide some context as to how we went from there?
Ms. Maqbool: Oh ok, so in total all the applicants are requesting a total of $748,782 and we have
$661,042 to allocate our funds. I mean those are our funds available at this time. We might get
more because the numbers are based on estimations.
Commissioner Lee: Then from there in your initial Staff recommendation you did a 47 percent
reduction across the board, correct? Do you want to go over that?
Ms. Maqbool: Did the Selection Committee…
Commissioner Lee: When you presented it to the…
Ms. Marilyn Rauf: Ok, sorry about that.
Commissioner Lee: So, I believe what happened was given that there was a gap in the amount of
funds that we’re expecting versus how much was requested. Staff initially came to us with a set
of numbers that proportionally reduced all of the requests down by 47 percent and what it would
look like if we distributed that gap in funding equally, right?
Ms. Maqbool: Oh yes.
Commissioner Lee: So, we started that as the baseline. What would the numbers look like based
on the actual funding available, 47 percent, and then from there based on our review of the
applicants and the number of folks served, the proposal compared to previous years, and how
that translated into a per person per dollar number. We tried to adjust upwards or downwards
based on that equal distribution. So, for instance for Catholic Charities, they have requested
$10,000. When you apply the 47 percent reduction that would bring it to $5,600 and based on
just their performance, we thought that they overperformed compared to some of the other
applicants so we recommended funding above their proportional reduction if that makes sense.
Whereas let’s see, Silicon Valley Independent Living Center, their 47 percent reduction number
would have been $16,000 but obviously, the Committee’s recommendation was $6,500 I believe.
Ms. Maqbool: Yes. That’s -- $6,000.
Commissioner Lee: $6,000 so that was a reflection of our review of their application where they
were sort of on par or above or below that reduction line. If that makes…
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
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Chair Kralik: So…
Ms. Rauf: If I may interject on that particular one, their application was for more funds. That
usually it’s just a bump up but theirs was for additional funding so it was quite a bump up from
their previous year.
Chair Kralik: Looking at the Attachment Community, there’s a list of providers or agencies on
the left. How many of those agencies were previous recipients of the CDBG Grants?
Ms. Maqbool: So, except for Mayview Community Health, all of them are previous recipients.
Chair Kralik: Ok so the Mayview is the only one that is new.
Ms. Maqbool: Yes.
Commissioner Stinger: And that’s also the only one that is a build project so that could be
funding for 1-year.
Ms. Maqbool: One year, it’s a capital project.
Commissioner Stinger: And then we would have additional funds to distribute in year two.
Chair Kralik: Was there a template of criteria that the evaluation Committee used? Steven
mentioned over performance from the previous year.
Ms. Maqbool: Yes, so if you see Attachment E, we have provided the semi-annual. So, we ask
all the sub-recipients to submit a semi-annual report so there are numbers. So, by December
2018 all the sub-recipients they have achieved this goal. So, for example, for Palo Alto Housing
Corp the annual goal was set on 131 and by December 2018 they already have achieved 140.
Chair Kralik: What does that number mean, 130?
Ms. Maqbool: They have assisted 140 persons in their shelters.
Chair Kralik: Ok so these are recipients of services…
Ms. Maqbool: Yes.
Chair Kralik: …that they provided?
Ms. Maqbool: Yes, yes, all of them.
Commissioner Lee: And to provide some clarification, Chair Kralik. There was a grader of
criteria that we considered but it wasn’t so formulaic in a sense that we graded each criterion and
used the grid to determine the funding allocations. It helped guide our thought process but it was
much more holistic in terms of how we actually made our recommendations.
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
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Page 7 of 82
Chair Kralik: Great and may I just ask in the context of the work that this side of the table did on
HSRAP. We were very impressed by the amount of time Staff spent in review not only of the
applications and processing them but also visiting each of these sites. Maybe you could just kind
of describe the process that you underwent and how many hours you spent…
Ms. Maqbool: Sure.
Chair Kralik: …go through all that.
Ms. Maqbool: So, for the sub-recipients in Fiscal Year ‘17- ‘18 we monitored Downtown Streets
Team, LifeMoves, and Silicon Valley Independent Living Center. We have actually made our
notes in Attachment B.
Chair Kralik: Very good.
Ms. Maqbool: So, you’ll see Staff notes where we have mentioned what our findings of the
monitoring so for Catholic Charities, there was an audit in ’17. We reviewed the quarterly
reimbursement request, performance report, programs, files, and financial records. So, in general,
we found that they comply with the Federal CDBG regulations and all the reimbursed costs were
appropriate and as per HUD usually looks for and asks. This is just an example for Catholic
Charities.
Chair Kralik: As you went through that example, I was looking down Attachment D…
Ms. Maqbool: D, yes.
Chair Kralik: … as in David and I did not see Catholic Charites. Did I just miss something?
Ms. Maqbool: D… so D is the Comp Plan Goal summary. So, you know we have a Comp Plan,
that’s kind of our Master Plan for 5-year so we decide, for example, these are the goals. Number
one is affordable housing, number two is homelessness, number three is strengthen
neighborhood, four is fair housing, five is economic development. The sub-recipients come
under these categories. For example, Catholic Charities comes under Strengthen Neighborhood
goal, Downtown Street comes under Economic Development goal. So, we haven’t named our
sub-recipients but these are the goals that we are getting from the Comp Plan.
Chair Kralik: Did you feel comfortable giving your input to the subcommittee members?
Ms. Maqbool: Yes.
Commissioner Stinger: It was very useful to us.
Chair Kralik: Very good. Commissioner, we’re not just asking some questions of Staff on the
CDBG Grant. If there are any other questions, I’ve asked all mine, I’d like to invite other
Commissioners to ask Staff questions.
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
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Page 8 of 82
Vice Chair Xue: I have one quick questions…
Ms. Rauf: Sure.
Vice Chair Xue: …regarding the recommendation of the funding. Since the current list is not
final yet so if there’s some change are you planning to do a proportional adjustment based on the
need? So, what the policy regarding the change?
Ms. Maqbool: The change in the funding?
Vice Chair Xue: Yes, right.
Ms. Maqbool: If we get more or less?
Vice Chair Xue: Right, right.
Ms. Maqbool: Yes, so that’s the contingency plan that we requested the sub-selection Committee
and do you have the copy of the report? This is the Selection Committee. So, see the contingency
plan on Page 3 of the report? It explains, in case of an increase of funds, how to allocate the
funding and in case of a decrease since the numbers are based on a 10 percent reduction already.
In case of a decrease in funding but after the meeting, we discussed that in case of a decrease
more than 10 percent, we do not want to come back again to a public hearing. So today maybe
you can recommend that contingency plan in case of a decrease because in case of an increase
you already have a plan.
Commissioner Lee: So, the funding recommendations assume 10 percent reductions from prior
years and then we made a contingency plan if we actually get that 10 percent back or any
additional on top of that. Staff is saying since the meeting we may experience a larger decrease
of 17 percent so we may need to discuss that as a Commission…
Ms. Maqbool: Yes.
Commissioner Lee: …How do we want to plan for that if we have a 17 percent decrease?
Ms. Maqbool: Or more.
Commissioner Lee: Or more.
Ms. Maqbool: Or more.
Chair Kralik: What is the…
Ms. Rauf: We have not heard anything that says that’s going to happen. It’s just being…
Ms. Maqbool: Careful.
Ms. Rauf: … cautious.
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting.
Page 9 of 82
Ms. Maqbool: Cautious, yes.
Chair Kralik: What is the present action step that you would like to the Commission to take this
evening?
Ms. Maqbool: We would like you to recommend if you agree with the Selection Committee
recommendations. We already have a contingency plan if we get more funding. We don’t have a
contingency plan in case we get less funding so we would like you to please come up with a plan
in case we get less funding than what we have right now.
Chair Kralik: We would approve the subcommittee’s recommendation and contingency plan
which is only for more funding.
Ms. Maqbool: More funding, yes.
Chair Kralik: If there is less funding then we’d have to come back.
Ms. Maqbool: Yes, so this is what we are requesting. If you can come up with a plan tonight so
that we don’t have to come back if there is a decrease so when the final allocations are
announced by HUD, we have actually 45-days to submit our actual plan. So, we want to utilize
that time and I mean HRC usually just meets once a month so we don’t want to delay the
submission of our action plan to HUD.
Chair Kralik: Ok and I heard from Commissioner Stinger or Lee on your recommendations for
the lower amount contingency plan so we have a clear picture.
Commissioner Lee: So, for that piece, I think we need to reserve that for the actual discussion
portion. I think we’re still in the question of Staff section but during the discussion we
can…(crosstalk)
Chair Kralik: You have something that you want to present?
Commissioner Lee: We don’t have anything to present but certainly we each have a notion of
what that could look like…
Chair Kralik: Great.
Commissioner Lee: And the Commission can adjust it accordingly.
Chair Kralik: Perfect, perfect.
Commissioner Stinger: Is there a discussion or discussion at our subcommittee meeting was
assuming a 10 percent decline and that’s what’s reflected here. If we want to reflect another 7 or
10 percent in addition to the 10 percent, we would do that during the discussion period.
Chair Kralik: Excellent, ok, that’s clear. Any other Commissioners have questions for Staff?
Then we’ll move onto Item B with is the oral communications from the applicants. The first up is
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Page 10 of 82
Pai Venegas, is that right?
Ms. Pai Venegas: Yes.
Ms. van der Zwaag: You can go right there and push the red button when you’re ready. And…
Chair Kralik: If you could just please introduce yourself and tell us your connection to the
CDBG process. We’d be grateful.
Ms. van der Zwaag: If I could just interject Chair? Are you doing 3-minutes per person or 2?
Chair Kralik: Yes, if we could do a 3. Is that enough for you, 3-minutes?
Ms. Venegas: I guess, yes.
Ms. van der Zwaag: It’s – yes , it’s 3 or 2.
Chair Kralik: We’ve got quite a few speakers tonight.
Ms. Venegas: I’ll say minutes.
Commissioner Lee: And are we…
Chair Kralik: Alright.
Commissioner Lee: And we are doing (crosstalk) both public and applicant comments at the
same time? Do we have any public comment?
Chair Kralik: No there’s no public (crosstalk).
Commissioner Lee: It’s just all applicants?
Chair Kralik: All applicants.
Commissioner Lee: Ok, great, ok.
Chair Kralik: Go right ahead.
Ms. Venegas: Hi, is this good? Hi, my name is Pai Venegas and I’m here today representing
Silicon Valley Independent Living Center. Yes, we were one of the agencies recommended to
increase the funding. We’re 1 of 28 centers for independent living in California and 400
nationwide. We are a disabilities service agency working with folks to determine their choices
and based on their dignity and just fully participate back into society. Of the 12 independent
living support tools in services that we provide, we service over 11,000 unduplicated consumers
per year and 75 percent of those come in for housing services. I want to say thank you for the
previous years in funding. Last year we served over 24 consumers, unduplicated clients and we
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with
government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting.
Page 11 of 82
were able to place seven of those individuals back into the community or in accessible integrated
housing. The method and strategies we use are we really focus on prevention, diversion, and
housing focus solutions and financial assistance. What we do is we really provide the tools and
resources to get them to be motivated for their housing search and sometimes that might include
one on one housing counseling sessions. That’s different, we’re unique from case management
because what we do is, we really try to person-center planning and that is set goals. You know
realistic goals and we don’t hold hands. We don’t say oh, we’re going to keep doing this for
because we really want to see that they are motivated to do this. We see that’s very effective
working with individuals that are motivated. One example is that we had an individual that was
making six figures a year and unfortunately, he got injured at work, his brother became ill with
cancer, so we made a life choice to take care of my brothers so things happened and was let go
from his job. Homeless and he didn’t know how to navigate the community or services. He came
to our center and instead of holding hands all the way to the social services we instructed these
are the steps you need to take. We want to see that you can do this right? I mean that’s the first
test for us, to really see that this individual is motivated. He came back and he’s like you know
what, people like me, I’ve been living off on six figures, I have no idea how to navigate. So, he
was very thankful to receive the services and tools and support. We offered him a position at our
center and that gave him the direct personal unique experience working with our individuals.
Now he’s able to really provide that information and work with consumers.
Chair Kralik: Let me just ask briefly. Where is your organization located and how does a person
find your organization?
Ms. Venegas: So our headquarters is in downtown San Jose and then we have a branch office in
Gilroy. So, we provide housing workshops here at the Palo Alto Opportunity Center and we get a
lot of Palo Alto resident at this workshop because we’re unique.
Chair Kralik: I’d like to thank you for coming in and thank you for your commitment.
Ms. Venegas: Yes, you’re welcome.
Chair Kralik: Our next speaker is Ann Marquart. Ann, welcome, thank you for being here this
evening.
Ms. Ann Marquart: I’m here representing Project Sentinel, a fair housing agency or at least
providing fair housing services in Palo Alto. The agency provides three different types of
services in Palo Alto. They are all housing related but we provide Staff support for your Palo
Alto Mediation Program, we also provide mortgage counseling, intervention services for those
people facing possible foreclosure and the third distinct service is the fair housing one. That’s
what I’m here before you tonight. We provide fair housing services to community outreach
education and complaint investigation. On the outreach education, we develop and distribute
multilingual literature on the various protected categories under federal and state law. We also
have a 35-page booklet for property owners on how they can operate their rental property and
stay within the law. That’s in English and in Chinese’s. Then for complaint investigations, just to
mention, we have had two recent cases that were fairly interesting. One was one with a
homeowner’s association where they had overly restrictive rules of conduct for families with
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Page 12 of 82
children. We were able to go in and get those policies changed to be more reasonable for how
children behave on the property. The second case was the President’s Hotel case where we
represented two of the last residents in the hotel. We were able to represent them because they
have disabilities and that would fit their situations under the Fair Housing Laws. We were able to
negotiate or at least help them negotiate their move out package. We bring with us some federal
money. We were just granted a 3-year award by HUD to help with the fair housing services. One
grant with outreach education, the other one was with enforcement, and we share that with all of
our funding jurisdictions. One new addition to the agency is our in-house legal counsel so we can
give legal advice to callers for fair housing.
Chair Kralik: Tell us how long you’ve been with Project Sentinel.
Ms. Marquart: How long I’ve been with…
Chair Kralik: Yes.
Ms. Marquart: What a mean – 40-years.
Chair Kralik: Wow.
Ms. Marquart: Next question.
Chair Kralik: No, that’s a tremendous commitment. We thank you for your efforts.
Ms. Marquart: Thank you and I’m also a Palo Alto resident too.
Chair Kralik: Right, thank you for being here tonight. Ok, we’re going to turn to Ken Graham.
Ken’s a CFO of Mayview Community Health. I understand Ken that you’re a new applicant to
the CDBG process?
Mr. Ken Graham: Yes. Actually, I’m CEO of Mayview and…
Chair Kralik: CEO, pardon me.
Mr. Graham: You know I just want to make sure that the CFO’s don’t get offended.
Chair Kralik: Sure, sure, that’s the beautiful jacket and white shirt.
Mr. Graham: There you go. Good match there. Mayview Community Health has been serving
Palo Alto since 1972 so we’ve been serving pretty much in plain sight on the first floor of the
community courthouse over on Grant Street near California. We have been the primary outlet for
Medicare, Medi-Cal, and county patients during that period of time. District Five in the county
does not have a county clinic in this area so we are the contractor for that in Palo Alto, Mountain
View, and Sunnyvale. The request tonight is for a capital grant for partial assistance in
constructing a dental program. The dental program is new to community clinics, it’s been proven
to be an overwhelming service in other locations, and we expect about at least 25 percent of our
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Page 13 of 82
patients will receive benefits from this project. According to some of the strategic planners,
almost 70 percent of all patients in this payment class basically are needing dental care,
screening, cleaning, and cavities and that kind of thing. We will not be doing surgeries in that
classic sense. We appreciate the Staff report and we’re here to thank you for that and I appreciate
the Staff’s recommendation.
Chair Kralik: On the services that you’re offering in the building that’s being built, could you
just describe it a little bit?
Mr. Graham: Well, actually it’s a building that was built in 1978 or so by the county who It is the
same...it looks like 1978. We’re converting two administrative spaces into dental suites.
Chair Kralik: And where is that located?
Mr. Graham: That’s on the first floor of the Court House on 270 Grant. It’s about a block south
of California Street and Birch.
Chair Kralik: Ok and…
Mr. Graham: So, when you drive to the Court House, you’re by that we’re in the first floor…
Chair Kralik: Right.
Mr. Graham: … right next to Mr. Simitian’s office. So, if you…
Chair Kralik: Ok, so right here?
Mr. Graham: Yes…
Chair Kralik: Alright, well welcome.
Mr. Graham: … and that’s where our headquarters is for our clinics. So, we’re a Palo Alto
company with about 30 employees at that location and about 70 in the other location.
Chair Kralik: How many patients do you think you’ll see in the dental services?
Mr. Graham: We’re going to see about 500 in the first year.
Chair Kralik: 500?
Mr. Graham: Then we’ll probably see three visits or so, 1,500 or so visits per the first year.
Chair Kralik: That’s fantastic. Thank you very much for coming in.
Mr. Graham: Ok thank you for your support.
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Page 14 of 82
Chair Kralik: Appreciate it. Just a break here, I wanted to mention to those present. If you want
to speak, we have speaker cards that look like this. We did have a public speaker session ahead
of time. It was Agenda Item Two but these are speakers for the CDBG process or speakers for
the HSRAP review which will come later. I know that the Mayview is coming later so our next
speaker is Linda Dominguez. Linda, welcome.
Ms. Linda Dominguez: Thank you.
Chair Kralik: How are you doing this evening?
Ms. Dominguez: I’m doing fine. Thank you very much for this time.
Chair Kralik: Yes, thank you for being present.
Ms. Dominguez: Once again my name is Linda Dominguez, I am with Catholic Charites, I’m
representing the long-term care ombudsmen office program of Santa Clara County. We advocate
for residents who are in facilities. Our program is a free program. We oversee four nursing
homes and eight 6-bed homes for residents of 1,255 residents and they are overseen by one Staff
member and that’s me. We come and help with residents who have issues with abuse, neglect,
financial abuse. We also support the family in helping them cope with their residents or loved
ones who are entering into a facility. We would like to thank you very much for your support.
Chair Kralik: I happen to be a long-term care ombudsman but up in San Mateo County.
Ms. Dominguez: Wonderful.
Chair Kralik: Tell us a little bit about how you got interested in this line?
Ms. Dominguez: Well, you know, life gradually brings you into different jobs. I first was
working with Children’s Mental Health for 15-years raising my children. I worked with the
children who had ADHD and it just so happened that my children have ADHD. So, I was there
to learn as well as give my support and now as my parents are now in their elderly years. It’s
great that I can learn more about working with seniors and also be a support to my family. So, it
kind of works hand in hand together working with the facility and with Catholic Charities.
Chair Kralik: I know it’s hard work and we thank you for your commitment.
Ms. Dominguez: Thank you very much.
Chair Kralik: Thanks for being here. Maureen Damrel. Maureen, welcome.
Ms. Maureen Damrel: Thank you.
Chair Kralik: How are you this evening?
Ms. Damrel: I’m doing well, thank you.
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Page 15 of 82
Chair Kralik: Thanks for being here. Tell us a little bit about your interest in CDBG.
Ms. Damrel: I’m Maureen Damrel and I’m representing Downtown Streets Team this evening.
I’m the Director of Santa Clara County. We’ve been lucky recipients of CDBG funding
throughout the years. Palo Alto is actually where we started Downtown Streets Team in 2005
and we really feel engrained in this community. It’s our home. What Downtown Streets Team
does is we run a work experience team for adults experiencing homelessness. Helping them to
get back into employment, take on any roadblocks that are really stopping them from progressing
their lives and becoming more self-supportive. So, throughout CDBG funding we are able to
really have the capacity to help the people who are experiencing homelessness but we also have
the capacity to outreach to local businesses in hopes of creating employment pipelines to secure
employment for people who may have not been working for a long time. It comes through a lot
of conversations and relationship building which can only be done truly in person and face to
face and kind of trying to expel the perceptions of homelessness. So, we’re very grateful to be
continually considered for funding and we look forward to helping more people understand what
it is to experience homelessness, how it affects our community in various ways and really
empower those who are facing this monumental undertaking in their own life to feel empowered
and supported by the community.
