City Council - Regular Meeting

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Okay. All right. Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to City Hall and welcome to the Hayward City Council meeting, June 16th, 2026. It is 7.01 p.m. and I'd like to welcome everyone to City Hall and I'd like to call upon Councilmember Zedmenyo, if you can please do the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Madam City Clerk, you can please take roll call.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Andrews. Present. Council Member Bonilla, Jr.

Present.

Council Member Goldstein. Present. Council Member Roach. Present. Council Member Syrup.

Present.

Council Member Sermonio. Present. Mayor Salinas.

Present. Thank you. Next item is closed session announcement, and I believe our City Attorney is online. Let me confirm that.

Mr. Mayor, our city attorney is not online yet. Maybe we can come back to the item.

Yeah, we can come back to that. Let me come back. Okay, I will move on to a special presentation. Tonight's special presentation is regarding Juneteenth. Let's give Juneteenth a big round of applause. Also referred to as Freedom Day. Freedom Day. We are very pleased to have with us today Dorothy Dominique of Treasures Unlimited and Planning Committee member. Dorothy, where's Dorothy at? Is she here?

She may not be here, Treasures Unleashed, but she may not be here.

Okay. And then Valita Savana and Duane P. Higgins from the Duane P. Higgins Foundation. There you are. Let's give Valita a big round of applause. And I've been practicing this all night, you guys. I'd like to welcome Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the Hayward Tri-City Alumni Chapter. Right? All right. I'd like to welcome all of you here this evening. It is a special time of the year, and it really is a special time, you know, particularly today. I think given the The current events that we're seeing all of our histories removed and eliminated from public parks, libraries, we see the all out assault on ethnic studies, African American studies, and other area content studies that I have been studying for an entire career. And so this particular moment in history, and particularly in this particular time in history today, I am very pleased to be acknowledging Juneteenth and all of you. and to be proclaiming today as Juneteenth. So what I'd like to do is I'm going to hand this over to you. I do have a proclamation. It is a little lengthy. And then I will read it, and then we'll have it come up, and we'll take some pictures. And then if you have some remarks, you're more than welcome to make some remarks. Proclamation. Whereas as early as the 15th century, enslaved African people were kidnapped from their homes across the African continent and trafficked into violent systems of slavery in the Americas, which lasted until the late 1800s. And whereas despite the systemic brutalization of black bodies and exploitation of enslaved Africans in America at the hands of public and private entities around the world, enslaved black people in the United States consistently advocated for abolition, human rights, social justice, and racial equity. And whereas after centuries of black resistance, advocacy, protest, and organizing the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1st, 1863 to freed enslaved African Americans in states that seceded from the Union. And whereas the last enslaved African Americans were not freed until June 19th, 1865 in Galveston, Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which led the African American tradition of celebrating Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery every June 19th, beginning in 1866. Whereas for 161 years, African Americans have celebrated Juneteenth to commemorate black freedom from slavery, And after years of advocacy from activists like Opal Lee and the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, Juneteenth National Independence Day was designated as a federal holiday in 2021. And whereas the City of Hayward recognizing Juneteenth through educational exhibits, reading lists, library materials for all ages and community programming, at the downtown library throughout the month. And whereas Hayward community organizations will continue the tradition of remembrance and celebration through Juneteenth Fest, 2026, the sixth annual Juneteenth Freedom Celebration hosted by Treasures Unleashed, The Best Me, Hayward Area Recreation District, NAACP, Hayward Tri-City Alumni Chapter, Delta Sigma Theta Inc. East Bay Community Foundation, Duane P. Wiggins Foundation, and Juneteenth Hayward at Mount Eden High School on Saturday, June 20th. And whereas Hayward, Juneteenth 2026 will feature local and regional artists, performers, speakers, vendors, exhibitions, refreshments, and family-friendly activities that honor African American history, culture, liberation, and joy. And whereas the City of Hayward is committed to centering racial equity in our processes and projects to better serve the needs of Black and other marginalized communities through its Strategic Racial Equity Action Plan, And whereas Hayward will host ceremonial flag raisings of the Juneteenth and Pan-African flags on June 18th in recognition of the long history of African-American liberation efforts, now, therefore, I, Mark Salinas, Mayor of the City of Hayward, do hereby proclaim June 19th, 2026, as Juneteenth National Independence Day. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give Juneteenth another great big round of applause. And also, I'd like to acknowledge someone who is no stranger to the chamber, former Hayward City Council member and now HARD director, Sarah Lamnan is here. Sarah Lamnan, Director Lamnan. And also, Director Hatcher. Where's Director Hatcher? Right there. Director Hatcher, both are from the HARD Board. So let's meet here in the front, take a picture, and then we'll have speeches, yeah.

So thank you all for this opportunity. I'm Valita Savannah, the founder of the Dwayne P. Wiggins Foundation. He was a longtime resident of Hayward. And this opportunity was one that we graciously accepted in terms of being able to support this program. The DeWayne P. Wiggins Foundation is there to support students five through 18 to have free music lessons and support their mental wellness and development. Music was always a outlet for DeWayne and it was a way that he was able to make a living and support his family and support us. In order to support this event, we were able to partner and provide some music entertainment, but also just bringing families out to let them know we are still a strong community and building strong foundations for our families. So I just want to thank you all for allowing us that opportunity. We're here and we'll continue to partner with organizations across the Bay Area to bring this just foundational support to youth as they grow. So thank you all for this.

Thank you.

Hit the button on the bottom of the base there. Hit the green button. There you go.

All right. To Mayor Salinas, council members, and all who are in assembly, my name is Jonna Nix, and I am the vice president of the Hayward Tri-City Alumni Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sward Incorporated. On behalf of our chapter president, Lonnie M. Taylor, and members of our chapter, we'd like to thank you for this recognition and proclamation. We are daughters of 22 courageous visionaries. Our founders were women who defined the odds and built a legacy that still moves us forward today. Our chapter strives to continue that legacy by uplifting women and girls by providing programming such as our Delta Academy, Delta Gems programs, and focusing on issues of our young women such as academic failures, low self-esteem, health and wellness, and human trafficking. HCCAC has served the Hayward Tri-City, Fremont, Newark, Union City, and Southern Alameda County communities for over 36 years. Ongoing economic challenges have made it difficult for students in our communities to obtain and pay for higher education, so for the past 33 years, our chapter has provided scholarships to deserving college-bound students. So we continue to serve our Hayward area, and we thank you so much for the partnership and continued partnership in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. And this is Corey Lowe from NAACP.

Yes. Hello, Mr. Mayor. Hello, Council. Hello, everybody. My name is Corey Lowe. I've been a member of the NAACP Youth Council for seven years, and I'm a recent recipient of the Carolee Parish NAACP Scholarship.

And then, hi, my name is Joy Johnson. I'm also a member of the Youth Council, and I'm also a recent recipient of the scholarship. And we're both here on behalf of our president, Ms. Freddie Davis, and we're here representing the Hayward South Alameda County NAACP and its Youth Council. For decades, our branch has focused on civil rights advocacy, education, youth development, community engagement, and social justice. I want to thank Mayor Mark Salinas and all of the Hayward City Council members and leadership for recognizing both Juneteenth and the Hayward South Alameda County NAACP, especially Councilmember Andrews, who has taken the lead over the last few years to make sure that Juneteenth is recognized and celebrated in the city of Hayward. We want to thank you as you continue to partner with us in advancing civil rights, education, economic empowerment, and social justice for all.

And on behalf of the NPLCP, we will be pleased to join you all this Saturday the 20th at Mount Eden to celebrate Juneteenth.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Sarah Lamnin, the president of the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District. And on behalf of my colleagues and our district, it's just such a delight to partner with you on this event. We did our proclamation last night. personally to have seen how this grows, how this event has grown, how our partnership between our two agencies has grown. It really is moving from strength to strength. So I really appreciate you all. Thank you for your leadership, and we'll see you on Saturday.

Thank you. And is that everybody from all the groups? Great, well, let's give Juneteenth one big last round of applause. And then Council Member Roach.

Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to add, you know, we wouldn't be here without Councilmember Andrews' leadership on this. I mean, she came and decided this is something that was missing in Hayward, and the amount of time she puts into this every year, getting sponsors, getting musicians, getting everyone, you know, collaborating in order to make this event happen, and it's grown now for, is this your third one? So I just wanted to congratulate you, Council Member, because it really is amazing. And this is why representation matters, I think, because it didn't happen before Angela was on Council and Council Member Angela was on Council. And I just really congratulate you for bringing this to Hayward. Thank you.

And she's been doing this for six years, and I'm guessing it gets easier each year.

um thank you to the council for having this acknowledgement year over year and thank you to all the community groups special thank you to hard for partnering with us this year we would not been able to have this event without you and to the wiggins foundation tri-city delta naacp all the groups that are involved treasures unleashed dorothy could not be here tonight but She has been instrumental in making sure this event happens year over year. So I just want to thank you all for just being so patient with us and continuing to work with us as a group, as an entity to put this event on. And it's amazing to see so many Juneteenths happening across the Bay Area. At first, there was one or two. Now it's all over. It's exploded. And I just am really excited to see that everyone is celebrating this important holiday. And it's a holiday for everyone to celebrate. Thanks.

Thank you. And I think the council also concurs with the comments of Council Member Roach. You have certainly put a lot of work in this. So thank you very much. Okay, I'm going to move on to the next item on the agenda. But before I do that, I'm gonna move back one item to a closed session announcement. And I do believe our city attorney is now online. Mr. City Attorney, if you can give us a closed session announcement.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Council convened in closed session at 5.30. There were two items. Initially, Council Member Roach was not present for discussion of Caleb Smith. The Council gave direction to staff. There is no reportable action at this time. Secondly, the Council, with Council Member Roach present, continued its performance evaluation of the City Attorney. This is the second session after June 2nd. I will defer to the Mayor with regard to that report. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. We had a discussion on the evaluation of the city attorney. No action was taken, and the meeting ended at 6.43 p.m. Okay, moving on to public comment, and this is reserved for anybody who would like to make a public comment on something that is not on the agenda. Public comments, the public comment section provides an opportunity to address the City Council on items not listed on the agenda. or informational staff presentation items. The council welcomes comments and requests that speakers present their remarks in a respectful manner within established time limits and focus on issues which directly affects the city or are within the jurisdiction of the city. As the council is prohibited by state law from discussing items not listed on the agenda, Items will be taken under consideration and may be referred to staff. The City Council welcomes comments, including criticisms about the policies, procedures, programs, or services of the City, or of the acts or omissions of the City Council. Speakers shall not use threatening, profane, or abusive language which disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of city council. The city is committed to maintaining the workplace free of unlawful harassment and is mindful the city staff regularly attends council meetings. Discriminatory statements or conduct that is hostile, intimidating, oppressive, or abusive are per se disruptive to a meeting and will not be tolerated. Let's see. Yeah, will not be tolerated. Okay, so public comments. Our first public comment comes from Suzanne Luther.

Oops, hold on. Hi, I'm Suzanne Luther of Hayward Concerned Citizens, and I'm here before you to respond to Mayor Salinas's reaction to my comments during the budget portion of last council meeting. I was able to view the video of the budget and finance committee meeting to which my comment was based, and I misheard what Mayor Salinas said. My comment was based on a basic misunderstanding between what I heard and what the mayor said, and for that I apologize.

Next public comment is Kashmir. Is it Duga? Just make sure you hit the button, the green button in the middle right there.

Almost. Mr. Mayor, my apologies. I believe that's on item 14, right?

Oh, wait a minute. Oh, it is.

Not yet. I'll call you. I'll call you. Yeah.

Okay. My bad. Okay. Next item is Eric Ekhorn? Ekhorn. Ekhorn. Yeah. My apologies. Hit the button again. Yeah, there you go.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and the council. My name is Eric Eichhorn. I'm a resident of the city of Hayward. I recently noticed in the stack email that comes out each month that an announcement kind of slipped in quietly. I hadn't heard of this before and I read the stack every month that there is suddenly going to be enforcement beginning on July 1st of laws on overnight parking and time limits in the city garages, which apparently I didn't even know the existence of them. And I think a lot of people don't because they've apparently not been enforced for years and years, which I think speaks to the point that maybe they weren't good things to enforce and that was recognized. Now, for some reason, they're being enforced. So this was announced kind of suddenly. I also notice that the enforcement is starting right when the city council is going on recess for a month. That doesn't look good. And it's going to be a hardship on some people. And the other funny thing about it is it says that as a next phase, the city plans to introduce a parking permit program to meet the longer term parking needs of people who live and work in downtown. Well, that's kind of backwards. It seems like you'd want to put the permit program in place first and let people sign up to do their parking legitimately and then if they don't then bring down the hammer and and enforce these laws that have been there all along, but not enforced. So this really seems like cart before the horse. The other small point to make is that the rationale is to free up space so that there is parking for people doing business with merchants during their hours, but overnight parking doesn't interfere with that. Nobody cares if your car is there between midnight and 6 in the morning because nobody's going to the stores anyway. So that's all I have to say.

Thank you very much. Thank you. And I think all the other cards are for items on the agenda. I have one last speaker for public comment is Mr. Chris Yellich.

Is this on? Yeah. Honorable Mayor Salinas, members of the City Council, I'm Chris Yellich. I'm with a project in town called SoMe. And I wanted to come tonight just to recognize your staff. We've had our struggles out there with the project and the staff had gotten together with our folks and has really turned a process that was a little bit difficult into something that's been great. And it started with Sarah Bowser getting your team and our team together to really go through issues that face all projects. And I wanted to recognize her in particular for having the impetus to get us all together. And then I just want to recognize each of the people that work so hard that you have on your staff and bring up their names tonight. In Public Works, Saeed Saibi, He's great because what happens in the field and what you go draw on plans doesn't always work when you get in the field. And he's always had a bright smile on his face, came willing to help us. And I'll tell you, I'll say this about everybody, they're very tough but very fair, which is what we always want. Our inspectors, Mustafa Taha, Miguel De Rio, and then Director Dave Hong. And on the building and safety side, Dennis Alvarado, which was really the impetus for me coming tonight, because I know he's getting ready to retire, and I wanted to recognize him, and he's been great. We actually know all the inspectors on our project, Steve Miller, Jose Rendon, and Abraham Magda. They're great. Secretary Adrian Roman, and the permit tech Ali Ahmad. And then on the community development side, I want to point out Christina Morales, Leah Schmidt and Doris Tang. I'm kind of an older school person. I like getting together in meetings versus doing calls. And I have to say they were always, would meet with us, meet with us in person to go through the issues that we have out of the site. And I'm very grateful for that. And then lastly, I'd like to say congratulations to you all on bringing Jennifer Ott to your city i know what a great addition she's been and she's been so helpful to us as well and then last i'm going to close on this Great leaders attract great people. So it's a big thank you to you all for having the staff that you have. And we're very appreciative from the project standpoint. I want you to know how great your staff is and how hard they work. And I know they're getting pulled in all kinds of different directions from different people, but we're very grateful. So I want to tell you thank you.

