body,date,page,text,path
CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities,2018-04-11,1,"ITEM 2-A
COMMISSION ON DISABILITY
MEETING MINUTES OF
Wednesday, April 11, 2018 6:30 p.m.
1.
ROLL CALL
Jenn Barrett, Acting Chair: Okay, I'd like to call this meeting to order. It's a little past 6:30 on
Wednesday, April 11th. Laurie, can you do roll call for us?
Jenn Barrett: Present.
Jenny Linton: Present.
Susan Deutch: Present.
Arnold Brillinger: Present.
Jennifer Roloff: Here.
Laurie Kozisek: Elizabeth Kenny, Lisa Hall and Anto Aghapekian are not present. Tony Lewis has
resigned. We have a quorum.
2. MINUTES
Jenn Barrett: Thank you. Moving on to item number two, minutes. Does anyone have any
comments from the meeting minutes from our last meeting which was on February 14th?
Laurie Kozisek: We have no minutes available at this time.
3.
ORAL COMMUNICAITONS/NON-AGEND (PUBLIC COMMENT)
Jen Barrett: Okay. Thank you. Moving on to oral communications, do we have any speaker slips?
Laurie Kozisek: No.
4.
NEW BUSINESS
4-A
Changing Commission meeting dates to second Wednesday of odd months, starting May or
July. New meeting months will be January, March, May, July, September, and November.
Jen Barrett: Okay. Item number four, new business. 4A is changing of the commission meeting
dates to the second Wednesday of odd months starting in May or July. New meeting months will be
January, March, May, July, September, and November.
Jennifer Roloff: Will this start next year?
Laurie Kozisek: It can start now.
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities,2018-04-11,2,"ITEM 2-A
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Jenn Barrett: Okay. So if we had one starting in May, that would be seven meetings this year. Do
we want to vote on it?
Jennifer Roloff: I would make a motion to have the meeting in May, unless you want to have
discussion before.
Jenn Barrett: I second that.
Laurie Kozisek: You should also include that you want the meetings to be in odd months.
Jennifer Roloff.: So I'll make a motion to change the odd months and start in May.
Jenn Barrett: Okay. Can I be the second for that? Okay. All in favor?
Jenn Barrett, Susan Deutch, Arnold Brillinger, Jennifer Roloff: Aye.
Jenn Barrett: No. At all?
Jenny Linton: Not in May.
Jenn Barrett: Okay.
Jenny Linton: Well we'll have an extra.
4-B
Presentation: Karen Nakamura, Chair of Haas Institute's Disability Studies Cluster, UC
Berkeley.
Jenn Barrett: Yes. So we'll move on to our next item, 4B, which is the presentation by Karen
Nakamura, Chair of Haas Institute's Disability Studies Cluster at UC Berkeley.
Karen Nakamura: Great. Thank you very much. Do you have your little screen working so you
don't have to hurt your necks?
[Pause for A/V to be corrected.]
Karen Nakamura: Thank you, Commissioners, and especially thank you, Commissioner
Brillinger, for inviting me to speak today. So I was just hired by UC Berkeley to head the
Disabilities Studies program. I was speaking to Commissioner Barrett earlier that I'd previously
been about 20 years in New Haven, Connecticut teaching at Yale. And I'm particularly pleased that
the proposed topic was to talk about intersectionality because I think it is increasingly an important
topic for anyone who's in the disability space to think about it. So I'm an anthropologist, and it's
natural for us to think about what diversity is. And increasingly, we've been thinking of disability as
a natural part of human diversity. Disability has always existed across time, disability exists across
cultures.
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities,2018-04-11,3,"ITEM 2-A
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Karen Nakamura: And so anthropology, as a discipline that studies diversity across time and
cultures is in a particularly good space to think about what it means especially in terms of all of its
different ramifications. Now, disability also has an expressive component. So it's also a new way of
thinking about human diversity. And one of the complexities of disability is that we are always
constantly being changed by emerging disabilities. So the disabilities that we thought about 30 or 40
years are still with us, but there are also new emerging disabilities and new ways of thinking about
disability that challenge and bring us to different places. And so the topic I want to talk about today
is intersectionality. Now, I am the Chair of the Disability Studies Cluster in the Haas Institute for a
fair and inclusive society which is a new institution that was created by UC Berkeley with generous
funding from the Haas Foundation to really think about what intersectionality is.
Karen Nakamura: Although I'm the Chair of the Disability Studies Cluster, there are other clusters
that are thinking about race, questions about gender, questions about sexuality, questions about
economic disparity, religion, socio-economic differences and so forth. And the goal of the Hass
Institute is to try to figure out how all of those work together to try to bring us to a place where our
society is more fair and inclusive. Now, the concept of intersectionality was brought forth by two
African-American study scholars, Kimberle Crenshaw and Patricia Collins. And it comes out of
many of the criticisms that especially black feminism and third world feminism had of second wave
feminism in the US, that they were feeling increasingly left out of the conversations and out of
some of both the political as well as the intellectual developments that were coming out of
feminism, and they wanted to emphasize that identities interact in complex ways.
Karen Nakamura: So if you look at that little chart that I have there, in many ways black women
found themselves at If we think back to the '60s and the '70s there are two major movements,
there's the feminist movement happening and the civil rights movement happening at the same time.