Chair Kralik: Would you share with us one of your recent case successes?
Ms. Damrel: Oh yes. I will call her Charlie tonight in lieu of using her full name and she’s been a
lifetime resident of Palo Alto. She raised children here who went to local schools. All of her
children are now adults. She was once a homeowner of a five-bedroom house. She still actually
holds everything that went into that house in storage because it’s really hard to leave parts of
your life behind even if your life has changed. Just in the past few months, she was able to
establish housing that was in a safe place. She has a merit of physical elements and lots of things
that are placing her in any other place would be extremely unhealthy for her and putting her life
in danger. So, now she’s sharing an apartment with a woman close to her own age so she feels
safe there. She is able to receive the consistent care because some care is not offered if you don’t
have a consistent, safe place to stay and if you don’t have a place that the Outreach vehicle can
pick you up and drop you off from. So, Charlie has been going to all of her doctor’s
appointments. She is one of our managers on our team who volunteers in the Food Closet
throughout the week as well.
Chair Kralik: We really appreciate your commitment. Thank you for your work.
Ms. Dramrel: Thank you for hearing me tonight.
Chair Kralik: Philip Dah. Philip, good evening, how are you? Thanks for being here. Tell us
about your connection to the CDBG Grants.
Mr. Philip Dah: Hi, my name is Philip Dah and I’m the Director at the Opportunity Center for
LifeMoves. LifeMoves has been partnering with the City of Palo Alto for so many years. I’ve
worked at the Opportunity Center for 16-years and I just want to highlight a few things that we
have been doing. Also, especially with our EAN Program which is a network of financial
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Page 16 of 82
assistant agencies within the county to provide services for low-income Palo Alto residents who
may be losing their homes. Had it not been for this rental assistance programs, we’d still be
bringing a lot of homeless people into Palo Alto but because of that, we’re averaging 8 clients
per month requesting rental assistance to be able to maintain their housing. We are also
averaging $1,750 paid requests. Another service that we provide is the only all year round shelter
in Palo Alto which is the Hotel de Zink Shelter which we partner with local faith based
organizations to house 20 clients each night. As we speak there are 15 clients sleeping at the
shelter in a church in Palo Alto with hot meals and will receive case manager services at the
Opportunity Center. The end goal for them is to be able to find housing of which when they find
this housing, we use some of this rental assistance money to be able to pay their deposits and
first month’s rent and other for them to be able to move in. Another critical service that we
provide is the Breaking Bread hot meal program which is not the only but we provide 5-days a
week at different church locations and also at the Opportunity Center for homeless people to
have a place and also a community where they can hang out. Our drop-in service which at the
Opportunity Center sees an average of 80 clients per day and last year we saw 425 unduplicated
clients coming into the Center to receive basic services that were not available to them. We have
also have been working with Stanford Law Clinic lately to continue – we had a break in it -but
we have been working with them to help people apply for social security benefits because a lot
of homeless people are disabled but the bureaucracy with social security applications is really
very difficult for even regular folks to go through. So, our contact at Stanford Law, Lisa
Douglas, has students come to the Opportunity Center every Friday to help clients apply for
those services and because of that, we’ve been able to at least have people or have received these
benefits that they do qualify for. I want to thank the CDBG and HSRAP Committees for all the
assistance that you have given us over the years. Thank you.
Chair Kralik: I just want to ask about your clients. Are their families involved in your work with
children?
Mr. Dah: Absolutely. We have a lot of family homelessness at the Opportunity Center. Most of
that family’s’ homelessness are low-income Palo Alto residents who lose their jobs or get sick
and don’t have money to pay their rent. That’s when our emergency assistance funds come in, to
be able to supplement their rent for a month or so until they can get back on their feet.
Chair Kralik: Thank you for your commitment.
Mr. Dah: Thank you.
Chair Kralik: Ok, Jessica Clark. Good evening Jessica. Are you here? Won’t you come up and
say hello.
Ms. Jessica Clark: I think I’m in the next section.
Chair Kralik: Awe, next section, you’re right. Ok, we’ve got a lot of twos in here. Let’s see, any
more ones? All twos, ok, we’re done with Section One. Wow. Great presentations, thank you all.
We’re going to turn to discussion and consideration of the Selection Committee’s funding
recommendations and the contingency plan for higher level and lower level funding.
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Page 17 of 82
Commissioner Lee: So, my personal recommendation, because we haven’t had a chance to
discuss a lower reduction than 10 percent, my personal recommendation would be in the event of
larger reduction that we do it in proportion to the recommending funding levels.
Chair Kralik: Steven, if the money is more, how did you come up with that contingency? What
was the formula you used?
Commissioner Lee: It was similarly in proportion to how we break out the current
recommendation.
Chair Kralik: Ok so…
Commissioner Lee: So, if there was a two to one for instance allocation, any increase would be –
actually no. I miss spoke.
Commissioner Stinger: (inaudible – off mic)
Commissioner Lee: Yes, that’s right. So thank you for correcting. For an increase, we decided
for SVILC that it should first go to that entity with a cap at $12,000.
Commissioner Stinger: We capped…
Chair Kralik: You might want to use your microphone so we can all hear you.
Commissioner Lee: So, any increase would first go to Silicon Valley Independent Living Center
up to a cap of $12,000. Is it $12,000?
Ms. Maqbool: Yes.
Commissioner Lee: Then anything above that would be split between LifeMoves and Palo Alto
Housing Corporation in equal proportions.
Chair Kralik: Ok so how would that work out if it was less money? What would you do?
Commissioner Lee: Then it would be to Silicon Valley Independent Living Center first until they
reached $12,000.
Chair Kralik: Ok.
Commissioner Lee: So, if we only had $10,000 more, then it would go all to them. If we had
$14,000 it would be $12,000 first and then the remaining $2,000 to LifeMoves and Palo Alto.
Chair Kralik: Ok, let’s ask Staff if that’s clear. Is that clear to you how Commissioner Lee has
described the lower contingency amount?
Ms. Maqbool: No, I’m actually not clear about the lower contingency. I’m clear about the, of
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Page 18 of 82
course, if the levels are increased.
Chair Kralik: Maybe you could ask Commissioner Lee questions about that.
Ms. Maqbool: So, you would like us to maintain Catholic Charities and YWCA at $10,000 and
$5,000 in case of a decrease?
Commissioner Lee: Well my personal recommendation would be in proportion but we can
discuss whether we want to do something different.
Commissioner Stinger: I guess…
Chair Kralik: I think we’d like to hear what your recommendation is first and then we can…
Commissioner Lee: Well, as a Committee we didn’t discuss a larger decrease. We only
contemplated…(crosstalk)
Ms. Rauf: This is new.. (crosstalk)
Commissioner Lee: It’s a new item.
Chair Kralik: Oh ok.
Commissioner Lee: We only contemplated a 10 percent decrease.
Chair Kralik: Oh ok.
Commissioner Stinger: Now we’re being asked…
Chair Kralik: Great.
Commissioner Stinger: … to add another 7 to 10 percent and I guess I would argue that maybe
we should get a further 10 percent so that we’ve bounded the many possibilities.
Chair Kralik: Up to 10 percent lower is what you’re saying.
Commissioner Stinger: An additional 10 percent.
Ms. Maqbool: An additional.
Commissioner Stinger: We’ve already taken 10 percent out and then we did that in our
Committee meeting.
Chair Kralik: Alright. Why don’t we take one at a time and then you can come up with your
thoughts and then we’ll discuss each of the thoughts. Go ahead, Steven.
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Page 19 of 82
Commissioner Lee: I just want to make sure that we’re clear, so the column here on the very
right-hand side under Selection Committee recommendation. That already assumes a 10 percent
reduction…
Ms. Maqbool: Yes.
Commissioner Lee… from what we got last year.
Ms. Maqbool: Yes.
Commissioner Lee: So, that’s baked in. What we’re asking now is if there’s a further decrease,
say a 12 percent, 15 percent, 17 percent…
Ms. Maqbool: Yes.
Commissioner Lee: …how would we adjust these numbers here in this last column? I would
recommend that we adjust it proportionality based on if you do the ratios here, how that pencils
out.
Chair Kralik: Are there minimum grants?
Commissioner Stinger: I don’t believe there is a minimum.
Commissioner Lee: There are no minimums but…
Ms. Rauf: I don’t think we have an official minimum, right? We’re trying for $5,000, is that
correct?
Ms. Maqbool: Yes, for the City of Palo Alto we haven’t had an official but as per HUD
regulations we should at least provide $5,000 to a sub-recipient.
Ms. Rauf: It’s a lot of work for the sub-recipients as to – all the regulatory things that they need
to do.
Chair Kralik: So, I think I understand it. Commissioner Stinger, do you have any other thoughts
about this?
Commissioner Stinger: I do, this is slightly different than the HSRAP because each category has
limitations. So, for the first category, Public Services, a 15 percent cap and so we were
distributing money within that. I might suggest that three of the agencies, Catholic Charities,
Silicon Valley Independent Living Centers and the YWCA of Silicon Valley are sort of at a
minimum level. To decrease them another 10 percent would almost make the grant unusable and
I…
Chair Kralik: So, your thought process would be to keep those three the same and then with
respect to LifeMoves and Palo Alto Housing you would decrease that proportionately based
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Page 20 of 82
on…
Commissioner Stinger: To stay within the…
Chair Kralik: The 15 percent.
Commissioner Stinger: …total. Yes, the Public Service subtotal that was our target would be our
target.
Chair Kralik: How about the other two categories, Planning…
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I think I had a suggestion as well.
Chair Kralik: Ok.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I think the YWCA is not using and is not receiving that many
numbers of people who need support so, I think we could – and we were debating of giving them
lower than $5K but then went with $5K because of the hard minimum. So, I think if there’s a
further decrease we could just eliminate giving anything to YWCA because they’re not getting
that many calls for help or need. Every year it’s less and less people and I think there were just
like one or two people who had help last year or something like that. So, that would then…
Commissioner Stinger: I would agree with that. (crosstalk)
Chair Kralik: I appreciate that input.
Commissioner Stinger: We did have that discussion that it’s the only group that’s dealing
specifically with domestic violence but the services aren’t local and don’t have enough outreach.
Yes, I would stand with that.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Then we could decrease proportionally with others and keep
Catholic Charites at $10K but decrease YWCA’s $5,000.
Chair Kralik: So, we have two alternatives right now.
Commissioner Lee: If I could modify mine based on the feedback that I’m hearing from my
colleagues. I agree is Commissioner Brahmbhatt’s suggestion regarding YWCA. It’s unfortunate
but if need be then I’d say that one would be the first to go. I’m ok with keeping Silicon Valley
Independent Living Center at $6,000. For Catholic Charities I’d say that should be decreased but
capping at the floor at $5,000 so that it meets that minimum threshold of being administerial and
then any other decrease being in proportion.
Chair Kralik: Ok Commissioner O’Nan.
Commissioner O’Nan: I disagree with that plan. Catholic Charities is overperforming and they
provide a unique service that no one else duplicates. I understand Commissioner Brahmbhatt’s
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Page 21 of 82
suggestion about dropping the $5,000 grant from YWCA if a further increase is required. By my
math, 10 percent of $80,000 would be $8,000 correct? Do I have it correct? So, if we dropped
$5,000, we only have to come up with a $3,000 additional reduction. I think that should be
shared between LifeMoves and Palo Alto Housing because they are the two largest grantees and
they would not miss the $1,500 each as much as the other agency would.
Chair Kralik: Commissioner Xue, go right ahead.
Vice Chair Xue: Yes, I agree with Commissioner O’Nan’s suggestion. I think that’s fair.
Chair Kralik: Alright I guess a couple proposals. Steven, why don’t you go ahead and would you
like to…
MOTION
Commissioner Lee: I’ll move to approve the Committee’s recommendation, the contingency for
an increase, and I would add to that in the case of a larger decrease that we first take it from
YWCA, then from Catholic Charities but keeping a cap on it at $5,000 so it doesn’t go below
that, and then proportional from the remaining two groups. That would be my motion.
Chair Kralik: Is there a second for that motion?
Commissioner O’Nan: Could I just interject before we move forward on that?
Chair Kralik: You can.
Commissioner O’Nan: We haven’t discussed the increase plan…
Chair Kralik: That’s correct.
Commissioner O’Nan: …and I wanted to discuss that but this motion covers both…
Commissioner Lee: Oh ok.
Commissioner O’Nan: … and so I feel like it’s premature.
Commissioner Lee: Well, did you want to make a motion on pieces of it?
Chair Kralik: Well I want to start with the decrease first…
Commissioner Lee: Right, ok, sure.
MOTION WAS REMOVED FROM THE TABLE
Chair Kralik: …and then we can move for the entire one, ok?
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Page 22 of 82
Commissioner Lee: Ok so…
Commissioner Stinger: Can I ask Commissioner O’Nan a question because I think you asked a
legitimate question. If we haven’t agreed to the Selection Committee recommendation Column D
on this when we start manipulating the numbers…
Chair Kralik: We’re just going to agree on identifying what the lower contingency is first.
Commissioner Lee: But that might change depending on what our actual recommendation is. If
we flip the numbers then what we do in a contingency may alter. So, many we want to discuss
the Committee recommendation first and then do the contingencies.
Chair Kralik: That’s fine. I think we’ve had a good discussion on the lower contingency. Let’s go
ahead and open the discussion on the recommendation and the Select Committee’s
recommendation as located in Attachment C. Commissioner O’Nan.
Commissioner O’Nan: So, I was fine with the allocations that were proposed. My questions were
really about the contingency plan if there is an increase. I didn’t understand why Silicon Valley
Independent Living would be prioritized over the other two agencies and I was also curious as to
why Mayview would only get a quarter to three parts of LifeMoves or I’m sorry, Downtown
Streets Team part, sorry? I’m just wondering if the subcommittee could fill us in on what the
thinking was there.
Commissioner Lee: I guess we could probably talk about the DST and Mayview first.
Commissioner O’Nan: Because I personally think that the building of the new dental facility is
again, a unique service for Palo Alto since it’s new, it’s vitally needed. Downtown Streets Team
also provides an amazing service but they are fairly well funded to this point. Mayview, this is a
new, one time build, that would be inclined to support as wholeheartedly as we can.
Commissioner Lee: That certainly came up in the Committee’s discussion. I think ultimately
where we ended up was, we thought that the need the DST was serving was perhaps slightly
more critical than Mayview. Granted both are very important and at least my estimation I
thought more priority should be given to DST. We tried to fund them fairly close to their request
amounts. Mayview is just $15,000 below their requested amount.
Commissioner Stinger: I think Downtown Streets Team is also close to their requested amount.
Commissioner O’Nan: So, to me, it would make more sense to share any increase more equitably
and I wasn’t sure about the three to one.
Commissioner Lee: So, yep. I’m when you say three to one…
Commissioner O’Nan: Didn’t you say it says three parts to any additional available to DST and
one part to Mayview.
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Page 23 of 82
Commissioner Lee: Oh, I see. Oh, I see, ok.
Commissioner O’Nan: So, if it was shared equably that would make more sense to me. I’m not
sure I understand the three to one ratio because I’m personally very supportive of the new dental
clinic.
Commissioner Lee: Sure, I mean based on the fact that they’re requesting different amounts, we
didn’t want to give them numerically the same amount, right? Given that one is asking for
$300,000 and one’s asking for $150,000. Our thought was that the ratio should reflect that for
any increase.
Commissioner Stinger: I guess we felt if we actually did the math it would be like 2.5 or 2.6 and
just rounded it to 3 for ease of calculation.
Commissioner O’Nan: I’m not sure that the ratio should inform what the excess would be. So, if
we could fully fund the clinic, that’s one thing checked and that’s a one-time build. DST is going
to be a long-term on-going partner.
Commissioner Lee: Sure, I mean I think there was also an evaluation, again at least from my
part, because I made that particular motion in Committee that we thought that the need being
served by DST was slightly higher than Mayview.
Commissioner O’Nan: Ok.
Commissioner Lee: So, that is really what’s explaining the…
Commissioner O’Nan: And then can you also explain the reasoning behind prioritization of
Silicon Independent Living over the other two agencies?
Commissioner Lee: Between Catholic Charities – oh so…
Commissioner O’Nan: Because the other agencies serve many more people and again, not that
Silicon Valley Independent Living doesn’t provide a critical service but in terms of if there was
an increase would we not want to prioritize and see that reach more people to maximize the
value of those dollars? I’m just trying to understand (crosstalk)
Commissioner Lee: Are you talking about LifeMoves and Palo Alto Housing Corp?
Commissioner O’Nan: It says the funding – you said that you were prioritizing
Commissioner Lee: So, Catholic Charities is already capped out…
Commissioner O’Nan: Right.
Commissioner Lee: … so that one’s gone. Between – there’s LifeMoves and Palo Alto Housing
Corp, Silicon Valley, and YWCA. I think the Committee felt that $5,000 was sufficient for
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Page 24 of 82
YWCA. So, we didn’t want to allocate any increase to that given that we have already given so
much to LifeMoves and Palo Alto Housing Corp. We were willing to give an increase first to
Silicon Valley Independent Living Center up to a point, up to $12,000.
Commissioner O’Nan: Right that’s essentially 100 percent increase for them because right, you
were at $6,000 and now you’re doubling it to $12,000? So, to me that’s a large chunk.
Ms. Rauf: If I could interject to that, that was a little bit different in that it was last year I think
Silicon Valley Independent Living Center had $5,000 but, in their application, they asked for
quite a bit more funding but they were providing more services. So, it’s kind of put it in a
slightly different category so that’s how the Committee addressed it. They asked for $20,000 –
so it wasn’t like they had $28,000. Currently; they have a smaller grant that they were putting
forward that would provide more services. So, the Committee decided that’s the way to address
it. They are not going to get the full recommendation but if there’s extra funding then they’d up
the funding. Is that correct?
Commissioner Stinger: It was. We looked at the baseline and $6,000 is consistent more less with
what they’ve received historically but considerably under the proposal for additional service this
year. In a way we felt sort of hamstrung but the best we could do with new services was if there
was increased funding available and that’s where the $12,000 came from.
Chair Kralik: Can I just ask are there three folks that were in on the recommendation? Ok. I just
wondered if we could also hear from you Commissioner Brahmbhatt?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I mean they pretty much summarized this. We wanted to support the
addition and the request for $28,000 but given the budget, the way to do that was to prioritize if
there was an increase to prioritize giving it to them first.
Commissioner Lee: I believe our recommendation was unanimous, correct?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Yes, yes.
Commissioner Lee: We did a lot of back and forth sort of fudging – not fudging – adjusting the
numbers based on what we were hearing from each other and we really worked hard to speak
with one voice on this. At least as a Committee, certainly the Commission as a whole may decide
differently.
Chair Kralik: Commissioner Xue, did you have any questions? Ok. No further questions?
Commissioner O’Nan: No.
Chair Kralik: I think the discussion’s finished now and I think what I’d like is a member of the
subcommittee to make a motion.
Commissioner Lee: So maybe, Chair Kralik, if I could make a two-part – separate them out into
two motions. The first motion would be on the Committee recommendation and the contingency
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Page 25 of 82
for an increase and then we can vote on that. Then I would suggest a second motion on a larger
decrease because it seems like there’s a couple thoughts on that.
Chair Kralik: Ok, let’s do it that way, sure.
MOTION #1
Commissioner Lee: Ok so I move the Selection Committee’s recommendation along with the
contingency plan for an increase as presented on Attachment C.
Chair Kralik: Is there a second for the motion?
SECOND
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I second that motion.
Chair Kralik: Any further discussion? Ok, we’ll go ahead and vote on that. All in favor? That’s
unanimous. Congratulations and thank you also subcommittee for your hard work on that.
MOTION PASSED 6-0 WITH COMMISSIONER SMITH ABSENT
Chair Kralik: We’ll move to the contingency proposal for a decrease.
Commissioner Lee: I’m going to differ to my two Committee colleagues on this one because I
think there’s more variety here and if one of you would like to present one of them as a motion
then we can discuss it if necessary.
