The San Leandro City Council eliminated full minutes of Council meetings several years ago. To make up for this, and keep San Leandrans informed of what the Council is up to, Mike Katz-Lacabe tweets from the meetings. I’ve started compiling his tweets on this blog. You can follow Mike’s tweets at @slbytes.
These are the meetings from the 10/20/14 meeting. The Council voted on whether to accept the COPS grant. This provides $500K to fund four school resource officers, but requires the San Leandro School district to pay $1.7 million in matching funds. The following day, the School Board tabled the vote on whether to accept the grant until November 18th. Mike Katz-Lacabe spoke both at the City Council and School Board meeting against accepting the grant.
According to presentation at San Leandro City Council, San Leandro Hospital had positive revenue in June and July 2014.
Cleophus Quealy joins the San Leandro brewery cluster (soft opening Nov. 1)
Proposed updates to San Leandro’s Casa Peralta: $75k for interior and $225k for exterior – inc. broken tile repair at front wall/fountain
The proposal for the kitchen was along the lines of authentic for the era – not a modern restaurant-grade kitchen
San Leandro History Walk videos now available at http://www.sanleandro.org/about/hwv/default.asp Videos done by Arroyo High student Jordan Schultz.
Homeless
San Leandro’s Homeless Task Force has met 4 times so far. Liz Varela (Bldg Futures) & Rose Johnson (Davis Street) are co-chairs.
San Leandro Homeless Task Force recommends $62k to homeless services from $150k allocated to Building Futures, which got state funding.
Liz Varela of Building Futures estimates that there are 50 chronically homeless people in San Leandro.
COPS Grant
Item 10B on COPS grant for 4 additional school resource officers has been moved up the schedule for the San Leandro City Council meeting.
San Leandro’s COPS grant calls for experienced officer for the positions – this means non-entry-level officers.
Current school resource officers assigned to San Leandro Unified are Cathy Pickard and Tom Rogers.
The proposal is for four total officers – not six. As for why four? Haven’t heard the reasoning about that yet.
SLUSD Deputy Sup. Rosanna Mucetti note that paying for San Leandro police officers takes money away from classroom.
San Leandro Teachers Association President Jon Sherr says COPS grant subsidizes police department & could be spent in students.
San Leandro Board member Corina Lopez asks City Council to table vote on COPS grant until School Board considers the matter.
Parent of San Leandro kindergarten student doesn’t want funds vital to schools being spent on police officers.
Mayor Cassidy notes that the staff report on COPS grant isn’t quite accurate – but still results in zero net cost to San Leandro.
Mayor Cassidy recommends that City Council conditionally accept the COPS grant, but consider a more fair division of costs.
In response to City Council member Ursula Reed, San Leandro PD notes that previous grant for 5 officers expires Dec. 2014. City has to pay full cost for 4th year.
San Leandro City Council member Cutter expresses concern that school resource officers would be eliminated. SLPD Chief says yes, because of grant expiration.
San Leandro City Manager Zapata says there are currently 90 officers – grant would add 4. Says no officers cut when budgets previously cut.
San Leandro City Council member Prola will vote in favor of the resolution and let City Manager Zapata figure out the financial terms.
SLPD Chief says there are 90,000 calls annually. Says 40% of crime is related to juveniles.
San Leandro City Council member Souza says school district has received more money while City has not. Asks if school district has previously paid for police
San Leandro Mayor Cassidy making strong case for City paying most of cost of officers and suddenly ending city paying for school officers.