And in some ways the civil rights movement was supposed to be addressing the concerns of
African-American men and women, but it was really focusing on the men. And feminism was
supposed to be dealing with the questions that affect all women, but was really addressing the
questions that were being posed by white women. And so black women were put in this position of
feeling left out of both movements, and both movements saying ""Well, if you're a black woman.
the civil rights movement was saying ""Well, you know, women's issues should be handled by the
feminist movement"", and feminists were saying, ""Well, your questions about race, that it was really
a question of the civil rights movement,"" and so they were betwixt and between and really feeling
that actually the circumstances that affect people who are at the intersection of two categories are
often unique and addressed by neither of the individual ones by themselves.
Karen Nakamura: So that in a nutshell is intersectionality, but it proves to be much more complex
in practice. So we can think for example of the disability rights movement and how the disability
rights movement interacts, and so we can think, ""Well, the disability rights movement and its
interactions with, for example, gender."" So we have the disability rights movement on one hand
addressing the questions of disability, but really focusing in many ways on the needs of disabled
men and not in particular thinking about disabled women. While at the same time we have
feminism really not thinking about disability at all. And so again, people who are at the intersection
of those two find themselves, disabled women, find themselves left out of both movements. Now,
where intersectionality gets complex is that there are so many different categories that we can be
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intersectional within, there is gender, there's race, there's ethnicity, there's immigration status,
disability of course, religion, socio-economic status, geographic locations, I don't think I have
sexuality up there, occupation.
Karen Nakamura: And so all of these are interacting in extremely complex ways, so that someone
who might be, for example, might be a DACA status, also disabled, who's female but might identify
as gender queer, they're in a very particular location. And it becomes difficult when all of our
services, for example, at the university are compartmentalized. So we have the program for the
Dreamers, we have the program for the LGBTQI students, we have the program for the disabled
students. But each of those are only addressing one component and unable to grasp, or in many
ways pushing out to other things, to the other units. If you're coming to the disabled student and
you're having questions about also race, well, that should be handled by another unit, so they find
themselves getting passed amongst different departments. I think this is a common experience for
many people who find themselves in intersectional categories.
Karen Nakamura: So in some ways the problem of intersectionality can get boiled down to really
two types of questions. One is who are we imagining when we think of the problem of X? And
because we come up, we have a particular thought or imagination of who X is dealing with, our
solutions take a particular bent. So that sounds kind of on the ambiguous side, so let me be more
specific. So when we think of ""Well, what are the problems that disabled people have?"" Well, the
question then gets begged, ""Who do we think of when we think of who are disabled people?"" And
to a great extent when we think of disabled people, and in Google Image when we search famous
disabled, we get a particular array of faces, most of them are white, most of them are male. There
are a few who are not. Most of them have mobility disabilities, so physical-apparent disabilities, and
so, well that might an unfair one. So let's just do a Google Image search for disabled people, and
still that same array of faces. And I think to a large extent when the public thinks ""Well, who are
disabled people? Who are the disabled?"" and this becomes important when it comes to government
organizations such as your commission you think who are the disabled people that we should be
helping? Who are the disabled people who need access?
Karen Nakamura: You have a particular imagination about certain groups of people and in that
imagination other people fall out of those categories. Because we think of disabled people and in
many ways the first things that do come to mind focus around apparent disabilities for example
People with non-apparent Disabilities fall out of this imagination. This affects what our solutions
look like. So if we think about the signature legislation that's come out of the disability movement
over the past 40 years most of them have in their basic construction, a model of who the ideal
disabled person is. Who benefits the most from the ADA? Who benefits most from the
Rehabilitation Act? Who benefits most from how we construct social security?
Karen Nakamura: And in many ways the person who benefits the most is the one who
approximates the closest to the model. And part of this harkens back to the original roots of the
Rehabilitation Act which was a white middle class male soldier who unfortunately got injured in the
war, comes back, gets the GI bill, gets access to university, graduates and then cannot find a job.
And from the Rehab Act then to the ADA that's really the model of some white cis heterosexual
male who has a physical disability which doesn't affect his ability to be a white collar worker and so
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the bills are constructed, the laws are constructed in ways that enable that category of people to
work, but it leaves out a whole group of other forms of disabled people in their imaginations.
Karen Nakamura: And we can see this in all the ways that the ADA hasn't helped people. So if we
think about the ADA and I'm sure you're all familiar that in the 28 years since the ADA has passed,
employment rates for disabled people have not increased, in fact they've actually decreased. And so
what does that mean? What does it mean when our employment rates are decreasing? What does it
mean that the number of disabled people are also increasing? Why is there so much difficulty
accessing services? Why is our infrastructure breaking in particular ways? So these are deep
questions that we need to ask ourselves and at the same time we need to ask ourselves what are the
protections we're building and who are we imagining are the people who are worth protecting. So in
many ways the important question here is, who's getting left out? What questions are getting left out
when we have a particular imagination of who a disabled person is.
Karen Nakamura: So I'm going to have a couple of categories of people. One for example, is
when we think about disability we often don't think for example about diabetes as a disability. We
may if we think oh, yeah I'm sure, sure. But diabetes is a major cause of amputation and
amputations caused by diabetes disproportionally affect African Americans. And so in any
imagination of what disability policy is, we can't think of just people with amputations but we have
to think well, if diabetes is a health crisis that affect populations disproportionately, then really we
should start to think, well, if we have a disability policy we should start thinking about diabetes
which then leads into earlier concerns, well what are the pre-cursors to diabetes? It high cortisol
levels. What's causing high cortisol levels? Stress. What communities are encountering a lot stress?