MOTION #2
Commissioner Stinger: Thinking out loud I would suggest that we look at it by the four
categories and if there were a 10 percent reduction, first looking at Public Services we reduce the
YWCA of Silicon Valley. Then we proportionally take a hit or reduction in the remaining four.
Is that right? One, two, three…
Commissioner Lee: Three.
Commissioner Stinger: …four.
Commissioner Lee: Oh, ok.
Commissioner Stinger: I think if we took a 10 percent hit at $10,000 that would be – well it
would be $1,000.
Ms. Maqbool: So, eliminate YWCA completely in case of a further decrease and then…
Commissioner Stinger: Distribute the rest.
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Page 26 of 82
Ms. Maqbool: The rest for proportionally decreased, like that would be $2,500. Ok.
Commissioner Lee: Sorry, sorry, we mean in proportion to how their allocated now or do you
mean an equal cut to all the agencies?
Commissioner Stinger: I was thinking of whatever percent we needed to reduce, applying that
percent. So, if it was 3 percent, we would take 3 percent. If we needed to cut it…
Commissioner Lee: Three percent from each. Ok, so it’s not in proportion as to the
recommendation. It would be equally divided.
Ms. Maqbool: For example, we have after eliminating YWCA, if we have $4,000 remaining, we
just take a $1,000 each from each agency? Is that correct?
Commissioner Stinger: That’s one way to put it. I was trying to make it harder and do a percent
distribution to say if we need to cut…
Commissioner Lee: I mean for instance LifeMoves has five times the amount that Silicon Valley
Independent Living Center is getting under the Committee recommendations. So, any further
decrease I would recommend be in the proportion in which the Committee has recommended
them.
Commissioner Stinger: Ok, that’s fine.
Commissioner O’Nan: I would say I still continue to disagree with that strategy because I think
the reward of getting the money will be offset by the burden of having to administer such small
amounts. As I said, Catholic Charities is overperforming with $10,000 so to cut them when it’s
already a modest grant, I would be hesitant to do that. I also think cutting Silicon Valley
Independent Living Center lower than $6,000 gets them really close the minimum. I think the
larger agencies can bear the burden which would if we remove the Y, would only be a few
thousand dollars that the two of them would be sharing. I think that would be a less impactful
way and preserve those modest grants and make them continued to be meaningful to those
smaller agencies.
Chair Kralik: Commissioner Brahmbhatt, you had talked about this before but could you tell us
your thoughts about the proposal of Commissioner Stinger and Lee and comment on
Commissioner O’Nan’s thought?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I mean I’m ok with doing a proportional. I think just dividing it four
equally doesn’t make sense because they have received different proportions. I also feel
Commissioner O’Nan’s proposal is very reasonable with Catholic Charities. I think it would hurt
them because if they’re asking for $28,000 and we are giving them $6,000. Then if we reduce
them further maybe we don’t reduce that one and do the proportional with…
Ms. Maqbool: Palo Alto Housing Corp and LifeMoves?
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Page 27 of 82
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Yes, Palo Alto Housing and LifeMoves.
MOTION #2 FRIENDLY AMENDMENT
Commissioner Lee: If I’m hearing my colleagues correctly, if I may make a suggestion to the
motion is we place a floor on Silicon Valley and Catholic Charities such that it does not drop
below $5,000. It’s not a mandatory minimum; it’s just a preferential minimum that we don’t fall
below the $5,000 minimum.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I think that would work, then we have a good proposal.
Commissioner Lee: Would you take that as a friendly amendment?
Commissioner Stinger: Yes, I would accept that. I will just defend where I was coming from
because I care so much about all of these groups. Catholic Charities in the past, except for last
year, has been in the $5,000 spot to $6,000 grant. So, it has performed well and it’s the only
ombudsmen service for seniors living in long term care settings. So, I’d hate to reduce it but the
past 2-years have been exceptionally high years for their grant rewards. Both LifeMoves and
Palo Alto Housing Corp are taking reductions this year from recent years. So, that’s why I was
trying to defend them and I think the motion on the floor makes the most sense. It’s the easiest to
administer. I just want to say (crosstalk)
Chair Kralik: Ok, let’s hear from Commissioner Xue, please.
Vice Chair Xue: Well, after hearing all the discussion I am more aligning with Commissioner
O’Nan’s proposal. Maintain Catholic Charities at $10,000 and also Silicon Valley Independent
Living Center at $5,000 or $6,000 and the extra should come from LifeMoves and the Palo Alto
Housing Corporation.
Chair Kralik: We’re going to have an interesting vote. Why don’t we do this, we go ahead and
have a motion from…
SECOND FOR MOTION #2
Commissioner Lee: Valerie made a motion and I’ll second the motion.
Chair Kralik: Ok, could you restate it so we know what we’re saying?
Commissioner Lee: Valerie, would you like to…
MOTION #2 RESTATED
Commissioner Stinger: I hope I can say this correctly or I hope I can say it again. The first
reduction would be YWCA of Silicon Valley and we would remove the grant. The remaining 10
percent…
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Page 28 of 82
Chair Kralik: And when would that trigger? On any decrease?
Commissioner Stinger: Any decrease.
Chair Kralik: Any decrease, ok.
Commissioner Stinger: The first $5,000 we would take from the YWCA of Silicon Valley.
Then…
Chair Kralik: But you wouldn’t take the whole $5,000 if it was a decrease that was less than
$5,000?
Commissioner Lee: You would take it first from…
Chair Kralik: First from.
Commissioner Lee: … first from and then anything above a $5,000 decrease would come
proportionately from the other three agencies with a…
Chair Kralik: Three or four?
Ms. Maqbool: Four.
Commissioner Stinger: Four.
Commissioner Lee: Oh, sorry from the four with a floor of $5,000…
Commissioner Stinger: $5,000 for…
Commissioner Lee: …Catholic Charities and Silicon Valley.
Chair Kralik: Ok and there was a second to that motion.
Commissioner Lee: I’ll second that. Is there any discussion on it or…?
Chair Kralik: I think we did discuss it.
Commissioner Lee: Ok.
Chair Kralik: Could I take a vote on that?
Commissioner Lee: So just a point of clarification, so whenever there’s a motion that’s been
seconded you technically have discussion. Since we’ve already discussed it, we may not need
too…
Chair Kralik: Any further discussion?
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Page 29 of 82
Commissioner Lee: Any further discussion.
Chair Kralik: Right.
Commissioner Lee: There has to be that option for discussion.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Ye, I vote for it. You are asking for the votes or not yet?
Chair Kralik: Not yet. Any further discussion? Ok, all in favor?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Ok so four.
Chair Kralik: So, it’s four. All against? Two so the motion does carry.
MOTION #2 PASSED 4 (Stinger, Lee, Brahmbhatt, Kralik) -2 (O’Nan, Xue) WITH
COMMISSIONER SMITH ABSENT.
Chair Kralik: Alright, we’re going to move onto the second item; Ad Hoc Review Committee
recommendation to the HRC for Human Services Resource Allocation process funding for Fiscal
Years 2020 to 2021.
Commissioner O’Nan: Could I just ask for one point of clarification here?
Chair Kralik: Sure.
Commissioner O’Nan: So, we just discussed for Category One…
Ms. Maqbool: Yes.
Commissioner O’Nan: … but what about the other categories?
Ms. Maqbool: Yes, there’s Planning Administration, Economic Development, and Public
Faculties too.
Commissioner O’Nan: We only talked about this group.
Chair Kralik: Ok we can do that.
Commissioner Lee: That’s correct, yes.
Chair Kralik: I thought that we had talked about…
Commissioner Stinger: No, we did not.
Commissioner Lee: The motion didn’t include the other two.
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Page 30 of 82
Chair Kralik: Yes, so could we have a motion that includes the other two, please?
Commissioner Lee: Commissioner Stinger, if I would suggest maybe for the other two categories
within their proportion proportionally reduce them.
Commissioner Stinger: I think that’s fair. It’s unfortunate but it would be fair.
Chair Kralik: Could you make the motion, please?
MOTION #3
Commissioner Stinger: There are categories of Planning and Administration, Economic
Development, Public Facilities, and Housing Rehab. If there was another reduction in funding
from HUD, we would spread that proportionally across the four agencies in the three categories.
Chair Kralik: Ok, is there a second?
SECOND
Commissioner Lee: Second.
Chair Kralik: Discussion? Ok, could we have a vote, please? All in favor?
MOTION #3 PASSED 6-0 WITH COMMISSIONER SMITH ABSENT
Commissioner Lee: Thank you for catching that.
Chair Kralik: Just for clarification, we have now voted in favor of the Selection Committee’s
recommendation, the Selection Committee’s contingency on increase and the Selection
Committee’s contingency on decrease. We appreciate the subcommittee’s work, thank you.
Commissioner Lee: Well, the decrease wasn’t from the Committee, it was at Commission we
made it because…
Chair Kralik: At the meeting.
Commissioner Lee: …we hadn’t discussed it previously.
Chair Kralik: Very well.
2. Ad Hoc Review Committee recommendation to the HRC for Human Services
Resources Allocation Process (HSRAP) Funding for Fiscal Years 2020-2021
A. Questions from Commission to Review Committee and Staff.
B. Oral communications from applicants
C. Discussion and consideration of Review Committee’s Recommendations
D. HRC recommendation to the Finance Committee
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Page 31 of 82
Chair Kralik: Alright, moving to the second item. First, we’re going to have Commissioner
O’Nan lead us regarding the HSRAP funding process. The review Committee consisted of Staff
members of the Commission and the three of us, right here; Commissioner O’Nan,
Commissioner Xue, and myself. Commissioner O’Nan?
Commissioner O’Nan: Ok, thank you so much, Chair. Oh, thank you so much, Chair. Alright,
we’re here for our 2-year HSRAP funding cycle and as always, the amounts that were requested
from the RFP process far exceeded the actual budget that we have. The amounts requested were
$712,690 and the amount that we had was $515,792 so almost $200,000 difference so,
obviously, a very difficult task for us. What we determined though, in our deliberations, was that
there were a number of relatively modest grants and there was available funding to award those
grants either as a significant increase or to fully fund certain agencies. So those agencies were –
sorry, I’m looking at the chart – sorry, I’ve lost my place now.
Commissioner Lee: (inaudible – off mic)
Commissioner O’Nan: Yes, I’m sorry. They were Cassy, Abilities United, CASSY, Downtown
Streets Team, DreamCatchers, KARA, La Comida, Mayview Health, Palo Alto Housing, Senior
Adults Legal Assistance, Vista Center for the Blind and Youth Community Services. So, that
was the easier part, then we had to look at some larger grants and we also had to look at requests
from new agencies and tried to determine how to use the remaining funding for them. We first
talked about Adolescent Counseling Services, that agency has a very long and venerable history
with the City. They were, at one time, one of our largest grantees and their funding had been
decreased because they have a different relationship now with the school district than they use to
have. They asked for more money this year and we did agree that dealing with mental health and
drug rehabilitation issues and giving support to LGBTQ youth is critical for our community. We
have a strong focus and priority on youth well-being, so we recommended their grant be
significantly increased to $42,500. We also talked about moving up the funding for LifeMoves.
LifeMoves administers a very critical Breaking Bread food program. Nutrition was one of our
priorities for the community, it is very shocking but even here in Palo Alto food security is a big
issue for low-income people up to about 100 a day, depending on the Breaking Bread program so
we agreed to move their funding up to $78,911 but part of that funding we also would like to go
the salary for a new Public Safety Officer.
Ms. Minka van der Zwaag: Safety – oh Yes, so not a police officer but a…
Commissioner O’Nan: Public Safety…
Ms. van der Zwaag: … Safety Manager.
Commissioner O’Nan: A Safety Manager for the Opportunity Center. The Opportunity Center is
another venue were homeless and families receive meals, snacks, counseling, and other services.
There was a need to have a Safety Officer or safety presence there so we were very supportive of
that as well. Then we had to turn to the newer agencies. These were the Health Trust which
administers Meals on Wheels, Ada’s Café which is a well-known café over at the Mitchell Park
Community Center, and Blossom Birth. Because we are prioritizing food-based programs, we
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Page 32 of 82
were supportive of the Meals on Wheels program. They are serving a group that has not been
served by our existing food program because these seniors are homebound. So, we agreed to give
them a grant of – looking at my chart here -- $10,000. We then looked at the request from Ada’s
Café. Ada requested a very large amount and because they are a new agency, we didn’t feel that
we could grant such a large amount to pay for their executive salaries but we also had some
questions about their application. There were some deficiencies there but we did decide that we
would allocate $5,000 to Ada’s. Then the final agency was Blossom Birth, another new agency.
This agency also had some deficiencies in their application. Two key problems that came up was
they requested an amount that was more than Palo Alto could be served by. They didn’t have
enough Palo Alto clients to justify a $15,000 grant. In fact, they didn’t quite have enough Palo
Alto clients to justify even a minimum $5,000 grant. That was one problem and two, they were
targeting a demographic whose average income was over $100,000 a year and while HSRAP
funding does not have strings attached to it. We generally try to direct the funds toward lower
income people so we decided not to fund Blossom Birth at this time. So, they were the only
agency that didn’t a recommended funding allocation and so that was the thinking behind our
current recommendations. We welcome the feedback from colleagues and the public who are
here today.
Commissioner Lee: Can I ask a clarifying question, Chair?
Chair Kralik: Right, this is the time to do it.
Commissioner Lee: So, between the 10 agencies that you looked at first that you either fully
funded or increased the funding for. Between those 10, what was the thought process in terms of
whether an agency got fully funded or how much of an increase in funding? How did you break
out those 10?
Commissioner O’Nan: Well, one constraint that we had was we cannot over fund agencies.
Commissioner Lee: Sure.
Commissioner O’Nan: We can’t fund more than they requested. Some agencies only requested a
few thousand dollars more and it felt like their request, their application was strong, they’d
worked with the City for a while, and what they were requesting was reasonable. Other agencies
requested really significant increases that would have taken quite a bit of the budget away from
possible other grantees. Including new agencies that we were interested in looking at and in some
cases the amount would have doubled what they were currently getting which seemed like an
excessive amount of increase. So, we were trying to be cognizant of all these factors as we made
our determination. So, some agencies may have gotten a $10,000 increase but not a $15,000
which would have doubled them and put them ahead of another agency which equally deserved.
So, we tried to make sure that people got enough funding because typically the funding was for
Staff positions that they could reasonably expect to serve Palo Altans and possibly make up the
rest of the funding through their additional fund-raising efforts.
Commissioner Lee: So…(crosstalk)
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Page 33 of 82
Chair Kralik: Let me just say that when you’re talking about thinking, I think there was a
consolidating opinion formed after much discussion. So, each of us had our own perspective,
they were different, and we didn’t always agree but we did come to a consensus after
formulating and listening. Staff had a big input. Staff has visited each of these agencies, they’ve
also interacted with the agency to address follow up questions, we had two meetings, and then
we received the follow-up input. In situations where we didn’t understand the submission or we
felt that clarification was needed, we received that, and then we came up with a consensus
viewpoint. I will say that the Blossom Birth, not funding it, was not my opinion but it was
carried in a two to one vote.
Commissioner Lee: So, the way that the memo reads it seems like the 10 there were either fully
funded or had increase in funding came first and then you considered the two larger increases.
Was it really a two-step process or?
Chair Kralik: We went one at a time and walked through each one of them on their own merits.
We did it twice actually.
Commissioner Lee: So, it wasn’t like you tried to fund the first 10 first and then…
Chair Kralik: No.
Commissioner Lee: … ok, so it wasn’t – thank you very much.
Chair Kralik: Yes, one at a time. Commissioner Brahmbhatt, did you have any questions of the
subcommittee?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: No, you’re good.
Chair Kralik: Commissioner Stinger.
Commissioner Stinger: No, I did have some questions but you’ve answered them.
Chair Kralik: Ok. Alright, well, we’re going to turn next to the oral communications from the
applicants. We have quite a few cards.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Did you want to do 2-minutes then or 3-minutes?
Chair Kralik: I’ll try to hold all the questions which apparently delayed us the last time. I’m
going to have a couple of folks come up again who have a one and two card.
Ms. van der Zwaag: So, 2-minutes or 3-minutes, Chair?
Chair Kralik: A couple minutes, 2-minutes.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok, thank you, sir.
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
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Page 34 of 82
Chair Kralik: Yes but try to feel comfortable. Folks, you’ve spent a lot of time coming here and
we really appreciate your time and commitment to the community. Philip Dah.
Ms. Mary Constantino: He decided not to speak.
Chair Kralik: Ok and Ken Graham, CEO. CEO, I got that right this time.
Mr. Ken Graham: Well thank you again. We do appreciate the opportunity to receive this grant.
We support the Staff’s recommendation both upward, downward, and around. This program will
provide care to 220 more residents and about 40 percent of those will receive behavioral health
services in addition. Thank you very much.
Chair Kralik: Thank you for coming in on behalf of Mayview. I appreciate it. Alright, Jim
Santucci of KARA. Jim, welcome this evening, thank you for coming. Just tell us briefly about
KARA and your connection to it first.
Mr. Jim Santucci: Sure, so my name is Jim Santucci, I serve as the Executive Director with
KARA; I’ve been in that position for over 5-years now. KARA has been in the community in
Palo Alto since 1976 providing bereavement support, emotional health support for those that
have suffered the loss of a loved one or someone close to them. So, I just want to really be here
to say thank you so much for funding out services for the community. This is the second time
we’re receiving funding for the cycle so we’re really grateful for that. It does a lot for us to be
able to serve and just as a short story. In my role as the Executive Director, my other hat I wear
is I’m actually a trained grief facilitator like many of our volunteers. I facilitate a group of
parents who have lost a young child and one in particular story, I won’t use names obviously, but
this one young single mom was in my group and she’s from Palo Alto. I’ve seen her heal and go
through that loss of her 18-month old and just come to the groups and be encouraged by the other
parents in the group. Those groups are a lot, it’s a lot of talking processing with two trained
facilitators and those other parents who experienced that loss. In two in one they say they can’t
have these conversations outside of that room and it meets twice a month. So, I see the healing
work that we do every day even though I’m sitting in my operational office. I try to stay on the
ground and stay close to the kids, stay close to the adults. I also volunteer at our annual camp
grief camp called Camp Erin. So, the reason I do that is because I, myself, was a recipient of the
services 10-years ago so I have a real heart for the services. So, I’m grateful for any organization,
City or person that supports this because all of our services are provided through donation. I just
want to say thank you again for the support that the City has given us.
Chair Kralik: We really appreciate your passion for this. Thank you so much for coming.
Mr. Santucci: Thanks, Gabe.
Chair Kralik: Jessica Clark, good evening Jessica from CASSY. I think I jumped the gun last
time, right? Ok.
Ms. Jessica Clark: I just wanted you to introduce me twice.
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Page 35 of 82
Chair Kralik: Right.
Ms. Clark: I’m thrilled to be here on behalf of CASSY. I joined CASSY last year and I supervise
all of the Palo Alto Unified School District therapists that we have placed providing mental
health services in the schools. This year we’ve added Pre-K to our spectrum of services so we
serve 4-year olds all the way up to the high school seniors. It’s thrilling to see the breadth of
work that our therapists are doing. I have the great privilege of meeting with all of our therapists
every week and I can’t tell you how amazing their skill sets are with all of the variety of skills
that they bring to all of these schools. What I would like to share is that recently I’ve been going
around meeting with the principles of the schools to do a check-in, make sure the year’s going
well, and see if there’s anything that we want to tweak to make sure that we’re hitting all of the
important things in their schools. I come pretty in even, I don’t want to bias anything, I think
they are amazing therapists but I want them to be really honest with me if there are any
corrections that we need to make. In multiple meetings I’ve had principles begin to cry as they
describe how grateful they are for these therapists partnering with our schools and providing not
only individual therapy, group therapy but classroom support, teaching mindfulness, support for
the teachers when they are stressed out over kids, giving them strategies to work with the kids,
providing support to the administrators, and secretaries. So, we really are focused on partnering
with the whole school to meet all the children’s needs and I think it’s an amazing partnership that
we’ve built with all of these schools. If I have one more second, I’ll give you one more little
anecdote. One of the therapists reported to me that she was called in because a child was coming
off the school bus really upset. Someone had started to tease him on the school bus and by the
time she’d gotten to him he had a couple of buddies around him. Turns out they were all from the
same class in elementary school. It was a classroom that she had done mindfulness lessons in and
his two little buddies were coaching him on deep breathing to help him calm down. They had
done that through the bus ride so that he could make it to school and he managed to pull himself
together and get back to class. That’s one of the things that I love to see because there’s so much
value in the individual therapy that we provide but it’s not all about that. It’s about the
communities feeling supportive and safe and having those skills to deal with life’s up and downs.
