To learn how weatherization works, CLICK TO LISTEN: [audio:http://510report.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/weatherization_0310.mp3]

Making magic with caulk, insulation and duct blasters, Contra Costa County weatherization specialist Brett Crowe can reduce a house’s energy waste by two-thirds in just half a day.

By late spring, thanks to $5 billion of stimulus funding, thousands of new weatherizers similar to Crowe will be sealing up low-income homes in the Bay Area and across the country. They will primarily come from the country’s 1.7 million unemployed construction workers, retrained as lean, greening machines.

These new weatherization hires will be some of the earliest manifestations of stimulus money in local communities. The East Bay will likely receive millions in additional funding, creating scores of new jobs.

Brett Crowe trains new hire Jesus Ruiz to track the energy leakage at an older home in Richmond.

For 32 years, the federal Weatherization Assistance Program worked in relative obscurity, but since first mentioning weatherization in a presidential debate, President Barack Obama has repeatedly put the program front and center. He has called it “exactly the kind of program we should be funding.”

Obama said he wants one million households to benefit.

Weatherization funds create jobs so quickly because they flow into the existing federal program, which already has established procedures for everything from allocation formulas to material selection. The quick transformation of funds into jobs means weatherization will provide one of the first opportunities to put Obama’s stimulus approach to the test.

“Basically, we’re just doing more of the same things we’ve always done,” said Robert Adams, director of weatherization services for the National Association for State and Community Services Programs (NASCSP), the network for agencies that administer programs like weatherization for low-income households.

While the benefits of the program sound nice, Leslie Paige, spokesperson for Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), said she does not think the government should even be in the weatherization business in the first place.

Weatherizers use a blower door to force air into a house and measure how much leaks out.

“The private sector could provide us this type of need if there’s demand for it in the economy,” she said. Paige would have preferred to see tax cuts to stimulate private sector growth.

County agencies said they expect to begin hiring as early as late April. That timeframe would be “really, really early” for stimulus funding that involves construction and hiring new workers, according to Steve Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

NASCSP estimates that California will receive $192 million over two years, pumping about half a billion dollars into the state’s economy through jobs, suppliers, and other related spending.

While the Department of Energy has not yet released final numbers for each state’s take, local organizations have already begun planning based on past allocations. The head of Contra Costa County’s program, Michael Angelo Silva, anticipates receiving $3 million from the stimulus.

He has already calculated that he will need to hire a dozen more staff, purchase and supply five more vans, and double his warehouse space.

Silva said he should have no trouble finding qualified applicants. When he posted a job opening in January, he ran one classified ad for one day in one local paper. Fifty people responded, many with decades of residential building experience.

Once in force, the program will create nearly 47,000 direct jobs, and an additional 86,000 indirect jobs for suppliers, according to an analysis by the non-profit Economic Opportunities Studies. Around 5,000 of these jobs will be in California, where employment rolls were particularly hard hit by the cessation of new residential construction.

The local sheet workers union covering the northern California coast said more than 50 percent of its members are unemployed. “We obviously welcome any opportunity to secure work in that market,” said Rob Stoker, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County.

These jobs, however, will be tied to the two years of stimulus funding. CAGW’s Paige said she was concerned that the private sector would not be able to absorb these trained workers once the stimulus times out.

Crowe reads the gages and determines that this home leaks the equivalent of having a three-foot square hole permanently in the side of the house.

“I suspect if they throw $4, $6, $8 million at it, they will create jobs,” she said. “What kind of jobs, though? Will there be an entrepreneurial market for it in the future?”

Contra Costa’s Silva said because the funding is temporary, new hires will not be full-time county employees; they will be hired on a contract basis. He said cyclical funding has always been problematic for weatherization—they train employees only to have to let them go a year or two later. Silva said the employees leave with training certifications that make them desirable to the local private sector.

Unlike the scramble for other stimulus funds, weatherization money is doled out to states based on an orderly, predetermined formula. It takes into account the size of a state’s low-income population, its climatic conditions, and the financial burden that energy use places on its low-income households. The states, in turn, contract out the actual weatherization work to a network of governmental and nonprofit agencies in each county.