Mr. Yellich, if you need another 45 minutes, you may have that.

What project is that?

I believe it's the SOMI project. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And I believe Councilmember Goldstein had a public comment.

Yeah, thank you. So I just wanted to take a minute to shout out to Sanjana Sivaraj, who is my summer intern. First of all, thank you for stepping up to be an intern, and thank you for being here.

Oh, there she is right there. Okay, great. Welcome. Okay, so I don't see any more public comments. So I will close public comment and I will move on to city manager's comments, Ms. Ott.

Great, good evening, Mayor, Council Members, and you thought it was the last word on Juneteenth, but if you don't mind, I'm gonna go ahead and read a couple more things, summarize it, just make sure if anyone's tuning in late, they know what's coming. But in addition to this evening's proclamation and recognition, Juneteenth observations will continue through the weekend in Hayward. At noon this Thursday, we will hold a ceremonial raising of the Juneteenth and Pan-African flags on City Hall Plaza, and we invite the Hayward community to join us. On Friday, city government offices will be closed in recognition of the Juneteenth holiday. And then the big event, the annual Hayward Juneteenth Freedom Celebration will take place Saturday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at a new location, Mount Eden High School, 2300 Panama Street. And there'll be a Juneteenth history reading, live music, DJs, vendors, activities for children, and more. And for the lineup, visit the event's Instagram page at instagram.com forward slash Juneteenth Hayward. Our next item is on our World Cup watch parties. So our Economic Development Division recently launched Hayward Amplified, a program that provides small grants to help businesses create engaging experiences that attract customers and bring people together. Funding is provided to purchase equipment such as televisions, projectors, sound systems, lighting, and live entertainment. and what perfect timing. Businesses throughout the city are hosting World Cup watch parties and offering food and drink specials. Early feedback is very positive with reports of large customer turnouts and high energy gatherings. And for more information on Hayward Amplified and the watch parties, go to the city's website, hayward-ca.gov, and then search Amplified. Lastly, the city's recruitment period for applicants to serve on city commissions has been open since April and closes July 31st. We have vacancies to fill on the clean and green, community services, library, personnel, and planning commissions. And meetings of these bodies are currently held in person at Hayward City Hall and service on them is open to all residents. For more information, including an application, go to the City of Hayward website, hayward-ca.gov, and search appointed bodies, or contact the city clerk's office at cityclerk at hayward-ca.gov, or 510-583-4400. Thank you so much.

and you know i i'm not gonna let this opportunity uh uh get away from me but um you know now that we have hard in the room i have to give it up for hard hard has been doing watch parties at area parks throughout hayward in the hayward area and um i don't know if you have seen the flyer if you haven't there it's all over their social media and of course you can go to the hard website but they had this huge television monitor that's like 10 feet by, I don't know, 15 feet or something. It's huge. There was a watch party at Eden Shores Park the other day, and there had to have been anywhere from 300 to 400 people out there watching World Cup soccer. So, Hard, thank you very much for all of your work doing this and really promoting FIFA. Yeah, so let's give Hard a big round of applause. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, next, I'm gonna move on to our consent calendar. I do have some public comments on our consent calendar, and I know there's some council members that wanted to make some comments. I'm gonna go to public comment first, and then I'll return to the dais. So I'll start with Mr. Kashmir Duga. You're back. Yeah, 14, yeah. Yeah, and just make sure you hit the button, the green button on the base. There you go, and then bring the mic down.

Yes, please.

There you go.

Yeah, my name Kashima Duga. I own the business on Mission Boulevard in Hayward last 43 years. So I have a little citations. So please take a look. So because somebody just doing purposely to nail us. Somebody don't like us or something. So that's why I came today to check these and take a look, please. Yes.

Thank you. We cannot respond to you directly from the dais, but we will take a look. We do have a process in place, and the city attorney will be evaluating those.

Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate that. Our next speaker is, is it Selena Nye? Yeah, Selena Nye. Sounds like Selena's.

So the green button. Okay. Good evening mayors and the members of city councils. My name is Selina Nee and then I'm one of the owner of the property located at 1085 Fawcett Avenue. Thank you for allowing me to speak regarding the proposed penalty and assessment fees. And then first I want to acknowledge the city's concern about the property's condition. I understand that complaints were made. And I appreciate the effort of the city staff and public safety personnel who respond to those concerns. And I'm not here to dispute the city's actions, and I'm here to respectfully request the consideration of a reduction away of the proposed penalty and the assessment fees due to the circumstance that occurred during 2025. In early 2005, I was diagnosed with significant cataracts in both eyes, and my vision to read printed documents and manage paperwork became extremely difficult. My doctor strongly recommended me to do the surgery as soon as possible. At that same time, my partner, Sean, suffered a life-threatening medical emergency and was hospitalized in the

UCSF ICU with serious infection and heart complications. After his discharge, I became his primary caregiver for several months. and I did IV antibiotic twice a day and assisted with the daily care and transferred him to many medical appointments. As my own vision became worse and worse, I delayed my surgery because my partner depend on me for daily care. So I wait until he became stable and able to manage his basic daily activities before leaving the state for the treatment because I lacked vision insurance and could not afford surgery in the state. So I ultimately underwent the surgery in China. During that period, while dealing with both my own medical condition and my caregiving responsibilities, and unfortunately failed to respond to the city's notice in a timely manner. I'm so sorry about that. So I take responsibility for my failures. However, once I became aware of the situation, I act immediately. I contact the city, I hire a landscaper to clean the overgrown rentations and brought the property into the compliance. I also hired a landscaper again this year in April to ensure the property remained maintained. And I'm committed to continue regular maintenance going forward. So I'm not, you know, asking the council to ignore what happens.

Ms. Nye, your time is up.

Oh, okay, sorry, sorry.

But... but we do hear you. And just like with Mr. Duggard, we have a process. The city attorney will be evaluating this and then we will be reaching out to people later. Okay?

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Okay, next item is, Well, council members wanted to pull 14, and I lost track on who wanted to pull. Yeah, but I think council member, Mayor Pro Tem Syrup wanted 14. No, you don't want 14? No one wanted 14 up here? Okay, maybe that was it. So since you're the only one with 13, Council Member Goldstein, 13.

Great, thank you. So I noticed that of the 15 addresses, I put them into a mapping tool and saw that as I reported to our city manager that five of the 15 were all within the Tennyson area. And my concern with that is, that since that has been an historically underprivileged area, that my concern is that by adding those fines, that one, we may be adding to the financial burden of folks who are already potentially overly burdened And rather than relying on fines alone, I'm asking that the city reach out and work with our community partners like Glad Tidings and some others out there that have been willing to act as intermediaries to help those neighbors achieve good neighbor status. So just that that's my comment. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Andrews wanted to pull six, seven, 16 and 17.

Yes, they'll all be brief. I wanted to thank the Michael Ness Trust for their contribution to the Hayward Animal Shelter. I also wanted to thank HARD for their agreement to take over La Vista Park. That is going to help us tremendously in terms of savings. And thank you to the Public Works for their tireless efforts in value engineering. that project so it can be a project that's delivered with cost savings. So thank you so much for doing that work. I also wanted to thank ACTC on their quick builds for transit safety and pedestrian safety, bicycle safety. and encourage them to also look at the 880 exit for Tennyson. I will continue to advocate for that exit to be safer for our community, so please look at that exit in particular. And I also wanted to thank, I believe on number 17 there was a property that was sold and will be contributing to our general fund. So I wanted to thank our real estate project manager, Tracy Irving, for making sure that transaction is moving forward as well as posting other parcels that will be bidded on for affordable housing or other projects in the future. So I wanted to thank him for his efforts in the real estate property division, thanks.

Thank you, yeah, ACTC. As the designee to ACTC, the Tennyson 880 overpass, it is a priority, and we have been looking at that. But yes, absolutely, and I've been on there. Every time it comes up, we're on it. Yeah, I think about you. Okay, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Syrup.

Also just wanted to make a quick comment on Seven and reiterate appreciation for HARD. I think this has been a landmark year for partnerships with our parks district. You know, HARD always says we are Hayward's park district. I think more than ever, you know, you're the recreation and parks district. And I think we're finding great ways to play to our strengths in ways that also save taxpayer dollars. And I'm just deeply appreciative of the work we've been able to do this year from events like the World Cup viewings to helping us save and construct La Vista in record time with maximum savings for taxpayers. So just deep appreciation, keep up the great work, and looking forward to continuing this partnership. Thank you.

Thank you, absolutely. Council Member Roach.

Thank you, I wanted to make a comment on consent item number 11, which is having to do with the Navigation Center and the Bay Area Community Services Management. It's a general fund allocation, so I wanted to make sure we said something about this. The Hayward Navigation Center under the management of BACS has been really successful, and Hayward has moved many people to housing over the years. So I congratulate BACS on that work, and I know that work will continue at the new location at Regis Village. And that will now be part of a larger innovative program helping the unhoused in all sorts of areas. And I wanted to bring it up because while I'm really excited about the Navigation Center continuing to do the good work, the beginning of Reach's Village has been a bit bumpy, and in particular on our public services. And so I just wanted to sort of take this moment to say I'm really pleased with the work. I know that BACS is working with our staff at the county to make this better, because I know it's a big program and there were unforeseen complications. And so I'm really pleased with what I'm hearing, especially around bringing to nurse staff or medical staff on board that perhaps sees the burden, especially on our fire department. And so I want to thank you for that offer. And, you know, and we'll be looking to make sure you write that that happens, because I think that will be a significant step in allowing medical staff on site to triage to deal with those non-emergency calls. So it's not immediately affecting our fire department. And so just encourage you to keep working on that. You know, thank you to everyone working together on this, that we want to make this as great of a program in Hayward as possible. So thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. I also wanted to just to acknowledge the back staff being here, the director and your team, you being here tonight says a great deal. So I really appreciate that. Thank you. Okay, so I don't have any more comment. I will close public comment, come back to the dais, and see if there's any motion and second. Hold on a second. I see moved by Councilmember Andrews, seconded by Councilmember Goldstein, and if there are no other questions, Madam City Clerk, we're ready to vote. And it looks like the consent calendar has passed with unanimous consent, unanimous vote. What I'd like to do next is I'd like to go back in the agenda and I will consider reopening public comment for one more speaker, Karen Goldman.

you're on just just start talking i want to thank you for allowing me to speak i know the comment time had passed um i wanted to bring up the parking enforcement uh this gentleman brought up um i've lived in hayward for two and a half years i like hayward very much and when we moved in the landlord said they don't enforce parking so anyway and we knew that there was going to be a problem at some point but we're here we are so and the city needs money from parking enforcement. That is also true as well. There wasn't really a notification except for one social media post that we saw. Nothing else that I saw. I did email, I did ask about stuff. They were not able to give me any clarity as to what streets they were gonna start coming out to. The majority of the people in our neighborhood Our renters, we don't have any place to park our cars. And when I did look to see about permit parking, it's limited to a certain area. I did call. I did email to ask about getting that like certain, you know, to see where we can maybe add that into our areas. I got no response. And I, you know, if parking permits are available, I gladly pay for those. That's what I have to do. But again, it's going to the enforcement's going to start before the six months. And I'm not sure what people are going to do. So anyway, there wasn't a lot. Anyway, that's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so I will close public comment. I'm looking at the city clerk. Can I close public comment?

Mr. Mayor, we have a gentleman here for item 14. Item 14?

Yes. Okay, I will reopen public comment and have the gentleman come and speak on item 14.

Good afternoon, everyone. So I received this letter stating the upcoming special assessment for unpaid program fees slash penalties. Just to be noted that there is no date on this. And according to the government code section 38773.5, there must be a date on there because the person has 10 days to file an appeal. which if you guys wanna confirm that there is no date on this letter. I don't know if that's a camera and they could show it.

We'll take your word for it and we'll just make sure staff has a copy of it. We can take a picture of it or something. All right. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. They wanted me to state my name for the record and I'm gonna leave this. No, turn it back on. You were on, there you go, yeah.

So for the record, my name is Alejandro Rodriguez and this is in regards to 22344 Happyland Avenue.

I appreciate you guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. So I believe we are all done with public comment and I will move on to, or no, we were done with public comment on the consent calendar. So now we're done. Okay. Okay, so I will move on to our public hearing, item 22, PH26-029, LLAD 96-1, assessment hearing. Adopt a resolution to approve the final engineer's report, reconfirm maximum base assessment amounts, confirm the assessment diagrams and fiscal assessments, order the levy and collection of fiscal assessments and adopt a resolution to approve funding recommendations and appropriate special revenue funds for consolidation, landscaping and lighting assessment district number 96-1 zones one through 18 for fiscal year 26-27 And this is gonna come to us by way of our maintenance services director, Todd Rollman. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna forego staff report and come straight to council and see if there are any questions from council. Seeing none, I will open this up for public comment. I don't have any cards and I don't think anyone is online. So I will close public comment and come back to the day as- Mr. Mayor. Oh, we do have one public comment. Yes, I do see. Robert Finkel.

Yes, hello.

Yes.

Can you hear me? Yes. My comment was for consent counter item 14. May I proceed?

I will allow it, go ahead.

Thank you, and good evening, Mayor Salinas and members of the City Council. My name is Robert Finkel, and I represent one of the property owners, San Antonio 30630 LLC, who are impacted by the consent calendar on item 14. Before anything else, I wanna thank the City Council and the city for allowing regulated cannabis in Hayward. I think it works to address the harms caused by the war on drugs, and I thank you for working to shut down the unlawful operators who want to cut that. The legal grows have real victims, the public, the lawful businesses that play by the rules, the city itself, and yes, even unwitting landowners like my client. I'm here tonight about one of those penalized landowners who did what a responsible owner is supposed to do. He signed a written commercial lease with a tenant who promised in writing not to break the law. The tenant broke that promise, and now my client faces the consequences for conduct they did not commit and did not know about. And to be specific, on a consent calendar in the spreadsheet that sets out all the penalties, my client accounts for $14.5 million of those penalties. So I would say something, what, three-quarters of those? And to consider those numbers in the grand scheme, the property itself that's being penalized or the activity at which the property is being penalized, it's worth $4 million. So the penalty before you at 14.5 is nearly four times the value of the entire property itself. And the question is, for what? There's no cognizable public nuisance in this instance. There's no environmental harm. There's no lawsuits, no cleanup. The grow is gone. The tenant is gone. What remains is a penalty that would take my client's property several times and its value over top of that. Now, the ordinance at issue with respect to my client was written to be harsh for a reason, to deter gray market operators who profit from breaking the law. It was not written to punish an unwitting landlord who signed a commercial lease in good faith that included a written promise that the tenant would obey the law. So applied in this instance, the penalty doesn't serve the ordinance's purpose. Instead, it punishes the wrong person by taking their property. beside the fact that it's terribly unconstitutional as written and as applied to my client. And this penalty is amazing. It's tremendously huge. So we've submitted a written objection setting out our legal grounds in full, and I'll rely on that and not take the council's time restating it. Thank you for letting me be heard, but I'll leave you with this. There's simply no justification for converting this enormous and unconstitutional penalty into a tax lien against a specific property. and I respectfully ask the council to decline to confirm this special assessment, so thank you.

