-
w w w.Pa l oA l t oOn l i n e .c om
County opens COVID vaccinations to
residents 65 and upPage 5
Vol. XLII, Number 17 January 29, 2021
Pulse 31 Spectrum 34 Puzzles 43 Read up-to-the-minute news on
PaloAltoOnline.com
Upfront City considers putting police headquarters on hold Page
5Arts Pace offers rare look at color field abstracts Page 35Eating
Out Pizzeria, Japanese market celebrate openings Page 38
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Page 2 • January 29, 2021 • Palo Alto Weekly •
www.PaloAltoOnline.com
U.S. News & World Report recognizes Stanford Health Care
among the top
hospitals in the nation. Ranking based on quality and patient
safety.
Stanford Health Care is here for you. Even during
shelter-in-place,
we remain open and are taking every precaution to keep you
safe.
To protect your health, we are:
• Screening both staff and patients for COVID-19
• Requiring and providing masking for all
• Offering “touchless” check-in/check-out with your MyHealth
account
• Limiting the number of patients inside to allow for physical
distancing
• Ensuring separate screening areas for symptomatic patients
Don’t delay your care. Appointments are available at our
locations
across the Bay Area and remotely by video visit.
To learn more, visit: stanfordhealthcare.org/resumingcare
dependablehealth care in uncertain times
-
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • January 29, 2021 •
Page 3
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www.PaloAltoOnline.com
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www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • January 29, 2021 •
Page 5
UpfrontLocal news, information and analysis
A fter a brief interlude, Palo Alto is preparing to re-sume its
effort to expand the citywide network of bike-ways, with a
particular eye to-ward the city’s south end.
The City Council voted on Monday night to kickstart three new
bike projects when it en-dorsed a community engagement process for
improvements on
segments of East Meadow Drive, Fabian Way and the Waverley path.
The improvements include reconfiguring Fabian Way to cre-ate a bike
path in each direction, possibly by removing a car lane between
East Meadow Drive and East Charleston Road, and install-ing a
protected bike lane on East Meadow by potentially removing some
parking spots.
The city also plans to widen and smoothen the Waverley bike
path, which is located on Palo Alto Unified School District
property between East Meadow and East Charleston.
The three projects are the city’s first major effort to boost
its bike facilities since its contentious revamp of Ross Road in
2017, a project that included a new
traffic circle on East Meadow as a central component. While some
lauded this project for giv-ing bicyclists more space, others
criticized the city for inadequate outreach and slammed the design
for pitting cars against bikes at the new roundabout.
Staff hopes to avoid some of the pitfalls of the Ross Road
mis-adventure with its new suite of projects, which were boosted by
a $919,000 Santa Clara County grant through the Vehicle Emis-sion
Reductions Based at Schools program. The city expects to kick in
$781,000 for the project.
CITY BUDGET
City could delay new police HQ
Squeezed by shutdown, Palo Alto council
rethinks city’s prioritiesby Gennady Sheyner
F acing plummeting revenues and continued uncertainty about the
pandemic’s tra-jectory, the Palo Alto City Coun-cil is preparing to
reshuffle its list of infrastructure priorities and potentially
delay its most ambitious project, a new police headquarters.
But even amid the recent staff layoffs and budget cuts, council
members are preparing to move ahead with two expensive and
long-discussed projects that they believe will aid the city in its
re-covery from COVID-19: the ex-tension of the city’s fiber-optic
network to every household and a permanent reconfiguration of the
city’s most prominent thorough-fare, University Avenue.
Both of these efforts are includ-ed in the wide-ranging economic
recovery plan that City Manager Ed Shikada presented on Mon-day
night to a largely receptive council. The plan also includes
upgrading heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems at City
Hall and other public facilities to improve indoor air quality;
assist-ing local businesses by permitting parklets and temporary
street clo-sures; and developing a series of activities and events
to promote community well-being.
In discussing Palo Alto’s re-covery plan, council members
signaled a desire to see the city’s priorities reshuffled in
recogni-tion of the new normal. While
(continued on page 41)
County opens vaccinations to residents 65 and up
S anta Clara County resi-dents 65 years and older are now
eligible to get vaccinated through the county health system, county
leaders an-nounced Tuesday.
Residents in that age range can
schedule appointments through the county website,
sccfreevax.org, for openings.
The expanded eligibility fol-lows the state’s current guidance
for vaccine allocation.