California divides up coverage of the entire state into a network of 63 individual organizations, including the Contra Costa Community Services Bureau, Spectrum Community Services in Alameda County, the Economic Opportunity Council of San Francisco, and Community Action Agency in Santa Clara County.

The stimulus legislation mandates that the federal government disperse funds to states within 30 days of signing the legislation. The state will need less than a month to execute new contracts and disperse funds to the 63 governmental and non-profit agencies that perform the weatherization work, according to Helga Lemke, director for external affairs with the California Department of Community Services and Development. That signed contract is all Contra Costa’s Silva needs to get going.

Contra Costa County's agency expects it will need to purchase and outfit five new vans because of stimulus fudning.

Silva’s organization sends out two-person teams to help low-income households fix leaky homes. Lower energy bills save homeowners an average of $413 a year—extra icing on the stimulus cake.

They do this by following a basic maxim. “We want to be heating the indoors,” said specialist Crowe. “We don’t want to be heating the outdoors.”

That is easy to say but surprisingly hard to do.

New weatherization hires will learn the newest greening techniques through a mix of on-the-job training and formal education at an existing network of training facilities. Pacific Gas & Electric’s Energy Training Center in Stockton provides the preparation for northern California. It teaches how to audit homes and determine how much energy escapes in order to locate and fix the leakage.

At an older home in Richmond, Crowe maneuvered his equipment around the living room filled with knick-knacks and pictures of grandkids. He set up a door-sized fan that blew air into the house to measure how much disappeared. Based on the electronic readings, this house leaked the energy equivalent of having a three-foot-square hole permanently in the wall.

Crowe got to work installing weather stripping, replacing the front door, and sealing off the kitchen fan. The ducts in this house were wrapped in asbestos, so Crowe could not do any work repairing potential duct leakage. Contra Costa Community Services Bureau outsources asbestos removal, but typically the services cost more than is allowed per house.

“It doesn’t take much,” said Contra Costa’s Silva. “You put a water heater in, and right there, there’s $2,400.”

But soon larger expenditures like furnace replacements and asbestos abatement will be possible since the stimulus package more than doubled the funding per house, up to $6,500.

NASCSP’s Adams said since California has a warm climate, most homes will not require additional funds. This means organizations in California will likely help proportionally more households than their counterparts in colder states.

While more households may benefit, Adams said weatherization programs aren’t new players in the ongoing drive to conserve energy. “These are things we’ve always been doing,” he said. “It’s nice to be finally recognized.” But with the recognition, comes pressure from Obama’s national spotlight.

Scenes from an Auction: As the number of Bay Area foreclosures skyrockets, so does the amount of auctions selling foreclosed homes at a fraction of their original price. Watch potential buyers vie for bargains at a recent auction.

[See post to watch Flash video] ]]> http://510report.org/2009/03/04/scenes-from-an-auction/feed/ 0 http://510report.org/2009/02/24/linking-public-health-to-city-planning-in-alameda-county/ http://510report.org/2009/02/24/linking-public-health-to-city-planning-in-alameda-county/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:33:59 +0000 kara http://510report.org/?p=3284

By Samson Reiny/Oakland North

Many of Oakland’s community health problems can be traced to a history of bad city planning and land use, an expert from the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) said last Wednesday during a panel discussion at the American Institute of Architects East Bay offices in downtown Oakland. 

Sandra Witt, the County’s deputy director of planning policy and health equity, referred often to a report published last year called “Life and Death from Unnatural Causes: Health and Social Inequity in Alameda County,” as she argued that historical segregation, racial steering and block-busting practices by real estate agents, as well as business disinvestment and concentrated poverty in urban centers, have created poor living conditions in largely non-white communities.   

Witt said that this has resulted today in the proliferation of liquor stores, a lack of safe community spaces, and forced close proximity to hazardous industrial zones, just a few of the many direct causes of health inequity for these depressed communities.  People in these areas suffer from higher rates of obesity, diabetes, asthma, and early death.

The report found that both ethnicity and geography play a role in one’s health. Compared to a white child in the Oakland Hills, a black child in West Oakland is seven times more likely to be born into poverty, five times more likely to be hospitalized for diabetes, and two times more likely to die of heart disease.  A black child in West Oakland, on average, has a life expectancy that is fifteen years shorter than that of a white child in the hills. “Looking at social inequities, it’s indicative of who makes decisions, and how we value certain populations over others,” Witt said.