We’re getting those skills in at such a young age that I just am so thrilled to be a part of.
Chair Kralik: Well, we’ve given you time in proportion to the grants..
Ms. Clark: Luckily, I talk fast too.
Chair Kralik: We really appreciate you reaching our youth. Thank you so much for your
commitment.
Ms. Clark: Thank you. We’re so grateful to have your support, thank you.
Chair Kralik: Ok, thank you. Roger Young? Roger are you here tonight – still? Thank you so
much for coming. Thank you for your patience.
Mr. Roger Young: Sort of like Christmas. I am the Manager of the Adult, the Activities and
Community Connection Programs for Abilities United. Abilities United provides a full
continuum of services for people of all ages. Whether they be young infants needing intervention
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access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
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Page 36 of 82
to mitigate the effects of developmental delays, children in preschool who benefit from both
education and socialization experiences, school ages children and young adults that need
socialization training or adults of all ages up through retirement age. On behalf of the almost 30
adult Palo Alto residents, the adults that Abilities United has the pleasure of serving, I wanted to
thank you for your very generous and needed financial support. In total, we serve over 300
participants in adult services alone and the costs have gone up while our state revenue has not
kept pace. It is support from places like the City of Palo Alto that enables us to continue to
provide the high quality of services that these people deserve. If we were not able to provide the
services that we do such as an independent living skill, adult day program, community
connections, computer training, tailor day s ervices, employment services, and the art program.
These people would be sitting at home without having a quality of life they really should have. It
is such a joy to see when I go in each day to the day program, these people come up and they
literally can’t wait to give me a hug and say thank you. Every day this one particular gentleman
from Palo Alto says, Roger, thank you. This is the best time of my life. Thank you so much. I
hear it every day but I never get tired of hearing it. These people experience the opportunity to
enjoy what this community offers. A fantastic community but also have the opportunity to give
back by doing volunteer work. Also, as a result of the assistance they receive, they are able to get
jobs and give back to this community. From the bottom of my heart and all the rest of us at
Abilities United, I want to say thank you.
Chair Kralik: Do you have summer camps for the…
Mr. Young: We do have a summer day camp for some of the young people but actually, we have
day camp every day.
Chair Kralik: Every day.
Mr. Young: Everyday we got day camp.
Chair Kralik: Thank you so much…
Mr. Young: It’s my joy.
Chair Kralik: … for your commitment.
Mr. Young: Thank you, sir.
Chair Kralik: Thank you. Alice Turner and Sharon Hudson. Why don’t you come sit at the table
because there’s two of you and maybe that would help us with respect to…
Ms. Alice Turner: I’m leading my guide.
Chair Kralik: Sure. Yes, and we have a microphone the two of you can share.
Ms. Turner: Thank you.
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
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Page 37 of 82
Chair Kralik: And just introduce yourselves and your connection.
Ms. Turner: Hello, my name is Alice Turner and I’m the Community Relations Manager for
Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. First and foremost, I want to thank this
Commission and for your support over the years. The funding that you have provided us really
helps us in being able to leverage and get additional funding. What we do is that we create Safe
and Healthy Living for our clients. So, what this grant is designed to do it to be able to provide
that support for seniors living in Palo Alto; seniors who are visually impaired or blind. Last year
we provided this program to 77 seniors living in Palo Alto. We expect to provide this for 95
individuals. What does Safe and Healthy Living look like for us? It means having the
opportunity and the ability to be able to perform all of the tasks of life. So, how do folks cross
the streets? Our office is located at El Camino and California Avenue if you can picture yourself
standing there and crossing that street.
Chair Kralik: I tried to recently and that’s a very difficult street to cross right there.
Ms. Turner: Absolutely, absolutely, and so what we do in that Safe and Healthy Living program
is that the individuals that come to us, the residents of Palo Alto and the other 3,000 individuals
that we serve. They come and we help to re-tool them not only in the skills and the proficiencies
but emotionally as well. Isolation is profound for people that are blind or visually impaired so
what we want to be able to do is have them out in the community. We want them voting, we
want them working, we want them seeing their grandchildren, and so what that means is being
able to organize their life and be able to live a happy and independent life.
Chair Kralik: Now you had the opportunity I think once to visit with us separately.
Ms. Turner: Yes.
Chair Kralik: I remember you handed out a little card for signature in which there’s a little
cutout.
Ms. Turner: Yes.
Chair Kralik: I provided that to someone at our church who is blind…
Ms. Turner: Excellent.
Chair Kralik: …and he put it in his wallet and we were very grateful. So, there are some
strategies…
Ms. Turner: Oh, there’s low tech and high tech, absolutely.
Chair Kralik: Right, right.
Ms. Turner: So, signature guides as well as my iPhone that’s in my pocket that talks to me all the
time. Yes, yes.
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
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Page 38 of 82
Chair Kralik: That’s wonderful. Sharon, thank you for making the trip…
Ms. Sharon Hudson: Hi, Sharon Hudson, I’m the Associate Director…
Chair Kralik: We didn’t establish that if you bring two people you can have 4-minutes.
Ms. Hudson: No, no, no.
Chair Kralik: I guess that’s how we’ll do it so right ahead.
Ms. Hudson: Actually, she misspoke, we saw 77 people last year, 95 this year so it’s a growing
population, the visually impaired, because as we age it’s basically an age-related disability for
many people. It’s also growing for those because diabetes and such. There are certain diseases
where it’s much more prevalent. Just one of the things that I wanted to say, I know one of the
things we try to do is reach out to all people, and if there’s somebody who needs a service, we’re
happy to serve them regardless of whether they speak a different language or whatever. We will
get interpreters in and I was just looking at the different languages just for Palo Alto, Chinese,
Farsi, French, German, Hindi, Russian, and Spanish so we got translators in to help with
reaching all the different communities. 80 percent of our clients are low income according to
HUD so despite Palo Alto having the regular population being higher, our population they really
are in the lower income.
Chair Kralik: Well we hope you felt welcome tonight…
Ms. Hudson: We do.
Chair Kralik: … and we welcome you back again.
Ms. Turner: Thank you.
Chair Kralik: Please give us a progress report and thank you for your commitment.
Ms. Hudson: Thank you very much for supporting us.
Chair Kralik: Philippe Rey.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: So, I think, if may interject?
Chair Kralik: I’m sorry?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I think we have a mom with two kids so we should prioritize her and
then…
Chair Kralik: Ok, Philippe, can you hold off just a second? Ok.
Ms. van der Zwaag: That’s Dominique from Blossom Birth.
ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
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Page 39 of 82
Chair Kralik: Dominique, won’t you come up? Bring the children, it’s ok. Bring them on up if
they’d like to come. There are some chairs right here guys. You can sit right here.
Ms. Dominique Vincent: You guys can sit there.
Chair Kralik: There’s a chair right here. You sit next to Commissioner Lee, he’s friendly, he’s
ok. Alright, go right ahead, please.
Ms. Vincent: Good evening, thank you for having me. I’m Dominique Vincent; I’m the
Executive Director at Blossom Birth and Family here in Palo Alto. These are my two children,
my husband is traveling on business and so this is life. I wanted to thank you for the opportunity
to get up in front of you. I was disheartened and sad to see that we weren’t receiving any
recommendation for funding but I just wanted to explain a little bit why I think it’s so very vital
that Blossom does get funding for this Postpartum Moods and Challenges group that meets.
We’ve been serving families here in Palo Alto for almost 20-years and we’re located now on the
corner of California Avenue and Birch. We serve a very vulnerable population. People who are
going through extreme life changes, things that will change their life for the next 20-years at a
minimum but generally for the rest of their life, and it’s a very vulnerable time. This is a program
specifically, Postpartum Moods and Challenges, services folks who are experiencing mental
health issues. About one and five women will experience perinatal mood disorders ranging from
anxiety, OCD, depression, and even psychosis. One of the reasons I want to mention and bring
this up is that even one of our families in the area was affected by this, this year. I’m not sure
how many of you are familiar with Kyle Heart but it was in the news a few months ago. His wife
is one of the families that came through Blossom and unfortunately, he lost his life 3-days after
his child was born. So, this is a very, very serious thing that we’re trying to prevent from
happening. While it looks like we don’t serve very many people, the people that we are serving
are vital. With your funding we could potentially double the mount of families that we’re able to
serve and reach families who don’t have the funds to actually come and be served during a very
vulnerable time of their life. So, I think that’s all I wanted to say. Thank you.
Chair Kralik: That’s very interesting. I guess I want to thank you for your passion. I just want to
let you know that there isn’t a final decision yet and the subcommittee vote was two to one so it
was not unanimous on Blossom. We had a lot of good input from Staff on your organization. I
think all of us unanimously recognized the good work that you’re doing and the importance of it.
So, thank you for coming in and we appreciate you.
Ms. Vincent: Thank you. I have to get my kids home to bed so.
Chair Kralik: Ok, thanks so much. Philippe, we’re ready to go.
Mr. Philippe Rey: Good evening, I’m Doctor Philippe Rey, the Executor Director of Adolescent
Counseling Services and I’ve been with the organization since 1998. As an organization, we’ve
been providing services to the Palo Alto community since 1977. We estimate we have helped
over 85,000 youth and family members since then. Just to give you some information, it is a
reality that our teens are currently going through a lot of struggles. One out of five adolescents in
the United States and locally suffers from a major mental illness and what’s really sad is that
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access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
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Page 40 of 82
only 30 percent of those receive any type of treatment or support. So, there are 70 percent of
youth just left on their own to make it into adulthood. 70 percent -- this is from the Pew Research
Center, this is brand-new research that came out 2-weeks ago – 70 percent of teens in the United
States report feeling depressed or anxious at all times. This is a huge increase from years past.
Suicide is, as you know, the second leading cause of death in youth ages 10 to 24 and then
substance abuse is on the rise. So, at our substance abuse program, we are seeing an increase in
the use of marijuana, alcohol is actually decreasing but here’s the thing, that in about 3-years you
will be hearing me screaming and rioting in the street. We have an epidemic on our doors and
this is the vaping and nicotine addiction. It’s a huge problem, we’re only seeing the tip of the
iceberg, we’re seeing it in middle school. If you remember back in the 70s/80s we use to say that
marijuana was the gateway to harder drugs. Watch my words; vaping is a gateway to drugs in
our youth nowadays. We need to do something and Adolescent Counseling Services, with our
substance abuse program, is the only organization of its kind that can tackle and handle this
epidemic. In terms of our LGBTQ+ youth, in our program, 60 percent of our youth coming to us
for support report that they feel unsafe in our local schools and 40 percent of our youth say that
they live in a hostile home environment. That’s increasing their chance for homelessness. So,
just knowing all the stats and what’s really going on with the youth, we know there is a need for
an increase after-school support for youth in Palo Alto. So, through our offices, our five offices
on Grant Avenue, plus the relationship that we have with the local schools including the Palo
Alto Unified School District, we would love to serve through our proposal 1,000 youth each
year. This is an increase from what we’re doing and basically, if you look at it, $100,000 per year
for 1,000 youth that comes down to $100 per youth. This is really cheap to save a life and I really
appreciate all the help and the support, the financial support that you’ve given ACS since 1977
as part of the HRC and Palo Alto City Council. I would like to also propose if there would be
any way for an increase in the support? As I said, you’ll hear back 2-years ago saying we need
more support especially with the drug epidemic, the vaping, and also with the depression and
suicide specifically after school. I mean we have a wonderful organization like CASSY that
provides those services during school hours. After 3:30 where do those kids go? There needs to
be increased services and here we are right here on Grant Avenue, five offices plus our other
offices in San Mateo and Santa Clara County. So, I would like to request for a second look at the
support.
Chair Kralik: Sure, let me…(crosstalk)
Mr. Rey: (crosstalk)
Chair Kralik: … just ask a question? Were you part of the LGBTQ Summit that the Human
Relations Commission held?
Mr. Rey: Yes, absolutely.
Chair Kralik: Ok, so that’s great because Commissioner Lee and Commissioner Stinger were
spearheading that this past week and it was a wonderful gathering of folks who were concerned
about the same things. Thank you for coming tonight, we really appreciate it.
Mr. Rey: Thank you.
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Page 41 of 82
Chair Kralik: Ryan Fouts? Ryan, thank you, welcome.
Mr. Ryan Fouts: Thank you to the HRC for this discussion tonight for your historical support of
Outlet and ACS. So, to introduce myself, my name is Ryan, I’m a licensed clinical social worker
and I’m the Program Director of Outlet. So, as you may know, Outlet is the only program
providing specialized services to LGBTQ+ youth in this area. One thing that I want to add to
what Philippe said is that I want to highlight a recent report from the Horizon Foundation that
found that last year, in 2018, 34 percent of the LGBTQ individuals in the Bay Area where unable
to access at least one vital service such as mental health support or substance use treatment.
Again, that was just released based on 2018 information. Outlet is committed to supporting Palo
Alto’s LGBTQ+ youth community. In this fiscal year alone, we’ve deepened our support within
the Palo Alto school district and have greatly increased our provision of school-based and
district-wide consultations and training ranging all the way from the elementary schools up
through to the high schools. In fact, just last night, we were part of parent education night at
Fletcher Middle School that brought out nearly 70 community members. As you just referenced,
early this week I was part of the LGBTQ working summit with other community providers
where the needs for increased training about our community, the need for specialized mental
health support, as well as the need for a designated community space for LGBTQ members were
all voiced. In addition, right now, we’re in communication with local universities to pilot
research studies that are going to help us better detail the needs of LGBTQ+ youth. Outlet seeks
to expand our reach within Palo Alto so that we can support even more young people. Our
visions is that no youth in this community would experience shame or rejection for who they are
but instead, the all youth would end up succeeding and becoming happy, healthy, productive
members of our community. Thank you for your commitment and support for our processes.
Chair Kralik: I was wondering if you could give a little bit of feedback. San Mateo has a LGBTQ
center.
Mr. Fouts: Yes, they do.
Chair Kralik: You mentioned space, is that something that you’re thinking about right now?
Mr. Fouts: There was a large discussion at the working summit earlier this week that there --
especially within North Santa Clara County, there is not a designated space where LGBTQ
community members can go. There is…
Chair Kralik: And do you think the San Mateo one works well with.. (crosstalk)
Mr. Fouts: I do. Yes, having a designated space where community members know they are safe
and they are welcomed is absolutely vital. For Santa Clara County the option at this point is
either to go north to San Mateo or to south to San Jose. So, I think definitely finding ways to
bring a designated space to northern Santa Clara County is absolutely vital to increase support.
Not only for LGBTQ but really LGBTQ individuals across a life span.
Chair Kralik: Great, thank you for your commitment.
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Page 42 of 82
Mr. Fouts: Sure, thank you.
Chair Kralik: Michele Schroeder. Michele, good evening.
Ms. Michele Schroeder: Good evening.
Chair Kralik: Thank you for being here.
Ms. Schroeder: Thank you for the opportunity to address you. I am the Supervising Attorney at
SALA. I’ve been with the organization for 24-years. SALA is a non-profit office that provides
free legal services to senior citizens. We provide our services countywide and in Palo Alto. In
Palo Alto, we offer half an hour appointment at the Avenidas Senior Center and also Stevenson
House. Last year 71 percent of the Palo Alto seniors we served were very low income, 56
percent were 75 or older and 21 percent had a disability. At SALA we see seniors with legal
problems involving the public benefits they rely on to meet basic needs. These are benefits such
as social security, SSI, Medicare, Medi-Cal. We see seniors that are facing evictions, seniors that
are the victims of elder abuse very often by someone living in their homes or by someone that
they know, seniors that need to do basic planning for incapacity, and seniors that need legal
advice about where to go and what to do with other matters. Without SALA most of our clients
would not be able to navigate the legal or public benefits systems, represent themselves in court,
or a benefit appeals, prepare legal planning documents such as Powers of Attorney or to know
where to go or what to do about other legal matters. SALA cannot charge fees for our services or
except fee-generating cases. The primary way we support our services is through government
grants such as HSRAP. We hope that the HRC will support the Review Committee’s
recommendation for funding and we want to thank you again for your support of SALA.
Mr. Drake: (spoke from the audience) Quick question, how do you find (inaudible)?
Chair Kralik: Yes, hold on just a second, we don’t have public questions but I will ask that
questions because I understand your interest. I guess I have an interest to know when I can stop
by your office. How soon?
Ms. Schroeder: Well, for our program it’s 60 and over.
Chair Kralik: 60 and over, I’ve got a few years. Ok, alright, thank you.
Ms. Schroeder: Thank you.
Chair Kralik: Thank you for your commitment to the community.
Ms. Schroeder: Oh, my pleasure.
Chair Kralik: Really appreciate you being here. Maureen Damrel. Maureen, are you here? Again,
yes.
Ms. Maureen Damrel: I’m here.
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Page 43 of 82
Chair Kralik: Ok. Did you fill out two cards, is that how you did it?
Ms. Damrel: I may have. Hi, long time no see. Yes, I did fill out two cards.
Chair Kralik: That’s kind of you, thank you.
Ms. Damrel: Well, I thought I had to so perfect. I want to say first that I’m very inspired by what
everybody’s doing to serve our community tonight. I think that there are so many really
important things that people are doing so thanks to the other service providers. It’s very
encouraging. So, particularly through HSRAP Downtown Streets Team is or has sought funding
for outreach case management. It is a big connecting part to PAR Court or Palo Alto Review
Court as well as the resources that are offered with the public defender’s office at the Kurk
Kumli Resource Center. It’s enabled us to really connect deeper into the community maybe
people that wouldn’t show up to the Downtown Streets Team meeting but didn’t realize what
services we’re able to connect them too. It’s a nice way to engage more people. So, I don’t want
to take up too much time but I appreciate you guys considering our needs. I appreciate your
support that you’ve already given us and hopefully continue to give us so thank you.
Chair Kralik: Thank you for your commitment. Leif Erickson. Leif, are you here? Thank you so
much for coming tonight.
Mr. Leif Erickson: Thank you. I’m Leif Erickson, Executive Director of Youth Community
Service, and I want to thank the Staff and the Commissioners for your work on our proposal and
your recommendations. I appreciate that. I appreciate also your past support for our work with
the City and the community. We serve about 1,200 students each year and middle school and
high school students and engage them in activities that link to civic engagement, to a sense of
belonging and connectedness in the community, sense of knowledge and understanding of
community issues. Examples of recent activities, we partnered with the City for Martin Luther
King Day. There were hundreds of children and youth and families who participated in that day
with a whole series of entertainment and learning activities about the legacy of Dr. King and
entertainment. Another example was a recent Gunn High School service day. There were over
300 young people who participated in that day, going off campus or on campus involved in
service projects. One of our favorite programs to volunteer with, for high school students, is
Blossom Birth. I’m particularly touched by the boys. Some of these very tall, hulking high
school boys who were volunteering with Blossom Birth and it was very touching to see that. So,
a shout out to Blossom Birth. So, thank you for your support in the past years. Our young people
grow up to take roles in public service. One of our young people grew up and became a Mayor of
Palo Alto and who knows, maybe in the future, we’ll have some who will serve on the Human
Relations Commission so thank you.
Chair Kralik: Thank you very much for coming in. Alright, Michele Lew, CEO of The Health
Trust. Michele, welcome this evening, thank you for your patience. We look forward to your
comments on The Health Trust.
