Consider Directing Staff to Create an Autonomous Code Enforcement Division to Enforce All Building Code and Health and Safety Laws.  (Councilmember Vella)
Consider directing staff to create an autonomous code enforcement to. Isn't to enforce all building code and health and safety laws. This item was placed on the agenda at the request of Councilmember Vela. So go ahead. Councilmember development. You take this one. I'll keep it short. So we've heard from constituents on a number of different issues, whether it's smoking in public concerns about after hours, construction issues related to other health and safety issues. And oftentimes, we're referring them to code enforcement. And then code enforcement is saying, you know, that's not something that we do. And so really, this is just about seeing collectively and we've talked about this tangentially related to other issues, but it often comes up relative to tenants issues where where we've heard from folks saying that they were reporting things. There was nobody to report them to or there was no record of it. Or our own building staff basically saying, you know, we focus on building inspections and not not we're not capable or trained in in the general breadth of code enforcement. And so several other cities were part of the LED abatement. JPA and several other cities are also in the taking steps to create their own autonomous code enforcement units. Oakland has one. Berkeley has one that they are making a little more robust. Emeryville will be putting or is considering a special ballot measure to fund a new code enforcement division. So I'm asking that council give direction to staff to put a proposal together about what that would look like. And also, I was told that there was some sort of past policy that we were not enforcing commercial. Commercial construction violations. The way that we were residential, that there was some sort of council policy to be a little not that we weren't enforcing them, but to be more lax. And so if that's the case, if there's some sort of existing policy that that come back to council for consideration. Um. Thank you. I actually would like to just ask Mr. Thomas to address that last the reference to. Or do. You. Yeah. If Andrew wants to address the last reference and then I can address the rest of the. Okay. And just if you could, is. There there is an existing council policy about code enforcement priorities for planning and building, and we will definitely bring that back when we bring it back. Eric will talk a little bit about that. It does not prioritize residential over commercial, but it does set priorities of some things over others. But that will be part of our report. Okay, thanks. Any other council comments before we hear from the city manager or should we hear from the city manager? Why don't we hear from the city manager? Mr. Levitt, I don't see its time. I have no idea why that went on. It was not on purpose. But Mayor Maras, Craft and City Council Andrew Thomas and myself are working on a report to come back to council. First quarter of 2020. And in that one is to go through the history and tell you what the priorities are. I think those priorities were set, as I understand it, 10 to 15 years ago. So to at least lay out what the priorities are and then also bring forward a plan of how we can move forward, how we could prioritize in a budget, a potential budget that would go with that. Sounds good in city attorney Did you want to add anything about code enforcement? I certainly echo my colleague's view that it is, you know, and I'm looking forward to working with both of my colleagues, both the city manager and the planning director on bringing back to the council a robust report. And I as I've indicated to the council previously, laws that are not in force are not laws that are effective and effectual. And so I look forward to working with the Council and my colleagues to ensure that we have adequate enforcement of our laws. Thank you. Any other clarifying questions or should we hear from our speakers? Councilmember Rudy. I'll wait till. After your time. Thank you. Okay. How many do we have? Three speakers. Okay, so three speakers. You can each have 3 minutes. Toni Grim, Nelson, Lag and Holly Lim. Eric. Okay. Graham. Good evening. I'm here to ask the council to approve this referral. I'm speaking as a member of an advocacy group, a well-known advocacy group. The seniors and disabled renters. And we have noticed an increasing problem of habitability lately. This is not surprising because we have. So many older buildings in our. City. But I also like to speak to the quality of life problems that all residents have in all buildings, whether they be commercial or residential. When codes are not enforced, it's not just problems of smoking and noise codes that are being violated, but also accessibility problems, which especially does impact seniors and disabled people. So I ask the Council to approve this referral. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Graham. Next in. Line. Hello. Hello. Good evening, Mayor and and council members. My name is Nelson League. I'm the Alameda resident and I'm also the president of the board of directors of Filipino Advocates for Justice, also known as FHA, as a representative of an organization serving Alameda Communities for the past several years, I'm speaking to express our support for Council members vela's Council referral to strengthen core code enforcement. FHA has been supporting Alameda residents through a multitude of housing issues since the attempted mass eviction and for some of the Central Avenue when tenants landlords ordered construction during illegal hours as a harassment tactic. When we surveyed Alameda renters recently in a large scale research project earlier this year, we observed that it was actually not uncommon to see renters lived through shockingly poor living conditions ranging from burnt out parts of their buildings to falling plasters to holes in the floor enough to see the downstairs unit. Well, we have always advised tenants to report these problems through through the usual means. Many of the community members have expressed discouragement due to in part of their what seemingly is a lack of response from code enforcement and other agencies. The recent complaint was made by the residents near and above the clubhouse bar and spinning bones reflect the types of concerns we've seen from vulnerable community members living in uninhabitable conditions. In Alameda, Councilmember Member Vela's proposal to transition building inspections into a new unit for universal code enforcement will significantly increase the city's ability to enforce existing laws in a timely and effective manner. I am confident that it will also have an outstanding impact on Alameda, tenants health, living conditions and overall well-being. Our organization applauds and supports this council applauds the support this council has demonstrated for renters this year, and we hope that will continue through. Thank you. Thank you. Holly. Lynn Holley them. Okay. Good evening. My name is Holly, and I'm an Alameda and living in a mixed use building on Park Street. I've talked to many of you about. The. Situation. That my neighbors and I. Have been going through for the past year. I'd like to offer my support for the council referral. To create an autonomous code enforcement division. There have been. Multiple times. Throughout this year. When the construction downstairs for an upcoming restaurant has really affected the health. And just the. Quality of life and well-being of. Myself and my neighbors. Especially when the construction went after hours. So I just kind of. If you can. Oh, shoot. I was going to play something. For you that happened on a Sunday from 9 a.m. to 10. P.m.. This was what? The noises. All day on a Sunday. My neighbors, I had filed five code enforcement. Complaints about. After hours construction at another a neighbor next door who filed code enforcement complaints. Nothing was really done, except we'll just talk to the owners. And so we felt like we were not only experiencing construction noise six days a week, nearly nine months, but we were also, you know, when the time was for us. To rest, we couldn't rest. And not only that, over the past decade. Residential tenants in my area. Have made numerous attempts. To report code violations related to the noise, nuisance, unsafe behavior and illegal actions of our commercial neighbors, particularly from the clubhouse bar, from smoking to noise nuisances like disposing of glass bottles loudly during their closing at 2 a.m.. Unfortunately, all of our reports have not been given the responsiveness needed to enforce the laws. As such, residents. Help right to quiet enjoyment and quality of life have been impacted. Most currently I'm impacted by the restaurant noise. The noise cleaning goes till 12 sometimes. They woke me up at midnight. Last night and at. Times the noise wakes me up at 530. So through the last month I've been kind of on very little sleep. And so because of the situation with the construction, I just feel like it kind of landed nowhere. So why should I even talk to people about anymore? Being raised without remedy. I think a lot of the residents feel like. We're headed to a place of partial, constructive eviction. In our near future. Many of us can't live like this. Lack of sleep. Just all. Of this stuff isn't really healthy. For a. Lot of us. And it's been going almost a year now. So please. Support this. Council referral. For me personally, my health depends on it, and we'd like to keep Alameda residents like me and my neighbors safely in our homes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. That's the last of our speakers. Yeah. Okay. So, um, council, we've heard from the city manager and the city attorney. What direction do you want to give? Can I say my question. That you may not share to the. Author? So I think I heard the city manager and the I've got to get this title right. Planning, building and transportation, direct your proposal. I mean, is that an acceptable. Or is there something more you want besides that? Or is that acceptable? Or. Well, I'd like a proposal to come back about specifically addressing the creation of the separate unit and also to hear back on this specific policy of council priorities. And then with that proposal, funding mechanisms, because if we just hear about here's a proposal and we don't have the cost estimates and funding with it, it's going to just delay implementation. And again, through the chair, I mean, is that something that you guys. That's consistent with what we're planning for? Thank you. And Councilmember de SAC. Yeah, I'm not quite understanding the need for a completely new part. I can't, can I? I mean. Yes. That makes a lot of sense. So what we're talking about, we haven't decided this for sure, is that it would be a separate division of planning, building and