Alameda County will try several strategies to overcome these challenges.  The “Place Matters Team,” formed in 2007 as an initiative of the Health Policy Institute, conducts research that focuses on the influence of social conditions on health.  The findings are designed to influence policy on issues including affordable housing, economic development, education, and land use.

The county’s public health department has also advocated on behalf of communities confronted with potentially health-averse developments.  Last year, county health officials were one of several agencies that testified before the California Energy Commission (CEC), lobbying against the construction of a power plant in a low-income area in Hayward.  The CEC ultimately denied the permit requested by the East Shore Energy Center to build.  Officials also recently testified at a San Leandro City Council Meeting, urging members to support an affordable housing complex as part of a new development project near the downtown BART.  A decision is expected by the end of the month.

The health department is also involved in the City-County Neighbor Initiative (CCNI), a partnership between the county, the city of Oakland, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), and various community groups aimed to help neighborhood residents tackle health inequities.  The CCNI worked with Sobrante Park area residents as they petitioned the Oakland City Council to fund improvements and safety measures at Tyrone Carney park, which was closed in 2002 due to violence and drug dealing in the area.  In 2007, the city allotted $30,000 for the redesign of the park, and public works installed new traffic safety improvements. 

“Creating healthy communities is in the original DNA of the planning profession,” said Albert Lopez, director of planning for the County. “But good advice has been ignored for several decades.” He notes that urban sprawl in the last several years has been about “dumb growth,” about reckless planning in certain counties and communities.  “There’s a lack of pedestrian amenities and there’s a real sense of isolation in the hinterlands like Antioch and Pittsburgh, where they have less access to transportation and resources,” Lopez said.

But Lopez said he believes that change is coming.  Planning is moving toward regionalism and mandates from a higher level of government, a change from what had been largely a city and county’s prerogative. Lopez said he believes it’s probably better this way, because the greater oversight of planning for land usage, “will create better connectors between housing, jobs, and transit … it will reinforce sustainability and resiliency.” 

As an example of this trend toward a more integrated and thoughtful planning system, the state is putting an emphasis on “going green.” In 2008, the California Legislature passed bill, SB375, which provides priority federal and state funding for communities whose plans include ample walking alternatives and public transportation. The goal of the legislation was not only community sustainability but decreased automobile usage, which would help to offset carbon emission levels.

But Lopez said planning does not hold all the answers to better health equity.

“The solution is not just a land use issue alone,” he said.  “It requires a conversation with various professions, and it needs political will.” 

Witt agreed. “There are historical forces at play in shaping our communities,” she said. “It’s not just a public health issue. It’s how we can better collaborate with transportation, educational sectors … it’s a collective effort.”   

January 20, 2009
Presented in part by Alameda County Board of Supervisor’s Keith
Carson, District 5 Supervisor.

“This is a call to action,” says Supervisor Carson, “We are blessed to
have scores of hard working service organizations here in Alameda
County.  We want to ensure our communities have opportunities to be
engaged in community service and know that they have a place to go for
help during these difficult economic times.”

A peaceful demonstration over the recent fatal shooting by a BART police officer escalated into violence last night in downtown Oakland

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the Fruitvale BART station at 3 p.m .Wednesday to protest the death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, a Hayward resident shot by the BART officer, 27-year-old Johannes Mehserle, in the early morning hours of January 1 on the Fruitvale BART station platform in front of dozens of witnesses.  Since the incident occurred, cell phone footage of the shooting, available on the Internet and other media outlets, has sparked public outrage.

Hundreds of Oakland police were called in, and in full riot gear-helmets, batons, and shields-tried to disperse the crowd and contain the escalating violence.

At around 9:15 p.m., Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums emerged from City Hall, met protesters on 14th street, and led a group of roughly 100 to the City Hall steps.  Speaking through a bullhorn over the sound of overhead police and news helicopters, he urged protesters to respect one another.  “I sense your pain and your frustration,” Dellums said.  Protesters responded angrily, booing and shouting that the Oakland police need to show more respect.  “We need the real Black Panthers out here!” one protester shouted.

When the Mayor went back into city hall, the crowd started to chant: “No Justice, No Peace!”