Many of our racialized minority communities are engaged in that. Food supply; so in many ways
you can think is being in a food desert a disability issue? Yes, it's a disability issue because if you're
in a food desert that doesn't have access to fresh food and vegetables then it's going to lead to a
particular health conditions which then lead to disability.
Karen Nakamura: So you can see the expansion of what we might think about disability moving
into other areas. Okay, in a similar vein we might also think about asthma. Do we think about
asthma as a major disability issue? In some ways we do, in some ways we don't. But when we again
think about the disproportionate effect of asthma across various racialized populations, then of
course it becomes more apparent. Well, then what becomes the disability issue? Access to clean air,
access to exercise and so forth. Policies that affect equality all become disability issues too.
Karen Nakamura: Okay, so I've done food, air, next we move to water. Water is also an important
disability issue and we don't have to think beyond Flint, Michigan, right? Even in Alameda County,
we have disparate impacts. We have a disparate lead measurements between children in different
communities. So it's not only our water supply and which of the water mains aren't freed of lead
pipes, we also have paint concerns. Which children are living in buildings with leaded paint still
remaining? And so forth. So there's an environmental concern about the consumption of toxic
chemicals that might still be in our ground water system. This is a particular concern in Alameda
because of the remaining effects of the naval base and some of the chemicals that might have been
stored. Policing as a disability issue. Yeah, now I'm starting to sound like a broken record but again
policing has a disparate impact.
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Karen Nakamura: Now there are two effects of police violence that make it a disability issue. One
is the disparate impact of police violence on racialized communities, African American and
Hispanic, especially young men, and then the other is mental illness and Police violence. When you
look at those statistics you see the people who are getting injured and killed by police violence are
African American young men and young men with mental illness. And so we need to think about
that I think as a disability issue. And then one of my final slides is thinking about addiction. Part of
the complexity of the ADA when it was signed, Jesse Helms put in small addendum to the ADA that
created a whole group of people who are not considered disabled. Some of them sort of make sense.
Pyromaniacs, he didn't want as people with disabilities but he also included Alcoholism, he also
included trans sexuality and bisexuality. But these were all carved out as particular named
exceptions to the ADA.
Karen Nakamura: At this point at ADA plus 28, let us rethink why don't we consider, particularly
addiction, substance abuse, to be a disability and what would it mean for our disability policy, either
out in the City of Alameda, Alameda County, if we seriously thought that people who were addicted
were disabled, if they were our people, what is our responsibility as the disability community to
addicts? And how does that change what policy means, what access means and so forth. And my
final slide is the question, why don't we do all of this? And I think much of it is because of fear. We,
in the disability community, we have, and I'd identify myself as disabled, we have gotten to a place
where things are relatively stable, but at the same time I think all of us are also realizing that there is
a real risk of backslide. That regardless of what your disability is, things don't seem to be getting
better. They're stable, but falling behind. And I think there's a great amount of fear that if we include
the other categories that we'll continue to lose.
Karen Nakamura: And I think part of the reason why I joined Cal and part of the reason why I
joined the Haas Institute is because it was taking a brave next step, which is saying absolutely not.
The only way that all of our civil rights movements are going to succeed is if we say that the issues
that face African-Americans, that the issues that face the addict community, the issues that face
undocumented immigrants, the issues that face folks with mental illness, these are all in some ways
disability issues and disability issues are very much part of the same issues that they face. And that
they in their communities shouldn't say, ""Well, if you're an African-American person with a mental
illness, well why don't you just go over to the other organizations that just deal with mental illness?""
No, but we need to do a better job of both networking and accepting that we have a responsibility
for all of the other minoritized identities and think seriously about how we can incorporate them
when we rethink our policies. Thank you for your attention and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to
break for questions, but I'm open for questions now.
Jenn Barrett: Yes definitely, if anyone has any questions?
Jennifer Roloff: I have a question. Thank you for the presentation, that was very enlightening.
When you bring up some of the disability issues, you said diabetes can lead to amputations, and
asthma, air quality issues, does addiction lead to people with disabilities and does diabetes lead to
people with disabilities or are you looking at diabetes and addiction as disabled, you're disabled
with those anyway?
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Karen Nakamura: Yes. Thank you. That's an excellent question. I think that my answer would be
that they are only in our domain once they cross a particular line and we'll draw a line in the sand.
So, once it crosses the line in the sand of amputation then they're our people. I think when we think
about diabetes and the larger effects of diabetes even if you're pre-diabetic, the effects on your body
are already apparent. We don't do this on, with other disabilities saying ""Well oh you're just a little
bit blind so we won't count you until you can't see enough or we don't do it with deafness."" We don't
say, ""Well if you only have some hearing loss, you're not disabled until you get to a certain stage.' I
think in general in the disability community, we have tried to create a big tent, but the big tent has
particular patchy areas and some of the patchy areas we have to think, why are some of the areas
that we have patchy?
Karen Nakamura: Is it because in some ways we have either internalized ableism or is sometimes
our internalized racism or our fear that if we accept people who other people see as unworthy of the
disability status then we shouldn't include them? I think that's what drives sometimes our decisions
of when we consider something to be a disability or not.
Jenny Linton: I have a question. I've been a member of the National Association of the Dually
Diagnosed, which looks at the developmentally disabled community that also suffers from mental
illnesses. And one of the most striking things I learned in the most recent conference I went to was
that two of the new places, domiciles for this population are in the jail system, as well as
homelessness. What are we doing to combat this?
