City Council 2025 Priorities Pt. 2

More Departments, More Updates

Human Resources - Humans Are The Resource

Human Resources (HR) is responsible for hiring, training, and payroll for all City workers. Their big projects are a compensation philosophy—more on that below, leadership development, and generally making things more efficient in their department.

Council Priorities

Councilmember Bonilla asked about the compensation philosophy and what they meant by that. Director Frye said that it was a way to try to be more consistent on compensation for staff. “What should our comparative jurisdictions be and why,” she said. The point isn’t to lock-in anything, but to have a starting point that is pretty even that can be deviated from if needed.

Right now, the comparative jurisdictions are decided in each labor contract—for example, the police may compare to different jurisdictions than Fire or Clerical staff. Mayor Salinas and Councilmember Syrop were interested in monitoring how closely they adhere to the process, but Director Frye said it was mostly a guide with some flexibility.

Councilmembers Syrop, Andrews, and Zermeño asked about intern guidelines and Director Frye admitted that there wasn’t a standard process from HR’s standpoint. Councilmembers Syrop, Zermeño, and Andrews have all said that they make use of interns, though it isn’t always clear what their role is or how they are being compensated, if at all. Councilmember Andrews, for example, said she has had an intern every year but finds ways for other organizations to pay for them. “The real work hasn’t begun on the intern program yet,” Director Frye said.

Councilmember Andrews expressed interest in a Career Center of some kind for City jobs. Director Frye said that the office is open and that they also do a lot of outreach—both at events and online—for positions.

Councilmember Goldstein asked about DEI training, implicit bias training, and the use of DEI metrics. Director Frye said that they do have DEI training and recommend implicit bias training for onboarding procedures. A report on DEI metrics is also scheduled to be given to the Personnel Commission soon.

Finance Department - Managing That Money

The Finance Department is responsible for the City’s money, including trying to fight off the budget shortfall that is looming in Hayward’s future. They’ve put it off for now, but it’s still looming in the future. Notably, there’s a new Finance Director—for a limited term—to cover for the last Finance Director who stepped down shortly after proposing the mid-year budget.

The Finance Department is focused on process automation—a great way to cut costs—and balancing the budget. They can’t do much directly, but they do keep track of it and offer up ways to make things pencil out. The big push has come from Councilmember Ray Bonilla to both avoid using more reserves and also bring them back up to 20%.

Council Priorities

Councilmember Bonilla cut to the chase and asked for confirmation that a balanced budget means no reserves. The Finance Director couldn’t make any promises, but said that they’re hoping to not use reserves. “Fantastic,” Councilmember Bonilla responded. “I really do like the idea of not using the reserve as much as possible.”

But he was still concerned about liquidity in the reserve. “We had some discussion about a non-liquid asset being in the reserve.” This came up in a budget retreat in February. Former City Councilmember Al Mendall seemed confident that non-liquid assets—in this case the loan to the Hayward Economic Development Corporation (HEDC) for $8,000,000 to purchase the Downtown movie theater building—shouldn’t be counted in the reserve. Assistant City Manager Dustin Claussen said that it’s not a problem—even going so far as to cite Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Council Gets Ahead Of Budget Shortfall

Councilmembers Put Heads Together On Budget

Hayward HeraldCollin Thormoto

Former Councilmember Al Mendall has continued to lean on his connections to current City Councilmembers in an effort to steer discussions and policy. The practice has had mixed results.

Councilmember Andrews asked for a review of the Cinema Place property, which is apparently going to be discussed by the Council Budget and Finance Committee soon. She also asked about a property manager, and Staff said that they’re managing Cinema Place actively at the moment and are hoping to activate the corner spot that used to be rented to Copy Pacific.

Councilmember Goldstein asked about the Property Manager position, and Staff said that they’re re-working the job description to focus more on marketing. One of the primary purposes of the position will be to both draw in tenants to Cinema Place and also help offload the 238 properties that the City still hasn’t sold yet. Councilmember Goldstein asked, again, about automation, which Staff said was dependent on funding.