The protesters demanded answers as to why BART, the Oakland police, and the city had not responded to the shooting in a more urgent manner by insisting that Mehserle provide a statement about the incident. Mehserle, who had been with the BART police for two years, abruptly resigned on Wednesday, just before he was supposed to be interviewed by BART investigators.

John Burris, an Oakland-based civil rights lawyer representing Grant’s family, says he believes Mehserle quit in order to avoid being interviewed by investigators in his department.  He added that BART legally could have demanded that Mehserle and the other BART police officers at the scene give statements on the night of the incident.  So far, they have not demanded that he give a statement.

Burris also said there had been at least two prior complaints about Mehserle before the shooting.

After Dellums retreated into City Hall, roughly 25 to 30 protesters then began running throughout the blocks around Frank H. Ogawa plaza, smashing in windows of cars and businesses along the way.  They smashed the windshields of four cars belonging to the city of Oakland, and broke a window at the police station.  Some set fires to trashcans and knocked over dumpsters in the middle of the street.  At least three cars were set ablaze, and there were other small fires that police and the Oakland fire department quickly extinguished.

In their riot gear, the police tried to contain the protesters.  Some protesters threw bottles at the police officers, and into the windows and doors of downtown Oakland businesses.

By 9:30pm, three BART stations-Fruitvale, 12th Street and Lake Merritt-were closed.

At around 9:40pm, police released tear gas near City Hall to try and break up the demonstration.  Within an hour, the police had contained most of the mayhem.  More that 100 people were arrested throughout the night.

But business owners in downtown Oakland like Leemu Topka, who has run a hair salon called Creative African Braids on 14th street for the past four years, will have to deal with the aftermath.  Many spent this morning sweeping chards of glass off of their stoops.  Some store owners arrived at work this morning to find that the windows of their stores had been shattered, and others, like Topka, were around to see it happen.

Topka says she was working in the shop around 8pm with her husband and baby when she saw a group of protesters approach her door.

“I was scared for my life,” said Topka.  Although she understands why the protesters were angry, Topka says she doesn’t understand why their anger was aimed at her and at her shop.  “If you’re protesting that a black person was killed, why go to your black sister’s shop and break all the windows?”

Topka said the protesters tried to get into the shop, but that her husband held the door shut.  She called the police, she said, but got no response.  Then one of the protesters threw a bottle through the door, she said,and broke the glass.

In lieu of this morning’s planned protest, Oakland police stationed officers on nearly every block of downtown Oakland to prepare for a repeat of the previous night.

So far, this morning’s protest in front of the building on 20th street in downtown Oakland, where the BART board meeting was held, has been peaceful.  Around 50 people were gathered in front of the building at 9:30 a.m. to protest BART’s response to the shooting incident.  “Coach Joe,” a teacher of science and physical education at the nearby Oasis high school, brought to the protest a large group of his students, ranging from ages 16 to 18–as an educational experience, the teacher said. “We didn’t come to break anything,” he said.  “We came to be seen and heard.” He added that many of his students hadn’t wanted to come to school at all because they were angry and felt that the shooting was unjustified, and BART’s response to the shooting unacceptable.

“Happy New Year’s Eve, I love you, and may God Bless Your Family.”

That was the text that Cephus Johnson said he sent to his nephew, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III, at 12:49 a.m. on Thursday.  But Grant never responded, and a little more than an hour later he was shot in the back and killed on the Fruitvale BART station platform by a BART police officer, according to cell-phone videos and eye-witness accounts of the incident.

Attorney John Burris and witness Mario Pangelina talk with the press about the January 1 shooting at the Fruitvale BART station.

BART officials said there is no video footage of the incident available from BART surveillance cameras.  However, numerous witnesses and at least three video accounts of the incident taken from cell phones reveal that Grant was unarmed and lying face down on the platform at the time he was shot.

“The video tapes speak volumes,” said John Burris, the Oakland-based civil rights lawyer representing Grant’s family, at a recent press conference.  BART officials have declined to comment.

Both the BART Police and the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office are in the process of conducting investigations into the shooting.  In addition, Grant’s family announced today that they will file a $25 million dollar lawsuit claim with BART on Monday, and a civil rights lawsuit to follow.