transportation. There were reports specifically to Andrew that that's my concept that I'm that we've been working on even before this referral. I tend to have in other organizations had code enforcement separate. So it's not through a building official, it's through actually their own supervisor that would report to Andrew. They would take on a lot of the complaints and then the the code enforcement officials would report through that individual to Andrew, I see that as autonomous. I don't know. I just think that if there's something broken with the current regime, then we fix it. If they need more funding for more staff to to respond to all the concerns, if there is a order of magnitude increase, and then we fix that. But that's a separate question from performance. Performance means how did we respond to problems as they arose and did we satisfactorily. And even there, I'm not convinced that. I mean, you know, it's your professional judgment. The thing that I'm concerned, though, is I don't want to see an entity whose. Whose reason for existence is to go after small mom and pop landlords. I don't want to see that. I want to see I want to make sure that tenants are treated fairly as well as landlords. But the tenure that I'm hearing here is, is that they're seeing this as something to go after those guys. So that's a concern of mine. Okay, so hold that thought. I actually like. That's fine. But I still need to make a motion because it is now 1126 and we voted to go to 1130. We've got the rest of this and one more council referral to go. Who wants to make a motion? I move again. Sorry. 1158 I was going to say 1145. I think 11 4511. 1145 yeah. That's my motion. Okay. Secondly, okay. Motion second four 1145 all in favor, I. Okay, five. Let's go quickly. So, Mr. Thomas, I mean, can you just talk briefly, briefly about I'm are we going after mom and pop landlords with. This. Permit. But the response because it's my referral. Uh, it is your referral. I would go to him, but sure you can. Okay, go ahead. So the intent of this is not to go after mom and pop landlords. The intent is to make sure that there is that there are habitable units and that when there are habitability issues or health and safety issues, that there is a mechanism for addressing it. Right now, we have we're under the old model where we have a building official who is trained in very specific things. That does not necessarily extend to all of the health and safety issues that may exist. And right now, it means that we're directing people to call the police department when it's not necessarily under their purview, and that might not be their best use or we're directing them to building inspections. Who where our inspectors do not feel that they are properly trained or in a position to address this. And most cities have therefore created an independent and separate unit that also trains staff to do this. And Mr. Thomas, you can chime in, but that's what I'm looking for. I first of all, I think this is we we've been talking about this report before your referral came. From my perspective, I'm relatively new to this role with this big long title, but my feeling being in this role for this last year is we have a code enforcement division in the planning building and transportation division, which was designed, shaped and funded, and the funding is key 15 to 20 years ago. You are adopting new laws. We are being asked to do different kinds of code enforcement. It 15 years ago it was very much designed as a small little unit that deals basically with building code violations. What I'm sensing is this council is saying, hey, we've got more than just building code violations. We have other kinds of violations. We have to rethink how we how we design our code enforcement unit, how we fund it. And that's, I think, where we want to kind of come back with is some some ideas, some thoughts, some adjustments. I kind of agree with you, Councilmember de Salgado, though, I think there is a question like I mean, every we just dealt with two code enforcement issues just today where we enforce code and immediately the call went to the mayor and, you know. To fix it, spent. A bunch of time on the phone. I mean, the more code enforcement we do, the more complaints and issues. I mean, yes, some people are going to be happy. Other people are not going to be happy. So it's a delicate balance. Yeah. Vice Mayor Nuts. Right. Okay. So I would like to thank Councilmember Vella for bringing this forward. My understanding from talking to staff is actually just something that I think everybody's been talking about with staff. On some level, I am uncomfortable with the council directing the the form that this takes. I would I think it and maybe this aligns a little bit with Councilmember de SAC. It sounds like there's a conversation around the policy that exists about what we do, code enforcement, and then we should have a we have a direct report whose job it is is to structure the city and be accountable for making sure that they're following through on the on the on the and on the implementation of that policy. It clearly it's not being implemented, right? Well, it may be implemented right. It may be that we just have a terrible policy or a policy that's not right for today. My proposal would be would be that we ask for that policy to come back. And then once the policy is adopted, that the city manager, you know, just come back with a report on how he is going to ensure that that policy is implemented in the way that the majority of the council is asking for it to be enforced. So. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Councilmember Valley, did you have some of that? Well. I think that that just delays what's already been worked on. And it sounds like staff already has something that. They're working. On in line with what the proposal is. So I don't want to add an extra step or an extra council meeting when we don't have to. Councilman Brody, thank you. I guess maybe I heard a different discussion than my colleague here, because I think when Mrs. Vela presented the item, I think her concern was I mean, later, Andrew, you talked about it was that commercial was was not getting enforced and residential was so it to me if residential was then we would already have enforcement against quote unquote small mom and pop landlords. And what I think we did with our tenant protection in our just cause is kind of remove the fear that tenants have to actually speak to their landlord about it. So in my mind, that would kind of reduces code enforcement because instead of being afraid of being evicted for complaining about a broken window, you're not going to code enforcement. You are actually not having the fear to talk to your landlord. And I think the story we heard from Holly was a commercial landlord that was doing construction or a commercial tenant doing construction, not a mom and pop small property owner. So I'm not sure I got the same, you know, the same reaction. I mean, I think that given that the author of the referral is okay with the direction or the, the, the, the proposal that staff has put together on how to respond to this, I would be willing to to move forward the the referral based on the expectation of the report that our planning director and our city manager said they would provide. So let me jump in here, if I might. That's okay with the. So so we've heard from the city manager that he and planning director and all the other titles are working on a report with the city manager, city attorney to come back to the council in the first quarter of 2020. That will look at the history of code enforcement and bring forward a plan in the budget to be able to to revamp it, to bring it up to the needs of today's residents and businesses. And I think, Madam Mayor, also making sure that whatever we do, that there's consideration given to the city attorney to make sure that whatever what what's being structured is, in fact, going to make us better at enforcement, especially with the creation of the new prosecutorial. Because he also mentioned that having a code that of course it is. Disagree with that. Disagree. Yeah. I'm a strong believer that the enforcement arm and you you work together but there should be a separation between prosecute. Well we're we're waiting for the report to come forward. Let's not let's not get too much. I want to say one thing, though, and I've met with Mr. Muslim and her neighbors. I think something that we have to be careful of is achieving that balance. When you're talking about a mixed use building, that is a mixed use and there is a zoning and it allows restaurant. And we've also if you've been on social media lately, you've seen a lot of talk about businesses that are going out of business on Park Street. And we and we heard about the need for small businesses and supporting mom and pop and independently owned businesses locally. So let's make sure we achieve that balance. And I want to make sure that we also hear from the business owner, because I have met with the owner of Spinning Bones and and this is a new restaurant and it deserves a chance and shouldn't have to pay for the transgressions of the clubhouse bar. That sounds like it should have been dealt with more effectively with code enforcement. But I just want to make sure that we don't this isn't all or nothing. And, you know, no side has the corner on the market of of truth and justice. We need if we truly want a vibrant community and a downtown district and walkable, you know, homes and businesses and all that, we've got to we've got to address that and not just say, you know, businesses bad anyway. But I like I like what's been brought forward. I think there's a good plan in place. I thank my colleague for bringing this to our attention. So have we got that motion to do? You made that? Yes. Okay. So that was you who moved, right? Councilmember is the move by Councilmember Odie? What is the motion, Madam Clerk? I said. That's okay. It is to essentially adopt what the city manager had put forward and with the assurance that. Yes. The council prioritization. Yes. Move the move the move the referral. With the plan that the director of transportation building and. Whatever. Yes, let me. Right, Andrew. I'll call you. Andrew had 1135. And your name. Is manager together with. Along with the city. With city with Councilmember Vela's addition at the end after I asked her the question. Okay. So it's been moved. It's been seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor. I opposed. Abstained. Okay. So that passes with four affirmative in one abstention. Okay. Now we are moving on to council referral nine be. Consider requiring new construction or renovation of publicly accessible buildings with at least one public restroom to provide at least one safe, sanitary, convenient and publicly accessible baby diaper changing station. This item was placed on the agenda at the request of Councilmember Phillips.