Commission on Persons with Disabilities - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the 03/26/2026, Social Service Human Relations Board meeting. This meeting is being recorded. The chat function has been turned off. If members of the public would like to comment on an item, there are multiple options to do so. If attending via Zoom, digitally raise your hand and Secretary Manna Eyal will announce when it is your turn.

You will then have the option to unmute yourself and proceed with your public comment. E mail your public comments to Secretary Manahayan at gmannahay o n alameda ca dot gov before or during the meeting with your name, the agenda item number you are referring to and your comment. Comments submitted during this meeting before the conclusion of the public comments section will be read into the record. Her e mail address is also on the meeting's agenda. If you are calling in by phone, please e mail Ms.

Manahayan as we cannot see you raise your hand. You can also dial 9 to raise your hand, and we will call on you. To provide a public comment in person, please complete a public comment slip with your name and the agenda item number you will be speaking on. You will be called when it is your turn. Comments will be limited to three minutes.

The public has two opportunities for public comments. First, under Agenda Item two, Public Comments, comments from the audience may concern matters not on the agenda but must deal with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the Social Service Human Relations Board. Second, under each agenda item, there will be an opportunity for public comment on a specific item. Each item follows a format similar to City Council meeting. First, after presentation, we will ask if there are any clarifying questions from SHRUB members or staff.

Then we will ask if there are any public comments on this agenda item, and after public comment, we will open the item for discussion and a vote if recommended. We are now calling this meeting to order at 07:03PM. We will be doing a roll call, and actually all votes will be by roll call tonight because we have people who are not present in the room. Robbie Greitze?

Present.

Chantal Carter?

Present.

Bernie Wolf? Here. Joe Bryant? Here. Michelle Buckholz?

Here.

Samantha Green?

Here.

And Scott Means, here. And I think they both have to say why they're attending remotely, or they or they have to do that?

Michelle's location is on the agenda. Okay. But Sam yeah.

So you're supposed to stay? Yeah.

Hi. I'm sick at home.

Thank you for the run here. Yes. And we also have joining us from Housing and Human Services Division, Garcia Manning Aron, program manager, and Shelby Neal, administrative specialist. We'll move on to item two, non agenda public comments. The city welcomes speakers providing public comment, but please be advised this is a limited public forum. Comments from the audience may concern matters either on or not on the agenda, but must deal with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the Social Service and Human Relations Board. Comments will be limited to three minutes. Comments concerning matters on this evening's agenda will be heard when that item is called. If speakers fail to follow these rules, they will be warned. And if they continue to disregard the rules, their opportunity to speak will end.

Okay. Do we have any people who would like to speak?

Yes.

Looks like we have a public speaker, public commenter.

We have a public speaker. Speakers, look.

Have covering for Sean.

Great. And we have three minutes left. So whenever you start, we'll start at the clock.

Whenever you're ready. Okay.

Unfortunately, the person who did this is not here, but let me be absolutely clear. You had no right to publicly speak about me that way. You are not a doctor. You are not an evaluator. You're not a therapist, and not anyone with authority, training, or personal knowledge to make statements about my mental health.

Yet you chose to sit in a public meeting and label me anyway. That was arrogant, reckless, stigmatizing, and completely inappropriate. I came before this board to speak about real issues affecting real people instead of doing what you are there to do, which is listen, ask questions, and follow-up. You chose to dismiss me with a cheap personal attack that says far more about your character, judgment, and fitness to serve in a representative role than it does about me. You are supposed to represent people.

You are supposed to be a voice for the community, but what you actually showed was content. You showed that when someone speaks in a way that makes you uncomfortable rather than address the substance. You insult them, degrade them, and try to discredit them in public. You can roll your eyes. I don't care. Your opinion means nothing to me. That is disgraceful. Let me remind you of something. Raising my voice is not a diagnosis. Passion is not a diagnosis.

Being hurt, frustrated, or speaking forcefully after being ignored for four and a half years is not a diagnosis. Disagreeing with the board does not make someone mentally ill. Telling truths that you do not want to hear does not make someone mentally ill. What you did was weaponize a mental health label as an insult and that is ignorant, offensive, and beneath anyone claiming to advocate for vulnerable people. You do not know me.

You have never spoken with me privately. You have never investigated what I raised. You have never followed up, and still you felt comfortable smearing me in front of the public. That was not representation. That was cowardice.

I am a thirty year educator. I am a human being. Grow up and I will not stand by while you or anyone else tries to erase my life, my work, my credibility, and my voice by reducing me to ugly stereotypes simply because I spoke up. So here's what I expect. I expect you to publicly retract your statement.

I expect you to acknowledge that what you said was inappropriate and I expect this board to start behaving like adults who are capable of listening to public comment without resorting to insults, stigma, and character attacks.