Karen Nakamura: Yes. That's a huge issue and in some ways it's bigger than the scope of a city.
It's a national issue. Right now, the three largest psychiatric institutions in the US, in terms of the
number of people who are housed in them, are the Chicago Jail System, New York Jail System, and
the LA County Jail System. And that is an astonishing figure. We all talk about de-
institutionalization. Well, it's really great, but in many ways we have re-institutionalized them in jail
systems. And the question with the homeless population is harder because often, the situation of the
homeless is so hard that folks who didn't have a mental illness before they became un-housed,
developed one because the circumstances are just so hard right now.
Karen Nakamura: But it's an incredibly difficult situation. And I think that's one of the biggest
challenges for the cities in the Bay area, is how we think about the homeless crisis. And then also,
what we think about how we can change the jailing system, how we can think about how to use the
5150 institutionalization, temporary institutionalization processes, hospitalization processes, and
whether or not there are ways that we can nudge policing policies to either be more
accommodating, to figure out better solutions, but, boy, it's an incredibly tough situation, and I feel
like it's not one that we talk much about.
Karen Nakamura: Early on in my career, I had wondered one thing which is one, you don't see a
lot of adults with Down syndrome, and when we do see a lot of adults with Down syndrome, they
all seem happy. And the kids generally seemed happy. In some regards, many people with Down
syndrome, adults and children are happy, but I once spent some time volunteering around Down
syndrome and there are a lot of unhappy Down syndrome children, who then become unhappy
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Down syndrome adults, but you don't see the unhappy Down syndrome adults. And what I came to
the realization with is that's because they become institutionalized. And so that is the situation that
faces many different communities, is that I know, within the psychiatric disability end, the sort of
management that one has to have of affect and so forth is incredibly draining. But one has to do it
because of continuous concern of institutionalization or other forms of violence against them. And
that in itself is the cause of more traumatization, so it is incredibly difficult. And that's where I think
the importance of different communities, who haven't allied in the past is really important, so
I
appreciate your question. Thank you.
Jennifer Roloff: My other question is, so right now there's petitions going around to get sort of a
revision of Prop 13 back on the ballot. And I remember coming from a family, personally, who, I
have a brother with disabilities after Prop 13 and then following Prop 9 in California, a lot of the
resources closed up for people with disabilities. So, I think they're trying to put something back. I
think it's its own measure, but you're probably familiar with it, I forget what the number is. It
amends Prop 13 to include commercial that was excluded from the whole property tax. And I'm
wondering does your organization get behind any political initiatives or do they do any lobbying?
Karen Nakamura: We don't do lobbying per se because we're part of the University of California.
That's not our goal, but we do produce white papers, and so we do have white papers that think
particularly about the housing crisis and what are the factors behind the housing crisis and behind
the de-funding of the state government. Many times, whether it's at the city, county, or state, or
Federal level we're finding that we just don't have the money to do things and, in many ways, that
was a deliberate strategy. If you can control the money supply, you can control what's possible. And
so, I think we need to rethink how we fund things. And certainly, reform of real estate taxes is really
critical, especially in the current environment that we're in. And so many things could be done if
Proposition 13 was even partially revoked. But there's so much fear around that. Everyone is afraid
that if we tinker with it, there will be devastating consequences, but it's hard to also remember that
if we don't do anything, we have devastating consequences. We already have devastating
consequences.
Jennifer Roloff: Does your organization have a website with a link that has a different white papers
that you produce?
Karen Nakamura: It does, yes.
Jennifer Roloff: Okay, great. And will you leave that with Laurie or this deck or whatever? Thank
you.
Karen Nakamura: Yes I will. Thank you very much.
Jenn Barrett: I also had a question. I really enjoyed your presentation, I thought it was very
interesting. Can you go over a little bit about what the Haas Institute does and then provide any
information on outreach for people who want to get involved in some of these issues?
Karen Nakamura: Yes. So we were funded as a distinct unit on campus that tries to think
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intersectionally across different issues and so we have seven different clusters, and I mentioned
them earlier on. And I am the Chair of the Disabilities Studies cluster, but our goal is as
Commissioner Roloff asked about, is to think through what policy could look like and to produce
analyses of the situation that we're in and different directions that we could head. And so, through
Laurie, I will send a link to our homepage and to the white papers that we've produced.
Jenn Barrett: Well thank you again so much for coming to speak. We really appreciate it.
Arnold Brillinger: Karen, I'd like to thank you personally for coming. I heard you at the Berkeley
Commission for Disability, and I said, ""This is somebody we need to bring in here and enlighten our
group and also because we broadcast this, and there are people at home that are hearing this and
because it's our way of spreading the word and thank you very much. I really appreciate it.'
4-C Overview of City of Alameda Service Request System: See Click fix (City Staff)
Jenn Barrett: Okay, we're going to move on to 4C, a presentation about SeeClickFix.
Laurie Kozisek: There are two online resources that I want to tell you about, that I want everybody
to know about. One of them is called SeeClickFix. You go to S-E-E-C-L-I-C-K-F-I-X.com This is
the page here, that you get when you do that. You click on ""I'm a Citizen"" or you click on 'Sign up""
over here and 'Sign up as a citizen', and then you put in your name, your display name, you might
want to just have your last initial, and your email address, which will not show up in SeeClickFix,
and your password, and where you either live or work, and it will assign you to the SeeClickFix for
Alameda. You put in the Alameda address and then let me show you what it looks like here.