Thank you very much. Moving on to public comment on the item at hand. I don't see anybody online. I don't have any cards, so I will close public comment and I'll come back to the data for a motion. And hold on a second, don't call it out. Let me see. Hold on. Moved by Council Member Zermeno, seconded by Council Member Roach. And if there are no other questions, Madam City Clerk, you can prompt the vote. And the item unanimously passes. Moving on to the second public hearing, which is item number 23, PH26-030, MD-1 assessment hearing. Adopt a resolution to approve the final engineer's report, confirm the maximum base assessment rate, confirm the assessment rate, confirm the assessment diagram, order the levy and collection of fiscal assessment and adopt a resolution to approve funding recommendations and appropriate revenue and expenditure budgets for maintenance district number one dash, for number one dash storm drainage plumbing station and storm drain conduit, Pacheco Way, Stratford Road and Roos Lane for fiscal year 2027. And this is also going to come to us by way of maintenance services director, Mr. Todd Rollman. I'm going to forego staff report on this, and I'm going to come back to Deus and see if there's any questions from any council members. Seeing none, I'll open up for public comment. I do not have any public comment cards. I do not see anybody online. So I will close public comment, and I'll come back to the Deus for a motion and... Moved by Councilmember Goldstein and seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Syrup. Madam City Clerk, if you can please post the roll. And the item passes unanimously, thank you. Moving on to item number 24, PH26-031, MD-2 assessment hearing, adopt a resolution to approve the final engineer's report, confirm the maximum base assessment rate, confirm the fiscal assessment rate, confirm the assessment diagram, order the levy and collection of fiscal assessment, and adopt a resolution to approve funding recommendations and appropriate revenue and expenditure budgets for maintenance district number two, Eden Shores, storm water buffer and facilities for fiscal year 2027. This is going to come to us by way of Director Rollman. I am going to forego staff report and come back up to the dais and see if there are any questions. Seeing none, I will open up for public comment. I do not have any public comment cards and I do not see anybody online, so I will close public comment and I'll entertain a motion. Moved by Council Member Roach, seconded by Yes. Well, I didn't see. Yeah, there was an override for some reason. Here, do it again. Just do mover and seconder.

I'll move the motion. I mean, sorry, I'll move the item.

Okay.

One second, one second.

Moved by councilmember Roach seconded by councilmember Zirmano But you know what just because it's on the record here. I'm gonna say moved by councilmember Roach seconded by councilmember Moved seconded by councilmember Zirmano. Whoo. We're gonna get through this Madam city clerk. It was moved by councilmember Roach seconded by councilmember Zirmano Madam city clerk if you could post the roll And the item passes unanimously. Mr. Rollman, thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Okay, next item is item number 25. This is PH26-032. This is the Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan. Review and adopt the 2025 Urban Water Management and 2025 the 2025 Urban Water Management and 2025 Water Shortage Contingency Plans. And this is gonna come to us by way of Director Alex Amiri. And Mr. Amiri, take it away.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor and council members. Good evening. I'm not going to repeat the title. Urban Water Management Plan has a requirement to be updated every five years. The last time we did that was in 2020, so this new one is for 2025. There is really not a whole lot of drama in this, but we have Cheryl Munoz, who is our Water Management resource manager online, and she's going to present the report. Cheryl, go ahead.

Yes. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. In tonight's presentation, I'll review the key components of the 2025 urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan. The two plans are water planning documents that help agencies evaluate whether existing and planned water supplies are sufficient to meet current and future demands under normal dry year and extended drought conditions. The Urban Water Management Planning Act of 1983 requires that all California agencies that supply 3,000 acre feet or more of water per year or have 3,000 or more service connections prepare the two plans every five years. Hayward has more than 38,000 service connections and deliveries of over 15,000 acre feet of water last year. Therefore, the city is subject to the provisions of the act. The components of the plan are highly prescribed in the act and must be addressed. I have a graphic here of the main required components. There's six boxes and I will go through each box quickly. So box one, water demand projections. Staff worked with the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency and the other 25 wholesale customers of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to develop water demand projections using a consistent methodology. We all worked together on the demand model. The model is very detailed and incorporated Hayward-specific factors. The water demand projections are planning level estimates over a 25-year horizon.

Excuse me.

Actual demand may not reach the estimated quantities. Demand is affected by various uncertainties such as economic activity, mountain type of development, climate factors like drought, and additional plumbing code changes that may reduce water use. For the Hayward specific demand model inputs, water resources staff work closely with staff from the planning division and economic development division to make sure that demand projections capture all known potential new development and community revitalization for both residential and non-residential sectors. Recycled water for non-residential use was also included. The bar graphs illustrate the current water use and projected water demand among the city's various customer classes. The column on the left shows current usage in 2025 with about 56% of use attributed to residential customers. This is the main use. 23% attributed to commercial, industrial, and institutional use, and irrigation use at about 14%. The column on the right shows that future water demand among the customer classes is expected to shift. By 2050, the majority of water use will be attributed to industrial, commercial, and institutional use at about 46%. It's anticipated that residential use will decrease to about 35%, and landscape use is expected to be about the same or decrease very slightly by one percentage point. So the last graph was disaggregated and this table summarizes the total water demand projections from 2030 to 2050. Overall water use is expected to increase due to growth in population, housing, business and redevelopment of existing properties. Moving on to water supply sources, Hayward receives all of its potable water supply from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's regional water system. The SFPUC has verified its ability to serve Hayward's demand during the urban water management planning period, urban water management planning period, in years of normal precipitation. Hayward also has a tertiary level recycled water system that's owned and operated by the city. Recycled water is a reliable, locally owned supply of water for non-potable uses. You may notice that groundwater is not included on this slide. The city has four standby wells that are permitted for short-term emergency use only. So for the purposes, planning purposes of the groundwater management plan, it was not included. Now we move to water supply reliability. As I mentioned, Hayward receives all of its water supply from SFPUC's regional water system. And because of this, the city is required to include information in the urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan from the SFPUC to determine water supply reliability in normal and dry years. Implementation of the Bay Delta plan would seriously impact the SFPUC's ability to deliver water in the event of multiple year drought. The SFPUC has opted to incorporate the Bay Delta plan in its reliability analysis, which would be a worst case supply scenario. And Hayward has incorporated it as well. Implementation of the Bay Delta plan could result in 40 to 50% reduction in our water supply during extended droughts, and that could lead to rationing. So these are graphs of what supply shortfalls could look like in a future years, or excuse me, in future years based on a reliability assessment from the SFPUC. With the Bay Delta plan, Hayward has one dry year, estimated shortfall would be between 31 and 38% during the planning period of 2030 to 2050. During multiple dry years, the graph on the right, the estimated shortfalls are more severe between 42 and 47%. Moving on to the Water Shortage Contingency Plan. This document is required and shows how agencies can accommodate shortages from 10% to 50% or more. The plan has six stages of water shortage and specific water use measures to be taken at each stage. The stages are cumulative, so the prohibitions increase as the percentages increase. The plan provides a city council with flexibility to substitute equally effective measures if conditions change or new strategies are identified. Moving on to demand management, Hayward has a wide range of demand management, water conservation measures and programs to help customers reduce water use. This slide shows a partial list of what we offer. The city has high levels of community participation. An example is our water efficiency landscape classes that are offered and are always well attended. As new programs come out, we will evaluate them and introduce them as they become available and cost effective. So lastly, the Water Conservation Act of 2009, referred to as SBX7-7, was enacted to reduce statewide urban per capita water use by 10% in 2015 and 20% by 2020. Hayward exceeded the 20% requirement and reduced its per capita use by 30% and is compliant. So this is a public hearing that is required for the urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan. The city has met all public noticing and document review requirements. No written public comments were received. Staff recommends that city council adopts the proposed 2025 urban water management plan and 2025 water shortage contingency plan. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Cheryl. Mr. Mayor, we are here to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. This is a public hearing, so I will first open up for questions from the council. And I do not see any questions from Councilmember Andrews, just for the record. Councilmember Andrews, I see you.

Mayor knows I love this topic. I had a question regarding the data center usage. So wanted to know in the report, it talked about an open loop system and it will be significant savings on a closed loop system. Would the study go further into talking about how much the usage would be with a closed loop system? And because there will still be water used for the data center. So I just wanted to see if we can get more specifics in that demand study.

So right now, we don't have operating data centers in Hayworth that have a closed system, so that information is not available to us. But I've had conversations with those who are proposing closed systems in Hayworth, and they have told me that for a 100 megawatt data center, the usage would be in the neighborhood of 4,000 gallons a day, which is very modest. We don't have any information to confirm that yet, but that is what I have received from the conversation and also available literature.

Okay, and can Bosca, so I do serve on the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency Board, can they also give us guidance to how we look at water usage in the future for future developments as we review applications, or just to have it on file as a fact page for the community as there have been a lot of questions about data centers in general?

Yeah, we coordinate with Bosca, and there are other agencies around the Bay Area, City of Santa Clara, City of San Jose, that have data centers, and we correspond with them, collaborate with them, and exchange information with them.

Okay, and then in the report, it showed that the residential is, is determined to go down in future years, but industrial is determined to go up. And is that particularly to a certain type of industry that they're seeing? I know that you reference economic development, some other folks visit, particularly in a certain industrial sector, part of the industrial sector that we're seeing an increase coming from?

So basically, the chart that you saw showed percentages to the extent that there are plumbing changes and other things that reduce the percentage of residential usage. The percentage of industrial, commercial, institutional use shows a higher number in the bar.

Okay, great. Thank you. Sure.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Temsaro.

Thank you for this presentation. A few questions. So can we go back a few slides to the recycled water demand and the expected growth for recycled water demand?

Maybe rather the lack thereof. Keep going back, please.

You're right here, perfect. So yeah, we're seeing a lot of growth in potable water, but I would say pretty minimal growth of recycled water. I guess this is just a matter of the capacity that we're actually able to produce, or is there not an intentional strategy for generating more demand or requiring demand for recycled water usage?

So one of the features of Hayward is that we do not have a whole lot of capacity for use of recycled water for irrigation. Our distribution system is limited right now. We are in the process of doing a comprehensive plan to expand our recycled water production and distribution. It is going to be costly. It's going to take some time to do it, but we are committed per the council direction to expand the use of recycled water.

So taking into account what you just said and what's on the slide here, is this 191 by 2050, 25 years from now, assuming we have implemented these changes, is that taking into account this new plan, or would we update these numbers after this is implemented?

Just the second phase of the plan. The first phase is in place right now. The second phase is in planning and design, and there will be future phases, but we don't have any projection for that.

And so these numbers don't take into account the second phase or future phases. Correct. So this 191 could be higher. We might want to revise this in the future. It could be higher, correct. As we build more recycled water capacity and infrastructure.

Yes, and one of potential uses are data centers. We are in conversation with them. They have particular requirements for the type of recycled water. Even our tertiary treated water will have to be treated at a higher level to be usable for them. But we are in conversation with them, and that's another source of using recycled water.

And that 4,000 gallon a day number feels a little bit lower compared to some of the research that I've read, too. And just so we don't blow this out of proportion, a golf course uses significantly more water in general. And so I just, I really want to make sure that as we have these conversations, we have them in a way that provides accompanying information so we can get a sober analysis of how thirsty these data centers are and how much water they actually require. Because that 4,000 feels very low to me. And... I don't want to get into a debate about data centers tonight, but I just want to make sure we're looking at comparators for the megawatts that folks are looking into and that we're finding ways to supply recycled water at a minimum to them. Can we go back one more slide? I guess just on the topic of data centers again, is that where we're seeing a lot of this increase in commercial demand? I mean, we're talking about a 23% increase in commercial demand over the next 25 years, where the majority of water is not going to go to residents anymore, but rather businesses. So I guess I'm just curious, where do we see this demand primarily coming from?

Data centers are in the mix, but we have a whole lot of different industrial uses in Hayward, and they all contribute to this. We also have institutional uses. We have the university, we have Shibu College, and all of those are in this mix.

Okay, so thanks for clarifying what's in here. Is there that much undeveloped or empty space in our industrial park? I mean, is every warehouse going to convert to being a soda manufacturer? I guess I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around where this increased commercial demand is stemming from. Is it assuming population growth? Enrollment's not great right now at some of our schools, so it's hard for me to circle that square. You know what I mean? I'm just trying to understand why there's a 23% jump here. Or how that's even possible.

Because of the quality of the water that we have here in Hayworth, which is second to none, as you know, we attract a lot of beverage manufacturers, food manufacturers. For instance, La Croix that is now being bottled at Shasta is the only place in California that that water is being bottled. PRODUCED AND DISTRIBUTED TO DIFFERENT CITIES. SO THERE IS GOING TO BE AN INCREASE IN THAT KIND OF USE. OF COURSE, PEPSI BOTTLING HERE WITH AQUAFINA AND DIFFERENT KIND OF DRINKS THAT THEY HAVE. GOT IT.

IN THIS PLAN, CAN WE HOP FORWARD A FEW SLIDES TO THE SHORTAGE PERCENTAGES AND THE DIFFERENT ONE MORE. YES, THANK YOU. In the case of an emergency, are we guaranteeing that residents have first dibs and we're not cutting off resident water supply in favor of a business's water supply, for example?

It will be all up to you to council to decide and direct us how we are going to do that. Our residents have been super great in terms of water conservation. As you know, I've mentioned this before, we are the fourth smallest or fifth smallest user in the Bay Area. There are over 400 water agencies in California. The city of Hayworth has been the 11th lowest water water user in terms of residential per capita so the last time during the drought we had a requirement to have a four percent reduction our residents achieved 23 reduction and as you heard sb x-7 required a 20 reduction by 2020 our reduction was over 30 and that is overall industrial commercial

and residential that's great i mean that's something we should definitely be proud of i think my question is more in line with the water shortage contingency plan you're saying it's up to us we're talking about a plan right now tonight can you clarify or it does require further action to say if there's a significant shortage you know like we're not going to shortchange the residents when it comes to a shortage this is a menu that you can decide from and tell us how to apportion the available waters Okay, I guess the reason I'm struggling with this conversation is that the recommendations just to adopt the plan as is, and this wasn't really presented in a work session fashion, for example, where we could have a conversation on what this menu should be. So, you know, I understand what staff recommendation is, I'm happy to support it tonight. But I think that there needs to be further conversation around if, if you can't give me a clear answer that resident needs are going to be prioritized first, if that's not as explicit in this plan, then maybe I have a problem with it. So can you help assuage this concern?