“Older residents and those
living in skilled nursing facilities continue to be the
population at greatest risk for serious illness and death from
COVID-19,” said Dr. Monika Roy, a county assis-tant public health
officer.
As of Monday, more than 160,300 individuals have been vaccinated
in Santa Clara Coun-ty by the county, private health care providers
and other vaccine distributors.
The county’s health system is the largest provider of the
COV-ID-19 vaccine, county staff said. So far, it has administered
nearly 60,000 first doses and has a week-ly capacity to provide
30,000 vac-cine appointments per week.
Residents can make appoint-ments for the mass vaccination sites
located at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, at Berger Drive in
San Jose and at the
Mountain View Community Cen-ter on Rengstorff Avenue.
The county is also vaccinating eligible individuals at several
Val-ley Health Center locations, in-cluding up to 600 people per
day in Gilroy, according to the coun-ty’s Public Health
Department.
“As the vaccine becomes avail-able to more of our residents,
the
(continued on page 14)
Expanded eligibility comes as state lifts stay-at-home order
by Sue Dremann and Jana Kadah
TRANSPORTATION
City paves the way for new bike projectsSouth Palo Alto plan
includes cycling lanes on East Meadow, Fabian
by Gennady Sheyner
(continued on page 43)
Swingin’ in the rainMiri Avisar and the child she is babysitting
sit on the swings at Mitchell Park on Thursday during an interlude
in a storm that slammed the Midpeninsula this week. An atmospheric
river passed over California bringing 3.09 inches of rainfall to
the area during a 72-hour period between Tuesday and Thursday
morning, according to the National Weather Service. Wind gusts
reached 31 mph in Palo Alto on Tuesday morning and caused power
outages for about 740 customers in the downtown area, according to
Palo Alto Utilities.
Magali G
authier.
-
Page 6 • January 29, 2021 • Palo Alto Weekly •
www.PaloAltoOnline.com
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EDITORIAL
Editor Jocelyn Dong (223-6514)
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EMBARCADERO MEDIA
President William S. Johnson (223-6505)
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Upfront
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D E L E O N R E A LT Y, I N C .
OUR TEAM IS IN MOTION FOR YOUFEEL THE BERN? ... The sight of
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders bundled up in mittens and a winter coat
while sitting cross-legged at the Inauguration Day ceremony last
week is arguably one of the most memorable fashion moments from the
national event that has since taken the internet by storm in the
form of memes. Palo Altans were no exception, posting images on
Instagram of the former presidential candidate transposed onto
recognizable places around the city. The Palo Alto Library posted
him at the entrance of the Rinconada branch manning a table outside
of the main entrance (and appropriate considering the library
system carries a few of his books published over the years). Lotus
Thai Bistro also joined in the fun by setting Sanders next to a
stand of flowers for the California Avenue Farmers Market. Sanders
also made an appearance downtown outside The Wine Room, where he
appeared to be the first and only customer in line, sitting next to
a barrel with an unopened bottle of vino. The U.S. senator has
turned the viral sensation into a benefit for the greater good. He
has launched the Chairman Sanders Collection that features the
widely shared image on sweatshirts and T-shirts to benefit
charities in his home state. The fundraiser has reportedly raised
$1.8 million, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
PLANS FOR THE YEAR ... When the City Council gets together on
Zoom for its annual retreat this Saturday, don’t expect too much
suspense. As in years past, the council will use the Jan. 30
virtual meeting to set its priorities from now through December.
But while well-meaning and vague priorities such as “civic
engagement” and “healthy community” made the official priority list
in years past, the council is expected to spend most of its energy
in 2021 on pandemic recovery. The list of proposed priorities
submitted by council members in the weeks leading up to the retreat
includes both “COVID-19 recovery” and “economic recovery,”
alongside items relating to housing, climate change, social justice
and transportation. On Monday, Jan. 25, as the council and city
staff discussed a broad range of COVID-19 initiatives — from
upgrading air filters at city facilities
to permanently changing the configuration of University Avenue
to support outdoor dining — City Manager Ed Shikada made it clear
that COVID-19 recovery is the biggest issue at the current moment.
“From a staff perspective, it’s clear that we see no higher
priority than sustaining community recovery from this pandemic,”
Shikada said. Housing also has a high chance of making the list. Of
the more than 200 responses that the city received to a resident
survey, many include “housing” or “affordable housing” atop their
rankings. The retreat will begin at 9 a.m. and can be accessed by
Zoom using the phone number 669-900-6833 and Meeting ID: 362 027
238.
