City Council - Regular Meeting

Council member Campbell, could you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance?

States Of America. And two, will cover the topics for which is,

nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Mister clerk, city clerk, could you take roll call?

Yes. Councilmember Lu? Here. Councilmember Shao? Present. Councilmember Kimberlin? Here. Councilmember Campbell?

Here.

Council member King? Present. Vice mayor Zhang? Here. Mayor Salwan?

Present. So I have a few announcements. There are vacancies on boards and commissions. The city clerk's office accepts applications for boards and commissions throughout the year. If you're interested, please apply by going to freemont.gov or contacting the city clerk's office.

Emails submitted to the city clerk are compiled, distributed to the city council, and published in the city's agenda center at freemont.gov, and they will be placed on file and considered part of the public record. I would like to announce that this meeting may go on until 11:11 thirty PM this evening, if necessary. We will allow for thirty minutes of oral communications. If there are additional speakers for oral communications after the initial thirty minutes, we will take those speakers at the end of the meeting, if time remains. I will now turn the meeting over to our city manager, Queen of Shackleford, for her announcements and introductions.

Thank you, mayor Salwan. Good evening. Good evening, members of the council. With us this evening is our city attorney, Rafael Alvarado, here to the left of me. Across from Rafael and I, we have our assistant city clerk, Dina Lewis, and our city clerk, Alberto Quintanilla. By way of announcements, I'd just like to once again remind the public that this coming Friday, January 23, we will be hosting our city's seventieth birthday. It'll be held at the Downtown Event Center between the hours of 5PM and 8PM, so please come out and join us for a festive event. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have the consent calendar items. I would like to withdraw item two e and two f and direct staff to bring that back at a future closed session meeting. With that, are there any other items the council wants to pull? Seeing none, is there any speakers on oath? Go ahead, council member Campbell. Oh, let's see. Two c and two d. Do you wanna make a comment on those? Do you wanna just do that now? Okay.

These two items are the ratification for the police association and the police managers association MOU. I'd like to say that I'm just just so happy that we were able to work together collaboratively and ratify these MOUs so that we can continue to work closely with our police and safety, given that this is one of the priorities of the council. So thank you, team, for all of your hard work. Thank you, council, for making this happen. Mhmm.

Thank you. And I I think we'll we all echo those statements. We appreciate everybody's cooperation in working together. So thank you. So with that, could I get a motion with all the items minus item two e and two f? And I'm sorry. Well, there was no cards, right, from the public? Okay.

Yeah. I would like to make a motion to to approve and with accept of two e and two f.

Okay. And seconded by council member Campbell. Please vote.

Okay. Consent calendar passes with the exception of item two e, two f, which were withdrawn. With that, we have a ceremonial item. We have proclamation for Compassionate Fremont. I'll join the folks over there in the at the podium. Thank you.

Hey.

So we have, sister Annette Burkhardt of sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, miss Ann Parks Council, accounted by current and former members of the Tri City Interfaith Council. So this is the proclamation for Compassionate Fremont month. Whereas Compassionate Fremont has partnered with the Human Relations Commission and the Fremont Public Library to present a series of community panel discussions known as Finding Common Ground, fostering dialogue, understanding, and mutual respect among Fremont residents. And whereas Compassionate Fremont has collaborated with the Human Relations Commission to print and distribute Fremont stands united against hate posters to businesses, schools, and homeowners throughout the city and has joined more than 30 local jurisdictions in sponsoring the annual United Against Hate Week. And whereas Compassionate continues its partnership with the Fremont Public Library to promote learning, engagement, and personal growth through an ongoing community book club that encourages deeper understanding of diverse perspectives.

And whereas Compassionate Fremont in collaboration with the Tri City Interfaith Council, cosponsors annual community events, including the International Day of Peace, the Tri City Interfaith Council Thanksgiving Service, and the vigil at Saint James honoring individuals experiencing homelessness who have passed away during the past year. And whereas Compassionate Fremont consistently responds publicly to acts of hate, racism, Islamophobia, classism, antisemitism, homophobia, and sexism through vigils, rallies, and public advocacy, and calls upon local officials and community members alike to reject all forms of hate, to affirm the dignity of every individual, and to serve as active leaders for inclusion and compassion locally and beyond. Now, therefore, that the city council of the city of Fremont, in recognition of the tenth anniversary of Fremont's signing of the Charter of Compassion on January 1236 does hereby proclaim the month of January 2026 as Compassionate Fremont Month and encourages all residents to participate in efforts that promote kindness, understanding, and unity through the community. So with that, I would ask, if one of your representatives, wants to speak, on this item, that would be wonderful. Okay.

Okay. So you can speak, and then we can present it right now.

On behalf of Compassionate Fremont, I am very proud to accept this award. And afterwards, sister Annette has a few words to say.

A number of years ago, I worked as a chaplain of an assisted living community and was invited to view a documentary known as Fremont, USA. The Harvard School of Plurality chose Fremont because of its small size and its large diversity. I was moved by the work of Mayor Wasserman, and you can find another version of this documentary on YouTube today. Just be sure it's Fremont, USA. About the same time, a nurse coworker shared her story with me.