When there is a requirement for reduction, let's say 30%, we are going to come before you with a menu that you can choose from how to apportion the water, who is going to have a higher cut versus residents.

So you're saying during an emergency, the decisions will be presented before us. It's not necessarily something that happens within this specific plan, but during the emergency itself?

Correct.

Okay, thank you. That helps clarify my question. I appreciate that. And then just a few more here is... You mentioned that we have this decline of 87 gallons per capita by 2020. Do we have a new goal that we're shooting for by 2030? What's our per capita goal to ensure that we're staying on track for water conservation as a city?

I understand. And thank you for your question. That was a state requirement to cut 20% by 2020. I think that that was... Governor Schwarzenegger that came up with that number, 20% by 2020. There are no new numbers that we have to meet right now.

Okay. I mean, given that climate resilience is one of our goals, I'm curious if we could set goals for ourselves rather than being forced by the state. That can be a conversation for another time. Okay. Those are my questions. Thank you. Thank you.

Council members or menu?

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for a very good report, very thorough. I had a question on the 50%, 2050 decrease of residents or increase of businesses for the water, and that's been answered, and I had a question on gray water also, so that has been answered. We will work towards increasing gray water production then? That's what I heard.

Correct. Recycled water. Yes, sir.

Okay. And I also heard you say that the data center would use gray water if it was a certain quality, correct?

Correct. Either they will work with us to purify the water and transmit it to them, or that they take our tertiary treated recycled water and purify it on site and use it. There are examples of that in California. We are in conversation with our data centers to see if that is possible to do here.

All right. And we have enough wells for an emergency?

Yes, we have four wells right now that can produce just shy of the average water use in Hayworth. So during an emergency that we lose, let's say, HHC supply, we can go to our residents and say, look, this is not the time to use a whole lot of water for irrigation and other uses. And if you cut back by 10% or so, we would be able to meet within our means by using well water.

Very good. And all the trees that we are planting, are we doing the wet Wednesdays with gray water or with potable water?

We will have enough water for those trees. We don't? We do. Oh, we do. So we do the gray water.

Correct. Thank you very much.

Yes, sir.

Council Mayor Bonilla.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Director Emery. I think a lot of my questions have been addressed through my colleagues' questions, but just to kind of circle back on the trend that we're seeing, you know, where we're projecting with the commercial water usage, you know, doubling, I guess, are there things that we can put in place to require better conservation of water or, you know, when it comes to the business usage? Because I agree with you. It seems like our residents have done a great job conserving water. And then when you kind of look at the trend, the residential water use is significantly going down. But it's being replaced, obviously, with a significant increase in the commercial water usage. So is there any sort of like policies that we can put in place to require commercial usage to be more efficient?

Absolutely, we encourage them, we work with them, we provide incentives to them for reducing, but I just want to go back to those charts and mention that they are based on percentages to the extent that residents do a better job Plumbing code changes and fixtures become much more water conserving. They become more effective. The percentage of residential reduces, and because everything is 100%, the percentage of commercial shows at a higher level.

Got it, because I guess what I'm hoping to see is the overall water usage goes down because the residents are doing their part and the commercial is doing their part. But I know what you're saying, which is the chart's going to show the inverse. And I think that that was my concern is that I don't want all of our residents going through all of these water conservation measures to just have that water be used by data centers or large commercial businesses that are coming into the city anyways. I kind of want to make sure that they're meeting their commitment for water conservation as they're building new projects in our community.

I understand that. When I started this work, toilet flush used six gallons of water. Then the code changed, the fixture changed, and it went to three and a half gallons. It further changed to 1.8. Now it's 1.2, and toilets are available with 0.8 gallons of flush. So when that happens, the overall usage goes down, regardless of active conservation on the side of residents.

Makes sense. And then, when we talk about the four wells that we have, you had said that they pretty much can support the average daily use. For how long can we run those wells if we needed to use them?

For a long time, they are sustainable over a long time.

And would that be the same sort of method that we would use if we had a water disruption because of an earthquake, for an example?

Correct, yeah. If there is an earthquake that disrupts the supply of HHA water to us, yes, that is a source that we can activate and use.

How long does it take us to switch to that source?

a short time. We are exercising those wells on a regular basis to make sure that they are on standby and ready to be used. I just want to be clear that they are only for emergency use. We cannot use them to supplement the water that we get from HHE like some other agencies close to us are doing.

Makes sense. And then just going back to Council Member Syrup's point, I do think that it's so important that we have a very clear, and we probably don't need to wait till the disaster to happen, to have a very clear sort of prioritization method for water demand when we are using our wells, right? Because in that case, I do think that we would want to make some pretty serious decisions around commercial not getting allocated or whatever, however we go to ration, but our residents need to be at the top of that list. And when I was thinking about kind of the prioritization that is kind of in here now. One of the things that it said is when we need to get to like a 50% conservation, we'll stop non-essential water usage, right? What is non-essential? Not today, but I think those are the discussions that we need to get more comfortable with because it's non-essential shutting off residential usage or is that considered essential, right? So I think what I'm wanting to understand is when we are in these water contingency issues or when we are under this, you know, whatever shortfall or state of emergency and when we need to prioritize water demand, I want to make sure that our residents are at the top of that prioritization and hopefully we can have that discussion before the crisis occurs to align on how we prioritize things.

Could the Public Safety Committee maybe take that on as an item?

Yeah, we can figure out how we action that later, city manager, right?

Yeah, and I might suggest the infrastructure committee as something we could bring that back to at some point, if that's okay. Just only just because I think the water, typically our water infrastructure comes before that committee. Perfect.

And then my final question was, when we look at the recycled water demand, I thought the chart had said that from where we're at now, going to 2030, the recycled water usage is going to go down, and then it's going to go back up. So can we look at that slide one more time? And then, did I read that right, that our 2025... Yeah, so it says we're currently at 72, but in 2030, it's going to go to 68 before it goes back up. Why would our recycled water usage decline over the next five years?

You know, there are certain businesses that use recycled water, and they have departed or plan to, and we have accounted for that small change.

Because it seems like our recycled water usage is going to be pretty flat over the next 10 years. If we're at 72 now and in 2035, we're expecting it to be at 78.

We have to talk to our customers and bring them on board. The cost of recycled water is not much less expensive than the cost of drinking water. Drinking supplies here are available. So we have to... bring them on board and by regulations and by providing some incentives. Right now, council has approved a 20% reduction for the cost of recycled water compared to drinking water. So that is one incentive we can add to it, but it is not something that it requires a lot of work. When you have recycled water, you have to on a monthly basis, prepare a report, submit it to the city. They are subject to inspection because it is not drinking water. You want to make sure that everything is working properly. You're not getting recycled water mixed with drinking water. So it is a little bit more cumbersome than using just drinking water.

All right, thank you so much, I appreciate that.

Keep up the great work. Thank you, Council Member Roach.

You know, I'm going to forego my questions. Almost all of them were asked, so thank you. I'll wait until the workshops. Thanks.

Okay, and then Council Member Andrews has another.

Just a quick question. For us upgrading our system or the type of water we're getting, are they asking for reverse osmosis or some other more advanced system? Would that impact the cost of our infrastructure upgrades?

Reverse osmosis could be one because that takes all of the impurities out of water. but it is very, very expensive and very energy intensive. So, yeah.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you. I will close this portion, move on to public comment. I don't have any public comment cards. I don't have anyone online, so I will close public comment and I will return to the dais for a motion and a second. Hold on a second, don't say it. Moved by Councilmember Roach, seconded by Councilmember, now I have no one. Hold on a second. Did you hit your button again? No, no, no, you're good. Stop. Moved by Councilmember Roach, seconded by Councilmember Andrews. Madam City Clerk, if there are no questions, we can vote. And then while we're voting, go ahead and make a comment.

I just wanted to let everyone know that our reservoirs are full. So we're at 94%. So we're good there. Thanks.

That's great news right at the beginning of fishing season. So thank you for that news. Yeah. And the item unanimously passes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to item number 26. which is a legislative business, LB26-010, military equipment use, approve the Hayward Police Department's annual military equipment use report for April 2025 through March of 2026 and review ordinance 22-06 adopting military equipment use policy number 706 in compliance with assembly bill number 481. And this report is gonna come to us by, Our chief of police, Brian Matthews, and also I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge also in our room in the chamber tonight is retired chief of police, Tony Chaplin. Mr. Chaplin. Chief Matthews, go right ahead.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you tonight. Tonight, we are going to share our annual military equipment report pursuant to AB 481. So appreciate the opportunity to do that. I want to start off by apologizing for exceeding the five slide rule. We do that every year, but want to make sure that folks are informed. I will be moving fairly quickly through the presentation because I want to get to the discussion piece and answer all your questions. But please feel free to revisit anything in the report that you'd like to. Just brief background on Assembly Bill 481. So this became effective on January 1, 2022. So this is our fifth year coming before the Council for this presentation and seeking this authorization. The bill requires us to obtain approval from you, the City Council, by adoption of a written military equipment use policy via ordinance at a public hearing before we can take certain actions related to military equipment, which is listed in the bill. I do want to highlight for the community that we have a link at the bottom of the slide, but we do have a web page that's dedicated solely to our AB 481 military equipment. It includes a lot of information, including all of our policies, all of that's in there for public consumption, so I encourage people to visit that with any questions. The next slide shows the quantity of military equipment. I'm not gonna go through all of this in the interest of time. I do wanna say that there's a detailed document that's been on our website for several weeks now that outlines all of this for folks that wanna take a deeper dive. I do wanna note that this number, particularly as it pertains to consumables, which are considered to be, you use it one time, you have to replace it. Our inventory flux is based on operational use, training, expiration replenishment guidelines, maintenance, et cetera. So the numbers do fluctuate during the course of the year. This slide reflects the use of military equipment for the time period April 2025 to March 2026. That's our annual reporting period. So for UAS, which is our drones, we had 62 deployments at 61 separate incidents. And for our armored personnel carrier, we had 14 uses, primarily as an example, critical incident response, barricaded subjects, high-risk warrant services, et cetera. The rest of our military equipment that we have in our inventory, as you can see below, was not utilized during this reporting period. So our costs during this reporting period related to military equipment are listed on this slide. Equipment acquisition, $402,000. Training, $270,000. And maintenance, about $4,300. I do want to highlight the armored personnel carrier. That's the biggest price tag for this reporting period. $360,000. If you recall, we received authorization to purchase that several years ago, and finally took delivery of it during this reporting period. So that that was already budgeted for, but we actually paid the bill during this reporting period. That's why the acquisition is high. This slide reflects the fiscal impact of our military equipment. So for fiscal year 25-26, our budget was about $103 million, and we spent approximately $677,000 and some change for equipment and training specific to AB 481, which comes out to be about 0.66% of our overall budget. The next slide is going to be related to our UAS program for ease. I'm just going to refer to them as drones. We want to introduce the drone as a first responder concept. We'll refer to that as DFR for ease. Want to talk a little bit about what that is, why we believe it's important for public safety purposes, and so on. So the remainder of the presentation is going to be related to that. So what is DFR? It's basically drones that are placed in strategic locations in the city to allow for rapid response to calls for service for both the police department and the fire department. And they often arrive at a scene before our staff does. And they allow for images to be provided in real time and critical information to be delivered to police officers and firefighters as they're responding. So I want to highlight that this is a 100% reactive program, which means that it's only utilized when somebody calls 911 to report something, whether it's a crime in progress or an issue or a community complaint. So a typical workflow is that an incident gets reported to a 911 call center, a drone is autonomously flown to the scene. Usually it'll arrive on scene before staff and then staff in a control center monitor live feed images and relay their observations to responding staff in the field. The right hand side of the slide is an example of some relatively local agencies that have DFR concepts in place and are utilizing them today. It's not an exhaustive list. There are others in the state, but wanted to kind of share where we're at in relation to some of our partners. So we believe the DFR concept has undeniable safety and efficiency benefits, provides real time situational awareness, which allows police officers and firefighters to scale responses to emergencies in real time based on firsthand observations. It enhances operational efficiency, so it improves overall response times, even in times where staffing is a challenge, which we know that has been the case for some time. We can actually use this technology to visually clear calls for service without physically sending staff members to the scene, so we can keep police officers and firefighters in service and prepared to respond to the next emergency. This technology would support de-escalation strategies, so especially in a volatile situation, it would allow for a police officer to assess a situation and coordinate a response from a safe distance without direct confrontation with anybody. It unquestionably enhances police officer, firefighter, and community safety. So by allowing critical safety information to be relayed to police officers and firefighters, it'll improve safety outcomes and save lives. So as an example, on the fireside, being able to assess structural integrity of a building prior to entering, observing hazmat incidents from a safe distance, mapping wildland fire paths, etc. for police officers being able to know the direction of a fleeing offender, being able to avoid an ambush, coordinating responses to volatile situations from safe distances. Those are all components of this technology that would enhance safety. This technology would also contribute to offender apprehension and case solvability, so improved response times increases the likelihood of apprehension and case solvability, especially during in-progress crimes. So we did run a trial program. We wanted to test the concept prior to seeking authorization, so we partnered with Axon and Skydio on a trial program that lasted about four weeks. Drones were launched from the rooftop city hall and flown remotely to live incidents as they were reported to the 911 call center. I do want to add that the vendors that we worked with for this trial program provided the technology and equipment at no cost, so we didn't have to pay anything. We appreciate that. From a distance perspective, it was primarily limited to a two-mile radius around City Hall, although there were a couple of cases where we sent the drones across town to a call for service, but there was some impact to battery life and the ability to use that, sending it out at distance. Some of our results, I mean, the preliminary data supports operational efficiency. So we had staff work a total of 215 hours over 22 days. We responded to 326 calls for service. 108 of those we were able to, or 108 calls for service we were able to clear without physically having to send a police officer to the scene. They were able to provide operational information or support to police officers and firefighters on 148 of these calls for service. The drone actually arrived on scene first during 53% of the calls for service, and it reduced response times by an average of 2 minutes and 30 seconds when it was available. And we anticipate with a fully implemented program, the percentage of arriving first on scene would increase significantly. So for the concept, I wanna talk a little bit about structure, oversight, and policy. So for a proposed team, these would be flown and monitored by two community service officers. These are not police officers, they are civilian employees. And we would have them working during times where data shows peak call volumes. They would undergo certified training in drone operations, police and fire operations, and drone-related laws and policies and work within our investigations division under the supervision of a sergeant, a lieutenant, and a captain. As far as the policy is concerned, this is a supplemental concept to our existing drone program, so it would fall under our existing policy that's already been approved by the council and is in use for current operations, and that's our policy 611. It is on the website, available for public consumption. We did make a couple of minor changes to it. We included language that allows for a drone to be flown to an incident that would require a police officer or firefighter to respond. And we also expressly prohibit now staff from manipulating a DFR drone camera system while in flight. I'll talk about that in a minute. Council will continue to receive annual updates. This is something that we have to report on under AB 41 every year, and council will have the ability to approve or disapprove usage annually. I do remember when we stood our drone program up in 2022, telling the council that if we misuse this technology, take it away from us. That remains in place. You have the ability to do that. The program still falls under the oversight of the FAA, Federal Aviation Administration, and we would continue to report publicly drone usage on our website. We do have a standalone website, much like the military equipment. We have a standalone website for our drone program. Usage is logged and available for public consumption now, and that will continue with this concept. Our policy has a prohibited use section that specifically calls out instances where a drone is not to be used, and so that's going to remain unchanged, and that includes the prohibition of random surveillance with this technology. So for this concept, the estimated budget impact, we estimate the cost of a fully implemented program to be around $589,000 annually. And so that includes the drone units, which we're seeking authorization to purchase eight of those, associated software subscription, batteries, accessories. The CSO positions are already funded in our budget. I do wanna emphasize the fact that we are not gonna ask for any additional general fund allocations or increases for this concept. We would use a combination of existing supplies and services, budget, grant funding, and asset forfeiture money. And if we've had conversations with the city manager And our finance team, if it's something that we can't afford, we won't implement. We can always push pause on it if we have to. The concept can be phased. So again, taking into account our financial position, we anticipate that it will be operationally cost effective over time. It's gonna reduce time on task for staff and can reduce staffing and resource needs for larger scale operations. And it's significantly cheaper than alternative solutions. It functions. in the exact same way that a helicopter would. That's not new police technology, but helicopters are incredibly expensive. They require very specialized personnel to operate. This is an alternative to that. We did hold a council public safety committee meeting on May 14th, 2026, where we talked about our annual military equipment usage. And we also talked about the DFR concept and sought discussion and input. The meeting was open to the public and was advertised on our social media platforms. And there were a number of questions and input that was provided during this meeting. um including questions about cost and funding i think i touched on that one of the questions that came up in that conversation is will vacancy savings be used to fund this program the answer is no will dfr be used for surveillance again this is a concept that's used solely for responding to calls for service and emerging incidents We did get a question about the ability to capture images during flight, and our understanding of the technology at that time was the answer was no. The cameras are part of this drone's ability to avoid colliding with obstacles. And so it's part of that collision avoidance technology. However, as a follow-up, we had a conversation with the vendor and learned that no, in fact, a staff member could override the camera while the drone is in flight. So we want to acknowledge that. That was our error. However, in response to that, we made an amendment to the policy that expressly prohibits this, and staff members can be disciplined if they do so. We had questions about whether or not the drone can be used during protests or demonstration. Our policy already addresses that particular issue. It remains unchanged, and it expressly prohibits the use of a drone for routine monitoring of a protest or demonstration where a security concern does not exist or where criminal activity is not occurring. Questions about drones and other city departments. It certainly has an application for other city departments. We talked about the fire department, but also potential applications for code enforcement and maintenance services, et cetera. Continuing with the questions, questions about whether or not other governmental agencies would have access to images collected by a DFR drone. So the images that are collected and stored belong to the Hayward Police Department. They cannot be accessed or searched by anyone outside of our organization. This is consistent with our current body-worn camera and in-car camera systems. The images cannot be shared with any federal agency for immigration enforcement purposes consistent with our policy and state law. And retention would be consistent with our existing retention schedules. Questions about facial recognition technology and weaponizing the DFR drones. The DFR drones will not be weaponized nor will they have facial recognition technology. This is already covered. and prohibited under our policy 611 and the questions about whether it's going to have breaching capabilities none of the proposed dfr drones will have breaching capabilities at the end of the meeting the members of the public safety committee expressed support for the drone concept recommended to be sent to the full council for review and authorization and so that is what we are seeking tonight I do want to back up because I goofed and missed a slide. And we do have an example to show you, if I can remember the directions that were given to me a couple hours ago. Look at that, okay. This is a little over a minute video because it's one thing to talk about the concept, it's another thing to see it. So we wanna do that for you. I wanna set the stage a little bit. There's two calls for services that were responded to during our trial. period one involved a report of a man with a gun so you'll see a response to that and in the video this individual actually pulls a gun out and points it at the drone clearly and it allowed for officers to know that to be able to coordinate a response and they were able to safely take this individual into custody and recover the gun without incident without using force that's the outcome that we want 100 of the time The second call for service that you'll see, there was an assault and a battery that took place, random attack on a pedestrian by another pedestrian. The offender actually left the scene, was located by one of the DFR drones, The operator observed her getting onto an AC Transit bus. That was relayed to officers. The bus was stopped and this person was contacted. No chance that we would have apprehended that person in that case had we not had that information from the drone unit. The front of this video, there is no sound. And then you'll hear some of the dispatch broadcast overlaying these calls for service. So that'll help with some of the context. But what I want you to pay attention to is... You'll see the docking station. You'll see a drone launch. The minute these units launch, they are recording when they fly. The camera is oriented on the horizon, so that's not facing directly down and recording everything that is going over in detail. That's by design, again, as part of the collision avoidance technology. So I just want to acknowledge that, and then we'll go ahead and see if we can't show this here. So this is the docking station. This is a image of the drone as it's in flight to a call for service. Image of the unit itself and an example of kind of what the control sound was like.