Councilmember Syrop asked about the procurement assessment, and Staff said that they changed it so that the threshold for Council Approval is higher. For items over a certain amount, purchases require approval of the full City Council, which can slow down the process by weeks. The Finance Department is trying to make things go faster by raising that limit to line up with other local cities.

Fire Department - Better Loved But Rarely Heard From

The Hayward Fire Department is the second-largest department in the City, by use of General Funds. Their big projects are dealing with an aging fleet—thanks to Wall Street consolidation of the fire engine production industry, managing service standards as the population grows, wildfire risks, and a general inflation of duties. “We’re really starting to look at what our core mission is,” Interim Chief Vollmer said.

Council Priorities

Councilmember Syrop expressed support for scaling up “public safety” staff with population growth. He also asked about the status of the HEART program. Interim Chief Vollmer said that there are no new hires, so they need to look at a new permanent staffing model. There are also issues where HFD is only allowed, by State law, to send people to either an emergency room or John George Psychiatric Hospital, even when that’s not what they actually need. There are also issues with dispatch staffing levels and triage, this is complicated by the fact that the Police Department is in charge of all dispatch—including for the Fire Department.

Councilmember Bonilla focused, as he does, on emergency management—his day job for technology and medical insurance companies. He specifically focused on a local response to earthquakes, citing shortcomings in regional emergency response. “For an extended period of time after an earthquake,” he said, “our community is going to have to rely on itself and its neighbors to get through the immediate aftermath.”

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Councilmember Andrews recommended working with local businesses for procurement of emergency supplies, given that routing things from a distance would be difficult in an emergency.

Councilmember Bonilla pushed for the Fire Department to prioritize broad emergency preparedness. Interim Chief Vollmer said an Emergency Manager position was needed. He said HFD currently has a Emergency Services Officer and a Public Education Officer who are helping, but they have very broad duties. One of the Emergency Services Officer’s jobs has been developing a partnership with Glad Tidings Church to develop a Community Resiliency Hub for emergency response.

Councilmember Andrews pushed for emergency hubs in each voting district, though the audio at this point got garbled. She has previously pushed for the Downtown Library to be an emergency hub, as well. One of the Assistant City Managers said that information about emergency hubs would be discussed at the next Council Public Safety Committee meeting.

Councilmember Bonilla agreed with the need. “I think that [Hayward] should be known around the world for our preparedness to respond to [The Hayward Fault],” he said. It is unclear, however, how his fiscal conservativeness will conflict with his desire for increased emergency preparedness.

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Councilmember Roche asked if the Fire Department has given input on the road narrowing for the hills, citing concerns about egress during a fire. Interim Chief Vollmer, however, focused on educational partnerships and the importance of making communities fire safe rather than focusing on evacuation.

Mayor Mark Salinas asked how many fire fighters the City should have given its population. The City Manager said that the standard is 1 Firefighter per 1,000 residents, and Hayward is currently at .75 firefighters per 1,000 residents.

IT Department - It’s Everywhere And Nowhere

Information Technology (IT) touches every system these days. They are the infrastructure upon which every department relies and so they have a lot of power and responsibility. For example, they play a large part in improving the finance system, which the IT Director said uses “an exceptionally difficult toolset.”

IT’s priorities are on “IT Governance” which seemed to be aligning IT projects with council priorities, though it wasn’t very clear. They are also focused heavily on Artificial Intelligence—both developing a policy for the City and piloting AI technologies for future implementation. They will also be developing an Acceptable Computer Use Policy for the City.

Council Priorities

Mayor of Hayward Mark Salinas kicked off the commentary by focusing in on a problem close to him: the Council voting system. “We can’t even vote on the dais,” he said. The City Council uses a push-button voting system, but it seems to have been on the fritz for multiple months.

Councilmember Bonilla asked about the term “hybrid world”, which the IT Director clarified is about moving systems to the cloud and also improving access for people. He was also very excited about the use of AI, primarily as a way to reduce costs. “I loved the focus on AI in your department,” he said, “and I would kind of like to see that broadened across all of our City departments. AI or technology as a strategic enabler for cost reduction.”