Thank you very much for your time.

I'm sorry. I'm very sorry

for your before you, then you are not serving the community. Yes. I'm You are failing it. You do not get to really get

me and

call it concern. You do not get to defend me and call it opinion. And you do not get to hide behind your seats on that board while acting in a way that is unprofessional, prejudiced, and cruel. You need to do better. You sit there and you say, you want to know. You want to know. You want to know. But have any of you read the contracts? Have any of you read the contracts? Have you read the contracts? No. You still haven't. Have you read the five year plan that is over with? No. You haven't.

Have you ever come down and spoke to the community of unhoused people? No. You haven't. So how is it that you know what the unhoused community knows

okay. Okay.

How do you know? How do you know? Well, I will tell you one thing. What would you say? Where's the village Of Love now?

Smells gone.

Where's the village Of love now? Where's Joey Harrison now? Do you realize if you are a resident in this city, you should care? Because I'm telling you, it's easy to find. There is not one financial report. Not one. And what we are talking about is close to $10,000,000. See everybody, ladies and gentlemen, this is exactly what happens when they don't like to hear something that is fact. Fact. 100% fact.

This is what they do. They get up and they leave because I raised my voice because I have not been listened to

Thank you. We are back. It is 07:41PM, and I'm sorry about the disruption. We are going to continue on with the minute item number three. Yes. Minutes. The review and approval of minutes. I'm gonna put forth a motion to approve the minutes for 02/26/2026. Do I have a second? Second. Do we have a second? Oh, we have to do a roll call vote for Robbie Price?

Oh, yes. I have

Chantelle Garden? Yes. For you all? Yeah. Gerald Bryant? Yep. Michelle Buckholz?

I abstain. I wasn't at the meeting.

Scott, thank you. Samantha Green?

Yes.

Scott Means. Gotta keep me honest there, Michelle. Alright. We got the minutes done. Now we're we're here on Monday. K. There are item four, the presentation on school board based centers bought by Kyle Sinclough and Catherine Schwarzschild, immediate family services is going to be postponed till the next meeting. Item four b, UC Berkeley Public Health Project update will be postponed until the next meeting. Foresee discussion on social servicing relations board work plan. Each year, these SHRUB presents an annual work plan to the city council for its consent.

SHRUB's annual work plan is typically approved by the board at its April meeting in order to be presented to the City Council at its first meeting in June. The Social Service Human Relations Board will break up into committees to discuss over overall impact of each group, and we have decided that those work groups are going to meet, since they are under quorum, are going to meet independently in those groups between now and our next meeting rather than doing it tonight.

Who are the members of the

work groups? Okay. So that would be you know that first one I sent you? Yeah. That we're gonna we're gonna go back with that one because if we meet in person, we can have three people, so we don't need to actually have it set up. Do you happen to

The one where you have people in multiples.

Yeah. Yeah. And and we

Do you want me to read that

checked in to yeah. Do you mind if if Shelby be visiting?

So the Road Home and Age Friendly Work group would be Samantha Green, Michelle Buckholz, and Scott Means. Almighty United Against Hate would be Gerald Bryant, Chantel Carter, and Samantha Green. Domestic Violence Committee would be Bernie Wolff, Robbie Kreitz, and Chantel Carter.

Is that correct with everyone? Yes. That's great. So we don't need to actually vote on that?

No. And we'll be scheduling meetings with you all to meeting committees. Okay.

And and you you don't have anything else to say about I don't. Okay. Okay. That's fine. We we can pursue this. Alright. So The rest of it, will you

be part of those meetings? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I usually am. The committee meetings that we have monthly.

Yeah. I'm talking it'll be, like, the ones that you and I have on Monday.

Yeah. We'll just add the folks to our meeting to make sure Yeah. It works with their schedule.

Yeah. How long do you typically meet? It's like thirty minutes.

Half hour.

Oh, okay. So you may need a little longer. That's all. Yeah. No. Yeah. That's perfect. Because you go to your meeting for an hour. It's definitely an hour and a half meeting. That's

too long. Zoom.

Okay. Great. Then we can move on. Does anyone else have any questions, comments about that? No. Great. Work groups, I I think, Bernie, you have something.

What's that?

Oh, for the work group reports of item four d? Mhmm. It's for board decision only. Did you say

you had anything? No. I'm gonna defer it till

next meeting. Oh, you are gonna defer. Okay. Well, do do you have anything that you need to that's, like, important in terms of dates or anything like that?

Nope. Everything is something that can be discussed later.

Okay.

You should report on your open mic.

I give that credit. We did do our open mic. Sorry for y'all that did not get a chance to attend. It was wonderful. Young folks came in, and they spoke really well. Some of them showed their artwork. Their artwork was really impressive. These were very nervous kids. Most of them were not used to public speaking or even being in a crowd of the type that we had. So it was very nice to see them come together.