It's 1066 with a gun at Tennyson Park on Huntwood. HMA wearing a baseball cap, red shirt and jeans, holding a gun, no 417. He did stare at the RP and cocked it back in front of her.

Show Claire. 1066, I can start.

Just going to put his arm up in there.

Come back.

Come back. Come back. Hey, what's your emergency?

I'm at the Amador. I'm like by Amador and Jackson.

OK, Amador and West Jackson Street. OK. And what is going on?

I don't know. I've never seen her before. So I was just walking my dog, and then I saw a lady run across the street and just start punching on somebody that she don't even know. They're going to look into that, and one of the officers is going to come over and have a conversation with you about it.

Right. So for our projected acquisitions for fiscal year 2027, this slide lists those. Again, going back to the consumables, which are on the left-hand side, these are things that are used one time and then must be replaced because they're not reusable. Those are kind of in line with current department replenishment schedules, and a lot of that is based on availability from the vendors that we use. Again, some equipment, we can't predict what gets damaged either in training or on an operation, and so there may be replacement needs that pop up during the course of the year. In terms of non-consumables, the eight DFR drone units and all the supporting technology, about $589,000. And then some additional tools for our energetic breaching program for $8,300. That's the conclusion of my presentation. I do want to acknowledge Captain Dan Olson, who's here on the dais with me. I also want to acknowledge Lieutenant Garrett Wagner. Both of those individuals have done an incredible amount of research and work to get us to this place where we're making this recommendation and to fully understand the capabilities of this concept and the benefit that it's going to have to this community in terms of public safety. And I also want to Um, give a shout out and thank Chief Ryan Hamry for his input and expertise. Again, we believe that this is not just a police resource. This is a resource for other city departments, especially for our brothers and sisters in the fire department who are responding to their own dangerous incidents and would benefit from. actionable information as they're en route to those things. So with that, I'm happy to stop talking and answer your questions.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. I wanted to acknowledge my colleagues who are on the Public Safety Committee and that's Council Member Roach and of course Council Member Bonilla. Thank you for your work on this. Okay, so I will start with questions first from Council. And Council Member Andrews.

Thank you, thank you for the report. I wanted to ask just a few questions on the DFR program. Is the DFR program also based on ACLU standards? I know we discussed that when drones were first discussed too.

2022 he said i think yeah we did extensive community outreach and solicited input we also reviewed recommendations from the aclu there was a lot of work that that went into understanding privacy concerns and trying to address those through policy and and so all of that work was done on the front end before we went live with the program in 2022 the dfr concept is no different. All of those same privacy rules that we have embedded in our policy based on that research, they remain.

And sorry I didn't watch the committee meeting, but was it discussed what is defined, how do you define an emerging incident?

So it could be any 911 call for service. It could be something that is not necessarily a high priority in terms of we need to get there right now. So for example, the one I've been sharing with folks is you get a report of a car doing donuts in a neighborhood. in the grand scheme of things if there are other things going on in the city you know that falls in the pecking order from a priority standpoint might not generate an immediate response but with this technology you know we could be overhead and in a case where you know the car's gone or we're unable to locate it we could clear that call for service and not have to send a police officer

Okay, so the first video we watched, someone called for service because they saw someone with a gun.

Both of the videos that you saw were based on 911 calls from community members.

Okay. And then what if you said that the program can be paused so if grant funds aren't obtained in future years, the program would be paused or portions of the program would be paused? How would it work if you don't receive grant funds?

So I think that the funding analysis for this is going to be an ongoing endeavor for us, right? There are grants that we are seeking for an overall real-time information center concept that this would be a part of, but I think we are only going to be able to do what we can afford. So if grant funding becomes unavailable, then we'll have to scale the program back or find alternative means to pay for it.

Okay, and then my last question was regarding the data. You said the data would be reported out annually. Is it possible it could be reported out more frequently, at least at the Public Safety Committee, just to see how the program's doing, at least in its first year, maybe quarterly, if that's possible?

We can certainly do that. I know that police technology is an agenda item that's pending for the Public Safety Committee, so I think they're already anticipating a conversation there. And again, going back to the website, We have for public consumption a log that identifies every single drone usage and the date, the time, the general location, and the purpose. So that's included on our website. With this concept, that would continue. And so for folks that want more real-time information about how it's being used, they can access that at any time.

Okay, thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Syrup.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the report. And I appreciate everyone on your team that put a lot of effort into this. Of course. So specifically on the drone for first responder program, I just wanted to clarify a few things. I'm appreciative that there is a log of uses. I'm seeing in the most recent log, which is dated back to April, so I think making sure we're getting those logs out on a regular basis will be important. For the DFR program, it's just listed as DFR, whereas other drone deployments are a bit more specific, like search warrant or possible weapon. So assuming if this program were to move forward, or even with our pre-existing drones, keeping that level of specificity, because when it just says DFR, it's hard for us to get data or insight into what kinds of calls for service are warranting these drones being deployed most often. The idea of someone maybe having a valid concern, but all of a sudden, let's say that I'm completely innocent and there's a drone following me all of a sudden, right, because somebody feels paranoid that I'm in their neighborhood, that can get people to feel a little bit less safe too. And so I think it's just important to understand why are people asking for these drones to be deployed as part of that transparency log. Because we were doing that already. I just think for the DFR program, it just started saying DFR. So I think we should continue to be specific. You mentioned earlier in the report that it's 100% reactive, but then when we talk about the fire department using it proactively, I guess I'm just trying to figure out, when you say it's 100% reactive and only deployed for 911 calls, does that just apply to the police department, but other departments are able to deploy it more proactively for their work?

So that's a great question. The examples that I gave for the fire department would be pursuant to a 911 call also, right? While in fire or looking at a smoke investigation or things like that. I mean, I think that's primarily, that is what we intend to use it for. There are conversations that could be had about the potential for But that would have to, again, come before the council and be incorporated into our policy. So because, you know, our policy is very specific about when it can be used and when it can't be used, anything outside of that is off limits.

So I guess that point, one of the examples that was given was like mapping paths or fire paths, which might be a more proactive use. I don't imagine there's like an emergency reason to suddenly map the fire path. And, you know, code enforcement, for example, might benefit from this. You mentioned other departments finding value in this. So something that was mentioned a few times was that HPD policy has been amended as part of this report. How difficult would it be to amend the policy so that it remains reactive specifically for the police department versus other departments deploying it for department-specific work? I'm just trying to understand how difficult it is to change these things, because it seems like a few amendments were already made pretty easily and pretty quickly in preparation for this meeting.

Yeah, I mean, we can amend policy at any time. And again, we are always open to not only the council and public safety committee, but the community's input. That policy was built with a lot of community input. We had a community advisory panel that was in place at the time and a lot of people that were very, very active in the conversations around this technology. And so, you know, policy... can always be updated, it can always be amended. That's certainly a conversation we're willing to continue to have. Again, the intent for this is to be 100% reactive.

Okay, and then just so I'm clear on this, the process for updating HPD policy, it's within HPD's purview to update its own policy at any given time, and then council can intervene to make adjustments if necessary. Is that currently the way that HPD policy updates work?

So council can make recommendations. In the case around policy that has to do with military equipment, which drones would fall under, again, council has to approve that on an annual basis. So this conversation is going to be an ongoing conversation every year. And there's certainly the opportunity for input independent of those conversations. We're always willing to listen. The way... other policies in the police department work you know sometimes laws change that drives policy change sometimes there's nationally recognized best practice we are an accredited agency through kalia we have assessors that are looking at our policies all the time and making recommendations about how to meet national standards and best practices so yeah ultimately policies are set uh by me the chief okay but for military equipment stuff yeah you know that's got to be approved by the council annually

Okay, understood. And thanks for clarifying. I just was wondering, you know, what the chain of command was there for policy amendment changes, because it sounds like, I don't know, policy 611, for example, there sounds like there was some recommendations and consideration, and then you made the decision, it sounds like, to amend that policy. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. And then I may have misread this, so I'm a little bit confused on the $589,000, but is that an annual cost in terms, and is that for the technology and the staff, or is it just the cost of the technology and that's a one-time cost?

No, we anticipate that that's gonna be an annual cost. We anticipate that's gonna be the average annual cost, and that doesn't include staff. We already have the staff on the books and budgeted for. Those positions are filled, but again, It is going to be a conversation that we have with not only the council annually under AB 481, but based on the dollar amount, we're going to have to come to council for authorization for purchasing some of this stuff anyway. So there's going to be conversations about this that happen all the time. Council will fully understand where the funding is coming from, et cetera. So $589 is what we think is going to be the annual cost for the technology itself.

I'm assuming the first cost is a purchase price, or are we leasing these drones? I'm just trying to understand why it's close to $600,000 annually. I would understand a significant cost upfront for purchasing these drones, but I am surprised to hear that this is an annual cost. And that doesn't include staff costs. Originally, I was under the impression this included staff costs.

It's a, and Dan can correct me, or Captain Olson, sorry, can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a lot of the technology solutions these days are subscription-based. There are other capabilities in terms of our ability to analyze, I don't know if you would qualify it as, you know, talk about the thesis component of this.