“It is without a doubt the most unconscionable shooting I have seen, ever,” said Burris.  “In that Mr. Grant at the time he was shot and killed was in fact laying on his stomach with his back to two officers, with one officer kneeling down at his neck area and the other officer straddling over him and standing in a bent position with Mr. Grant’s back to him.  He did not have a weapon, he was not kicking, and he had been turned over.”

Burris believes that the facts involved in the shooting warrant consideration of criminal charges for murder against the officer, and plans to make this request of the Alameda County District Attorney this week.

Sidewalk memorial for Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale station.

A statement released Sunday morning from BART Police Chief Gary Gee does not give any further details about the case that weren’t already released, and asks that the public “be patient, refrain from jumping to conclusions, and allow the investigators do their job.”  BART officials said that the officer involved has been placed on administrative leave.

Also according to the press release, five BART police officers pulled Grant and three others onto the platform in response to a report that two groups of riders were involved in a fight on a train coming from San Francisco and bound for Dublin-Pleasanton after leaving the West Oakland station around 2 a.m.  The train stopped for a longer time than usual at the Fruitvale station so that officers could pull offenders off the train and break up the fight.

But witnesses on the train sitting at the Fruitvale station at the time of the shooting said that Grant and others were pulled from the train without reason and treated with unnecessary force.

Sophina Mesa, the mother of Grant’s four-year-old daughter, was with Grant for New Year’s Eve and was present at the shooting, but was not a witness.  Mesa’s brother, 23-year-old Mario Pangelino, also did not witness the shooting but heard the gunshot because he was 15-feet away from Grant when the incident occurred.

At a recent press conference, Pangelino described the events on the platform prior to the incident.  His descriptions are corroborated by multiple videos accounts.

Pangelino was one of hundreds of partygoers who packed into a crowded late-night BART train on New Year’s Eve to return to his Hayward home after celebrating in San Francisco with his family.  He was riding two cars behind Grant when the train stopped at Fruitvale.  When he saw his sister walk by on the Fruitvale platform, Pangelino stepped out of the car to see why she had disembarked.

When he looked to his left, he saw Grant talking to police officers at a nearby wall on the platform.  Pangelino said he saw an officer grab Grant by the neck, and when Grant resisted, another officer approached him with a stun gun or “Taser.”

“I could see the red dots on his face and that’s when he slid down [the wall] and said ‘please please don’t shoot me, don’t tase me.  Please.  I have a daughter,’” said Pangelino, who added that more than one officer had their Tasers out and at-the-ready.

Pangelino said that Grant had his hands in the air when he sat down next to three other young men sitting at the wall, two of whom had been handcuffed by the cops earlier.  “That’s when one of them grabbed his wrists and pulled him off the wall,” said Pangelino.

As Burris recounted in the press conference, a recently released video account shot from a cell phone reveals the following events: an officer moved Grant from the wall to the ground so that he was lying face down, while another officer stood over, straddling him.  The officer straddling him, a two-year veteran of the force whose name has not been released, then reached for his holster and shot Grant once in the back.  So far BART officials have only said that the officer’s gun “discharged” once.

Witnesses say that directly after the shooting, the officer said: “Oh my God.”

“I didn’t even know he was shot,” said Pangelino.

He said that he thought it was a rubber bullet gun at first, and riders in the train-car near him assumed it was the sound of a taser being triggered.  Pangelino said he tried to hold the BART train door open, but a female cop made everyone get back on the train and it left before he could hold the train at the station.

Witnesses said that officers put handcuffs on Grant after the shooting occurred, and then removed them as the ambulance arrived.  He died soon after at Highland hospital.

“The intention of the officer is not significant.  It’s what he did that counts,” said Burris at the press conference.  “And what he did at the time was step back, pull his gun out of his holster, point it at the back, and fired it.”

BART police have the same training as city police officers, and have the same authority for arrest.   In 2001, 42-year-old Edward Seward was shot in the chest and killed by a BART police officer at the Hayward station, and roughly ten years prior to that in 1992, an unarmed 19-year old named Jerrold Hall was shot in the back and killed by BART police at the same station.  In both cases, the BART police involved in the shootings were eventually cleared of wrongdoing.