Ms. Michele Lew: Good evening, my name is Michele Lew, I’m the CEO of The Health Trust,
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Page 44 of 82
I’m a Palo Alto native, and a current resident of Palo Alto. The Health Trust might be new to the
HRC but we’re not new in the community. We were founded in 1996 and since that time we’ve
been providing Meals on Wheels in the county. I wanted to make sure you knew that Meals on
Wheels is not just the meal, it's also a daily wellness check. A driver who can check on the senior
and make sure everything is ok at home, that they don’t need extra help. If they do, our driver
can make a call immediately and get in contact with that senior’s loved one and make sure that
they get the support that they need. We have a first-time request in for $20,000. The
recommendation is $10,000, we’ll take $10,000 or $20,000 and I’m here to answer any questions
you might have. Thank you.
Chair Kralik: Thank you very much, Michele. Valery Talma. Valery, good evening, how are
you?
Mr. Valery Talma: Very good, thank you.
Chair Kralik: Thank you for your patience. Welcome to the Commission.
Mr. Talma: Thank you very much for this opportunity to address the Commission.
Chair Kralik: If you would just move the microphone closer.
Mr. Talma: To the mic, right away. Hello, everyone, I’m Valery Talma, I am a Board Member
and the treasurer of La Comida. La Comida has been serving nutritious and affordable meals to
the senior citizens of Palo Alto for over 45-years, 5-days a week. We are also the main contractor
for the Santa Clara County Senior Nutrition Program. Last year we served nearly 40,000 meals
to seniors with just four full-time staff. In addition to providing healthy and affordable meals, we
provide seniors, more importantly, with the opportunity to socialize, to meet friends, to feel
welcome, to feel valued, which is crucial for their health and wellbeing. I would like to share one
very brief anecdote. One day I was serving lunch and I was talking to an elderly lady next to me
and she was telling me she grew up in Palo Alto and that she’d been living here for decades; 40-
years more. When she started in a very small house became a multi-million-dollar house but she
still comes to La Comida every day or very often because that the only place where she can feel
the warmth and the social community. Then I turned to the lady to the other side and I said do
you also live here? She said, yes, I live around here. I live in my car around here. So, at the same
table, these ladies eat who would never meet or interact otherwise and I think this is magical and
unique. 2019 is a critical year for us, we are doubling down, we are opening a new serving
location. La Comida Downtown on Florence and the University, a few steps away from here,
because of the increasing need of the increasing elder population in Palo Alto. So, this is a very
big financial commitment for us. We are funding it through fundraising and aggressive
fundraising campaign, we’re funding throughout own resources, and we very much appreciate
your support and your help as you have done for many years. Thank you very much.
Chair Kralik: Thank you, Valery. We appreciate you coming in tonight.
Mr. Talma: Thank you.
Commissioner O’Nan: Congratulations on the new center.
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Page 45 of 82
Mr. Talma: Thank you very much. We’d like to see you soon and welcome you there when we
celebrate.
Chair Kralik: Jonake Bose, is that right?
Ms. Jonake Bose: Jonake.
Chair Kralik: Jonake, good evening. Welcome.
Ms. Bose: So, I’m Jonake Bose, I’m the new Executive Director for DreamCatchers and I just
wanted to say thank you for your support. I’m sure most of you know but it’s a free afterschool
program servicing 65 plus low-income Palo Alto Unified School so it’s only for Palo Alto
Unified School students with over 100 volunteers to different Paly, Gunn, and Stanford. There’s
a small staff that helps connect the school day and align the school day with the curriculum that
the tutors work with, with the students after school. We pair each student with their own
personalize tutor, create an individualized program for each student and align a program, as I
said, with the school curriculum. We try to build bridges paved by empowering local high school
students to help with others in their own community. So, that’s what we’ve been doing and I
wanted to thank you for your support.
Chair Kralik: And based on the recommendation from the subcommittee you’re doing it well so
thank you.
Ms. Bose: Thank you, we try to build a safe place.
Chair Kralik: We’re going to turn to discussion and consideration of the Review Committee’s
recommendation.
Ms. van der Zwaag: There’s one more card, Chair.
Chair Kralik: Oh, there’s one more card but this is not from an applicant, right?
Ms. van der Zwaag: No, it’s a member of the public so it’s during oral communications. This is
oral communications so it’s…
[The Commission moved back up to Oral Communications]
Chair Kralik: We are presently in Item Two C, discussion, and consideration of the Review
Committee’s recommendations. Other Commissioners, that would like to ask questions of the
Review Committee and/or Staff? Commissioner Lee.
Commissioner Lee: I don’t have any questions but I do have a comment after we finish
questions.
Chair Kralik: Any other questions? Commissioner Stinger.
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Page 46 of 82
Commissioner Stinger: Yes, I’ll frame this as a question. Could you talk more about your review
of Ada’s Café proposal? You did mention it. Is there more that you’d like to detail or you said
the Staff also looked at the proposal and the applicant? Some more details?
Commissioner O’Nan: Well, there were some deficiencies in the application. It was inaccurate
and the budget was not correct and we had to go back to them for clarification. They admitted
that they are suffering a shortfall and that’s a little bit problematic from an HSRAP perspective
because one of our requirements is, we have to fund agencies that are sustainable. We were not
really supposed to bail out people who aren’t doing well because then the City’s money can go
down the drain. So, that’s part of the stewardship that we take on but looking at all things
considered and the length of time Ada’s has been in the community and the good work that they
are doing. We did eventually agree that we thought that a small initial grant would work for
them.
Commissioner Stinger: Thank you.
Chair Kralik: Any further questions, Commissioner Brahmbhatt?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I have no questions.
Chair Kralik: Without further questions or discussion we’ll move to the recommendation. I’m
very sorry, Steven.
Commissioner Lee: No, I didn’t have a question but if we're moving to discussion…
Chair Kralik: The lights gone. Ok, sure, go ahead.
Commissioner Lee: So, if we’re moving to discussion then I’d like to speak first if I could but…
Chair Kralik: Please, go right ahead.
Commissioner Lee: I really appreciate the work that the HSRAP Committee did. I took a look at
all of the applications myself as well and it took a while to slog through them. I really only had
the benefit of talking through them with myself here. So, as I was going through in my mind of
what are the big needs in our community? I think all of these agencies certainly serve one of
those needs, right? I mean they all fulfill one of the items on our list of priority needs but two
needs in particular really stand out for me as the biggest needs. One of them in mental health
services, both for youth and also for the entire community. I was particularly struck by the most
recent National Citizen’s Survey that the City did and they found in this past year that the
percentage of Palo Altans who rate the availability of affordable quality mental healthcare as
excellent or good. It went from 52 percent last year or in 2017 to 38 percent in 2018. So, that
number is not surprising given all that we are seeing sort of anecdotally and in our everyday
experiences in Palo Alto. So, to me, mental health is the number one human service needs in
Palo Alto. I think the other one is homelessness; you know we see it downtown, we see it all
over the place. A lot of our fellow citizens mentioned homelessness is something that they
wanted to see our City do better and one thing that they wanted the City to make happen was to
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Page 47 of 82
address homelessness. That was on one of the lists in the survey and so as I was thinking about
our funding recommendations through that lens. I would encourage the Commission to consider
directing more money to those agencies and so I’d hate to call it an alternative recommendation
but a recommendation that I came up with, for discussion purposes, to see if the Commission
will entertain it. As a base maybe I should just pass it out. As a base, it would maintain the
funding for all of the agencies at the levels that they had received in the previous funding cycle.
So that was sort of the floor for me given the good work that the Committee did in ensuring that
the applicants were performing. That gave me…
Chair Kralik: Take a moment and you’re going to show it on screen, right?
Commissioner Lee: That gave me some reassurance that those agencies are doing good work and
that their funding should be maintained for stability purposes and to help them keep doing what
they’re doing. Hold on a second. So those are the ones in yellow. Under my recommendation, we
would maintain funding at previous levels. The light green reflects an increase from what they
received in the prior cycle. In the case of…
Chair Kralik: Ada’s Café.
Commissioner Lee: … Ada’s they didn’t get any so that’s an increase from 0. The blue are the
fully funded agencies and then the dark green except for this, this one is supposed to be light
green, the dark green are larger increases than what is recommended by the Committee.
Commissioner O’Nan: That’s not true in the case of Mayview, you recommended less.
Chair Kralik: Your microphone is off.
Commissioner O’Nan: You recommended less, we recommended more.
Commissioner Lee: Sorry, correction, the green is an increase from what they received in
previous years.
Chair Kralik: Yes, may be the best thing to do Commissioner Lee, is just take one at a time.
Commissioner Lee: Sure.
Chair Kralik: Because if we try to describe it, it will be difficult.
Commissioner Lee: Yes, so the bulk of my recommendation, you can see here, is with regards to
Adolescent Counseling Services. Again, I think they do fantastic work and I think mental health,
in particular as it addresses our youth and the LGBTQ community, is the priority for me. So, my
recommendation would be that we bump them up to $80,000 here but actually in light of recent
discussion I’d be fine to put $5,000 towards Blossom Birth and bump it up to $75,000 from the
Committee’s recommendation of $42,500. That’s sort of the bulk of the adjustment. There was
an additional adjustment for LifeMoves from the Committee’s recommendation of $78,000,
almost $79,000 to $85,000. So, I think that I will leave that there and solicit thoughts from my
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Page 48 of 82
colleagues on the Commission.
Ms. van der Zwaag: I’m just trying to think of how to work this because the subcommittee’s
recommendation was the recommendation on the floor. I’m not sure if you want to start with that
and then bring other aspects if people are interested in Commissioner Lee’s alternatives into it.
I’m just thinking of process wise if the subcommittee wants to bring their motion to the floor and
then kind of work from there instead of starting with Commissioner Lee’s as a starting point. I’m
just seeing where the Chair would like to do that.
Chair Kralik: No, I – Yes, no, I’d like to talk about his proposal…
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok.
Chair Kralik: …and I will ask some questions about it. You identified a couple of priorities for
your proposal, Commissioner Lee and the first one was mental health. I just wondered if you
could speak to the increases in mental health funding over the subcommittee’s recommendation.
Just the mental health funding first and identify it within your chart.
Commissioner Lee: The first one is ACS, so I will give the Committee kudos for recommending
ACS get a larger increase than the other agencies. So, I really do applaud that there but under my
recommendation, we bump them up to $75,000.
Chair Kralik: It says $80,000 here in mine.
Commissioner Lee: Yes, I just made an adjustment based on some comments I heard during the
meeting. I would take $5,000 of my $80,000 and put that towards Blossom Birth.
Chair Kralik: Oh ok, great.
Commissioner Lee: So, if you can just change that number on your sheet to $75,000…(crosstalk)
Chair Kralik: $75,000 and then $5,000…
Commissioner Lee: …and then $5,000…
Chair Kralik: … to Blossom Birth under the theory that Blossom Birth is addressing mental
health needs. Is that right?
Commissioner Lee: I didn’t necessarily do it because of mental health but I thought I’d like to
encourage new agencies to apply and I think it’s worthy of at least a minimum funding.
Chair Kralik: Ok, is there another entry in which you increased the funding for mental health?
Commissioner Lee: Yes, CASSY, here, so the Committee recommend – that’s the blue one –
recommended $42,500. I would maximize it to $50,000. Let’s see...
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Page 49 of 82
Chair Kralik: Any others that relate to mental health?
Commissioner Lee: So, Momentum, I put that up to $33,000 which was a decrease from the
Committee’s recommendation but still an increase…
Ms. van der Zwaag: Momentum is no longer…
Commissioner O’Nan: Momentum is no longer…
Ms. van der Zwaag: … a funding application.
Commissioner Lee: Oh, I’m sorry, what is that one?
Commissioner O’Nan: Mayview.
Commissioner Lee: Mayview, ok, I’m sorry, then never mind that’s not a mental health one.
Commissioner O’Nan: No, Mayview is a mental health one.
Commissioner Lee: They do – well, they do both mental health and what, primary medicine or…
Commissioner O’Nan: And they’re going to do dental as well.
Commissioner Lee: Yes. Given that mix I didn’t – I’m not recommending any…
Commissioner O’Nan: More than 50 percent of their clients get mental health services.
Chair Kralik: If you could just go to the second broad priority that you had.
Commissioner Lee: Was homelessness.
Chair Kralik: Right.
Commissioner Lee: So, that was primarily an adjustment to LifeMoves from $78,900 to $85,000.
Chair Kralik: Ok and any others related to homelessness?
Commissioner Lee: I’m not seeing them on the – let’s see.
Chair Kralik: It looks like Downtown Streets…
Commissioner Lee: Well, DST is already fully funded under the Committee’s recommendation
so that would be the same.
Chair Kralik: Ok.
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Page 50 of 82
Commissioner Lee: I’m not seeing any other ones here.
Chair Kralik: Alright, let’s entertain discussion on those identified changes. Would any
Commissioner like to ask any questions about those changes or discuss them?
Commissioner O’Nan: Yes, I would like to discuss them. I strongly disagree with my colleague’s
analysis. I agree that mental health and I agree that homelessness are two huge problems in the
community but I also believe that food security is the predominant need. People who are hungry
and malnourished cannot avail themselves of other services. Food is the gateway…
Mr. Grant: (inaudible – spoke from the audience)
Commissioner O’Nan: Sir, excuse me. Food programs are absolutely essential to life, without
life we can’t go ahead and provide additional physical and mental health services. So, I disagree
strongly, I think we need to continue to prioritize food based and nutritional programs for all
ages. In particular our most vulnerable people who include seniors, who include low income,
families, children, and homeless individuals. Having prioritized those, I think then we should
look at allocating and the current allocations that the subcommittee came up with do then focus
heavily on both homelessness and mental health. So, I think we have a better distribution and a
better allocation in terms of our recommendations than what Commissioner Lee has proposed.
Chair Kralik: Well, let me just comment on that discussion and just say this that not all of us
have this number that’s on the right-hand side. I looked back into my own thought process and
being a mental health hearing office, I also prioritized mental health and had higher numbers.
There was a discussion in an attempt to reach consensus. One of the things that I remember from
that discussion is that as an example, ACS had a contract amount of $10,000 and we had
quadrupled it to $42,000. So, that was a huge increase and some of the analysis that was brought
forward was how to track and make sure that this huge increase is being used not only properly
but used effectively. There were competing services with that, the CASSY service which in large
part was increased and that also had a fairly big increase. That was another service that we were
trying to grapple with at the time and I see that you’ve accepted their recommendation of
$50,000 but you did not accept the recommendation for $100,000. So, in some sense, it’s kind of
hard to reach a consensus. I want to acknowledge an argument that was made by Commissioner
O’Nan which is a focus on front line food security which in a large part does deal with
homelessness which is a second of your priorities. I would like to also say to Commissioner Lee
that I agree with you on the $5,000 recommendation on Blossom Birth. It was a two to one vote
and I would be open to trying to fund them to that level. What we did was we actually went back
to Blossom and we acknowledged their program in so far as it’s reached to Palo Alto residents
did not meet the threshold level that was required for funding of $5,000. We also looked at what
was the amount of money that the proposed patients or…
Commissioner O’Nan: Clients.
Chair Kralik: …clients would make and I think there was some sense that that might not fit with
the overall purpose of HSRAP which was another discussion. I do think I’d like to ask
Commissioner Xue to give his viewpoint about whether the subcommittee addressed mental
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Page 51 of 82
health and homelessness as priorities.
Vice Chair Xue: I do believe so. As we are facing an aging community mental health, also the
food need, disability, were heard a lot from different groups. You know we only have this much
resources, if we allocate a big chunk of money to a very specific problem, it’s very hard to
support services in our community. We had very lengthy meetings for two evenings so three of
us plus the Staff. So, basically based on the application we did a lot of homework, also the Staff
weighed in their sides, they answered our questions, I feel the proposal is quite fair. So, even
after hearing Blossom Birth talk, I’m still not supporting funding them $5,000. So, I want to see
that they can serve more clients from Palo Alto.
Chair Kralik: And if I’m right, the universal view of the subcommittee was that they’re doing
good work and that we’d like to see them come back at a later time because the number of Palo
Altans served in the community might increase…
Commissioner O’Nan: Needed to increase.
Chair Kralik: … because of their continued…
Ms. van der Zwaag: For this program.
Chair Kralik: Yes, for this program, for their continued work and that was something that I know
they have a lot of Staff contacts who will keep us apprised of that. Go right ahead.
MOTION #1
Commissioner Lee: Unless anyone else has anything to say, I would make the motion to accept
the proposal on the screen.
Chair Kralik: Is there a second?
SECOND
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Yes, I can second that.
Chair Kralik: Ok and do we have any discussion? Commissioner Brahmbhatt, would you like to
give your viewpoint?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I think giving nothing to Blossom Birth doesn’t seem fair. I think
instead of $5K if we could get it from somewhere else, I could increase it to $10K.
Commissioner O’Nan: They don’t serve enough people to justify that much.
Chair Kralik: Well you have to use your microphone. (crosstalk)
Commissioner O’Nan: We literally cannot do that.
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Page 52 of 82
Chair Kralik: You have to use your microphone.
Commissioner O’Nan: Sorry, we literally cannot do that because the money can only be used for
Palo Alto residents and they don’t serve enough Palo Alto residents to justify that size of a grant.
We cannot spend the money on non-Palo Alto people, it’s against the rules.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: So, are they serving…
Commissioner O’Nan: They are not even serving $5,000 worth yet.
Commissioner Stinger: But when I read the summary – oh…
Chair Kralik: Oh on, Commissioner…
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I mean I think I heard different things because you said they are
serving people who are earning more than $100k and so they are not serving people who are
poor enough. Now you’re saying they are not serving from Palo Alto?
Commissioner O’Nan: No, there were two issues. They are not serving enough Palo Alto people
to justify even the minimum $5,000 grant and the demographic there are serving makes over a
$100,000 a year. So, both of those things are somewhat antithetical to the purpose of HSRAP.
Commissioner Stinger: Could I ask a question? I thought in my notes that they served 60 Palo
Alto residents.
Ms. van der Zwaag: It was 30, 30 was the amount of residents. It might have been a 2-year total.
I can look back at the grant but when we did the allocations they are – they would be serving –
their projected total for 2019 was 132 clients, 30 of which would be Palo Alto residents. So,
that’s 23 percent of the total amount of clients that they serve.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I mean I just want to say as a family with a newborn baby, I think
that’s one of the most challenging times you experience, and if that’s the only category that is
supporting that. I mean I have received requests from the school community for very rich
families who have newborns who need support. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or not
when you are going through transitions where you are supporting a newborn you need all the
help you can get.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Right so the funding is for scholarships for folks. So, the funding is not to
offer it for free, the funding is just providing scholarships for Palo Alto residents for the
program. The money would go directly toward reducing the cost of the program for Palo Alto
residents. It’s $20 an hour now and it would reduce it to $10 an hour so that’s what they’re
requesting City funding to do.
Chair Kralik: Commissioner Stinger did you…
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I lost you there, why is it per hour? Why the $10 to $20? What is
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Page 53 of 82
the…
Ms. van der Zwaag: They are asking for support for their postpartum birth support group.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Yes.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes, so they are asking for support for people to be able to participate in the
group that now they feel there’s a barrier to them providing because of the cost of the program.
So, the full cost of the program is for a participant is $20 an hour, so they are asking for HSRAP
funding to be able to support moms to participate in the program for $10. So, the HSRAP
funding would pay 50 percent of the mom’s ability to participate and then the mom would pay
50 percent of the program to be able to participate in the program.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Shouldn’t it be free? I mean why does the mom have to pay 50
percent?
Ms. van der Zwaag: That’s up to Blossom Birth to designate the fees for their program.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I mean in any event I support the $5K or $10K or whatever we can.
I’m not…
Chair Kralik: Ok the proposal…
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I’m not comfortable with not giving them anything.
Chair Kralik: Yes, the proposal on the table is $5,000.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Yes, then I support that.
Chair Kralik: Sure. Commissioner Stinger, you had a (crosstalk) comment…
Ms. van der Zwaag: Can I ask clarification? So, was the proposal that moved, was that
Commissioner Lee’s proposal or the subcommittee’s proposal?
Chair Kralik: No, it was Commissioner Lee’s proposal.
Commissioner Lee: On the screen.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok.
Chair Kralik: With a change…
Commissioner O’Nan: But Commissioner Lee has modified his proposal per Blossom.
(crosstalk)
Chair Kralik: Right it goes from (crosstalk)…
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Commissioner Lee: Can I ask one…
Chair Kralik: Yes, is now at $75,000 and Blossom is at $5,000. That’s his proposal. Ok,
Commissioner Stinger, you had your light on. Please.