Laurie Kozisek: Because I have a membership here as a citizen, and it looks like this. On the left
hand lower side there, there's a scroll of a ticker tape of issues that are coming in. And you'll see
that almost all of them are illegal dumping. That's the most popular one, we get hundreds of those.
The other ones we get that are really common is sidewalks. If you have any kind of a tripping
hazard or something that's not quite ADA Compliant, a curb ramp or sidewalk, that's in the public
right away, you can report that and we get a lot of reports for that.
Laurie Kozisek: And that's how we have the citizens as our eyes and ears to help us find the places
where we need to respond because part of the ADA is that, not only do you build it correctly, but
you must maintain it correctly, and we have to find out where it has deteriorated so that we can fix
it. If you're a citizen, you would come in here and you'd go, ""I want to report an issue.' You go here
to report an issue and open it all the way up here, and then, if you've got it on your phone, that's
why they call it SeeClickFix - you see it, you click a picture of it, and we fix it and we even know
where it is. Because theoretically, you click it and you upload it right there. Sometimes people will
click the picture and then they go upload it at their house and then it's got the wrong address. But
what you do is you type in the address. I'm going to put in the City Hall West address here.
Laurie Kozisek: Okay and it pops up with a map as soon as it realizes what I'm doing, and then I
go ""next"", and I put in my issue and this is the important thing I want to tell you about, is these
categories. I'm going to read them out in case people can't see them on their TV. The highlights. If
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you have anything to do with Alameda Municipal Power that is not like a downed power line, you
can put that down. AC Transit, paratransit, anything to do with Alameda Point, the animal shelter,
Boards and Commission information, bus shelters, cable TV, city council, city manager, or code
enforcement if you think there's something wrong with something someone is building.
Laurie Kozisek: If you want to get your curb painted blue for an accessible space, election
information, disaster preparedness, fire prevention, all kinds of graffiti, illegal dumping, lagoon
problems, library, parking enforcement. Then we get down to your pedestrian or bicycle issues and
a popular one is pothole repair, Public Works complements, recreation and park requests so if you
have a tripping hazard in the park you would put it there or trees getting in the way so you have
access issues. And then sidewalks is a very popular one if you have any sidewalk issues.
Laurie Kozisek: And if you have any problems with signs or street sweeping or a streetlight out. If
you have suggestions for traffic calming. Anyway, there's all kinds of things you can click on here.
So you'd click on one and then you'd put a little description on it and then you'd go to the bottom
here and click: Report your issue. I'm not going do that now. And then you would get an automatic
response saying: Yes we got your request and it's put into our queue. And then we have a program
called Lucity, that's just internal to us, that takes all of our requests and routes them to the correct
person who gets a notification saying: ""Here's something in our inbox you need to work on this"".
And then you have to assign it to somebody and follow it through and it keeps reminding you until
you get it done.
Laurie Kozisek: Great way to make the city more accessible is to let us know where there are
issues. I put in a SeeClickFix for the door here. We had not gotten a button on it, but I have
requested it. And just have at it, if you're not sure what to do, if you're not comfortable with this
computer interface, then what you do is you call up the public works main number 510-747-7900,
and ask to do it over the phone. We'll be happy to have someone upload it for you.
Laurie Kozisek: What I see when I sign up as an official is a whole ticker tape of things that are
going on, and what their status is, who they've been assigned to, what their number is. And then I
can look up the whole dialogue. Say, when somebody writes in and says, ""Every time I get out of
my car, I step into a big puddle."" Or, ""My wallet falls into the puddle, do something about it."" And
so I will send messages to, say the inspector, to go look at it and take some pictures, and they'll
upload some pictures, and we'll maybe talk with another engineer about what we can do about it.
And we'll come to a conclusion, we'll talk back and forth with the person who made the request by
email, and we'll try and get it resolved that way. So you can see a whole list of things going on for
each item. So I've got a different way of looking at it here. That's really all I have on SeeClickFix.
Do you have any questions?
Jenn Barrett: My sister and I use it, and we think it's really easy and accessible, so I think it's a
great program.
Laurie Kozisek: Good.
Jennifer Roloff: I have a question. For traffic issues around the school's pick up and drop off that
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seem to be causing repetitive problems, would that be logged here, and you would work with the
school district? Where's the intersection with schools and city?
Laurie Kozisek: We manage the Safe Route to Schools program, so you would talk to us. I believe
there is one there on schools. If you're not sure, just put in say, ""Traffic calming"" And that will go to
the same person, and they would try and get back with you about what the specific issue is, and
maybe go out and observe it, and see what kind of traffic difficulties there are, and what can be
done about it.
Jennifer Roloff: Okay. Thank you.
Arnold Brillinger: I'm just particularly interested in the part about calling it in, and having
someone else fill out the thing. And thank you very much for that. A lot of us can't make our phones
work in that way, where we can click, and take a picture of it right away, and stuff. And it doesn't
work when we've got one hand, or whatever.
Laurie Kozisek: Yes. So, we realize that many of the people that we talk to are not computer savvy.
They call up and they say, ""I've been in Alameda for 80 years."" And then, they proceed to tell us
what the problems are, and we try and find out where they are. And a photo helps, but you don't
have to do a photo. And if you do a photo, do a close up, and do one far away, because sometimes
we get pictures of a pothole, we don't know where it is. So it's nice to have the surrounding also.