She and her husband had come to Fremont to visit some friends. They were so impressed with the sense of welcome and community that they went home to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, packed up their things, and moved to Fremont. So when the Charter of Compassion invited cities to be recognized as compassionate cities, my response was Fremont already is a compassionate city. They were looking for a 100 cities globally by the year 2015. A small group of us from the Tri City Interfaith Council began spreading the word, educating the community, and collecting signatures from the residents and citizens of Fremont in support of the city signing its own charter of compassion.

And this made Fremont the seventy second city in the world to claim that title. A copy of Fremont's charter was then placed in a time capsule to be opened on the one hundredth anniversary for Fremont's Incorporation as a city. So thank you. And you can view the video, and our young people will get the time capsule.

Thirty years.

Here you go.

In my eighties. Yeah. I'll be my nineties. Oh, okay. Okay. Pretty cool. Am I in a walker? Thank you. That's. Right.

Okay. Thank you so much. Next, we have public communications. So this is, oral communications. This is an opportunity for the public to speak to the council on any issue that is not on the agenda. The council cannot take action nor respond to items that are brought up under the oral communication comment period. However, the item could be agendized for a future meeting if the council makes a referral to city staff for a report back. When speaking on behalf of an organization, state the name of the organization you are representing. A bell will ring when thirty seconds remain for you to sum up your comments. The bell will ring again when time has ended.

The city clerk will start the timer for each speaker. How many speakers do we have?

We have three speakers tonight.

Okay. So two minutes

each. Okay. Our first speaker is Keith Parker followed by Jeff V.

Hi, everyone. So I know I'm a little late in doing this, but, I hope you'll forgive me as I'm here to say something that I don't think you hear very often. I wanna take a moment and congratulate the council on a job well done. I wanna congratulate you on the successful cleanup of the Isherwood encampment. You did the right thing in clearing out that encampment, but you didn't just go in and clear it out.

Prior to clearing it, city staff, service providers, and others were able to successfully go in and connect about 40 people there with services that include meals, enrollment in Alameda County's coordinated entry system, and other services that even include pet care, which I assume is related to you, mayor Sawan. As I understand it, of those 40 people, about half have now transitioned to either the housing navigation center or some other shelter. So you heard the complaints from the local community who were being impacted by having the encampment there. They were understandably concerned about things like crime, fire, litter, and everything else associated with encampments like that. And you dealt with it the right way.

You went in and met the human needs of the people living in that encampment. And for those that were willing to accept help, you made their lives a little better. This positive result and the help those people received would not have been possible without the successful passage of the so called camping ban. I know there was a lot of controversy around that, but you did the right thing and you passed the ban. And now both the housed and the unhoused are benefiting from it. So good job.

Thank you. Next speaker?

Our next speaker is Jeff V followed by John Hines.

Good evening, everyone. I am a Fremont resident for decades, and I have been contacting my city officials for a while. It's been four and a half years of ordeal trying to reach all of you. I have been emailing. I've been calling.

I've been leaving voice mail messages, and I have not been hearing back from any of you. And I have been home invaded, burglarized, stalked, hacked, wiretapped. My animals are killed in my own home. I've been put to sleep by energy weapon weapons of these satellites and drones that are hovering over my home in Fremont near 880 off of Dakota for years on end that all triggered after I filed police misconduct and crimes reports against Fremont PD officials to Fremont PD Internal Affairs and HR, city council, and mayor office. And since then till now, it has been unrelenting harassment.

I am followed every minute of my life. My parents are dying of cancer and other diseases by these attacks. I am put to sleep. I can't defend myself. It is so disturbing as a man to be in your home, in your own castle, and not wake up to your cats being poisoned, grabbed, run after their, their ears being cut. And this is going on, and I have contacted you and Fremont PD chief Sean Washington, internal of investigation, have not responded. They are behind it. FBI, DOJ, NSA, US government, all the way to White House is behind it as a race related hate crime. I want that stopped. I want that addressed.

My cats died in November and December, and I am invaded today again. My neighbors are involved. Fremont PD fails to do anything about it. Please incorporate my two emails today.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is John Hines. Hello,

everyone. This is about streetlights. About ten years ago, the city went through a big project to replace all of its older technology streetlights, which I think were probably the sodium lamps, the yellowish light ones. Replace those with newer technology LEDs, which had two big advantages. One is that they could produce about twice the same light for the same energy, and they had a longer active service life. There we go. The older sodium lamps, maybe five or six years on average. The new LED lamps, at least ten. Although they were a fairly new product at the time and their service life wasn't so well defined yet. They also have a very different mode of aging.

Rather than blinking and blinking and failing to start eventually like the sodium lights, the LEDs just gradually get dimmer. And based on some photos I've seen from several years ago and recently, the whole city is just gradually getting darker. All of our LEDs were replaced at about the same time. They're all the same age. They might be just one or two models. The city is getting dimmer. So at some judgmental arbitrary point in time, we have to say, okay. They're not bright enough. Let's let's replace them. It won't be doable in a week, so we should start a year or two before we think it's too late and just make sure we set a budget item in the near future to sweep through the city streetlights.

Thank you.

We have no additional speakers.

Okay. Thank you. So with that, we will close the oral communication portion of the meeting. With that, the only item we have is report on committee assignments. Are there any committee assignment reports? Okay. Seeing none, I will adjourn the meeting, and we'll meet again February. Thank you. Have a good evening, everyone.