Remarks by Sue Wilson
50 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 2
Thank you. So thanks for the presentation. And so one of the things that I learned from the presentation last time that I think, and you can tell me if I'm articulating this correctly, is that although we as council members and sometimes community members, we like to see sort of quantifiable data that shows progress on this measurement and that measurement and that. But what I'm hearing is that and you said this last time as well, is that when you have a program that's spending, you know, $6 or $7 million across a whole city, that you're not really expecting to move the needle on reading…
Yeah, and so just along those lines, I think that, again, I just sort of want to mark it as that we're taking a certain approach of not having a super tight focus on a particular issue, and that's something we might want to keep in our heads over time is if we ever wanted to experiment with having a tighter approach. Another thing that I'm learning about is, I mean, I guess this is kind of the same comment I made during the last presentation, but I think it bears repeating, is that one of my concerns about just sort of the way that it's structured is that, if we were taking this money and…
Thank you. Hi, thank you for the presentation. I didn't understand the answer that you gave Councilmember Zepeda about it measuring the risk of asthma of either exasperating or creating, you know, we have very high asthma rates in Richmond. So is that correct that this health risk assessment is basically silent on the connection between the regular emissions and asthma?
Okay. So, and that's because the emissions, so you were driven by the admissions, the actual chemicals that were being emitted to then model these health risks.
Okay, it's narrow. Okay. And so this is not, so just to sort of bring home the point, this is not exonerating Chevron in terms of having a connection to Richmond's cancer rates. It simply was not studied in this study. I'm sorry, to Richmond's asthma rates. It simply was not studied in this study. Am I understanding that?
Okay, great. Thank you. So what I want to kind of focus on in my questions is what's actionable, like in the short term, in the immediate moment coming out of this report. And so if I understand it correctly, you have, this is the first time that there was a health risk assessment done, which I didn't realize. It comes out of, it's what, Rule 1118, people keep saying. And so it's been seven years in the process. There's been a law change. And now we can, the community can benefit from having these studies done at a variety of sites that are, of places that are potential polluters. And what…
And if I can just, so thank you for that. And if I can just sort of piggyback on that in terms of expectations, how soon does Chevron have to, either produce a risk reduction plan or refuse to do that and sue us instead? Like what's the timeline for that?
Okay, so that'll be our, we'll have six months in which to do a test here about whether Chevron's going to be responsive to community concerns about health by doing something about its storage tanks, generators, bioreactors, and leaks, or are they going to try to wiggle their way out of it with some kind of lawsuit. And then if they do sue us, so I guess we have the example of the wet scrubber. If they do sue us, I mean the community, I mean the Air Board, If they do say, oh, we're not going to do any of this risk reduction stuff, we don't believe your health risk assessment report, we're not…
Okay. So I hope you're right. I hope they just do it. But if they don't do it, the Air District can enforce penalties. Right. And then eventually, like what happened in the wet gas scrubber, Chevron paid the penalties and eventually did the thing that was asked for.
Okay. Well, I hope they start there rather than end there this time. But thank you.
All right. Thank you for the presentation. So I was just curious, like what made you as scholars decide that you wanted to do research on this particular program? Like how did you find out about it? What sort of drew your attention to it?
I want to say again, even though we know more work needs to be done, we really appreciate when outsiders come and especially for free, we didn't have to pay you, do this kind of research because we are all pretty desperate for numbers. We know they don't always exist they can't always be used, but when they can, we really appreciate that. So really thank you. I want to talk a little bit about the methodology. One of the things that my jod sort of dropped open when I first saw this online and then you explained it so beautifully tonight is sort of like, well, how do you know what would have…
Well, I'm going to ask you, it's a question, but I hope you will also hear it as a pitch, because one of the questions we're trying to answer here in Richmond is when we started using ALPR cameras, automatic license plate readers, did that have an effect on reducing crime or solving more crimes? And when I talk to my friends who we are not researchers, we say, well, it's hard to say because we don't have a parallel universe in which we didn't have these cameras to compare it to. But now I am learning that there is this technique called the synthetic control model where you can maybe…
Right, so it sounds like both having it run for a longer period of time and investing more in it pays off. It doesn't, like you say, plateau at a certain point and you don't get any more benefits. Okay, last question I have is, you talked about it again, I want to recognize that human life is, you can't put a dollar price on it, on human life and human suffering. But one of the things, the statistics that you had was, and maybe KCRT can put up that slide, about every dollar spent on the program saved a certain amount of, or generated a certain amount of savings in terms of the number of…
I'll try to keep going. So is that city savings or is that sort of like the cost to, I know sometimes people quantify cost to society. Can you clarify?
Okay. Again, amazing things to think about. Thank you. Appreciate it.
That wasn't my point. May I state my point and then you can see if you want to respond?
Point of order. Thank you. Am I allowed to clarify my actual position just for the record? Five seconds.
I was saying that it would be interesting to use the same methodology to study the effectiveness of ALPRs, not making a point about how ALPRs work. Yeah, maybe a long extension. Thank you.
Can I make a friendly amendment that we separate this into three separate votes to place this on the consent calendar?
I have my hand up for agenda review as well.
I would like to move item 06 just to be heard before item 01 because the EFF presentation is supposed to give us information to guide our decision about the axon contract. So I would like to hear that presentation before we further discuss the axon contract as a request to the chair.
Friendly amendment N7A is also related to axon. So if you wanted to actually group the axon things together, I would put it fourth.
And I'm also on the queue, Mayor. What's up?
Hello. Thank you. So thank you for the presentation. Some of my questions are actually pretty simple. I mean, if you will, Sarah, I'm going to try to sort of bottom line some of these things and make a couple of statements and see if I'm drawing the right conclusions, in your opinion, from some of the data and information that we shared tonight. And one of the things I've been thinking about too is, you know, is there something unique about ALPR cameras or are they just another tool of policing and can be used for good and be used for bad and we're focusing maybe too much attention on it. But…