But yes, we would like to be accessible as possible, so that we can help people who cannot interface
with us through a phone or through a computer. And I think, we even have a TTY, if you look it up.
Well, I don't think that's used much anymore. Did you have any further follow up?
4-D
Overview of ""211"" System Alameda County Social Service Referral Line (City Staff)
Jenn Barrett: Great. Thank you. We'll move on to item number 4D, overview of the 211 system.
Laurie Kozisek: Okay, the 211 system. It happens that I volunteer for the Walnut Creek, with the
Contra Costa County 211. And so I know about the 211 in general, but I thought I'd tell you about
the Alameda County 211. A 211 is a nationwide program for social service agency referrals. So just
about wherever you are, you can type in 211, like I did there, 211.org or you can dial 211. There are
some rural areas that don't have it, but they're trying to get 100% coverage. They're county based.
So there's a 211 for Alameda County, there's one for Contra Costa County, there's an aggregate one
that covers San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Solano, Marin and Sonoma County or Napa
County. It covers a larger area, but in general, they're county based. The people that serve for 211 in
Alameda County is Eden I&R, I&R standing for Information and Referral.
Laurie Kozisek: And so to get them, you either dial 211, or you use these backdoor numbers. The
reason they have these backdoor numbers is, let's say, you got a cousin in Virginia who's having a
substance abuse problem. You would put in their ZIP Code, get their backdoor number for their 211,
and you call them up and you say, ""What are the local resources available for my cousin?"" And
then, you'd be able to help somebody like that, remotely. So anyway, I'm going go to Eden I&R,
because that's ours. And there's a resource finder for health, housing and human services, and
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities,2018-04-11,12,"stay? Do you have a source of income?"" All these different things that you need to know, and then
guide you to people that can help you. So it's a wonderful resource, and I wish everyone knew about
it. Any questions?
Jenn Barrett: If you're calling on a cellphone that's in another area, but you're physically in the
area that you want assistance, it'll work?
Laurie Kozisek: Generally the cell tower you are closest to is where it will go. So, sometimes if
you're right on the border in the Oakland hills, you will end up in the wrong one. And in that case,
whoever you get to will say, I'll get a call from someone who lives in Brentwood but is working in
Oakland, and she calls on her lunch break and says, ""I need some services in Brentwood."" But she
gets to the 211 in Alameda County, so they switch her over to me in Contra Costa County and do
their live transfer, or you just give them the backdoor number.
Jenn Barrett: Great, thank you.
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OLD BUSINESS
5-A
Commission and Board Liaison Report (All Commissioners)
Jenn Barrett: Okay, we'll move on to our next item, number five, old business. 5A, Commission
and Board Liaison Reports. Does anyone have a report that they would like to state? Commissioner
Brillinger.
Arnold Brillinger: Thank you. A while back when we decided on going to different commissions
and councils, I chose transportation. And so I go to various, not just the transportation commission
here in Alameda, but I go to other places too, to find out what's happening in the area of
accessibility, and so forth. And so I went to the AC Transit accessibility committee meeting. And
there, I've got something that I thought, ""Oh, this ought to be broadcast around to various people.""
Now when I look here, you guys probably don't fit here, but the United Seniors of Oakland and
Alameda County is having their 27th annual convention on May 25th. And I'm sure that if you look
them up, you will find more information on how that works, and how to register for it. But in the
AAC meeting, that's the Accessibility for Alameda or AC Transit, they spend a lot of time talking
about RM3, and I'm thinking, ""Why don't I hear about these things except when I go to certain
meetings?""
Arnold Brillinger: And RM3 is the thing that's going to be on the ballot in June, and it's in the nine
Bay Area, or nine county, it's in the Bay Area, and it's about increasing the toll on the Bay Bridge,
and the other bridges. They plan to increase it a dollar in 2019, and another dollar three years later
in 2022, and another dollar in 2025, and this is on the seven different bridges connecting in the Bay
Area. Now it doesn't include the Golden Gate Bridge, because that's under a different ownership.
But I thought, ""This is something that we ought to all know about."" And also, I want to talk a little
bit about the SRAC. The SRAC is the Service Review Advisory Committee, and that's where I'm
the chair of that, that meets in Oakland, and it's about the paratransit of the Bay, East Bay
Paratransit. If you get problems, you could come to our meetings and let us know what they are.
But, we just approved the Measure B and BB paratransit plan, and funding application, and we also
approved the staff's recommendations on East Bay Paratransit on their current no-show cancellation
policies.
Arnold Brillinger: If you have six no-shows or late cancellations, if you have six of them, you're
possibly going to be suspended. But we decided that because it is fairly liberal in how we do this,
you're sent a letter after four times and they say, ""You've already missed four in this quarter."" And
when you get six, you get a letter that says you'll be suspended, but you can come in and plead your
case. And very few times do we really suspend anybody, but it makes them more aware of. ""Hey,
you've got quite a few."" And it disrupts the service. And, the next meeting is going to be May 2nd at
12:30 in the afternoon, at 1750 Broadway, that's the East Bay Paratransit building. And then, I also
wanted to talk about the Transportation Commission and the Planning Commission, and I saw Jen
there. She even went up and introduced herself as being kind of a watchdog, I think.
Arnold Brillinger: And, the Transportation Commission and Planning Board had an interesting
meeting. It took about two hours just for the joint one and then a lot of people left, and the Planning
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Board, they continued with their meeting. But I heard a couple of things that were kind of
interesting. And they showed some figures on the actual, and the projected growth of California in
the 20 years from 1990 to 2010, it grew from 29 million to 37.2 million, 28% growth.