Yeah, thank you, sir. So the 589 cost is more of an amateurized approach. So we've talked to several vendors, we've gotten several ideas of what it's gonna cost to do a program like this as part of a real-time information center concept. They're willing to structure it. We could go real heavy on the cost in the beginning of the five-year plan. We could go heavy on the back end of it. So this is just a spread across concept. It may wind up being that we spend more in the front than we do on the back, but some of that is based on some congressional earmarks that we've already received or been approved for. Some of it is going to be dependent on asset forfeiture and when that's available. Some of it's dependent on federal grant funding that we're already sitting on and we're waiting to use. So it can be structured however we really need it to structure it over this five-year plan, but the 589 was just an average cost. Across those five years? Correct, sir. Got it.

And I do want to say we're asking for authorization up to, so it may not be that high. Okay. It may be far less than that.

And then a question on asset forfeiture dollars, and I think my concern here is just certain funds being seen as specific to a department versus a fund that belongs to the entire city. Maybe this is a question for the city manager, but am I incorrect in maybe thinking that asset forfeiture monies go back to the general fund? Or are they just inherently, they go back to the police budget?

Yeah, there's very, very specific rules around asset forfeiture money. You can't supplant general fund money with it. You have to use it for very, very specific purposes for the police department. And we don't have control over that.

That makes you feel better. I just want to make sure we're obscuring general fund dollar usage somehow. Okay, and then... Last question on the armored vehicle. When you say 14 instances of deployment, does that include deployment for, just as an example, there was like a backpack and toy giveaway at the North Division Station. Would that be considered a deployment of it?

No, that wouldn't be considered a deployment. It's not uncommon for us to bring staff and equipment out to, you know, community events where we engage with folks. You know, a lot of our intent is to demystify some of this stuff. I think there's a lot of, you know, inaccurate information floating around about what these pieces of equipment are used for and when they're used, and so... You know, we want people to be comfortable, number one, knowing what they're for, and number two, knowing that it is our intention to use them appropriately. So we do take it to community events. The Trunk or Treat event is an example where, you know, I mean, kids love climbing in it, taking pictures, et cetera. So we want people to be fully informed about pieces of equipment like that.

Okay. Okay, those are my questions, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Roach.

Thank you, yeah, thanks, my colleagues. Most of my questions have been answered as well as at the Public Safety Committee meeting, so thank you for listing those questions, because I think we had a really good, robust discussion, especially around the privacy concerns regarding the DFR program. And I just want to thank you, because the one question I had was about the Horizon View, and I really appreciate you following up on that and looking further into what the possibility was for a manual override. and you've already taken care of it by updating the policy to make sure that that is a policy within the department that it doesn't look down until you reach the incident. Is that right? Yeah. So thank you. The rest of mine will be comments. Thanks.

Thank you. Council Member Bonillo. Oh, I'm sorry. Council Member Sermonio.

Thank you, Mayor, thank you, Chief, and thanks to the whole staff for putting this together. Two quick ones and one a little longer. I still dislike the term military. Can we ever change it?

That's the language in state law. We don't have control over that. You're welcome to talk to folks in Sacramento.

Will aid drones be able to cover our whole city?

We believe they will. Strategically positioned throughout the city, you know, we should be able to respond to emergencies almost anywhere. I think, you know, there are rules around, you know, flying, you know, in FAA airspace around the airport and things like that. But the intention would be to be able to provide that coverage so that if something happens anywhere, we'll be able to be there quick. Okay.

And those are the long questions. So you mentioned that the program is reactive. So let's suppose that we know that every day about five o'clock in the afternoon at the corner of Sleepy Hollow and Lauderdale, a guy does donuts for about 15 minutes. could we proactively send a drone and wait for this person to start doing donuts so we can catch him or her is that a possibility i think the technology um would allow us whether to know whether that's happening or not but in terms of enforcing you would still need staff to respond to something like that even if we got

that somebody was doing donuts at 3 p.m. every day in a certain location, that still qualifies as a community complaint. It still qualifies as notification of criminal activity to the police department. Could we, I suppose? Would we? I'm just thinking. It just depends. Proactive use. Yeah. It's still complaint-driven. That would still be considered to be a complaint-driven use. Mm-hmm.

Just as if I know, this probably would be more difficult, if I know that my neighbor does firecrackers every day, fireworks every day at 9, 10 p.m., that probably would not be a good proactive use to put a drone there and wait for this to happen.

I mean, realistically... This equipment is for when big things happen. If we're constantly chasing around a lot of low-level stuff, you could almost render the technology unusable because the battery drains after, what, about 45 minutes in flight? A little less than that. So it does us no good necessarily to chase something that's super low-level and not have it available for, you know, a major incident or something that has the potential to injure.

Usable at night also, correct? What's that? Usable at night also? Usable at night, yes. Excellent. Very good. I like it. Thank you. Thank you.

Council Member Bonilla.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Chief. You've answered a lot of my questions too in the Public Safety Committee and also just in your brief recap of the questions that You addressed the Public Safety Committee meeting. But I know that there's been a lot of community concern just around sort of a particular vendor. I think it's like flock as it relates to sort of their ethics and whatever as it relates to accessing data and the way that they store and retain data. Who is the vendor of this? Can you kind of talk about your confidence in the vendor, kind of making sure that this data is secure, not inappropriately accessed, and that we have kind of complete control over that data since it belongs to us essentially and they're just the custodians of it?

Sure, absolutely. I mean, I think that the reality is that we are gonna have to go out to RFP. There are multiple companies that provide this technology for this purpose. And so that's some research that we're gonna have to do. And again, that's gonna come back to the council when we ask for authorization to make the purchase. The company that we used for the trial program was Axon. It's the same company that we have our body cameras and in-car cameras with. All of those images are uploaded into evidence.com, completely secure, very well audited and tracked. Everybody has a user ID. Anytime somebody clicks on a video, there's a record of it. Anytime somebody downloads a video, there's a record of it. a total audit trail that will allow us to understand who's using information and for what. Again, nobody from outside HPD can even access it. And so, you know, that's gonna be the work in doing this research. For the actual drone units themselves, we partnered for the trial at least with a company called Skydio. They are a Bay Area company. Their manufacturing facility is actually in the city. And again, similar protections with that technology. And, you know, again, I would argue that our intention is not to move forward with this concept, you know, with a company that... you know, has issues. We want to make sure that we're doing this the right way. Thank you so much. When does the drone start recording? So the minute that it launches, the camera's on and it starts recording. So if somebody were to physically manipulate the camera while it's in flight, There will be a video record of that. I do also want to, on that topic, you know, the goal of this program is to get places quickly. When a 911 call comes in, we want to be on scene as fast as we can. And you kind of defeat that purpose, you know, if you're taking the long way or if people, you know, are moving the camera while it's flying. The other thing is, you know, we don't want to inadvertently hit anything because the camera's been moved. So if it's adjusted manually in flight, we will know, and people will be held accountable for that.

because I think the concern is as these drones are going to wherever location they're going to, just the privacy of everything that they're flying over in the people's backyards and our residents and all of that, just to make sure that we're kind of mindful of their privacy. And then also, I appreciate this being reactive, and it could be, like, you know, in any situation, we can send these drones to kind of get situational awareness so we can sort of size up the event, know how to respond more appropriately. It's not just necessarily you know, kind of going in and chasing a criminal per se, but it's also looking at, like you were saying, large-scale catastrophic events that can happen in our city, like an earthquake, and then being able to quickly understand sort of the situation, damage assessments, and then deploy the resources strategically to make the biggest impact that we can make for community safety, right?

Yeah, 100%. This would be a game-changer in a catastrophic incident like a major earthquake. We'd be able to... do damage assessments we'd be able to take a look at you know roadway impacts you know avenues of ingress and egress to be able to get resources into the city i mean there's just we'd be here all night if we listed them all yeah and then um i also appreciated your response to what kind of calls these are going to be going to and you said kind of the bigger things because

you know, to Councilmember Syrup's point, I would hate to see, you know, somebody complaining because there's a stranger walking in their neighborhood and the next thing you know, you know, there's drones following somebody, right? Or, you know, a neighbor complaining that there's a party that's going too late and the next thing you know, there's a drone over someone's backyard surveilling everybody at the party, right? I just do also appreciate the discretion and the discernment that's going to be used in deploying these drones. They're not going to be deployed for every time someone calls the police department for any issue. There's going to be discernment on, you know, does this reach a criteria or does it make sense for this drone to be deployed first? And that will kind of be the discernment question that you guys would ask yourself before you go and deploy these, right?

Yeah, and there's gonna be ongoing learning. I mean, there's certain times of the day, certain days of the week where, you know, just based on volume of activity, you won't be able to use a drone for everything even if you wanted to. You know, I think it's, you know, the intention is to be measured in our use. And, you know, we're always gonna err on the side of keeping people safe. We don't control the information that comes into the 911 center that's coming from folks in the community. And so it's not uncommon for us to respond to a scene and find out that it's not entirely accurate or, you know what I mean? So those things are still gonna have to get figured out, but this is just an added tool because at the end of the day, we want, community members we want our staff members and even you know the folks who offend in our community um at the conclusion of an event to be in the same condition you know that they were when they showed up um you know those are the outcomes that i think you know if we're all sitting around the table being honest those are the outcomes that we all want um and you know quite honestly we believe that this technology is going to be a game changer in that space um all right those are all my questions thank you for being so thoughtful with this program thank you

Thank you. I will end council questions and I'll go to public comments. I do have public comment cards. Let me see. Okay, I don't see any comments online. So I will start here in the chamber. Our first speaker, our commenter is Suzanne Luther.

Hi, Mayor and Council. I'm Suzanne Luther of Hayward Concerned Citizens, and I'm here today to voice my complete and total support of the Hayward Police Department and their UAS Unmanned Aircraft System program and its expansion to the DFR drone as first responder program. These drones are game changers and great tools to help back up Hayward Police Department, seeing as that they are extremely understaffed with both sworn officers and staff. The drones will be able to respond to calls quicker and assess situations without putting officers and community in harm's way, and can also help in de-escalation among many other positive services they provide. They are highly technical, state-of-the-art safety tools, and safety is a top priority of Hayward residents. They are a win-win-win for Hayward Police Department, the city, and the community. I thank you for your continued support of the UAS program and ask that you authorize the expansion to the DFR program. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Claire Dugan.

Good evening, Council, members, and Mayor. I'm Claire Dugan. I've lived and paid taxes in Hayward for over 40 years. I'm a member of Hayward Concerned Citizens, and I'm here tonight to support HPD's request to expand their drone program. One of my main concerns is public safety, not in the abstract, but in the daily lives of myself and all Hayward residents. I want to be able to go to my bank and get back to my car without being mugged, go to my local bank and not have to drive to Caster Valley, that branch. I want to be able to shop in Hayward at the local stores and the restaurants. to be able to go to Southland Mall, and in all instances, be able to come back and have my car windows not broken out. Unfortunately, pretty frequent occurrence. I believe that the use of drones helps these and many other crimes against businesses and people in Hayward. The list of benefits for drone use by police departments is long. Drones can respond to emergency calls and arrive at crime scenes before police or fire and provide critical information about that situation. They help deescalate criminal behavior and increase the officer and the community's safety. And I'm sure the council has a more definitive list of the benefits of drones. I see no need to repeat those. So please support HPD's current request for the expansion of drones as first responders and as real-time information centers. We want criminals to know that Hayward is serious about preventing crime and catching those who come here and commit crimes. I thank those council members who have supported the use of drones in the past. Thank you for that, and please continue to do so for this expanded program. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is, and I apologize if I mispronounce the last name, but it's Dennis Hotelling. Did I say it right?

Hotelling.

Hotelling.

Mayor, council members, staff, good evening. My name is Dennis Hotelling. I'm here tonight to speak as a longtime resident of Hayward and as a retired police officer with over 50 years of service. I was hired as a police officer by the city of Hayward back in 1976, and I retired in 2003 as a deputy chief. After retiring from Hayward, I was hired by the Allen McKenna Sheriff's Office where I worked for another 20 years, having the opportunity to serve as the Chief of Police for the City of Dublin and later as the Assistant Sheriff before retiring. I'm here tonight to speak in strong support of the First Responder Drone Program. During the time I worked for the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, a very successful drone program was developed and utilized frequently. I had many opportunities because of my assignments to be present when drones were being deployed and used very effectively. I can say that they improved safety and response and were very, very effective. Police drones are one of the most effective and innovative technology I've seen since being implemented since my law enforcement career started almost 50 years ago. When I look back to the old days when I was working in Hayward and I see the technology that's available today, I just so wish that we had that technology back then because things would be done so much safer and more efficiently. I know the chief has already covered the benefits of the program very well, so I have a lot to tell you, but I'm just going to cut it kind of short. And I believe that the first responder program will significantly improve safety for our citizens and for our police officers. The situational awareness that is provided in real time is invaluable because you know what's happening when you get there. There's no unknowns like there are currently. The drones and the information that's provided will allow for better decision making and pre-planning as officers respond to a call. They know better how they're gonna try to handle the situation and they don't have a lot of surprises. This will reduce chaos and when you respond to a critical incident and there's chaos, it increases the chance of uses of force and bad things happening and by reducing this chaos, actually de-escalating the situation before you even respond there. So this is excellent, excellent technology. And drones are a force multiplier. As you know, if the drone's in the air and they're covering a perimeter, you may not need to send as many officers. And in some cases, when the drone responds, you may actually see that you don't need to send an officer at all, that whatever the threat was or the call was in regards to may be just completely gone, so there may be no need to send anybody. Police officers have a very dangerous job. As you know, we see them running toward the danger while others are running away. They're our first line of defense and are willing to place themselves in a harmed way to protect the citizens and community. We need to support our officers by allowing them to utilize this innovative technology, which will provide increased safety for citizens and officers. And I'm here tonight to ask you to please support the first response drones for the Heritage Police Department.

Thank you, sir, and thank you for your service.

Thank you.

We do have a public commenter online, so I'm going to go to the public commenter online. TJ from Hayward Concerned Citizens.

Hi, thank you. Good evening, Chief Matthews, Council, and other officers present. This is TJ with Hayward Concerned Citizens. I wanted to express my appreciation for this detailed report on the tools required for effective operations in the line of duty. I want to thank HPD for the support, transparency, and continued partnership with the community and council to ensure safe and appropriate parameters are followed with regard to equipment use and privacy and data concerns have been adequately addressed. I also appreciate the public outreach education you provide to the community about the roles you play in maintaining public safety, including efforts to guard against unintended or undesirable outcomes as much as possible. That being said, I'm in full support of the additional equipment needed to achieve the proposed Jonas First Responder Program and real-time information center capability, if that should come to light, It's a win-win for all, serving the needs of our residents who want safe neighborhoods and quicker emergency response, serving the needs of our officers to enhance their safety and deescalate critical situations, and serving the needs of our city to maximize limited staff and resources and to bring about positive outcomes without further burdening the general fund budget. And for anyone still voicing concerns about privacy at this stage in the game, I think your pushback may be an uphill battle because the world is changing, technology continues to advance, and positive progress has been evidenced already. Privacy can never be guaranteed in public spaces when you have cameras in stores, on homes, on cars, and even in the hands of people every day. If you're a law-abiding citizen, a law-abiding person, there's no need to worry. In the case of the City of Hayward, I have every confidence that the benefits of drone technology for all of our first responders far outweighs the privacy concerns. Thank you for bringing this item forward and have a good night and a good recess.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Lucy Lopez.