Commissioner Stinger: I wanted to think out loud because there’s a lot of numbers in these
columns. I first want to thank the subcommittee, the team that put this together. I think it’s a lot
of work. I also want to thank the speakers who came because it’s just really enlightening to hear
their commitment to their purpose and their mission. I want to encourage anybody who did not
receive funding or did not receive the level of funding to come back again because each exposure
we have helps us evaluate that more. I want to thank you, Commissioner Lee, because I think it’s
interesting to see the range of possibilities and I think this is really helpful for me to sort of kick
the tires and challenge each of these proposals. I think overall, what would you say, 6-hours you
spent in your two meetings? I know you spent a lot of time too but I hesitate to juggle with
numbers to quickly because there’s so much thought going into the subcommittee’s proposals. I
do see some places where I think some line that deserves some thought. Blossom Birth would be
one, Ada’s would be another, and I appreciate your answer in that the application did not meet
your standards. I thought it was loosely written also and the issues that I see in the press that they
are facing are not the issue that they addressed in the proposal. So, I understand the questions of
sustainability but I also see when I look at the special needs, that they would be part of, there’s
not much funding in that area. It’s Abilities United and Ada’s and if we don’t fund Ada’s I feel
that we’re missing an opportunity to provide employment and training for disabled people, for
disabled students, and high school students to work with that community.
Commissioner O’Nan: Well, the Ada’s application, just to clarify, was for their executive salary
and that person, in turn, was going to provide services but it was to cover an operational
shortfall. That is really very problematic because the City’s money cannot be used to shore up an
agency that doesn’t have a sustainable business model.
Commissioner Stinger: Thank you for the clarification. As it’s written I have trouble accepting
this but I do think that there are some things we can learn from this; the funding for Adolescent
Counseling Services and Blossom Birth being the two areas.
Chair Kralik: Commissioner Lee.
Commissioner Lee: I hear what my colleagues are saying in particular about I want to be
respectful of the Committee’s significant effort. Certainly, the CDBG Committee, we didn’t
meet quite as much as the HSRAP Committee but I’m sure I would have some bruised egos if an
alternative was proposed but I think it’s important that we really think about this carefully. Not
to suggest that the HSRAP Committee didn’t. I really appreciate that the HSRAP Committee did
give a significant increase to ACS and others so I do want to acknowledge that. I just think that
we need to see an even larger increase given what I and a lot of the people in the community
think is the issue. I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on what that is. If we go line
by line, we can see that even though ACS has a bigger increase under my proposal, the other
ones have very small modifications and it’s when you add those small modifications up that it
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Page 55 of 82
enables us to increase ACS so significantly. So, Abilities United, again funding them at the same
level as 2019, it’s about a $6,000 – it’s $45,800 versus $51,000 recommended by the Committee.
Ada’s the same; CASSY is bumped up to $50,000 from $42,500 so maybe a slightly bigger
increase there. DST is the same, DreamCatchers is the same, and KARA is the same as last year.
It’s only about $2,000-$3,000 short of the Committee’s recommendation. La Comida, that I
would admit is a bit of a change there from $46,000 to $37,000. LifeMoves is a $7,000 increase.
Mayview is just a $7,000 decrease from the Committee’s recommendation. PAH is within
$5,000. SALA is essentially the same.
Commissioner O’Nan: So, if I could interject though to my colleague, keeping an agency to the
same is in effect giving them a deficit because the cost of living is astronomical here in the Bay
Area. So, these modest increases are in effect the cost of living increase for the agency and
without them, the agencies will do less and they will serve fewer people. So, we may feel like
we’re not causing them any burden by keeping them at the same level but in fact, we are
degrading their ability to perform.
Commissioner Lee: I understand that and I appreciate that comment. Again, in the priority of
needs in my head, I have allocated accordingly to do what I believe are the greatest needs. Again,
all of these serve important needs but there are some that I think are greater needs.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: So, if there is a 10 percent, 20 percent increase/decrease scenarios
not needed for HSRAP?
Ms. van der Zwaag: No.
Chair Kralik: There’s nothing needed, yes . Commissioner Xue, any thoughts?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: This is like the $700,012 is the requested and $515,000 is what is
going to be there. It’s final?
Ms. van der Zwaag: That’s correct, well, that’s in the proposed City budget for the next fiscal
year.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Ok, so the City has proposed $515,000?
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes, that’s true for the next year’s proposed budget.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Oh ok.
Chair Kralik: Commissioner Stinger, if I could just ask you when you made a statement that you
had some issues with the proposal. Was that with the proposal of Commissioner Lee that’s on the
table and motioned or is it with the other proposal? What were those issues?
Commissioner Stinger: I was speaking to the motion that’s on the table so that would be
Commissioner Lee’s.
Chair Kralik: So, you would have issues with something and…
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Page 56 of 82
Commissioner Stinger: The issue that I have is mostly methodology – not methodology, I’m
blanking on the noun that I want.
Commissioner O’Nan: Priority.
Commissioner Stinger: No, respect for the careful juggling that the subcommittee did.
Commissioner Lee: Deference. Is that the word?
Commissioner Stinger: I don’t want to walk away from a carefully thought-out proposal from the
subcommittee, but I also see some advantages. I think whatever proposal, what we put, we would
see pluses and minuses to that Committee, the individual, personal preferences. I mean if I put
my numbers here, I’m sure I could make a good case for my numbers. You said your Committee
voted two to one on some of these. You could probably make a good case. It’s the totality of
Column Four of the of the HSRAP subcommittee that is a delicate balance. I want to respect that
and that’s painful because I also respect the priorities that you said. So, it’s a…
Commissioner Lee: If I can say something, and I mean with all due respect so I’ll try to tread
carefully. I’ve served on other Human Relations and social services Commissions in other cities
and we have very similar funding recommendations that we do. Palo Alto is unique in the sense
that our Commission has decided to delegate a bulk of the work to a subcommittee. When I’ve
done CDBG in other similar funding on other Commissions, the entire Commission had a chance
to weigh in, really deliberate it in greater detail, ask a lot of questions, and so while I do want to
respect the hard work done by the Committee, I don’t want to entirely defer to that Committee.
In making my proposal, I relied heavily on the work that the Committee did in terms of judging
how agencies have been performing and so that sort of leads me to the ones in yellow. It gave me
the confidence that yes, we should at least at minimum fund them at the same level of previous
years. Again, it came down to my hierarchy of priorities in my head. You know we have limited
funds and while we would love to fund all of them, we’d like to fund all of them closer to the
amount that they requested and maybe that’s something that the Commission recommends to the
Council in future years that we see an increase. It looks like the amount allocated this year is the
same as the last 2-years so certainly it hasn’t kept up with inflation so that’s something that I’d
like us to perhaps weigh in on the later. Given the finite pool of money as it is and what I and
what I’m seeing in the numbers from the survey and what I’m hearing from folks in the
community. I think the allocation as I laid out in my mind reflects that; again, not diminishing
the work at all that the Committee has done but really doting upon it and using it to help build
my case.
Commissioner O’Nan: I would like to respond to my colleague. I appreciate that he’s heard from
the community but I imagine that what he’s done is talk to people at the school district, he’s
talked to parents who are very concerned about their kids, he’s talked to kids who are struggling,
and he’s heard in very bonafide way about the needs of the community but I warrant that he has
not talked to a low income senior who is hungry. I warrant that he has not talked to many, many
homeless people who are hungry or low-income families who are so off the radar that he would
probably never even encounter them unless he really sought them out through the partner
agencies. Those are hundreds of people who live in this community and they are largely
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Page 57 of 82
invisible. So, it’s important not to wipe them out in terms of our funding allocation
recommendations. We are the voice for those most vulnerable, most invisible part of Palo Alto
and we have to be true to them and we have to make sure that their most basic biological needs,
for example for food, as met through HSRAP dollars. That is the core of what HSRAP is
intended to be.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I wanted to suggest a proposal to the Committee…
Chair Kralik: Well we have a motion on the table and it’s been seconded and that’s what we’re
discussing. So, if…
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: No, as we are discussing that, I was wondering if you guys would
think of moving the $5K from Ada’s Café given that the proposal was very problematic to
Blossom Birth?
Chair Kralik: Well…
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: And (crosstalk) then keep the rest of the numbers…
Chair Kralik: In fact, the subcommittee did consider that for that particular one.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Oh ok.
Chair Kralik: It was debated back and forth, going back and forth, but at this moment
Commissioner Lee has funded Blossom in his motion. So, if there are any further questions or
discussion on the motion on the table we’re going to go ahead and take a vote.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: But I don’t want to speculate on the vote but Yes, we can take the
vote.
Chair Kralik: Ok so those in favor of the motion on table place say aye? Those that are not in
favor of the motion on the table please say no. Commissioner Stinger?
Commissioner Stinger: I abstain.
Chair Kralik: Abstain.
MOTION #1 FAILED 2(Lee, Brahmbhatt) -3(Xue, Kralik, O’Nan)-1(Stinger) WITH
COMMISSIONER SMITH ABSENT.
Chair Kralik: I’d like to ask Commissioner O’Nan to make a motion as to the subcommittee
recommendation.
MOTION #2
Commissioner O’Nan: Alright, thank you, Chair. So, I’d like to make a resolution that the HRC
approve the funding recommendation allocations as evidence in the – where is it Minka?
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Page 58 of 82
Attachment A.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes.
Commissioner O’Nan: Attachment A as provided At Places and I urge my colleagues to accept
this recommendation. It is never possible to be perfect in our recommendations but I think we
have done a good job in ensuring that all of the agencies who work with our diverse population
can do the work that they do so well and continue to do it effectively in the next funding cycle.
Chair Kralik: Is there a second for the motion?
SECOND
Vice Chair Xue: Second.
Chair Kralik: Ok, discussion? Anyone would like to – Commissioner Brahmbhatt.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I would like to hear more about the subcommittee discussion of
moving the $5K to the Blossom Birth and why it was decided one way or the other. The other
thing was…
Chair Kralik: Blossom Birth was a two to one vote. I was in favor of funding Blossom Birth, the
other two Commissioners on the subcommittee said no. In actuality, both were unfunded until we
had some answers to questions about Ada’s Café because of I guess information that was within
the application that didn’t seem correct. We asked them to correct it and/or to explain it and I’ll
ask Commissioner O’Nan to supplement my comments.
Commissioner O’Nan: Alright, yes, thank you, so we took all of the applications very seriously.
Both Ada’s and Blossom Birth had deficiencies in their applications. Their numbers didn’t make
sense. Some of the things they said were not correct so we had to go back to them and get further
clarification. So, it is a rule that HSRAP funding that comes from the City’s General Fund must
be spent only on Palo Alto residents. So, Blossom Birth does not meet that standard. The lowest
minimum grant we can offer is $5,000 and currently, they don’t serve enough Palo Alto residents
to warrant a $5,000 grant. They asked for $15,000 and that was yet another problem with their
application. They asked for money to serve people who live outside of Palo Alto. Not that their
services aren’t wonderful, not that their mission isn’t admirable, not that we don’t support the
needs of mothers going through mood disorders following birth but their application had to be
formulated in such a way that it would fit within HSRAP guidelines. Currently, it does not.
Ms. van der Zwaag: So, just for clarification, it was very close. So…(crosstalk)
Commissioner O’Nan: It was close but it was just under $5,000.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Just under $5,000 so that’s just this discussion… (crosstalk)
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Page 59 of 82
Commissioner O’Nan: But then secondly HSRAP funding was designed to serve low and
extremely low-income people. This demographic that Blossom Birth seeks to serve is a fairly
high earning demographic which makes an average of I think $117,000 a year.
Ms. van der Zwaag: What the application said I want to say subsidy but the ability to have a
scholarship for the program would be open to women earning up to $117,000.
Commissioner O’Nan: Right but they had made no specific mention in their application whether
outreach or efforts were to low income women or low-income families. None, so it was very
hard for us to really see how they would fit in while with the HSRAP guidelines as their
application was currently written. That isn’t to say they couldn’t come back to us in the future
with a well-developed program that does better outreach to 1) to Palo Alto and 2) to different
income levels within Palo Alto. Certainly, I think their mission is completely admirable.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Can I add just one thing to it? Just one addition to what you said as far as
Blossom Birth. When we asked the specific question of outreach to low-income parents for these
specific programs, they said that there are two programs through the county that serves that
demographic but they, as an agency, their focus was serving middle-income individuals. So, it
wasn’t that they hadn’t reached out; the county has a couple programs that serve low-income
parents for postpartum issues. So, they had positioned themselves, for lack of better phrasing that
their services were for middle incomes. I just wanted to clarify that. It wasn’t that they hadn’t,
it’s their service model is to middle-income parents that there are two programs out there that
serve low-income parents for some of these postpartum services.
Chair Kralik: I want to ask Commissioner O’Nan to speak to ACS and CASSY because the
history, being a new member to the Commission, is not entirely clear. I want to get an
understanding as to school-based counseling services and outside of the school-based counseling
services because I think that informed the inquiry of the subcommittee. Certainly, it was one of
the things that added color to the decision making and so I wonder if you could just speak to that.
Commissioner O’Nan: Alright, thank you, Chair. As I mentioned, ACS is probably the oldest
member of the HSRAP family going back to the early 1980s. At one time ACS provided on
campus counseling as well as off-campus counseling services. They particularly ran the
LGBTQ+ base program called Outlet. So, at that time I think they were our largest HSRAP
grantee for some years but they changed their relationship with the school district and the school
district now has a different on-campus counseling provider which is known as CASSY. ACS still
serves Palo Alto in the form of its other counseling programs for youth and families, through
LGBTQ youth, for the substance abuse program that we heard about. We felt strongly that both
ACS and CASSY do amazing, wonderful work in the community and youth wellbeing is a huge
priority for both the City and the HRC. Our goal was really to bump them both up significantly
in funding to try to create an umbrella of mental health services for youth. Both those who are
served by the school district and those families who need other services beyond what the school
district offers. CASSY, my understanding, offers more of short-term therapy model. ACS offers
a longer term, ongoing type of therapy model and families have different needs at different times
depending on what kids are going through. So, I think we funded them at an equal level in our
initial proposal which would be more than about $85,000 worth of mental health services for
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Page 60 of 82
youth; both through the schools and both through ACS. I feel that is a great step forward, that’s
not to say more funding couldn’t be used, that’s not to say all needs will be met but I think it’s a
huge step forward from where we were and a great use of those funds for those agencies to
continue to work in partnership. Of course, we’ll continue our efforts to get the City Council to
continue to fund HSRAP in increasing amounts because the cost of living is going up and
agencies are having a hard time with their staff requirements here in this expensive City of Palo
Alto. For where we are today with this snapshot of the funding we have, this is what I think is
probably the best solution we can come up with.
Chair Kralik: I do want to point out a couple things. One is if you combine those two, which had
a prior funding level of $46,000, and you look at the current recommendation of $85,000. That’s
quite an increase from the previous recommendation. The other thing I want to say is I listened to
discussion about a commitment to homeless and commitment to providing critical services, food
services. I do want to say that I think Commissioner Lee in his funding proposal of I think
LifeMoves, he did, in fact, increase that. So, I know that he feels very strongly about the
homeless in the community as a second priority, as do we. Is there any further discussion of the
motion that’s on the table?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: So, for CASSY, if it is part of the on-school campus thing. It
probably gets donations from parents with PIE contributions going towards that and so does it
really depend on the donation from the City or is it getting funding from PIE as well?
Ms. van der Zwaag: I can look at the budget.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Because I haven’t heard of any service or anything that is associated
with the school that is underfunded. Usually, parents are donating generously and…
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes, the school district is not fully funding this program. So, the full cost of
this program is $759,000, the school district is funding at a level of $677,000. It’s my
understanding in their contractual agreement with CASSY that CASSY is responsible with
coming up with the additional funding. Is that correct?
Ms. Clark: We are not allowed to solicit donation from families.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok, so for the additional costs that the school district isn’t fully funding and
you can correct me if I’m wrong. So, the additional amount that the school district isn’t fully
funding they have asked CASSY to do so and they are not able to get donations from individual
clients. They then go through different funding sources in the community or others that fund
mental health services to be able to fully fund that program. At this point other than the amount
they are getting from PAUSD and their $50,000 from the City of Palo Alto, they have about
another $30,000 in fundraising that they do and about $2,600 in an in-kind contribution to the
program. Does that answer your questions? I don’t believe that they are getting any money from
PIE, is that correct? Partners in Education?
Ms. Clark: Not for this contract.
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Page 61 of 82
Ms. van der Zwaag: Not for this contract so this is the middle and high school contract. So,
CASSY also has a contract for the elementary schools so it could be that PIE money is
supporting mental health services on elementary school campuses but I can’t say.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: That’s helpful.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok.
SUBSTITUTE MOTION
Commissioner Lee: I’d like to see both ACS and CASSY bumped up to $50,000 each. So, I
would propose a substitute amendment to bump up those two to $50,000.
Commissioner Stinger: Can I make a second…(crosstalk)
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: (inaudible – off mic)
Commissioner Lee: Well, I mean I can make a substitute motion though right because if the
motion, as is, passes then it’s done.
Commissioner Stinger: Yes, to make a substitute…
Chair Kralik: Is there a second to the substitute motion?
SUBSTITUTE MOTION FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND
Ms. van der Zwaag: I think as part of this, Commissioner Lee, I think to be able to have folks
adequately discuss this you’d have to say where you would take that money from to fund the
additions to those two sources.
Commissioner Lee: I’m going to defer to Commissioner Stinger.
Commissioner Stinger: Let me try to find a compromise as I’m apt to do between the two really
good proposals. You know I care about the balance in this proposal but what I was looking at
was the request that the agencies gave us for 2020 and the contracted amount that they had in
2019. I’m wondering if you or I would like to propose or I’d like to make a motion that we…
Chair Kralik: So, this is a second substitute motion?
Commissioner Stinger: This is a substitute…
Commissioner Lee: I withdrew my substitute motion.
Commissioner Stinger: … an amendment because there was no second.
Chair Kralik: Alright.
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Page 62 of 82
FRIENDLY AMENDMENT #1
Commissioner Stinger: So, then I guess a friendly amendment that I’m asking, if you will accept,
would be $50,000 proposed for Adolescent Counseling Services which is between the contracted
amount that they had last year, the $100,000 that they have requested this year, and is $75,000
more -- $7,500 more.
Ms. van der Zwaag: They didn’t have a $100,000 last year that was their request.
Commissioner Stinger: Well, then I have the columns mixed up, I’m sorry. I meant to say their
contract last year was for $10,500. The request was for $100,000 and I would make up that
difference by taking small amounts from Abilities United $2,000, Vista Center $3,000, and YCS
$3,000. Those amounts still increase the contract amount from 2019.
Commissioner O’Nan: No, I think Abilities United is only…
Chair Kralik: We’ll need a second.
Commissioner O’Nan: Oh sorry.
SECOND
Commissioner Lee: I’ll second that motion.
Chair Kralik: Ok, go ahead, please.
Commissioner O’Nan: No, I strongly disagree with that friendly amendment. Abilities United
was only getting a few thousand dollars increase and they urgently need that money for staffing
to provide services for adults who need services. Even a small decrease will make that
impossible for them to fund those staffing positions. All of the agencies who asked, Vista has a
waiting list that’s quite long with seniors who need vision services which means that fewer
people will be seen which means that fewer people can stay in their homes and live independent
lives. So, if there was a huge impact to that, even reducing by the small amounts, we came up
with the amounts looking at their funding requests to staff certain positions to offer certain
programs. So, to simply take them away is actually quite detrimental to the agency. Adolescent
Counseling Services got quadrupled as our Chair said. I know they would like more money; I
would like to give them more money if we had it but I’m really satisfied with the $42,500 that
we’re offering them.
Chair Kralik: Commissioner Brahmbhatt. We’re talking about the motion made by Chair Stinger.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Yes, I mean it seems reasonable, I can go with that.
Chair Kralik: Ok, Commissioner Xue?
Vice Chair Xue: Commissioner O’Nan mentioned the two agencies; I’m going to focus on YCS.