There were enough prizes and everybody got a prize. Only thing that I didn't really see that I was hoping to get more of was more of the adults to come in and actually spend time, see what was going on. The kids were there. They they showed up in force to take care of what they knew was rooting for their friends that were up there actually doing it. So overall, I have to say it was a wonderful, wonderful program. And looking forward to next year's season of nonviolence. Great. Yeah.

I I love that last poet, and she's eleventh grader, so that means you might be able to hear something again next year.

Next year? That's mine. That's mine. Yeah. Have the rest of them who are all seniors. Yeah. I have to say she was pretty remarkable as the only way to go through it. Her story was well well written or well discussed. I'll just say well discussed. I I was very surprised to hear speak a certain topic and and speak with real heart. So Yeah. Yeah. You recommend it. Thank you, Grisha.

And just for the one thing for ATRN and the Alameda is we will probably we we will be having our survey guide in May. Great. Along with older Americans month, which also is May. Anything else, Samantha or Michelle, on work groups?

I just announced that we have upcoming overdose prevention trainings scheduled throughout the city. And partnered with a great Alameda County based community partner to lead lead those trainings. Awesome. Yes.

I will tell you the dates in just one moment. I believe it is May we have one on May 7. We have one on June 11, and then we have a third in July. One moment. I believe it is July 29. So those are our three overdose response training dates.

Thank you. Where are you

gonna be located? It will be held at the Albert H. DeWitt officers club, also known as the o club. O club. Which is on the base.

You just send that out to Paul's staff. Yeah. The only other thing is Scott and Michelle and I have been discussing a well-being survey and the potential of doing a community satisfaction survey. So it's kind of a standard it's like, if you say, like, the happiest places on Earth. Right?

Those just came out recently. They do it in an annual report. Anyway, there are global measures that people do. We can't get it down to the size of Alameda from the, data that they pull, and so we thought maybe we would try and get our own sample of community residents in Alameda to see kind of where we were on that happiness index. So it's something that we're discussing as a group.

Yeah. That's great. Thank you for remembering that, Martha. Alright. We can go to item five, staff communications.

Okay. So staff updates for housing and human services. We have CDBG funding recommendations will be taken to council for approval on May 5. This will include public services, economic development, capital improvements, residential rehab, carry forward projects and home projects. We are also seeking approval for the twenty twenty six-twenty seven annual action plan, which covers our achievements over the past years, goals and objectives for the upcoming program year, citizen participation efforts, etc.

The Housing and Human Services Division is currently conducting a community needs assessment. Our goal is to better understand the needs and priorities of our community as it pertains to human, social, and housing services so we can improve program service delivery. Your responses are anonymous and will help us shape programs and resources that support residents. You can find the link to the survey on the City of Alameda Housing and Human Services website under the Community Needs Assessment survey section. And you are all invited to fill it out as well. Community survey time extended to allow for multiple language accessibility.

It was brought to our attention it was only in English.

Yes. We're spending the

time so it's accessible for multiple languages.

For an additional thirty days for the for several languages. We had a second stakeholder session that occurred on March 11 that is part of that needs assessment process. Our engagement specialist team continues to work diligently moving people off the street and into shelter. In the month of March, they exited three people into transitional housing and five into emergency shelter from unhoused homelessness. For an inclusionary housing update, the city's program administrator, Rise Housing, recently held a workshop with the moderate income waitlist members who opted in to be considered for the three homes currently being sold in that program.

The city has reviewed some of the completed application files with RISE and has issued decisions that will be provided in the waitlist ranking order. And that concludes the staff updates.

Thank you. Thank you.

This is an uncommon item. Okay. So move on to oh, statute report on the city of Albania's housing and human services. That's is that separate?

That's what I understand.

Oh, you said oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm a little shaky too, I think. Number six, forward communications. I'm just gonna jump right into a couple of things real quick, if that's okay. The League of California cities met today, and they've adopted a change in language. They're now using the term older adults as every time possible instead of seniors in reference to older adults. They don't mention the word elders, but, know, that's also a nice one to throw in there. It shows a little extra reference and respect.

But yeah. So older adults instead of seniors. And with that in mind, the American sorry. Older Americans month this year, the theme in May is going to be champion your health, and I'll be talking more about that in April leading up into May. But I actually wrote and submitted a proclamation to the mayor for consideration to read in May to in honor of that.

And that is something for especially the new members here. You know, the proclamation is something that can be, you know, done through through the process of the city to, you know, recognize things that are happening. Anyway, just for that, does anyone else have anything any other board communications? We're good. We're all good. Really? Okay. Well, then without further ado, we will what time is it? Mike. We will adjourn this meeting at 07:54PM.

It's gotta be a record.

Alright. Was a feeling better.