Arnold Brillinger: In the next 30 years, from 2010 to 2040, they expect that it will grow from the
37.2 million to 46.6 million, which is a 25% growth. And of course Alameda is part of California,
and needs to plan correctly on how they're going to deal with this. Now, the Bay Area growth in the
20 years from 1990 to 2010, it grew from 6 million to 7.1 million. 18% growth. Now, they expect
that in the next 30 years, that it will grow from 7.1 million to 9.3 million, which is 30% growth.
And this is a higher percentage than California's growth rate. And the city of Alameda, in those 20
years, 1990 to 2010, it actually lost some of its population, about 3.5% but they expect to regain
that, so they've got to work on how to plan for this.
Arnold Brillinger: And, now I don't want to bore you with a bunch of figures, but a couple of
things that were brought out is that in the planning they can't say, ""Oh, we've already got way too
many cars trying to use the tube and the bridges, we don't want any more housing, we don't want
any more people here."" Traffic is not a way that you can decide on your building program. It has to
be safety and something else, but it has to be safety and it's not a matter of just saying, ""Oh, we've
got more cars than we want to deal with, or more people."" That's pretty much the end of my report
but I just wanted to say that. And then Jenn, you probably had a different take on the meeting?
Jenn Barrett: I thought it was really interesting. They talked about the requirements that the state
has on providing additional housing, so every plan - I'm not sure how long the plan is, but three year
plan, you have to increase. The state gives you mandate on how much housing that you have to
increase, so it's very interesting how that's state driven and then one of the public comments about
the transportation, they brought up the Alameda free shuttle, when they're talking about increases in
transportation and not single ridership of cars and stuff. It was nice to have someone who
represented the Alameda shuttle there.
Arnold Brillinger: I do have a couple more things. There's a inter agency liaison commission or
something like that, committee, and it met today. And what this is, is three people from AC transit
and three people from Alameda, and they're city council people, and those are board people from
AC Transit. And they get together quarterly, and they had their meeting today and at that time they
talked about the Transbay tomorrow. That's their whole thing on, using the brand new building that
they're building over there. And also they talked about the different bus lines here in Alameda, the
19, and the 96 especially up at Alameda Point, and they talked about the sink hole.
Arnold Brillinger: They said, ""Well something else, will happen again to clog up the works at the
tube and how are we going to deal with that? Let's use this."" And so the people, the transportation
person, they're all on this, and trying to put together plans for this. Now I don't know if any of you
use the ferry from Harbor Bay, they're trying to get people to ride the buses. I was on a bus that I
actually stopped there other day, I was coming from the airport going through Alameda and three
people got on, out of the whole ferry load of people. And they realized that that's a problem, that
people are not taking the bus, but they are really working on it, they've got supervisors there to
make sure that the buses get there on time and stay long enough to take people off and so forth.
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They're working on it, they're working on it and they need to let people know that they are working
on it and put it in the papers or get the word out, because there's just not enough parking down
there, for all the people that want to use the ferry.
Susan Deutch: I just wanted to comment on the Harbor Bay Ferry. I do take that ferry and I live
near that, and they took away street parking near the ferry and made it two hour parking, so there
are limited parking spots now for people that need to take the ferry. And some people really do need
to use their car to get to the ferry and when the parking lots filled up, they can't park in the street
and there's no place for them to park, but some people have to get their kids to school in the
morning and then get to the ferry on time and there's only three ferries. It's been an issue in Harbor
Bay and a lot of people are talking about it, especially on that Nextdoor app, where people talk
about issues. And they're trying to come up with some solutions to the parking problems so that
more people will use that Harbor Bay Ferry, it's limited.
Arnold Brillinger: Because the ridership has gone up.
Susan Deutch: Yes.
Arnold Brillinger: But they want to get more people on the bus, get there.
Susan Deutch: Yes, it's just some people can't take bus for reasons.
Arnold Brillinger: And they did talk about the fact that some people needed to drop their kids off
first and then make it over to somewhere else and it just doesn't work out.
Susan Deutch: Yes, and they took away the street parking there. And so it's become more difficult
to take that Ferry. A lot of people in Harbor Bay are actually driving all the way across Alameda to
get the other Ferry.
Jennifer Roloff: Where there's more parking?
Susan Deutch: Yes.
Jennifer Roloff: I have another comment. You made a point that at the joint commission meetings
they were saying, something like, ""We don't want to hear about over development that causes traffic
but is it a safety concern?"" And my daughter rides her bike down Central towards Encinal High
School; she's at the middle school there. And since she started last year, we started building up a list
of the accidents. And yesterday she got hit, and she got hit on her bike. Two girls, they were riding
next to each other and both got knocked over and it was an intersection outside of Paden School.
And I believe that is Highway 61, is at central as it goes towards the high school.
Arnold Brillinger: It's a state road. [Editor's comment: It's not.]
Jennifer Roloff: Yeah, I believe its state road and it brought me to think about what Karen
Nakamura had said, the intersections. So as a commission, luckily she doesn't have any disabilities
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but as I shared my story with our friends and you hear about ""This person became disabled from
this biking accident."" And I've been to City Council meetings for Bike Walk Alameda and other
biking organizations who come and talk about the pretty bad accidents that have happened with the
biking community. I know for liaisons, there is a health and safety issue around all the bikes and
traffic in Alameda.