Using Artificial Intelligence solutions to cut costs—usually in personnel—has been an increasing danger to workers in many industries. And while the financial savings are usually given as reason enough to use them, Hayward’s dedication to sustainability should cause them to consider the energy cost of AI technology, not to mention built-in biases and risks of incorrect answers.

Councilmember Syrop was also supportive of implementing AI, but struck a more cautious tone. “I just want us to be very deliberate about making that decision [to implement AI],” he said, “and having it be driven more by the need that we’re seeing… rather than just blanket subscribing to something before we know what we want to do with it.”

Councilmember Andrews asked about the situation around Fiber Optic internet for businesses. The IT Director said that the funding issues are “beyond difficult.” He said that other places with more money have tried it and that it is ridiculously expensive to do.

Library Department - Everyone Loves It

The Library department is probably the City department that is most frequently used by Hayward residents. As one of the last completely free public spaces, it is used by people from all income brackets—more on that in a moment—and has morphed from a place to find books to somewhere people go for community services, IT help, taxes, and more. One of the frequent complaints of library workers is mission creep, which forces library staff to take on projects and issues that they are neither trained nor funded to handle.

Library Director Jayanti Addleman laid out multiple priorities for the Library, with one of the first being “ongoing safety issues.” She said that safety and security are her biggest concern and said that Library Staff and security had been physically attacked. Other issues included low staffing and the demand for more hours, high demand for meeting and programming spaces, and the difficulty of managing Heritage Plaza. Some good things are that a tech-mobile is expected in April and that the upgrades to Weekes Branch are funded entirely with outside money.

Council Priorities

Councilmember Andrews went directly to safety issues around Weekes Branch. She has been one of the louder voices when it comes to the perceived dangers of unhoused people around Weekes Park. She asked Director Addleman what is being done to address things once the Weekes Branch reopens. Director Addleman said that there had been a lot of vandalism at the Weekes Branch during the renovations, but also said that there were issues with unhoused residents at the Downtown Branch, as well.

Councilmember Andrews then asked about Heritage Plaza, and Director Addleman said that managing it is a lot for the understaffed Library. The Library has committed to four big events per year, but also said that there are competing priorities for the plaza, because there are not many public spaces for programming and recreation.

Councilmember Bonilla pushed to have a Library Safety and Security Plan brought to the Public Safety Committee—a plan supported by Councilmember Syrop. He also asked if the Library should shift hours later, citing an anecdote where the Library didn’t seem busy around 11am. Director Addleman said that some people come to the Library for the quiet and often do their remote work from the Library.

On the subject of Library hours, Mayor Salinas said that, at a recent Hayward Local Agencies Committee (HLAC) Meeting, and unnamed HUSD Trustee complained about public library hours, as well. Mayor Salinas said he challenged HUSD to think creatively about their own school libraries and making them available to the public—though it should be noted, most school libraries do not have full-time staffing.

Councilmember Roche expressed concern about damage to the Weekes Branch and framed it as a public safety issue. However, if the damage is being done by unhoused residents—to which many comments seemed to allude—providing more services may be the answer to the problem as opposed to bringing it to the Public Safety Committee, which focuses on Police and Fire.

She also asked about the Hub Space, and Director Addleman said that the computer classroom space—on the second floor of the Main library—will be reimagined as a Community Services Hub where different community services would be available to help residents on a rotating schedule.

Councilmember Syrop suggested collaborating with other agencies—specifically highlighting HARD—to address the shortage of public spaces. HARD does have many meeting spaces, but they are usually for larger gatherings and require a fee to reserve. He was also supportive of addressing the low staffing levels in the Library department.

City Clerk - All Your Records And Voting Here

The City Clerk’s Office handles public records requests, meetings, and all things voting. If you’re looking to do some paperwork, chances are good you’re running into the City Clerk’s Office. City Clerk Miram Lens started by saying that a room—it was unclear from the audio which—at Chabot College has been identified with all the right A/V hookups to run a City Council Meeting in the community, something some on Council have shown interest in.