OPENING UP NEW HORIZONS ... Stanford University’s Cantor Arts
Center debuted its new Asian American Art Initiative this week. The
effort seeks “to acquire, preserve, display and research art
related to Asian American and Asian diaspora artists and their
practices,” according to Stanford News Service, which said the
initiative is the first of its kind. The initiative is “anchored”
by acquisitions of artist Ruth Asawa’s “Untitled (LC. 012, Wall of
Masks),” which features 233 ceramic masks, and 141 works from The
Michael Donald Brown Collection (pieces created between 1880 and
1996 by Asian American artists). It will be steered by founding
co-directors Aleesa Alexander, the Cantor’s assistant curator of
American art, and Marci Kwon, assistant professor at the
university’s Department of Art and Art History. “With the exception
of a few major figures, Asian Americans remain in the shadows of
American art,” Kwon told Stanford News Service. The initiative aims
to encourage scholarship across disciplines and support research by
undergraduate and graduate students in the field. “Stanford is the
ideal place for this project, especially when one considers the
history of the Bay Area and the museum’s plurality of audience,”
Alexander said. There are plans to host a conference and exhibit in
the fall of 2022 “to rethink and reimagine the historical and
theoretical dimensions of Asian American art and aesthetics,” the
article states.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Around Town
We cannot solve a homeless problem without having housing, no
matter what.
—Paul Bains, co-founder of United Hope Builders, on
manufacturing modular houses for the homeless. See story on page
7.
-
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • January 29, 2021 •
Page 7
Upfront
Two steel houses were deliv-ered on the back of a big rig on
Jan. 7 to a parking lot in East Palo Alto, one coming all the way
from Pueblo, Colorado, and the other from Caldwell, Idaho. They’re
not exactly ready-to-live-in homes, but in a few weeks, pos-sibly
by Valentine’s Day or earlier, they can be.
For Pastor Paul Bains, that’s just part of the beauty and
benefit of modular houses — factory-built homes that come
ready-made in sections to be stacked or put together like Lego
blocks. One of the newly delivered modular dwellings is a
960-square-foot, three-bedroom house made of three sections; the
other is a 640-square-foot, two bedroom home made of two
sections.
The big-rig delivery marked a new chapter in the Palo Alto
na-tive’s 21-year pursuit to address homelessness in the Bay
Area.
“My goal has always been to disrupt generational poverty,” Bains
said. “You do that through education and home ownership, and this
makes it much more af-fordable for people to own their own
home.”
Bains and his wife, Cheryl,
founded East Palo Alto’s WeHOPE nonprofit in 1999, which now
oper-ates 100-bed shelters in San Fran-cisco, a 74-bed shelter and
Safe Lot RV parking program in East Palo Alto and mobile fleets
that provide showers, bathrooms and laundry services in 17 cities,
across four counties, according to Bains.
But to address homelessness, a problem made worse by the
pan-demic, more directly the pastor is venturing into affordable
housing development with his new non-profit, United Hope
Builders.
“We cannot solve a homeless problem without having housing, no
matter what,” he said.
Through a partnership with IndieDwell, an Idaho-based B
corporation that manufactures
modular housing units, United Hope Builders will construct a
roughly 60,000-square-foot fac-tory by leasing seven acres of the
old Romick Environmental Tech-nologies site on Bay Road. The
fa-cility will churn out steel modular homes like the two recently
deliv-ered to East Palo Alto’s RV Safe Lot at 1798 Bay Road.
A burgeoning trend in housing
Prefabricated homes are not a new concept, but they’ve become an
increasingly popular answer to the Bay Area’s affordable housing
crisis.
In August, as part of San Jose’s goal to provide emergency
hous-ing for the homeless, the city broke ground on one site that
will host more than 100 beds, using modular dwellings that each
cost $85,000, according to a report from San Jose Spotlight.
Sand Hill Foundation, the non-profit arm of Sand Hill Property
Company of Palo Alto, purchased the modular units for the San Jose
project, Bains said.
In another sign of the demand for modular housing, Factory OS, a
3-year-old Vallejo-based modular
housing factory, recently completed 1,000 housing units,
according to multiple media reports, and raised $55 million in
Series B funding, receiving support from tech and finance
corporations such as Face-book, Google and Morgan Stanley.
