RNCC Meeting Minutes, February 12, 2018
1. The meeting was called to order at pm by Vice President Rock Brown at 7:04 PM.
2. MSP approval of the Minutes from the November 12, 2017 and the January 8, 2018 meeting.
3. Representatives from the following (11) neighborhoods introduced themselves and some gave reports: Castro Heights, Coronado, Fairmede/Hilltop, Hilltop District, Iron Triangle, North & East, Panhandle Annex, Park Plaza, Richmond Annex, Richmond Heights, and Richmore Village/Metro Square.
4. Announcements from RNCC PIO: Madalyn Law Was not there and all announcements were made during the neighborhood reports.
5. City Department Heads/City Official Reports:
Engineering & Capital Improvements: Rob Chelemedos told us that they have resumed the paving and will be paving 11th, 12th and 13th Streets. They had also paved the alley between Berbeck and Grant between 23rd Street and 22nd Street.
City Manager/Community Services: Rochelle Monk told us that last week the City Manager and the Director of Finance announced that the City had a $800.00 budget surplus. On 1/27/18 there was a Youth Job Fair and 208 teens and young adults attended. Community Services had a service day with Making Waves Academy and they made 80 supply bags for seniors and there will be a ServiceWorks Bootcamp on April 4th from 9-4 for young adults and it will be a skill building workshop. They are also trying to work with the school districts and have done workshops with young men of color.
Mayor’s office: Alex Knox is the Mayor’s Chief of Staff and he talked to us about an update on the Sims Metal fire and the Mayor following up to make sure that all of the system alerts are working properly to help make everyone in Richmond safe during any disaster. There was a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Long Life Medical Center and the Mayor will have his State of the City address at City Council on February 27th at 6:30 pm. The Resilient by Design to study and find ways to stop rising sea levels are doing a project on the City’s shoreline and the City has received a $107,000.00 planning grant to engage community groups like NERVE, and underserved neighborhoods. This will be the 3rd year of grant funding from the Mayor’s Community Fund. on March 1, 2018 there will be announcements through social media like Nextdoor.
Police Department: LT Tim Gray, RPD is posting crime alerts regarding street robberies that are happening in Richmond and at BART. Right now they have about 8 open positions and they are hiring Rangers as well. They have had coffee with a cop and they just had Boba with a cop at Pacific East Mall. They are also going to have a major campaign on illegal fireworks and another on side shows/donuts on our city streets.
Dept. of Infrastructure and Maintenance and Operations: Tim Higares gave us a sneak peak at his end of year report. He will send the RNCC his completed report and it will be distributed to the membership. They have helped 82 seniors with cleanups and they are to receive $27,000.00 from the State for all of the mattresses they have recycled. They have about 100 homeless encampments and they have been able to abate about 40 of them so this is a never ending job.
Planning Department: Hector Lopez brought us the project list by neighborhood and let us know that Mira Flores and Terminal One Projects are going before DRB.
Fire Department: Adrian Sheppard – N/A
WCCUSD: Marcus Walton told us about the Teachers of the Year that have been picked, he also let us know that the School board is looking into another parcel tax and it would be on the ballot in June or November, they are also thinking of changing from elections at large to district elections and their next meeting is February 28th.
6. Presentations:
1) Chevron – We had Brian Hubbinger and Andrea Bailey give a presentation about the Chevron Modernization project. They have made a 1 Billion $ investment in the hydrogen plant replacement and the limit on greenhouse gases. They will have a telephone town hall meeting on 2/22/18 and you can reach them at richmondtownhall.com. They are updating their tugboats to be tier 4 clean tugboats and they have tank domes that are for emission control. You can check on air monitors at fenceline.org/Richmond anytime. Solar One is a project on their land with MCE taking the lead, they are also upgrading their lighting to LED and doing a landscaping perimeter upgrade and they will be including trees. They have 200 Richmond residents working on the Modernization project and they have earmarked $90 million over ten years to the city of Richmond and March is the opening of the ECIA grants that come out of the $90 million dollars. They also have some very large investment programs like:
STEM in the parks, a mobile FabLab, a stationary FabLab at Kennedy High School, math cubes for Helms Junior high School students, Construction Resource Center, Pogo Parks Products and they will be building out Co-Biz on the first floor of the BART parking garage starting March 1st. They have a volunteer program and they are working to get water fountains in all of the parks in Richmond. They have been reducing flaring by 87% over the last ten years but flaring is an important part of their safety program. Flaring reduces buildup that could cause fires. Please contact either Andrea Bailey or Brian Hubbinger if you would like them to come to your neighborhood.
7. Old Business: None
8. New Business: None
9. Adjournment: Occurred at 8:45 pm
Respectfully submitted by,
Jan Mignone
Recording Secretary