Sorry. Good evening, Mayor Salinas, council members. Good evening, Jennifer, City Manager Jennifer Ott, Assistant City Manager Mary Thomas, and hello, Chief and Captain Olsen. I'm here on behalf of the Hayward Chamber of Commerce, our board of directors, and the businesses we proudly represent here in the City of Hayward. to express our strong support for the Hayward Police Department's drone DFR program expansion. A safe and responsive and very well-prepared city is the foundation for a strong local economy, and Hayward deserves this. And it aims to improve our city's public safety perception challenge that we've been facing for much too long. The DFR program directly advances several top community priorities not only identified in the 2025 Resident Satisfaction Survey, but also for the business community needs for faster response times. These priorities are essential for the businesses, the employees, and the customers who we all rely on and who also want a secure and stable environment, and most importantly, joyful experiences so they continue to come back here to Hayward. With roughly four dozen sworn and staff vacancies, these very prolonged staffing shortages make it increasingly difficult for our law enforcement to meet our community expectations, which continue to get higher for rapid response times and proactive safety services. When I speak to my peers in the chamber world, this DFR program has proven to be a very fiscally responsible and dynamic solution to help bridge resource gaps and to improve public safety, not only just here in our backyard, but regionally and even nationally. And the results and the hard work that Lieutenant Wagner and Captain Olson and the entire police department have put together in terms of that pilot program. I had the opportunity to see it a little bit in action and it was extremely impressive. And it really helps me to communicate the benefits and the thoughtful approach to our business community who are consistently calling my office on the daily to talk about you know, public safety, what's happening and what have you. So when I explain the challenges, they're very supportive. And when I explain this possible expansion of the DFR program and share some video footage about the outcomes, it's very exciting. And I'm also committed to helping to try and secure funding from our private businesses, you know, as the initiative rolls out. I won't go over the results. Those were just overall impressive, but most importantly, I think what also helps me, not only a resident here in Hayward, but to represent the business community, is that these results also increase the safety for our police officers. The criminals are getting bolder, bolder and bolder, and our officers deserve this increased safety for themselves. We want them going home to their families. So I think at the end of the day, I just really wanna commend our Hayward Police Department, their staff, and as well as the city staff for the vision and ingenuity for this initiative. It's not a request for additional city funds from my understanding. They're very creative in looking at how we can use what we have to get more. and so we're very much in support of that here at the Hayward Chamber, so we respectfully support the adoption of the program, and it also will help to support the long-term economic growth for us that we all deserve here in Hayward. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next commenter is Dylan Rogers.

Hello, my name is Dylan Rogers, and I'm here to represent the Hayward Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines. We as HCHRP stand in opposition to agenda item 26 in the DFR program, and we have concerns over the increase in militarization of local PD, along with militarization globally. We specifically condemn the proliferation of drones and their use of surveillance on our fellow community members here in Hayward, all the way to those in the Philippines, with the same companies being used in test trials being used to surveil those in the Philippines that have been murdered. We stand against the use of taxpayer funds to funnel dollars into private tech companies' profits, as those in our communities still suffer. I would also like to personally raise a potential concern around the use of drones, whereas in the video example, we did see that the kid in the red only pulled out a gun in response to seeing a drone. So a concern that I might personally have would be that this could possibly lead not to de-escalation, but instead to escalation of circumstances. and that situations could more properly be handled by a human being who could reason with an individual as opposed to a flying drone. So we just want to make sure that the possible concerns associated with drones are heard by the council and by those who actually live here, not just those potentially in law enforcement, and that that might have a negative impact on people's daily lives or fears overall with what that data can be done. Lastly, I want to point to what could be deemed something is unlawful. Many times, potentially peaceful gatherings could be deemed unlawful by law enforcement. So there is concerns we might have around the surveillance surrounding protests and what deems a situation to be unlawful and that that could be potentially arbitrary. I would like to thank the council persons who have brought up these concerns for the community and want to ensure that any program of this nature does have strict regulations around it and where that can be directly imposed.

Thank you. Thank you. Our final speaker is Chief Tony Chaplin, sir.

Thank you, retired Chief Tony Chaplin. First of all, I want to applaud the advocacy and the work from the council and from Chief Matthews and the men and women at Haywood Police Department for the guardrails that they've put up on this technology to make sure that we are protecting the rights of our community members. There was a lot of work that went into the passing of the drone program in the first place. I want to start off by saying, watching the videos, It made me think of something that recently happened with my wife driving on Fletcher Street. A young man pointed a gun at her because he thought she was driving too slow. And he responded out quickly. The person was apprehended within 24 hours. But it just goes to show you how... The proliferation of guys now thinks and quickly spiral out of control and, as the video illustrated earlier, the drone showed the young man had a gun pointed at the drone and the hayward officers responded, they had shields up. Imagine that's a call for service no drone you have no idea that young man has a gun the outcome could be radically different than the one we saw in the video. So I think the drones as a first responders is a fantastic tool. And we keep hearing this reoccurring theme about the shortage of officers and the lack of available people to put out on the streets, the boots on the ground, so to speak. I just watched a graduation from my old alma mater, the San Francisco Police Department. And even with the graduation they had last night, they are still 600 officers short. They have a Arctic program, a real-time information center and robust drone program, and it really turned public safety in San Francisco around. It was a national story how dire that situation was. Once they put the real-time information center together and the drone program, it was really a radical turnaround. And I've also heard some concerns about the cost of this program. The numbers I saw with the agencies I've talked to on the peninsula and other places, kudos, Chief Matthews, that's a hell of a deal. I mean, you're talking about the costs are well below. And when you consider San Francisco, and I'm not talking about population, talking about square miles, 49 square miles for the city of San Francisco, I think Hayward's significantly larger than that. And for them to come up with this plan to cover this entire city at that cost, I think it's ridiculously good. You know, if President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing had drones as an option, I think it would be listed, number one, as a de-escalation tool. Because when I look at some of the shootings, officer-involved shootings that happened over my tenure as a police officer, which spans over three decades, I would go out and venture to say a lot of them could have been avoided with a quick overview of the scene before the officers got on scene to tell them what was going on. I won't go into details about specific shootings, but I will say that I think this is going to be a tool that can really help Hayward continue the push that they've had towards de-escalation and towards reducing officer-involved shootings. and the safety of our officers. So I won't keep you here all night. I won't rehash anything that was said. Again, as Chief Matthews said, to list the benefits of a drone program, we'd be here probably until the weekend. So I won't do that to you, but I will say that if anybody has any doubts about this program or the cost of this program, reach out to cities that have these robust programs And I think you'll see that the costs are a lot higher than the ones that Hayward negotiated. So kudos to the team that worked on this whole program. And as you can tell, this is something that everyone kind of expects. I've been all over Hayward. I've talked to people just about in every corner of Hayward and everyone says, They already believe that this is already something that's happening and already in place. So I would implore you to make sure that this vote goes all the way through and everyone's in agreement that there are guardrails in place to stop the abuse of this technology. So thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

thank you um i do not have any more cards uh there are no more people uh online so i will close public comment come back to um the council and uh council members their menu mary thank you and thank you very much thank you for the commenters uh public hunters that uh

Very good, as I said before, I like this program.

Public safety is one of our priorities, if not our main priorities. I receive emails and calls from residents. Public safety, public safety. I think this is a good step for it. I see a drone as a pre-first responder, so one that will see and assess a situation before the first responders get there, possibly saving a life. And that's key. In my mind, that is key. It does a quick assessment. before an actual human does a quick assessment and that human may not know what is happening or what the situation is. I am not worried about a drone snooping on my backyard. I don't see our police officers snooping on my neighbor or I went to see how the how the program is run and there are two people who drive the drones or direct the drones and as the drone is flying through the screen, they really have no opportunity to see below what John Doe is doing or what somebody else is doing. That drone is going to a specific location That was told by the dispatch. So I also trust our police officers that they will not be abusing this particular technology. And I support it 100%. I'm hoping my colleagues up here also will support it. And thanks again, and take this and give us a safer city. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Mayor Procham Syrup.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you again for the presentation. You and I have had conversations about this proposal leading up to tonight. My position on military equipment within the police department has been consistent since before my time on council. I just have a lot of concern with expanding surveillance infrastructure. I understand that there's surveillance everywhere. One of my regrets on my time on council was what I see as a bit of a lapse in judgment in at one point approving a flock camera expansion only to find out that the company that owned flock is, you know, looking at children in gymnasiums and partnering with ICE. And so, yeah, I have a really hard time with surveillance expansion, especially when it comes to trusting third-party vendors. And I just say this to explain, you know, where on principle I have a hard time moving forward with military equipment in general. That being said, you know, I imagine I'm probably going to be outvoted tonight, and so in the spirit of wanting to have the best possible program we could have, I do want to reassert that, you know, we review the policy to ensure that other departments can derive value from this, and so it's not just a tool for first responding and surveillance, but rather is there other departments that can find benefit to this or streamline their operations through this process for more civilian uses. I also am interested in having very specific deployment categories. I share what one of our public commenters said about this being used on protests. I know that in the presentation it said it would not be unless there was a security concern. And I think the issue with terms like a security concern is it all becomes subjective, right? If a council member is at a protest, does that then become a security concern? Does that then become a justification for a drone to be deployed? So it's really up to the discretion of who's in charge. And I trust your judgment for the most part, Chief, but what if we have a different chief in the future, right? And while I appreciate Council Member Zermeno's points here when he's talking about proactively flying a drone to catch someone in the street, that's my concern is we're already talking about how to use this drone proactively. And if the body up here changes, we've It kind of opened a Pandora's box for proactive surveillance of our community. So these are the things that give me concern. I'm just sharing these with you so that we can have a strong policy that helps mitigate some of these concerns, rather than just being obstinate for the sake of being obstinate. The cost is $600,000. I hear the former chief chaplain's comments on this being a good deal. And it's fun to see you in the chambers tonight. It feels like old times, although the roles are a bit reversed now. You know, we have had numerous conversations about our budget deficit and how if we don't have a long-term funding plan for a new program, we need to be really disciplined in whether or not we move forward with that program. I understand that we've strung together a lot of funding this year to make this potentially happen. But next year and the year after that for the next five years, it doesn't seem as clear. And my concern is we've seen a police budget increase of, you know, close to $20 million over the last five years. And now we're adding in an additional half a million. And I don't want to see this continue to balloon, I guess. I think if there's a desire for this program to continue and find ways to fund it, I don't want to see it at the expense of a growing police budget, but rather finding ways to be creative with the pre-existing police budget. Or if this has the labor savings that you're discussing, maybe there's even a reduction in the police budget as a result of this, because it makes up for some of the vacant positions that we have currently. So anyways, I share all this just because I'm not trying to disagree on the basis of some ideological zealot position, but more so we're in a position right now where we are seeing surveillance technology being abused, we are in a budget deficit, and I don't feel very confident in the long-term funding strategy for this program, and I'm concerned about our growing police budget that's already grown quite a bit in the past few years. I hope moving forward you can address some of these concerns in the drone policy. uh and help clarify some of the concerns that i have and you know maybe i'll channel this through the public safety committee to get more specific about some of this feedback but i do appreciate the thought that's gone into this i think you've been very deliberate with your team and trialing this and putting together and compiling this report so i don't want you to think i don't appreciate the work that's gone into this i just want you to understand the principles on why i'm disagreeing with it tonight thank you thank you uh uh councilmember roach

Thank you. Thank you, Chief Matthews, Captain Olsen, and the rest of your team that are here today. Thank you about the report on the general military equipment. You've always been very transparent with the public on the report and the uses of that equipment. And it's for public consumption on the website for everybody to see on those uses. So I'm comfortable with that part of the report. And then on the DFR program, we did get to have a robust discussion on the Public Safety Committee at that time. And I do see that with increasing difficulty, as retired Captain Chaplin said, the increasing difficulty of recruiting police officers around the region. I mean, maybe around the country, right? This is sort of a big problem everywhere. But I think turning technology to assist our department is a forward-thinking, reasonable endeavor. We have to look at it. I mean every industry is doing this and obviously we need to use this in law enforcement as well. I just think the video, for me the video was really compelling. I did get to do a tour of it when we were doing the pilot program and the video that I got to see in the Public Safety Committee and we all see tonight. It's a really perfect example of how this helps. I mean, that we saw the guy in red was the one with the gun, so when officers arrived on scene, there wasn't a big, prolonged, dangerous investigation of who had the gun, looking, you know, so bystanders were kept safe, the suspect was kept safe, and of course the officers were kept safe at that point because they knew exactly who they were turning to that had the gun. And I just think you can't deny that kind of sort of safety for everyone involved here and how quickly that was able to be resolved. I think it's really sort of amazing, really, technology. And then, you know, Chief Chaplin also mentioned the San Francisco program. I was able to get online and look at that program as well. And maybe you all saw recently there was an incident in San Francisco where there was a pickpocket ring. I mean, it was all over, you know, social media. And their drone program was able to identify the pickpockets and quickly apprehend these suspects, keeping everybody safe in that community. Apparently they were very aggressive pickpockets. The way they were going after people, it was a really dangerous situation. That was helpful. So by the time the officers arrived, usually a pickpocket is really good at getting out of town really quickly, but they weren't, and they were apprehended. And I just think it shows this technology, it's here, it's here to stay, and I think it's gonna be really helpful for our department I also wanted to sort of just address some of the sort of general policy concerns that we heard from the community that we've heard appear that, you know, I think the chief said that there was this robust policy created during the initiation of our drone program back in 2021. That policy stands, that policy is available for public consumption and even answers some of the questions I think that were mentioned here tonight. And as we've heard also, it's been updated with the DFR programs. There was a question about the horizon look, right? That has now been updated in the policy program. So it's not just sort of being used as a surveillance tool, as we said. And I think to reiterate that this is a reactive program. So when somebody calls 911, that is when the drone is deployed. So it's not being used to sort of you know, for general investigation, for general surveillance. And yes, I mean, I think to Sairabh's point that, you know, maybe there will be grayers in the future. I'm not sure, but I don't think that's a reason to stop us from going forward with this program. So I'm in support of the program. I appreciate all the work that's gone into it. And, you know, we'll continue to watch it. I am on the Public Safety Committee, so I will be looking for those I appreciate all the work that Captain Olsen and the chief put in to find funding for this program, because this wasn't easy. The task was there is no general fund money available. How are we gonna do this even if we think it's a great program for the department, for the city? And I think it's amazing that you were able to find that funding and bring this program to the city to keep everybody safe. And so I am supportive of the program.