Future projects include getting everything together for District Elections in 2026, including providing information and education to the public on how that will be working. They are also facing an increase in Public Records Requests.

Council Priorities

Council had nothing to say.

City Attorney - Defending The City From Liability

The City Attorney’s Office handles all of the legal stuff the City has to do. That includes a lot of liability and Worker’s Compensation claims, among other things. Their whole job is to protect the City from liability. Their recent achievements included the Alameda County Assessment Center Dispute, a dispute with Union Pacific Railroad which netted the City $250,000 over an environmental issue, defending against attacks on the City’s flavored tobacco regulations, and advancing the Russell City Legacy Project which may be referring to the Russell City Reparative Justice Project.

The City Attorney also seemed proud about defending an Officer Involved Shooting incident resulting in no payout to the person who was shot.

Issues coming up for the department mostly involve costs increasing for insurance because of general liability, police practices, property loss, and cyber security risk.

Council Priorities

Councilmember Syrop asked if the liability coverage was even worth it with the cost increases. City Attorney Michael Lawson said that the deductible is up to $1,000,000 and that “we cannot keep up with ourselves.” The increases are largely driven by the cost of Police Practices Liability coverage, which is an issue across the county, wildfire risk, and cybersecurity risks.

Councilmember Bonilla seemed shocked at the $7,000,000 increase, but Attorney Lawson said that it was below the threshold predicted and there is coverage in the High Risk Fund. They baked-in $2,000,000 to $3,000,000. During the Strategic Planning meeting last year, Attorney Lawson said that the City Attorney’s Office has no budget and that they spend what is necessary, no matter what the cost.

When responding to questions from Councilmember Andrews, Attorney Lawson hinted that he was looking forward to the change in leadership at the District Attorney’s Office and hopes that it will make settlements easier for his office. He hoped it would also have “a more cooperative relationship” with the Police Department.

City Manager’s Office - The City’s CEO

The City Manager is the CEO of the City and has a very particular role. Not only is the City Manager the Boss of almost every other Department in the City—everything other than the City Attorney and City Clerk’s Offices, the City Manager also has 3 departments of their own to manage directly: Community and Media Relations, Community Services, and Economic Development.

Some of the highlights from the last year include the Scattered Site Housing Project—out of the Community Services Department—and tripling the ridership of Paratransit in the City. City Manager Ana Alvarez said her priorities are to improve encounters at City Hall and increase fire and police capacity. On the subject of Police staffing, she said that, while there is no standard for Police staffing, the average across the country is 2.5 Sworn Officers per 1,000 people. She said the City of Hayward is at 1 Sworn Officer per 1,000 people, “So we have a lot of catching up to do,” she said.

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As a new City Manager, most of her time focused on future projects. She wants to start organizing services by election district and develop a way to respond to specific districts. She also is looking to group resources together and grow the local economy with a focus on attracting businesses. City Manager Alvarez specifically thanked Councilmember Andrews for Arthur Mac’s, which has been in development for several years and has yet to break ground downtown.

City Manager Alvarez also stressed fiscal solvency and accountability. “If we’re expending tax payer money, then we need to track and speak to and report out on the impact that is intended for that investment,” she said.

Council Priorities

Since it was getting late and they had run over time on other departments, only Councilmember Andrews had any comments. She pushed for a retail center in every district, aligning with her consistent push for economic development. She celebrated the City helping with community events, but stressed that the City shouldn’t be planning it all. She also supported the growth of public safety, “I like hearing that we are going to start looking at escalators for public safety,” though she also pushed to include maintenance services in that growth, as well.

Councilmember Andrews’s final comment called bus shelters a nuisance and called for more investment from AC Transit. When Councilmember Bonilla pushed for the City to stop paying for bus shelter maintenance in November of last year, Public Works Director Ameri stressed that the political fallout wasn’t worth the less than $40,000 in annual savings—approximately .018% of the City’s general funds.