Over thirty of Grant’s friends and family members attended the press conference, and many have said that they will spend the next week holding vigil that the memorial that the BART officials have allowed them to erect outside of the Fruitvale station.

Grant was raised with his sister in Hayward by his mother, Wanda Johnson, who had just celebrated her birthday on December 31 when she received the news that her son had been shot.  He worked as a butcher at Hayward’s Farmer Joe’s store.  Family members say that Grant was a big sports fan, and Cephus Johnson, Grant’s uncle, said that they had plans to attend all of the Raiders games together before the shooting occurred.

Update: On November 19th, the California Supreme court agreed to hear the lawsuits but denied a motion for an immediate stay.

Update: Alameda County and the City of San Mateo unanimously voted in closed session to join the lawsuits on November 18th. The city of Oakland voted in closed session to join the lawsuits on November 19th.

In a four to one vote, the Fremont City Council voted on November 18th, to become a party in the now four lawsuits being waged against the state in opposition of Proposition 8. Fremont is the first city in Alameda County to join the lawsuits.

City Attorney Harvey Levine presented his legal assessment of the litigation its primary argument that Proposition 8 is a revision, rather than an amendment to the California state constitution.

“The underlying issue is whether or not you can take a fundamental right away from the Constitution with a simple majority vote,” said Levine.

Following Levine’s remarks, the microphone was opened up for community statements. Seven individuals came forward, each making two minutes speeches urging the council members to support these lawsuits.

Each of the seven, while presenting individual perspectives, all referenced Fremont’s minority majority population and large immigrant community as reasons to oppose Proposition 8 and ensure that rights for all will be protected.

Christina Melnarik, a resident of 22 years, emphasized the American commitment to the separation of church and state as set forth by James Madison.

She went on to state, “Every generation has resisted the inclusion of a group of others into our society. How can we laud the election of our new president election as a triumph over bigotry and prejudice while on the other hand we apply that same bigotry and prejudice against another subset of other?”

Reverend Barbara Myers, a minister at Mission Peak Unitarian Universality congregation and 33-year resident of Fremont, said she was concerned that Proposition 8 might establish a precedent for taking away the rights of other minority communities in the future.

“In my view this is simply not just and I’m confident that eventually justice is going rain in this matter,” she said

Natalie Mun stepped up to the podium and with a quivering voice and tears in her eyes, urged the council to do the right thing.

“I’m embarrassed that the constitutional change wrought by Proposition 8 is wrong for CA, that it’s wrong for my neighbors, and that it’s wrong for our city. As a minority majority city we have a particular need to protect the rights of all our residents, but especially minorities. Let’s wake up from this bad dream,”

Following the statements, councilmembers briefly discussed the issue, turning to Levine for clarification on the difference between filing an “amicus” brief, or simply join the lawsuit. This time also gave members the opportunity to voice their personal opinion on the matter, which were overwhelmingly supportive.

Vice-Mayor Anu Natarajan stated, “Something more important than whether we join in the lawsuit is the fact that we as community leaders are taking a stand on this for our community in Fremont. Especially in a diverse community like ours, we need to be looking out for the smallest of the groups amongst that diverse group.”

Also a vocal supporter was Councilman Bob Wieckowski, who said, “Can you imagine after the Civil Rights Act had been passed by Congress, that the state decided by a majority that they want to go our own way because this is what the majority of our state wants? So sometimes it’s appropriate for the city to express their will.”

The city expressing its will was one of the reasons given in Councilman Steven Cho’s sole voice of dissent. He argued that the city council has not taken an official stance on civil rights issues that have been brought to the council in the past and that this issue was no different.

“I want to protect civil rights, but to change the definition of marriage, in my mind, is a different issue than one of civil rights. The Prop 8 language is what I grew up with. I will talk about civil rights but I won’t go against 8,” said Cho.

Mayor Bob Wasserman said that during his 16 years as mayor he has been a staunch opponent of getting involved in issues that do not affect the city. But he was quick to jump in and say that this issue is different because it results in the “deprivation of rights of people in Fremont.”

Despite Cho’s disagreement, the majority opinion of the council was summed up by Councilman Bob Wieckowski, “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t join the lawsuit. We’re doing this for all of our citizens.”

The four to one vote was met with a standing ovation by those in the gallery, many of whom were wiping away tears.