In September, the company an-nounced that it will open a second
facility to meet the demand.
“The floodgates have opened,” Bains said. “I’m getting inquiries
every single day about this product and people wanting to come see
it.”
Two of the most attractive rea-sons for the shift toward modular
homes are time and cost.
“Modulars can reduce construc-tion expense, but most
impor-tantly, reduce (construction) time sometimes by as much as
40%,” said Michael Brownrigg, United
Hope Builders’ chief of staff.In 2019, the average cost of
building affordable housing in the Bay Area was $664,455 per
unit. According to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, an
economic and policy think tank, that figure includes construction,
land acquisition, materials, labor and legal fees, among other
costs, unique to the region.
Brownrigg couldn’t yet provide the total price tag for a United
Hope Builders modular home, due to some of the uncontrollable
vari-ables beyond construction, but he is certain that modular
units will cost a “small fraction” of the typi-cal new home.
“Even when you peel all those
P olice departments through-out the Midpeninsula are following
in the footsteps of the Palo Alto Police Depart-ment, which on Jan.
5 abruptly announced it would immediately encrypt its dispatch
radio com-munications — a longtime source of information for
residents and the news media — to protect cer-tain private
information from be-ing transmitted publicly.
The Menlo Park, Atherton and Mountain View police depart-ments
all state that they plan to completely encrypt their
commu-nications, choosing the more strin-gent of two options for
complying with a California Department of Justice policy that aims
to protect information such as license plate numbers, names, street
addresses, phone numbers and other private information. The less
stringent op-tion is to encrypt only the private data, which is
accessed through the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications
System (CLETS) and could be used for identity theft. Encrypting the
in-formation also gives privacy to victims of crime.
The Department of Justice re-quires encryption of “specific
in-formation” disseminated through radio traffic “while allowing
for radio traffic with the information necessary to provide public
safety,” according to an October bulletin.
But the total encryption of a source of information sets a
dan-gerous precedent, according to watchdog organizations,
includ-ing the Electronic Frontier Foun-dation and Reporters
Committee for Freedom of the Press.
One of the fundamental pur-poses of access to the dispatch
transmissions is so the public has knowledge of information about
their communities. It’s why the press access is so important, said
Aaron Mackey, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation.
The move to encrypt, while re-cent for local police departments,
has already stirred up controversy in other areas of the country,
in-cluding Colorado and southern California. In some jurisdictions,
news organizations and law en-forcement have tried to come up with
solutions that walk the line between continuing to provide
vital access to police activity while also shielding private
information from public view. With high price tags and clunky
interfaces asso-ciated with these workarounds, however, news
organizations say the jury is still out as to whether an
alternative to total encryption can be found.
Falling in linePalo Alto’s police department
began encryption in early January, but others are planning to
enact the change within the next three years.
Menlo Park Police Department is currently working with its radio
vendor for a redesign of its current radio system with a projected
date of no later than December 2023,
said Tracy Weber, communica-tions and records manager.
Atherton police Chief Steve Mc-Culley said that his department
will need to upgrade its commu-nications center and radios. He
es-timated the cost at $250,000. The department plans to be
compliant with the state mandate by 2023. The Atherton police have
just one radio communication channel and can’t switch to other
frequencies to encrypt specific information, he said.
“It’s an unfunded mandate (and is) quite a financial impact on a
small agency like ours,” he said.
Relaying the private informa-tion by computer or cell phone,
separately from the radio, would
be too difficult. Having to leave a person’s property and go
back to the patrol car would compromise officers’ safety, he
said.
“It’s not an efficient way to pro-vide that information.
Oftentimes (we) need to have that information as soon as we can
over the radio. We have no choice but to move to encryption,” he
said.
Likewise, Mountain View Police Department spokeswoman Katie
Nelson said using both the radio and a separate channel for
sensi-tive information could jeopardize officers’ safety.
“An officer stops someone and checks their information over
the
Are modular homes the answer to Bay Area’s affordable housing
demand?
Inside the latest chapter in one pastor’s bid to address the
housing crisisby Lloyd Lee
Radios silencedAs police encryption of dispatch transmissions
grow,
questions remain about the public right to information — and
alternatives that would not exclude news organizations
by Sue Dremann
HOUSING
LAW ENFORCEMENT
Pastor Paul Bains tours the kitchen inside a three-bedroom
modular home in East Palo Alto. Through his new nonprofit United
Hope Builders, Bains hopes to construct a roughly
60,000-square-foot factory on Bay Road to churn out similar modular
homes.