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Page 63 of 82
I had a very good experience with YCS so thank you very much. My daughter worked with YCS
so I knew they provide wonderful opportunity for the youth. So, looking at that all around, we all
grew up from a young age, right? We all understand their services, I feel they were polite, very
high-quality opportunity or service to the youth, if we cut their funding, and I’m not feeling
comfortable. So, I just speak for this part, in conclusion, I’m not supporting the resolution.
Chair Kralik: I’d just like…
Commissioner Stinger: Can I ask…
Chair Kralik: …to ask Commissioner Stinger if she could go down the list based on her new
proposal and identify just one by one so I could have a clear picture.
Commissioner Lee: Do you want me to put it on the screen, I think I could.
Chair Kralik: No, no, just talk it through.
Commissioner Stinger: So, I looked at Abilities United and my proposal would be $49,739
which is above the contract amount and is $2,000 less than the agency requested. Adolescent
Counseling Services at $50,000 which is five times what they contracted for in 2019 and half the
agency request for this year.
Chair Kralik: And that’s an increase of $7,500?
Commissioner Stinger: Over the Committees.
Chair Kralik: Ok so you’re minus $2,000 and plus $7,500. Please keep going.
Commissioner Stinger: Vista Center minus $3,000.
Chair Kralik: And that would be at $37,000?
Commissioner Stinger: So, that would be between the $27,000 that they -- $27,137 from 2019
and the 2020 agency request and I think I had $2,500 for YCS.
Chair Kralik: A reduction of $2,500.
Commissioner Stinger: I’m sorry, yes.
Chair Kralik: Ok so you’ve changed one hirer which is the Adolescent Counseling Services and
you took $2,000 from Abilities United, you took $3,000 from Vista Center, and you took $2,500
from Youth Community Services. Is that right?
Commissioner Stinger: Yes, does that arithmetic work? I think it does.
Chair Kralik: I believe that it does. Ok (crosstalk) and so that is the motion on the table.
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Page 64 of 82
Commissioner Stinger: That’s the motion on the table and I’d like to comment to Commissioner
Xue. I agree with you totally, that each of the agencies has a very strong mission, has an
important mission in this community, and with one or two exceptions I might vote different on
Ada’s Café. I think they all have good proposals; they all deserve to be fully funded, so it’s not
easy.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Just for clarification, I think that’s the amendment on the table.
Female: Yes.
Ms. van der Zwaag: The motion on the table is still the original.
Chair Kralik: That’s right and so do we take the vote on the amendment first?
Commissioner Lee: Yes, take the vote on the amendment.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Can we still try to get something to Blossom Birth?
Chair Kralik: Well, that would be a new amendment and…
Ms. van der Zwaag: Or it could be part of them if they’re willing (crosstalk) to do that.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: No, I mean I’m just requesting to Chair Stinger…
Commissioner O’Nan: She’s not the Chair.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Oh Yes, we already gave to everybody else, they made the request
and now we give nothing to them.
Commissioner Stinger: Make an amendment – make a motion.
Chair Kralik: That would be the third.
Commissioner Lee: Well, so just to talk out loud are we still discussing the amendment? Can we
continue discussing it?
Chair Kralik: I think Commissioner Brahmbhatt is asking for what is a third amendment.
Ms. van der Zwaag: I think she’s asking to add something or for that group to discuss (crosstalk)
something in their friendly amendment.
Commissioner Lee: (crosstalk) So, in their discussion if we can find $5,000 to put into Blossom
from others, we can consider making that a friendly amendment to our…
Chair Kralik: So, would you like to restate your amendment in a friendly way? No.
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Page 65 of 82
Commissioner Lee: Well I think we need (crosstalk) to discuss it first.
Commissioner Stinger: (inaudible)(crosstalk)
Commissioner Lee: Let’s see.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I think the legal assistance, the senior adult’s legal assistance thing if
they’re getting assistance…
Commissioner Lee: Yes reducing that to their 2019 amount or actually that doesn’t give us
much. That gives us what, $600 but Yes, let’s do that. KARA…
Chair Kralik: Just so the public realizes that we cannot hold a meeting with four Commissioners
outside of a public meeting. So, the subcommittee is made up of three members and this is our
chance to try to get the views of others on the work that we did. Unfortunately, we can’t do that
outside of the public’s view. So, this process is something we anticipated. It’s certainly
welcomed and I think most of the ideas have been really well-meaningful, in good spirit of trying
to give money to people who really need it. I do appreciate the discussion and the civility of it.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Maybe from Mayview, we can take from Mayview and just keep it
simple. Just take it from…
Commissioner Lee: Mayview.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: … Mayview and give it…
FRIENDLY AMENDMENT #2
Commissioner Lee: Yes, I would be ok – so I would say Yes, we bring Mayview down to
$35,000 so that’s still an increase from their $27,600 from 2019 and its sort of the mid-way point
to their request. Does Commissioner Stinger, would you take that as a friendly amendment to her
substitute motion to move $5,000 from Mayview to Blossom Birth?
Commissioner Stinger: Before I answer, Commissioner O’Nan can you help me by answer a
question? The $40,000 that the agency requested…
Commissioner O’Nan: Which agency?
Commissioner Stinger: Mayview. Some of the requests you accepted at full value and this was
one of them and some of them you felt comfortable taking a midpoint between their – what was
the discussion on the $40,000 they had requested and that you recommended?
Commissioner O’Nan: So, Mayview is the sole provider of physical and mental and dental health
services for many low-income people in the community. They urgently need to expand their
facility, they need to pay for a provider, they need to increase their service model here in Palo
Alto. There is no alternative to them for people who live in Palo Alto so we felt strongly about
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Page 66 of 82
fully funding them because again, people who are suffering physical mental debilities cannot
access other services. They also serve many, many pregnant women, they serve young children,
they provide vaccinations, so this is just an in the trenches, front line agency for some of our
most vulnerable residents.
Commissioner Stinger: They do have a combined grant from the HSRAP and the CDBG fund.
Commissioner O’Nan: CDBG is a one-time build out to make their new dental suite.
Commissioner Stinger: (inaudible – off mic)
Commissioner O’Nan: Yes, because again dental health, a research now shows us that people
who have poor dental health have poor overall health. So again, they’re being very, very on point
and on the spot with their mission to improve health for low-income people in Palo Alto.
Commissioner Stinger: I do understand, thank you.
Chair Kralik: I wondered if you did accept that proposal from Commissioner Brahmbhatt and
Commissioner Lee, which is the drop of the Mayview $5,000 to fund Blossom, would all of the
grant amounts increase from the previous year from each of the agencies. Is that the case? Could
we…
Commissioner Lee: I believe it does. We didn’t reduce anyone else, right? We’re just taking it
from Mayview?
Chair Kralik: No, but I’m saying from the previous year does everything increase?
Commissioner Lee: Yes because the Committee’s recommendation increases everyone, right and
so we are just adjusting Mayview down $5,000 which is still an increase from their 2019 contract
amount. They got $20,000 – sorry, they got…
Commissioner Stinger: Yes.
Commissioner Lee: … $20,000 -- $27,000…
Commissioner Stinger: YCS is increased; Vista is increased, Abilities United..
Commissioner Lee: That’s everything is an increase.
Chair Kralik: Ok I believe that’s a statement of the Commission on needs.
Commissioner Stinger: And that was partly why I went with those numbers.
Chair Kralik: Did you want to reformulate your proposed amendment according to
Commissioner Brahmbhatt and Commissioner Lee?
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Page 67 of 82
Commissioner Stinger: I’m sorry, I can’t.
Chair Kralik: You can’t – you would like them to do it or?
Ms. van der Zwaag: I think Staff could not frame it but Staff could tell you – I mean what we
have written down from what we’ve heard.
[Many people started talking at once]
Commissioner Stinger: I’m not – I can’t accept it with…
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok, thank you.
Commissioner Lee: Is there a different…
FRIENDLY AMENDMENT #2 WAS NOT ACCEPTED
Commissioner Stinger: I’m very taken by the need for that service and I want to fund a new
agency. There’s a lot that I like about the proposal that they submitted but I’m taken by the
argument of the numbers of people they serve and the income level they are addressing.
Chair Kralik: Ok so your friendly amendment stands at the present time and I think we should
take a vote on the friendly amendment. All in favor?
FRIENDLY AMENDMENT #1 FAILED 2(Lee, Stinger)-3 (O’Nan, Kralik, Xue)-
1(Brahmbhatt abstained) WITH COMMISSIONER SMITH ABSENT
Chair Kralik: Alright.
Commissioner Stinger: Thank you for entertaining the motion.
Chair Kralik: Sure, sure, it was a glorious effort to try to bring…
Commissioner Stinger: (off mic) spread the pennies around.
Chair Kralik: …bring us together on what we all believe should be funded. I think did we have
the motion and the second? Is the motion to accept the subcommittee’s proposal as drafted and
presented tonight. All in favor? Ok, we have five ayes?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Yes, I’m not in favor.
Chair Kralik: Not in favor so 5-1.
MOTION #2 PASSED 5(Kralik, O’Nan, Xue, Stinger, Lee)-1(Brahmbhatt) WITH
COMMISSIONER SMITH ABSENT
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Page 68 of 82
Chair Kralik: Ok that completes Item Number Two. I’ll take a deep breath, that’s part of the –
Vice Chair Xue: (off mic) Thank you very much (inaudible)
Chair Kralik: Yes, I do want to salute Commissioner Lee who really took a careful look at that.
Commissioner Stinger: (Off mic) Before people leave, give them a round of applause.
Chair Kralik: Thank you.
Commissioner Lee: Where’s my agenda?
V. Reports from Officials
1. Commissioner Reports
Chair Kralik: We have Commissioner Reports. I’d like to begin with Commissioner Lee.
Commissioner Lee: Sure, it’s been a pretty busy two weeks so Monday Commissioner Stinger
and I hosted our LGBTQ+ working summit. Thank you to the Chair for attending. There were a
lot of great ideas brought up during the…
Chair Kralik: We’re going to need a little bit of quiet to get the record. If the members of the
public could please come to another area; I just have to ask for order. Just take a minute to clear
the discussion outside the room, please. I do want to say thank you again for attending and
putting the effort into all of the proposals. I also want to salute Staff and all the efforts that
they’ve made. Ok, we’re going to turn to Commissioner reports, Commissioner Lee.
Commissioner Lee: Yes, it’s been a pretty busy 2-weeks. On Monday Commissioner Stinger and
I hosted the LGBTQ working summit. A special thanks to the Chair for making an appearance.
There were a lot of great ideas and great energy presented at the summit. Some which this body
hadn’t considered, there were some surprises, good surprises but some good reaffirmations of
some things that we observed from the Listening Forum and from the survey. There was a lot of
great energy that carried us through the end and hopefully, we can keep that momentum going
and really just facilitate these agencies working together. There were quite a few ideas of things
that they would like the City to do. Things like – I mean we’ll do a full debrief at the next
meeting but things like making sure all of our forums are gender inclusive or just making sure
that the tone from the top of City management was set such that City employees feel more
comfortable with their particular identities and such because there were at least a couple folks
who had expressed that there could be a stronger, more visible support. Not that it was hostile
but there could be more support from City m anagement for City employees. Related to that,
yesterday Fletcher Middle School, their PTA hosted an ABCs on LGBTQ youth which was very
great. I was able to attend that. Did we do anything – did we have something last week?
Commissioner Stinger: Yes, we did.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Are you being facetious? The gender equity event.
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Page 69 of 82
Commissioner Lee: Oh, Yes, I went to the gender equity event.
Ms. van der Zwaag: I shouldn’t say that because Mary and I when they were both at the Art
Center and we would go is this one the LGBTQ or the gender equity? We were getting totally
confused.
Commissioner Lee: So, that was a great event. I did mostly listening given the topic. Nothing
really surprised me but it really deepened my appreciation for the need for additional work on
that front, how so many issues are interconnected in terms of mental health, the always-on
culture in Silicon Valley, and how all of those plans fold into and reinforce each other as it
respects to gender equity and other issues. Those are all that I can think of at the moment so I’ll
defer to…
Chair Kralik: Thank you, that’s a lot of hard work. Commissioner Stinger.
Commissioner Stinger: I’d like to just comment a little bit more on the gender equity. There’s a
lot more to say about the summit that we did but we did say that we would come back in April
on that. I think there’s a lot of good work to be done and a lot of lessons learned about the
summit but I want to talk now about the gender equity event that we did because that was the
first of the Building Community One Conversation at a Time series. We had about…
Chair Kralik: That’s a fantastic venue. It’s a venue that just, you know, all of the participants felt
safe to express themselves. I think both you and Commissioner Lee did a great job. Also,
Commissioner Kaloma Smith who did work on the gender equity and helped to secure the
wonderful speaker but it is a wonderful venue to hold these conversations.
Commissioner Stinger: They are a really supportive venue. They are really helpful and it does
work really nicely for a range of informality to formality. The take away that I had from that
meeting was that I think the format was good. The speaker was casual, she talked a little bit
about her experience, she had a few data points which were mostly just opening herself up to
questioning, and I think it wasn’t what I would have expected from the speaker. It worked well
and it triggered conversation at the individual tables so I think its format that we can learn from.
A couple people talked to me about a repeat schedule and I think we need to think about that in
our annual planning. How often we want to repeat that so people know that once a quarter or at
the end of the fourth Thursday, the second Thursday, whatever it is, that’s where they’re going to
be because they did come up and say when are we coming back? I want to respect that. One of
the other lessons was, and it’s fairly obvious, that PR is so important. We kind of hit a capacity
limit for this but really, it’s the personal invites that make all the difference and to have each of
the Commissioners use their distribution list and do the one on one contacts would be really
helpful. I think that’s all I wanted to say about that but I do have some other things to share. I’m
going to pass around some things from Mountain View, their Leadership Class is going to do a
Day in Mountain View and they are going to post pictures on sentences from the homeless
community. One day on where I rest, what I eat, what I enjoy, where I learn, when I grow up, to
give more visibility to homeless situations – to the homeless personalities and people; make them
real; give a personality.
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Page 70 of 82
Ms. van der Zwaag: So, we can scan these if you want and send them out to the whole group but
if you don’t want to lose these…
Commissioner Stinger: No, if you could take them that’d be great. City of Mountain View is also
doing a multi-cultural festival on Saturday, March 30th from 11-2. You’ll be seeing that come
around and then we talked about this before. There’s Civility Round Table on April 6th and I
want to use their title. They are talking about living in RVs and they are using the League of
Women Voters civility model so it will probably be two things, a format on civil conversation
and then the content also. If I can keep going just really quickly, I think I probably have enough
of these to that we don’t need to copy but Avenidas is starting a Culture Club and they will have
a spring party on March 23rd which is next week. Then the last thing I want to talk or mention is
that I went to the county’s HRC meeting last night at Santa Clara. What was interesting was I
think we are probably the last Commission in the county that still is a Human Relations
Commission.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Right, the county just changed it as of January 1st.
Commissioner Stinger: And many of the cities are also and I made an argument that I really like
human relations because I think from all of our work implicate bias, we know that regardless of
what the law says. It’s still about how people relate to each other. That’s as equally important so
I said maybe we could be the Human Rights and Relations Commission but I’m not ready to give
up personal relationships yet.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: So they changed it to Human Rights?
Commissioner Stinger: The County has and many of the cities have also and one of the content
things that came out of that meeting first of all, besides all the Commission there are numerous
service organizations and everybody was just sort of looking at each other. Really? I mean it was
just so many different agencies that we weren’t aware of and that was really impressive. The
other piece that came out it was that the county might be able to do some work on things that
really belong at a county level; human rights being one. It is hard for individual cities to put that
effort into becoming a human rights city but we could become a human right county and each
city could corporate with that and would facilitate the work. The other piece of it is would it also
facilitate a reasonable content? We came across this when we were looking at immigrant rights.
You don’t want to step over the board and find out Mountain View has a different set of rules. It
really needs to be consistent throughout the county so that was one of the things that they were
going to take a look at as how we could work together on what initiatives and how we could
corporate. So, it was an interesting meeting.
Chair Kralik: Appreciate your leadership, thank you for attending. Commissioner Brahmbhatt
and let me just say each of us here has put in a lot of work on these proposals tonight. I want to
thank everyone for that kind of effort. It’s extensive.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I totally was differing to the subcommittee but I just wanted to have
a discussion and make sure that we were doing the right thing by…
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Page 71 of 82
Commissioner Stinger: Thank you for saying that.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I appreciate all of the hard work. So, I mean I did have one comment
so I was here in the last meeting when we had the election then February I couldn’t attend the
monthly meeting so this is the first meeting after the election. I wanted to comment that I was not
happy with the HRC process of electing the Chair and the Vice Chair. There were seven people,
four people who were the majority got to select who they wanted to be the Chair as well as the
Vice Chair because everyone voted again. So, three people voted one way, they wanted a
different Chair and a different Vice Chair and four people were in the majority and the four
people got both the positions. We are diversity and inclusion with human relations and so there
should be thought given to the way the Chair and the Vice Chair are elected. If the Chair is
elected, after that whoever was second in the first election should automatically become the Vice
Chair.
Ms. van der Zwaag: I’ll take that under advisement. The process that we follow is in the
handbook and I can pass that on to the Clerk’s Office as they make considerations for possibly
updating the handbooks for the Commission.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Yes because it seemed like the minority people on this Commission
are not getting the right to representation.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok, (crosstalk) I will pass that on to the Clerk’s Office.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Ok.
Chair Kralik: Is there anything that would help that in terms of your…
Ms. van der Zwaag: I want to be careful of not this, starting to discuss it if it’s not agendize
but…
Chair Kralik: Right, right, I mean when you say is it just the vote or you said that they are
underrepresented meaning?
Commissioner O’Nan: Our Vice Chair is Chinese.
Chair Kralik: No, no, no, practically speaking what would that…
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: No, I mean the (crosstalk) – I’m not saying minority as in the race.
There were three people who wanted to vote one way and four people who wanted to vote the
other way. The four people got to select both the positions, the Chair, and the Vice Chair.
Chair Kralik: Ok, I’m going to second your thought process so that we can discuss that and
agendize it, alright?
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Page 72 of 82
Ms. van der Zwaag: I’d have to check if it’s up to – to discuss her thoughts or discuss a change to
it because I don’t know if this Commission on its own has the ability to change the process. I’d
have to look into that.
Chair Kralik: Well, I think I’d like to agendize whether someone could advise us about whether
we could make changes to it… (crosstalk)
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok, well you can talk about…
Chair Kralik: In light of that concern.
Ms. van der Zwaag: …that during agenda planning.
Chair Kralik: Is that something that I can second?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: Yes, sure, I mean that is something that felt wrong to me as to the
process that we followed.
[Many people started talking at once]
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: There are a lot of wrong processes in… (crosstalk)
Ms. van der Zwaag: Be careful that we’re not discussing it, folks.
[Many people talking at once]
Commissioner Lee: I’m not going to discuss it but I’m going to say that nothing in the code
prohibits the Commission from making those adjustments and that’s all I want to say.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok, in your reading of the code.
Chair Kralik: Let’s second that topic and agendize it for next time. Anything else?
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: No, that was the thing. I appreciate all the work everyone is doing
and we all have the right attitude and the right values. There’s the emotion that we all want to
help people and that is what is binding us. I don’t want it to be taken one way or the other.
Chair Kralik: Well of course not. I mean a tremendous group of people showed up and really,
they are doing wonderful work.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: I wish we had $717K and everybody should be given what they
requested.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes, I was going to yes, if we had it but I think if we had that much…
Chair Kralik: There would be more requests.
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Page 73 of 82
Ms. van der Zwaag: … there’d be more requests.
Commissioner Stinger: (off mic) Oh Yes, I didn’t get it last year but (inaudible).
Chair Kralik: Don’t let the word out. Ok, great, well thank you again. Commissioner O’Nan.