Fremont joins the ranks of San Francisco city and county, Los Angeles city and county, city of Oakland, as well as Santa Clara, Alameda, Marin, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties in their lawsuits against the state of California.

NEWARK – In a public forum Monday night, the city managers of Fremont, Newark and Union City detailed the stresses on their budgets because of falling tax revenues and the state budget crisis.

(Right to Left) Larry Cheeves, city manager of Union City, John Becker, city manager of Newark, Fred Diaz, city manager of Fremont, and Dominic Dutra, moderator, at a public forum in Newark on Nov. 17. Photo by Mateen Kaul

The city managers opened the forum with brief presentations showing how they were struggling to balance their budgets. All three have implemented belt-tightening measures and hiring freezes to try and trim expenses.

Fred Diaz, Fremont city manager, said the economic situation was so dire, it could be considered a “catastrophic emergency,” adding that the city of Fremont could conceivably dip into its $22 million fund reserved for disasters if the situation worsened. “What’s the use of all that money lying around if the salaries of fire and police officers are not getting paid?” he said.

At November 18th’s Fremont City Council meeting, City Attorney Harvey Levine will be presenting his legal brief concerning three lawsuits filed by the city and county of San Francisco and a handful of other city and county governments challenging the legal authority of Proposition 8. According to Mayor Bob Wasserman, the request that the city sign onto the lawsuits did not come from the San Francisco city attorney, but from local residents.

At the meeting, city council members will discuss potential actions the city can take, or not take, in support of the lawsuits. Wasserman said that the most likely outcome would be for the city attorney to file an “amicus currie” in support of the lawsuits.

An “amicus currie” is a brief filed with the court by someone who is not a party to the case but believes that the court’s decision may affect its interest. Wasserman said the reason the council would not consider becoming an official party in the lawsuits is that the city does not have sufficient resources to supply the necessary attorneys.

The placement of this issue on the city council’s agenda did not come from government officials or lawyers, but from a few concerned residents. Neighbors Christina Melnarik and Beth Hoffman spearheaded several anti-Proposition 8 fundraisers and rallies in the lead up to the election. When the measure passed, the two women said they went back to the drawing board to figure out their next move.

When San Francisco decided to file suit in opposition to Proposition 8, Hoffman said the City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office began recruiting other cities to join the lawsuit. While he took the time to fly to San Diego, Hoffman said he never even picked up the phone to call Fremont – its neighbor and the fourth-largest city in the Bay area.

“In 2004, when all these cities joined in on the first initial court action against the state on gay married, no one asked Fremont to join. We were ignored. So it seems like, to me, that nobody asks so Fremont doesn’t normally take action,” said Hoffman.

Fremont is demographically different than other cities in the Bay area and has one of the highest per-capita income rates. As such, Hoffman said this means the city also has a large number of traditional married couples. Instead of opposition, she said she was surprised how adamantly many of her neighbors were working to oppose Proposition 8 and subsequently have it repealed.

“They’re happily married. It’s visceral with them. They don’t want people to be denied marriage because it’s really important to them. This [city council decision] could be a really good thing for Fremont. It can change the perspective of who lives here and show that people care about the community and members of the community,” said Hoffman.

This type of outlook is one that Melnarik is also fighting to support. As a wife and mother of two young children, she said her support for gay marriage is founded on two simple concepts: equality and the separation of church and state. With a large immigrant population in Fremont, she said issues of equality resonate throughout the city.

“My kids are one of only three white children in their classroom. For many of the families I know, they’re new to the country, some are perspective citizens, and they wondering whose rights will be taken away next,” said Melnarik.

The concept of the separation of church and state is something Melnarik said is much more confusing for these immigrants to understand. But for those who fled to the United States to escape an autocratic society, Melnarik said the thought of moving to another nation where religion dictates policy is frighting.

“There are a lot of different religions in Fremont. What gives one church the rights to say that a certain right or law goes against their theology and now everyone has to follow their theology? Fremont has a responsibility to reassure all its citizens that if somebody’s rights are taken away they will stand up and say this is wrong,” said Melnarik.

Melnarik said that she and some of her neighbors and friends will be attending the city council meeting and speaking out against Proposition 8 and requesting that the council file an “amicus” brief in support of the lawsuit.