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Andrews.

Thank you. I remember back when drones were first brought up, I had serious concerns about them and I do think Hayward PD responded by looking into the ACLU standards and I'm hoping that we can maybe put that information on the website some kind of way to that we are taking privacy concerns seriously. Other things we implemented, and I know that I haven't seen any reports of this, but if there is a complaint about privacy, that is an option in Access Hayward that people can access. So that is something that we take seriously if there is a complaint on any misuse of drones. and I'm sure that can be implemented with this DFR program as well. I'm not excited about drones at all, but I do understand the reasoning for it. I am not, I'm more interested in emergencies and using this technology for emergencies. We live in Hayward, there's a fault called Hayward. I'm concerned about those kinds of emergencies and making sure that we have technology in order to access folks when they're in need. And we are seeing that it's getting more difficult with a lot of the climate change things that we're seeing in our country and across the world that this technology might be needed for those instances. I am interested in seeing more information as we continue to learn more about the program. Thank you to Chief Chaplin for coming today and talking more about other jurisdictions. I'm particularly interested in jurisdictions like Livermore, San Ramon, those type of cities that are also using these programs. So I've done a little bit of research, but I would love for that information to come back to the full council at some point. I will say that if there are any issues, then we can pull the program. So that is something that if the community sees issues, if they are finding that they think they're being surveilled, we can address that immediately and we can stop the program immediately. So I just want to remind the community of that. I was a little concerned about the videos that I saw. I had a different reaction from seeing them. One, I thought maybe he was pulling a gun thinking it was a regular drone, not necessarily that it was a police drone. And so I am a little bit concerned about the reaction to the drone just in general. So I'm hoping that there is some kind of robust program after someone is discovered by a drone if there's more of an investigation of why was that reaction? Why did you pull a gun on a drone in the first place? I just feel like there needed to be a little bit more information because I feel like if they knew if it was the police, I'm pretty sure they probably wouldn't have done that. But I do have a little bit of reaction of seeing some of those videos because yes, they are, being reactive calls. But I do agree with some of the public commenters that, for some, that could be an escalating factor. But what, for me, what outweighs that is the safety of the people involved, the safety of the officers. I also am looking at this, and this is the last point I would say, is that we can't have it both ways. you'd want less officers. Some folks want less officers. We found technology to not have as many officers at the scene. So I think this is something that we also have to think about as a community of activists. how do we keep our community safe? If you don't want officers escalating situations, you don't want technology escalating situations, how do we keep our community safe is the question that I have. And right now, I would at least like to try this program to see if this is gonna be something that works for Hayward. And the last thing I will say is, i am tired and frustrated of seeing officers involved shooting videos and if we can find a way to not have that if there is a technology out there that can help reduce that i'm interested in in trying it so thank you for bringing this to the council and we will make sure to have regular reports on this for the community make sure that we have access hayward available for the community if there's any complaints and make sure that we are making sure our community is feeling safe even with this technology thanks uh council member bonilla

Thank you, Mayor. I also appreciate all of the guardrails that are being put in place to manage this technology, because I think that there's just general concerns about over-surveillance and kind of the overreach of law enforcement generally. So I think that the guardrails that you're putting in place and the mindfulness that has went into the policies and the intentionality behind how we're going to be using this does allow me to feel comfortable in moving this forward. And I also appreciate kind of the creativity and how funding was found, right? We're not increasing necessarily the police budget out of the general fund. It's there's funding that's available and any department should be creative in how it is they're competing and getting those funds. And I think that this is a great example of how your department has done that. And I do appreciate the comments from Council Member Syrup, which is, I do think that this is going to have exponential benefits. So if we can find ongoing cost savings within the police department to make sure that such an important program isn't necessarily on a year by year funding basis to not know if we're gonna be able to have this technology available for our community. I think that if the benefits are really what we heard today, which I believe they are, it's incumbent on us to find more of a permanent funding source to make sure that this program is able to be sustained, especially if it's being used in the way that it's intended and it's providing the results in terms of community safety that we're looking for. So just appreciate the robust discussion tonight, appreciate the creativity in looking at ways that we build up to having more real-time information in terms of how we respond to crises and events across our city. I know we don't have the money for kind of this real-time, state-of-the-art crime center yet, but I see how we're building up to that through these strategic developments like putting this drone program out there. And I also appreciate the fact that it's gonna be reactive because if it was proactive in ways I think that we can kind of get into a lot of different concerns with sort of what's proactive and why are we using it and should we be having it hang out on a street corner and wait for something to happen or not. So I really appreciate the intentionality behind the reactiveness and How being reactive can actually help us be proactive in our response to things right so it does come full circle So thank you so much for this and for being so thoughtful and I'll be supporting this tonight Thank You councilmember Goldstein Thank You mayor For all the reasons expressed by my colleagues.

I'm also in agreement with this and I I just wanted to call out how appreciative I am of the very diligent effort you and Captain Olson have made to make sure that we're adhering to the standards that our community believes in for respect for privacy and, you know, clearly the use as intended, as documented, I think are very appropriate and can really do a great service. not only in achieving the goals as outlined, but as one of the speakers mentioned, also setting the tone that Hayward is not a playground for criminals. And so I will be voting in favor of this. One of the comments from the speaker, though, brought up corporate global social responsibility, and I hope you will make that extra effort to consider that in choosing the vendor. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate everybody coming out. And, you know, I want to, again, acknowledge my two colleagues. We, all three of us, serve on the Public Safety Committee, Council Member Roach and Council Member Bonilla. And we have heard this before the committee once or twice, I believe. And so I think... They have certainly incorporated all the feedback that we had in the committee. And, you know, a lot of the questions that I had prior to this meeting, they've been answered and they've been incorporated in the presentation. So I just, you know, I just really want to thank Chief Matthews and particularly Captain Dan Olson. You have been... you know, over the last several months, you and I have had several conversations and I can see sort of how you've been developing this policy and just sort of you've, you have really invested the time and the discipline into making sure that we were happy and that we were comfortable with this policy. So I just really want to acknowledge that and say thank you. I also, you know, want to acknowledge and say thank you about and say thank you for looking at technology as a responsible tool in our city. And, you know, there are people out there that are using this recklessly and I'm not going to, you know, I've seen it. We see the news and we read the paper, we see it. And I think what our police department has done to date, they too have seen those stories. They too have seen those issues. And I think we have a policy that we are comfortable with. It's not set in stone. We will visit this quarterly, and we will certainly be working on this policy. I have to agree with Council Member Zermeno. I don't like the term militarization and all of that, but I have to say that the term militarization came from the California State Legislature. These are pieces of equipment that we've always had in our in the building or in the police department, but the term, the language, in this case, words matter, language matters, and someone, I don't know who wrote the bill, but somebody in Sacramento really wanted to sort of polarize this issue and inflame this issue. And how do they do it? Well, you do it by that. You call the legislation militarization and boom, we have conversations like this. And so I want to be very cognizant of that and call that out. I also just, I certainly don't wanna disagree with my colleagues up here, but the video about the young man with a gun, let's put that into context. That young man with a gun was at a park, was at a kid's park in Hayward, in South Hayward, and he had a gun. at a kids park, at a community center. And although we didn't get the full context of the call, but I think the call was based on the kid had a gun. So when the drone got out there, all of that was addressed and all of that information was communicated to the responding officers. and then they were able to identify the individual, locate the individual, and literally, precisely be able to identify who that individual was and then deal with the situation. I know videos can be alarming, and we're talking about videos that are dealing with everyday issues around crime and and these and in many cases these types of videos aren't pretty and and these are these are the things that we deal with I just want to end on just three three very short points you know Technology is helping us here. And I think for all the reasons why we have said, and I don't want to repeat too much, but I do want to highlight this one piece. You know, even take the case at the park there, at the Matt Jimenez Center. Technology is enabling police officers to walk into a situation with a high degree of predictability, with a high degree of safety for themselves. And I think if we can continue to use technology, deploy technology, you know, enable police officers to respond to calls safely and have a higher degree of accuracy of what they're walking into, then I think that's good. It deescalates situations before they even get there because we know, they know what it is that they're responding to. A couple weeks ago, I was at the United States Mayor's Conference, Conference of Mayors. And I did go to all the workshops on drones and on license plate readers. The sessions talked about the technology. They demonstrated the use of technology. They talked about privacy. They talked about, you know, license plate readers and they talked about, you know, privacy and the technology used there. And unanimously, mayor after mayor after mayor, regardless of the size of the city, whether it was a small city, town, whether it was a medium-sized city, or whether it was these large metropolitan cities, every single mayor unanimously believed that this was a game changer. The mayors that were presenting on the workshops, they were retired police chiefs who were now responsible for entire cities in terms of as the mayor. And they talked about the mayor of Tampa talked about how before drones, the city of Tampa had three helicopters. and they tried to finance and fund imagine funding three helicopters in the police department they got drones and the budget you know just decreased by millions of dollars just because of of drones um so you know they that the um the technology not only saves on budgets, but they also talked about how it protects police officers and it provides a greater deal of precision and accuracy and predictability on calls. So the other point I wanted to make is, you know, The seven of us here, the seven of us up here are responsible for a lot of different things. There's a lot of things we're responsible for up here. But I think the primary thing, the main thing we are responsible up here for, and that is to keep the city safe. Full stop, that's it. And when I say the city, that means people who work for the city. That's what we are responsible for. And if technology gets us to be that much more safer, then I'm going to support it. Full stop. Period. And that's what this technology does. You know, one of the topics that came out or one of the sort of discussion topics that always comes out at the mayor's conference is mayors are responsible for a lot of different things. But the number one issue that mayors are responsible for, no matter what size of the city, is public safety. That's it. And so that's why I support this. Every community survey, year after year after year, the number one priority, number one, top of mind in every neighborhood, neighborhoods of color, low income, high income, middle income, no matter what neighborhood you are in Hayward, this is the number one topic that people are looking for, and that's public safety. And one of the things I wanted to lastly just say is that as a member of the Public Safety Committee, if this program is not implemented correctly, if the program, if it has mission creep or we start to see it go in a direction that we don't want it to go, we can always change it. we can always pull it and you know, but we can always enhance it, revise it, and tweak it. And I think that that's, you know, it's a policy and it's something that we can work on as, you know, as this program unfolds. So with that said, I am going to move the item and if there is a seconder, let me see, and as, As I wait for a seconder, I just wanted to thank the police chief for all of your work on this. Captain Olson, thank you for all of your work on this. Besides the vote, is there anything else you need from us, Chief Matthews?

I think we're okay right now for tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. And Madam City Manager, thank you very much for bringing this to us. And Madam City Clerk. Let's vote. Moved by Mayor Salinas, seconded by Councilmember Roach. And the motion passes. I didn't catch the... Six yes and six ayes and one no. Okay, thank you. Moving on to item number 27, which is the Hayward Municipal Code Amendment Introduction of Ordinance Amending the Hayward Municipal Code Relating to the Community Services Commission. This report is going to come to us by the Assistant City Manager. and i know we've heard this before and i just want to pull the pull the council do you want should we forego this report or yeah we're okay okay um so um uh item number 27 lb26-013 hayward municipal code amendment an introduction of ordinance amending the hayward municipal code relating to the community services commission um so i'm going to forego staff report i'm going to come straight to the council see if there's any questions i don't have any uh I don't have any questions from council. I'm gonna open up public comment. I do not have any public comment cards and I don't see anybody online. So I will close public comment, come back to council and entertain a motion.

I had a comment. Mayor Pro Tem Syro. Thank you. Just wanted to thank Councilmember Bonilla for working with the Community Services Commission over the past few months to really help think critically about how that commission could provide benefit to the city as a whole, but also to make the best use of our commissioners talents. It wasn't just discussion with those commissioners, but I know that you also researched other neighboring cities to figure out how are they making best use of their community service or human development or human services commissions. And so really appreciate the thoughtfulness and getting the most value out of our residents. And also just wanted to thank staff. I think they did a great job distilling your comments down into something that ensures that, you know, there was concern about scope creep with the CSC before in the past. I think this is very specific and helps them understand their role as an advisory body. So I'll be supporting this item tonight.

Great.

Thank you.

Seeing no more speakers, I will close this. And Madam City Clerk, let's get ready to vote. And the item passes unanimously. The next item is an informational item. There's no staff report, purely if council has any questions. It's the development of new 39,900 square foot hanger at the Hayward Executive Airport by APP Jet Center. And like I said, there's no action, no presentation. I don't see any questions by council, so I will go move on to council reports and announcements. Council reports and announcements. And I think Councilmember Andrews might have a announcement.

Yes, we announced Juneteenth a few times, but just a reminder, Juneteenth will be at Mount Eden High School this year, and it will be from 12 to 6 p.m., and we are very excited to have activities for kids, music, food vendors, all the fun things that you will see at a Juneteenth. Thank you all for the support. And thank you to Supervisor Marquez. I forgot to mention that earlier. She's been a strong supporter of Juneteenth year over year. So I wanted to acknowledge her and the Best Me Conference. Thanks.

Thank you. And it's good to see you at Westside, the Westside, Westside Hangar.

Oh, and thank West Coast Makers, who is managing a lot of events. So I'm sure Council Members, I mean, Mayor Pro Tem Syrup will be mentioning them as well. But they've been doing a lot of events throughout the city. So kudos to them.

Mayor Pro Tem Syrup. Thank you. And one of those events as a part of or in partnership with the Juneteenth celebration is a 5K run that I believe is happening concurrently or at the same venue. So hope to see folks out there for a plethora of occasions and reasons to celebrate that day. I think it's interesting that it all lined up that way, but nonetheless, hope to see folks out there and about celebrating Juneteenth.

Do we have to run or can we walk with very spirited, eager...

I'm not organizing this, but I did see that there's a very... Can eager walkers be there? I'm sure. There's a very beautiful Hayward medal that was made by local artist Big Lou, so there's a reason to complete the 5K. I'm out of training, but I think maybe I'll join you in walking it.

great thank you um seeing no more uh i will move on to uh council referrals there are no council referrals and i'll move to adjournment but before i adjourn just wanted to say uh everybody that today is our last meeting of this session our next meeting uh will be in um in august um August 14th, 2026. And I just wanted to just end on... August 18th. 18th is... Next meeting, August 18th. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. I just wanted to say thank you to everybody for another great year. I tell you, it has been one heck of a year. And if there was a recess that we deserve, it is certainly this one. But it doesn't mean, while we are on recess, it doesn't mean that we're not answering our phones and we don't answer emails. We're always still available by phone. You can always call, email us by email. We are around town. So we are just, we just won't be meeting here on the days. So to all my colleagues on the council, have a great recess. And I'll look forward to working with you guys next year. All right. With that said, meeting adjourned.

record.