Commissioner O’Nan: Thank you, so most of my extra circular work, of course, was reviewing
HSRAP applications and then meeting with my esteemed colleagues here for several hours but
we did have the benefit of great sandwiches that were provided by Mary and Minka. Thank you
so much for that. In addition, I heard from Barbra Klausner who was the outgoing ED of
DreamCatchers to say goodbye and of course we met the new ED tonight. Then coincidently one
of my graduate students at Stanford is pursuing a doctorate in education. She is a math teacher of
Hispanic heritage and was very interested in learning about DreamCatchers and may do a
research project there to finally get some metrics on outcomes of their program which would be
awesome. So, I was so glad that my two worlds of professional teaching life and my volunteer
Commissioner life intersected there from a moment and something great might come out of it.
Chair Kralik: Commissioner Xue?
Vice Chair Xue: Only one small activity, so you know the Lunar New Year celebrating party. I
went there, I ran into Commissioner Lee, so it’s a wonderful opportunity. When I looked around
it seemed to be smaller than what I expected so I don’t know what we could do to make a
promotion to attach more people to participate in this kind of activity. One thing that I was a
little bit surprised; it was a very short program. So, I guess it takes a lot of effort to organize this
kind of thing. I really enjoyed those kinds of activities; the culture, the diversity – besides this
Lunar New Year activity I participated in different settings through a church and some other
activities like Commissioner Lee. The activities that our church organized attracted more than
3,000 people so a different group of people. It’s the whole Bay Area so it really depends on how
much effort, how much manpower, resource so that we can pull you in. So, we can make a major
impact if we do the right thing so that’s what I wanted to say.
Commissioner Lee: Chair Kralik, after you do your work, can I add three things real quick after
you…
Chair Kralik: Why don’t you go ahead?
Commissioner Lee: Ok, great, so I totally forgot about these things. I attended Avenidas’s
opening this past weekend. I thought the space was fantastic, very open, very peaceful so I
thought that was great. I had a chance to attend the Palo Alto Mediation Program’s last meeting.
I was very encouraged that they decided to take diversity to heart. They are focusing this year on
doing greater outreach to the community to make sure that they actually get more folks using
those services and more folks know about them. They’ve decided to forgo doing recruitment this
year and they will do it next year after they’ve expanded their outreach efforts. Hopefully, when
they do recruit, I guess, 2-years from now, hopefully, that group is a bit more reflective of the
community. The only other thing that I would say is I did attend the Lunar New Year event as
well as the Chinese New Year event hosted by – was it the Chinese Parent’s Club or was to raise
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Page 74 of 82
money for PAUSD. I thought both events were very great. One positive, constructive feedback I
would give to the City for the Lunar New Year event. The performers themselves were not quite
reflective of the community that the event was designed to celebrate. So, it felt somewhat
optically odd and so again, it’s positive feedback that I’m trying to give here if they can just be
more sensitive to the optics of it. As a Chinese-American, it was sort of weird seeing very few
Chinese-Americans actually represented in some these smaller performances. I mean they were
certainly there in the big group performances but some of the one or two or three or four people
performances it seemed optically kind of weird for me. Not that it should be homogenised – Yes,
not that is should be homogenised but it should be more reflective of the community that it’s
designed to celebrate. That’s my feedback.
Chair Kralik: I have you all beat; I attended four Chinese New Year’s celebrations. My son was a
lion dancer, my daughter was the Chinese dance troop dancer and they did a fabulous job. I think
Commissioner Xue had it right, there are so many of these celebrations out there for the Lunar
New Year, not just Chinese New Year. That it’s hard to recognize all of them and the efforts that
are made but I think it is a wonderful demonstration of our culture and our wonderful community
of welcome. I did attend two very important presentations, one on gender equity, and I sat with
the speaker from Stanford who gave a wonderful talk and a story about her father. I think when I
read the news that the soccer team had sued, with my daughter on a Palo Alto soccer team I felt
that we’re all in this fight and I think it’s wonderful that we can voice these concerns. I think one
of the things in terms of human relations is really getting people together. I really liked that
presentation because people talked openly, respectfully, they had different points of view, but
they fel t safe to do it. That is a wonderful venue. I will say that when I attended the LGBTQ
workshop or summit, that the firepower that was in that room in terms of people who are
members of our services and communities and their focus on trying to protect youth, which was
one of the things that we identified tonight, was just upfront. There is a real consensus there that
we need to be protective and careful and value people as individuals. That was wonderful to get
from that and I hope we do follow it up with the recommendation to Council. I know
Commissioner Lee and Commissioner Stinger are working on that from the input. I am a Liaison
to the mediation group; I was a mediator, a part of that group. Not only did Commissioner Lee
visit with them but so did Commissioner Smith. Both were welcomed, both discussed openly this
issue of having a representative group or reaching representative groups within our community.
That group is really committed to it and they are really great people, they’re volunteers, and they
appreciated your attendance. So, thank you for doing that, spending that each time.
2. Council Liaison Report
Chair Kralik: We’ll move – any other Council liaison report that wants to be given? I think we
sort of covered them.
3. Staff Liaison Report
Chair Kralik: So, we’ll move to the Staff Liaison Report.
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Page 75 of 82
Ms. van der Zwaag: I only had one thing, is a reminder if people have suggestions for the scope
of services for program administration of the Mediation Program. I believe those are due
Tuesday and the other item I will bring during agenda planning.
Commissioner Lee: Can I ask Staff a question? I wanted to know has there been any update to
some of the recommendations that Council had considered back in October from City
Management in terms of just an update on those items.
Ms. van der Zwaag: If I can go visually down it, the letters have gone to the folks in Sacramento.
The Amnesty International that was passed that night. CEDAW, it looks like Policy and Services
is quite busy so when I checked last it looked like that was going to be after the Council break.
Commissioner Lee: So, in fall?
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes and if folks can help me remember what the last one was?
Commissioner Lee: I think there was SB-54 and 31.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Those are the letters, those have gone. As far as those updates to be honest
it’s been about a month since I checked with the City Manager’s Office about those two. So, I’ll
put that on my to-do list again.
Commissioner Lee: So, I think there were two comments, there was a letter and so just having
them confirm that policies, procedures, and programs…
Ms. van der Zwaag: That’s the one that I checked on a while back but I’ll put it on my to-do list
again.
Commissioner Lee: Oh, ok, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Ms. van der Zwaag: No, no, no that’s perfectly fine because I couldn’t think of them all in my
head.
Commissioner Lee: Ok.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes, so I will check on that.
Commissioner Lee: Thank you very much. Agenda – are we on tentative agenda?
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes.
Chair Kralik: Are we through the Staff report because I thought there was an item…
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes, because my other item was an agenda item for April that I wanted to
bring out.
Chair Kralik: So, you’d like to cover that under agenda?
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Page 76 of 82
Ms. van der Zwaag: I would, thank you.
Chair Kralik: Ok, wonderful.
VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR NEXT REGULAR MEETING: Thursday, April 11,
2019.
Chair Kralik: Alright, well tentative agenda items for the next regular meeting. Let me just say I
did have that motion – not a motion but a second to the discussion of Commissioner Brahmbhatt.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok, so…
Commissioner Lee: And I’ll add a third to that in case that helps.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes, so with anything then it will get on the agenda. I can’t promise it will
be on the next, so just for folks to remember. When things get a second that means it does get on
the agenda but that there’s not always the ability to say I promise it will be on the next agenda.
That’s a conversation with leadership.
Chair Kralik: I’ll twist…
Ms. van der Zwaag: But that doesn’t mean…
Chair Kralik: …her arm.
Ms. van der Zwaag: …it won’t be. I just want to be honest about that. So, we have someone from
Avenidas leadership team to talk about doing another learning series and very interested on
transportation in the community and how that looks for different vulnerable groups. So,
Avenidas will have their two transportation folks coming to speak to us at the next meeting. I
know we’re going to invite folks from the City Shuttle Program. If there are other aspects of that,
that you want to shoot me an email to other aspects of vulnerable communities. I would assume
that the conversation with the City on the free shuttle program would include transportation for
low income, seniors also and homeless folks because it’s a free shuttle program. So, but if people
have suggestions, I’m always willing to listen.
Commissioner Lee: I was just going to say that I really like that idea so thank you for bringing
that. It sort of relates to one of the Council’s four priorities of the year, right; transportation and
traffic. To the extent that the other three Council priorities have an intersection with HRC
jurisdiction or issue of vulnerable communities, it would be great if we could have folks come
and do presentations to give us ideas on how we can help the Council weigh in on their priorities
through the prism of what the HRC does.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok. Then the other item that I have for the next agenda, so folks may
remember that has been around a while, that we have an Emerging Need Fund that is $50,000 a
year that the Council allocates. It doesn’t compound if we don’t spend it so it’s $50,000. If we
don’t spend it all, the excess goes back to the General Fund, it’s reallocated. So, we’ve been
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Page 77 of 82
doing that for a little over 2-years. I crafted that policy and brought it to here. It was recrafted
and accepted and then it went onto Council to be accepted. I really feel like after 2-years I’d like
to look at that again. So, what I’d like to do is send that policy out to the HRC to have you look
at it, provide me some suggestion to craft an initial policy for the full HRC to look at, at the next
meeting. I’m looking specifically at Commissioner O’Nan, Commissioner Lee, and
Commissioner Smith because those, to the best of my recollection, are the three Commissioners
that are still on the Commission that have been on one of those subcommittees and have lived
through the working out of that policy and may have some lived experiences to say hey, that
worked or that won’t. So…
Commissioner Lee: Can we form an Ad Hoc Committee?
Ms. van der Zwaag: I’d prefer to do this the same that I did with the other two policies, so to
have some consistency but I commit that the meeting next time will be a full version of being
able to do review that.
Commissioner Lee: And do we need to make a recommendation by the end of that meeting?
Ms. van der Zwaag: What I’d like to do, I’d really like to do that for the reason that it may need
to go back to Council to what it’s changed too. My supervisor would like to look too. If it’s
something significantly different that has been done before then she feels and I would agree that
it would need to go back to Council. I’d love to get it on the Consent Calendar for Council and
have it operational by July 1st…
Commissioner Lee: July 1st.
Ms. van der Zwaag: … so that when we send out the next announcements for folks to be able to
apply, it will already be ready.
Commissioner Lee: Ok, July 1st is – ok,
Ms. van der Zwaag: So, like I said, I commit to listening to all suggestions, I commit to having a
full discussion about this at the next meeting.
Commissioner O’Nan: (off mic) So, who’s your manager now, Minka?
Ms. van der Zwaag: Who is my?
Commissioner O’Nan: (off mic) Your manager now because it seems like a constant (inaudible)
(crosstalk)
Ms. van der Zwaag: Oh, Monique is my manager.
Commissioner O’Nan: Monique, ok.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes, so I report to Monique. Yes, I use to report to someone else.
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Page 78 of 82
Chair Kralik: Do you need a second for that proposal?
Ms. van der Zwaag: Not as Staff, no.
Chair Kralik: You’re in charge. Alright…
Commissioner Lee: One other..
Ms. van der Zwaag: But…
Commissioner Lee: Sorry, go ahead.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes, go ahead. I then had one more thing but is there a question about this?
Commissioner Lee: No, no, not a question.
Ms. van der Zwaag: And then I would like to, because I thought it worked really well last year, is
I would like to suggest again in that we agendize it for next time a retreat in June. For years and
years, we had it in August and I really felt it worked nicely in June because if there are new
members then they are included right away in the forming of the vision for the HRC. It gives us
the summer to be able to have some of the ideas percolate and get ready in the fall, ready to go.
In the past, when we’ve had it in August, it’s like September and October and sometimes
November the HRC is still going back and forth like do we want to go with Proposal A or
Proposal B? I think having it in June and maybe some discussion over the summer really puts the
HRC in a good spot in the fall to work on its Action Plan for the next year. So, my suggestion
would be that we have the retreat again in June before people go off to vacations and if you feel
necessary agendize it for the April meeting.
Chair Kralik: And you don’t need the second so I guess you’re going to go right ahead and do
that.
Commissioner Stinger: No, you can weigh in ...
Chair Kralik: Great, Yes, let's move forward.
Ms. van der Zwaag: No, I mean when we meet as leadership, I mean we can discuss if that’s not
an interest of folks to have it in June.
Commissioner Lee: I don’t have a comment on that, I think June’s fine.
Commissioner Brahmbhatt: When does my term end?
Ms. van der Zwaag: Your term ends at the end of May, yes. So, there are two terms ending,
Commissioner O’Nan’s and Commissioner Brahmbhatt’s.
Commissioner Lee: I think they just extended the deadline for applications, right?
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Page 79 of 82
Ms. van der Zwaag: I think I saw it was April 2nd for anybody that wanted to apply or reapply,
yes.
Commissioner Lee: I had a couple of things that I wanted to suggest for future agendas. The first
one is I think SB-1421. I believe it was the Daily, they wrote an article about –SB-1421 is a law
that took effect January 1…
Ms. van der Zwaag: It’s the letter that I sent out.
Commissioner Lee: It’s the letter that got sent out. I think there would be interest from the
community to give the Police Chief an opportunity to come and give a presentation about it and
to solicit public comment on it. I think now that it’s been written about and there seems to be a
60/40 split in terms what cities are doing on it. I’d just love to give the community an
opportunity to give their thoughts on it and give the Chief an opportunity to maybe reiterate in
more detail some of the things he mentioned in this letter. I think with the aim of fostering even a
better police-community relationship. I think that sort of opportunity would only help foster that
very strong relationship.
Chair Kralik: I’d like to second that. I think one of the things like when someone writes you a
letter with your name on it; it’s just like what would you like me to do? The thing that he was
saying in his letter is that he’s made a decision, an interim decision, to withhold two files that
qualify, depending on how court view the date of the effective date, of this particular law. He’s
made a decision and he’s argued that it’s consistent with other decisions and it’s protective of
interest which is great but I think he’s made a decision. I think timeliness is important for us as a
group to talk to him and to have him present. I’d really like to have him come.
Commissioner Lee: I know the next meeting is really packed but if we’re able to squeeze it in.
Chair Kralik: Yes, I’d really like that.
Commissioner Lee: Then the other two things are sort of questions to Staff. I know at the last
meeting there was discussion about needing to revamp how the Commission may recognize
groups, how we might endorse events. I’m wondering if there’s a sense of when that might
appear on the agenda.
Ms. van der Zwaag: Talk to Commissioner, I mean Chair Kralik.
Commissioner Lee: Do you happen at the last meeting we talked about needing to revamp the
process in which the Commission could do recognition of groups, individuals or how we might
endorse events. So, I’m wondering if you had a sense of when that might come to the
Commission?
Chair Kralik: Yes, what I’d like to do is agendize something that would be a discussion of the
process and ask for volunteers as an agenda item. I don’t know if you would second that but you
know having lived through this experience with three Commissioners and a fourth Commissioner
and my minds going wild with all these; have we talked to this person and that? Is to have one
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Page 80 of 82
person write this policy and then present it. So, it could be one or it could be two but I think
here’s the thing, is that I want us to robustly recognize good work in our community. I mean if
we wrote a resolution about everyone in this room tonight, I think we could get consensus on that
but the point is to really to be robust but to be fair. So, there has to be a process because we don’t
want to be exclusive of one group or not include another and we want to be sure that we do it
right. You know some of the things that happened the last time -- because I was new, is I spoke
to Staff about it and one of the things that happened is it was a question of ok, if we make this
recognition or this resolution, I mean what about all the other – I think the resolution had to do
with the Lunar New Year. What about all the other people out there that put on a Lunar New
Year event and we might recognize one? So, there has to be a process where we can be perceived
as fair, not unfair, but robustly supportive of good efforts in the community. So, I do think there
should be a process. I don’t know that we were going to do it in this next meeting. I think we
were going to wait until the following meeting.
Commissioner Lee: May?
Chair Kralik: In the May meeting and there are a couple of reasons for that. One is there might
be two new members. The second reason is that there’s quite an agenda already for the April
meeting. So, my plan was to try to call for a single volunteer to craft the policy and present it,
working with Staff.
Commissioner Lee: I’d be happy to volunteer for that because I sort of created the work on that
so…
Chair Kralik: Well, let’s have a discussion on it and…
Commissioner Lee: Did you want to have a discussion before we have a volunteer work on it?
Chair Kralik: That’s right. Yes, that’s right (crosstalk)
Commissioner Lee: So, you want…
Chair Kralik: … ask for – because there’s a member that’s not present that has expressed an
interest to me in working on that particular policy. I know Commissioner Stinger has also
indicated…
Commissioner Stinger: No, I have a question actually.
Chair Kralik: Sure.
Commissioner Stinger: So, are we talking about the recognition of good work or co-sponsorship
of programs?
Ms. van der Zwaag: My thought that it would be inclusive of a request from the public and
request from Commissioners for resolutions for endorsements of events for folks that comes to
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Page 81 of 82
us; for instance, when the Amnesty International so my hope is it’s inclusive of any request to
the HRC for endorsement, a resolution, and so forth.
Chair Kralik: So, you know, just to go through the practicality of it, right, after the process is in
place right if you have one Commission Member working with Staff to review and receive the
request, whether they’re from one of the other of us. Then when we hold a meeting to agendize
that item, we’ve got two Commissioners in the leadership who are going to meet. So, if we add
more than that then we’re going to end up with four people and that’s not going to work out. My
focus was to appoint somebody based on interest and discussion to write it and the second thing
was to appoint somebody to run it. There was one Commissioner, Commissioner Smith, who
I’ve spoken to about this who’s expressed interest in working on this.
Ms. van der Zwaag: I want to be cautious that we’re getting pretty close to discussing the item so
I think the question on the table is that it sounds like there’s a proposal to put it in the May
agenda. That proposal at the May agenda would be to talk about the process about the people that
would be involved in crafting the draft policy. Is that correct, Chair?
Chair Kralik: To appoint somebody to craft it and present.
Commissioner Lee: Yes so…
Commissioner Stinger: (off mic) Based on (inaudible)
Commissioner Lee: … again…
Chair Kralik: It would probably be one person because you’re going to end up bringing it to the
leadership as an agenda item and we would review it. That would be three people so we’re going
to…
Commissioner Lee: Ok so we’re going to discuss the ideas. Not just the idea of having someone
do it but the actual idea.
Chair Kralik: Yes, we will, sure.
Commissioner Lee: Ok, ok, ok. That’s what I didn’t understand. I thought we were talking about
choosing someone in May and then it would come back in June.
Chair Kralik: Well, they would once they drafted it.
Commissioner Lee: Well, but they’ve actually gotten input in May from the Commission.
Chair Kralik: That’s right, sure.
Commissioner Lee: Ok, that’s fine.
Chair Kralik: That’s a good idea.
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Page 82 of 82
Commissioner Lee: The other question I had and maybe this is to my fellow Commissioner to
my right and to Staff. In terms of the Anti-arbitrary Discrimination Ordinance update, I’m just
wondering if Staff has had a chance to look at that and had a sense of when it might be ready for
prime time so to speak?
Ms. van der Zwaag: That did not receive a second so I have not done any work on that.
Commissioner Lee: Ok, I thought you were just personally interested in it (crosstalk)
Ms. van der Zwaag: I was personally interested but I have not done any work on it.
Commissioner Lee: Gotcha.
Ms. van der Zwaag: I have not had the opportunity with my workload to be able to do so. In
theory, I was interested in it personally but I didn’t specifically to say I was going to do it.
Commissioner Lee: Gotcha, so I’ll go back to our Committee and we’ll talk about it.
Ms. van der Zwaag: That would be great.
Commissioner Lee: Great, thank you and that’s it.
Commissioner Stinger: My request would be an update on the summit that we had earlier this
week.
Chair Kralik: I would second that.
Commissioner Lee: Did we also want to talk about the Community Conversation? Either the one
that just happened or when the next one should be?
Chair Kralik: I will second that too.
Commissioner Lee: Did we want to…
Ms. van der Zwaag: Well, I’ve got seven so we’re going to have some chatting to do. My – just
like Dominique, my kid is texting me going when are you coming home, mommy?
Commissioner O’Nan: Yes, we need to go.
Ms. van der Zwaag: I don’t want to go to sleep until you come home.
Chair Kralik: Is there any other person that wants to address agenda items for the next regular
meeting? I think we’ve hit on most of them. Anything that you have? Ok, I’m going to go ahead
and adjourn. It’s about 10-minutes to 11:00. Thank you all.
VII. ADJOURNMENT
Meeting adjourned at 10:48 p.m.