Arnold Brillinger: I just now looked at my notes here. There was the public health and safety,
those are the only reasons for accommodating, for zoning the land differently.
Jennifer Roloff: Oh okay.
Arnold Brillinger: Because the state says, ""You can't use transportation issues as reason for
rezoning or blocking housing.""
Jenn Barrett: Does anyone else have any items they want to comment on for their board liaison?
Jenny Linton: Like Arnold I tend to go to meetings outside of Alameda as well. And we spent last
month a couple of days at the public policy conference in Sacramento. It was put on by the Arc of
California and United Cerebral Palsy. And they went through some of their priorities for 2018, a
very nice overview of the state of support for the developmentally disabled in California. They're
looking at things like a uniform holiday schedule. The state is trying to cut back on the daily
services and it's causing problems for families and individuals that want to live independently. And
there was a $25 million bridge funding proposed by Assembly Member Holden, that that they're
hoping to part of the budget as well.
Jenny Linton: Social groups were cancelled as a result of the recession or postponed. They've not
yet been restored. We're looking to restore some campaign outdoor opportunities for the
developmentally disabled population. And they put together an integrated living program. The
housing and community development agency, the state has closed their last developmental center,
the institutions, I think in 2006, and they're sitting on land across the state that they are hoping to
sell and put back into the general budget. And this agency is proposing that we take the money on
the sale of these lands and put it back into the budget to support the developmentally disabled, for
which it was built to begin with. Those were some interesting issues I've learned about in
Sacramento.
Jennifer Roloff: Just a quick question, that $25 million bridge, is that what you were talking about
that's going to be on the ballot for increasing the bridges? Is that the same?
Jenny Linton: No it's a bridge loan to get from one year to the next.
Jennifer Roloff: Oh, it was a loan. Sorry.
Jenny Linton: It's a bridge fund, bridge grant.
Jennifer Roloff: Oh got it.
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Susan Deutch: Trying to cover some of the services that aren't being funded by the previous year's
budget into this year's budget.
Jennifer Roloff.: Oh, okay. Thank you.
Jenn Barrett: Commissioner Deutch or Commissioner Roloff, do you have any liaison report?
Susan Deutch: I am a liaison to the Library and the Park Department but there hasn't been anything
on their agenda. Keep checking their agenda.
Jenn Barrett: Thank you.
Jennifer Roloff: And I will be attending Parks and Rec Commission tomorrow night.
Jenn Barrett: Great.
Jenny Linton: One more thing. At the City Council meeting last week we declared April, Autism
Awareness Month in the City of Alameda.
5-B
Subcommittees Report and Schedule
Jenn Barrett: Yeah, Jennifer and I and Beth were all there. Okay, we'll move on to subcommittees
report. Commissioner Brillinger, do you have anything for this?
Arnold Brillinger: I don't. I don't know that I'm on any subcommittees.
Jenn Barrett: Really? They were assigned during our retreat. We can look into that. Does anyone
else have a subcommittee?
Arnold Brillinger: I had a question. We do have a subcommittee. It's dealing with making sure that
different buildings in Alameda are ADA accessible, right? And is that dealing with businesses?
Jenn Barrett: Yes, so Anto and I are working on that and I actually maybe want to add to the next
agenda but I came up with 10 ways for businesses to improve accessibility and so the thought that
we had come up with was that if a business can show that they did something to help people with
disabilities enter their businesses or use their services that we would, provide them with a sign, and
this is just a draft that I've come up with so far but it says, ""Alameda supports people of all
abilities."" Businesses displaying this poster have completed steps to make their businesses more
accessible to all. We're still in a planning process of it and hopefully we can add it to the agenda,
and we can get comments for the next meeting, but that's what Anton and I are starting to work on.
Arnold Brillinger: Okay, I was just going to say that San Francisco, their Disability Council had a
report from their small business part of the city government. And how they have put together and
they've got a deadline for places to become accessible, businesses. And I think that they also help
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them out if they need help, but I'd like to share some of that. Get some of that information for you
and for you to take a look at it.
Jenn Barrett: Great! Yeah, I think that for the purpose of this just right now is that we want to be
as encouraging as possible and it's very expensive for businesses. Although it is the law that you
readily achievable, make your businesses accessible, we want to be like a guiding force and work
with the business to help them and reward them for small changes that they made in the hopes that
they'll continue to make changes as financially, able to do so. That was our beginning thinking but
we're definitely, excited to hear comments from the rest of the commission.
Susan Deutch: We've done that in the past with some businesses and it works out pretty well. And
we didn't pressure.
Jenn Barrett: Okay, great! I'm glad to hear that you had success with that.
Susan Deutch: Like the Marketplace they were not accessible, but we worked with them.
5.
STAFF COMMUNICATIONS
Jenn Barrett: That's awesome. Great. Okay, are there any other subcommittee reports? We'll move
on to staff communications. I think just that there's the position open.
Laurie Kozisek: There are two positions open to fill one existing and one potential vacancy for the
Commission on Disability.
6.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Jenn Barrett: Great, thank you, and we saw the email go out from you last week so that was great.
Thank you so much! Item seven announcements, does anyone have any announcements? Okay, I'd
like to adjourn this meeting at this time, do I have a second?
7.
ADJOURNMENT
Susan Deutch: Second.
Jenn Barrett: All in favor?
All: Aye.
Jenn Barrett: Okay, thank you so much everyone.
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