Magali G
authier
The Palm Springs Police Department created a computer aided
dispatch (CAD) system page, similar to one used by police and
dispatchers, for the press to view active incidents in real time.
The system replaces radio transmissions, which are now
encrypted.
Courtesy Palm Springs Police D
epartment
‘The floodgates have opened. I’m getting inquiries every single
day about this product and people wanting to come see it.’
— Paul Bains, co-founder, United Hope Builders
(continued on page 12)
(continued on page 13)
-
Page 8 • January 29, 2021 • Palo Alto Weekly •
www.PaloAltoOnline.com
Upfront
S everal changes to Palo Alto Online’s popular reader forum,
Town Square, will be implemented over the next few weeks in an
effort to reduce disrespectful commentary and encourage broader,
more diverse community participation.
The new policies build on an experiment implemented last
Au-gust, when all commenters were required to register as a
condition of posting, a change that has now been made permanent. As
a result of the registration experiment, the tone of comments
improved and some of the more problematic posters stopped
commenting, but it had the effect of giving more visibility to
those who posted the most frequently, Embarcadero Media President
Bill Johnson said. These are often among the comments that are also
long and not seeking constructive dialogue with others, he
said.
“The registration requirement did significantly discourage and
reduce the number of ‘fly-by’ commenters, many not even from
our community, from posting snarky, disrespectful and often
in-cendiary comments that our mod-erators needed to edit or
remove,” Johnson said.
After seeking feedback and in-put from readers and holding two
virtual community meetings, the Town Square editors considered
additional changes, which are in the process of being
implemented.
The most significant change, which will be completed in sev-eral
weeks by the company’s software developers, will create a
“pre-moderation” function that will automatically delay the
post-ing of comments by newly regis-tered users until a moderator
has reviewed and released them to the site. That preview process
will re-main in effect until a moderator clears that user to post
directly to the site.
Similarly, existing posters can be switched to pre-moderated
status if a moderator determines they are undermining the goals of
Town Square by attacking other commenters, repeatedly violating
the Town Square terms of service or not sticking to the
topic.
An added benefit of this new system is that it should virtually
eliminate spam, since spam al-ways comes from a newly regis-tered
“user” and will be subject to deletion before readers see it.
Other changes, which are be-ing implemented on Town Square this
week, include a length limit of 2,000 characters (about 200 words),
an end to the “like” a comment function and a new requirement that
posters use the same screen name for all their comments. At the
discretion of the moderator, posters who make consecutive or an
excessive num-ber of comments and are domi-nating a discussion may
have their comments deleted.
The “like” upvoting feature has been removed because of
exten-sive abuse by some commenters who circumvented our automated
checks to prevent repetitive voting from the same user.
In explaining the need for the changes, Johnson said the
company felt an obligation to do its part to better manage Town
Square in light of the widespread abuses of social media both
lo-cally and across the country.
“Town Square is intended to be a place residents can share their
opinions, debate local issues and give their feedback on our
report-ing. But like other social media platforms, it is also used
by those trying to manipulate public opin-ion, create false
narratives and incite distrust of institutions, in-cluding the
media,” Johnson said.
“On a local level, we had al-ready been evaluating how to
improve our Town Square on-line reader forum and ensure that we
weren’t aiding and abetting those who sought to polarize and divide
the community through misinformation.”
Johnson said that the substan-tive content and political views
expressed by commenters have never been a factor in modera-tion
decisions and won’t be in the future.
“We don’t care what your po-sition is on local issues. As long
as the comments are made with respect for those with differing
opinions, aren’t snarky or sarcas-tic and are not presenting false
information, we believe the more diversity of views the better,”
Johnson said.
“Moderating is an art, not a sci-ence, and we have and will make
mistakes. But our collective goal as a community should be to talk
about issues with civility and, when appropriate, passion, with-out
attacking those who are hon-estly and respectfully expressing
different opinions,” he said.
Here is a summary of the changes being made:
• All new Town Square post-ers will automatically be
“pre-moderated” before their com-ment goes live on our site. While
this will result in a delay in their posts appearing, it will allow
our moderators to review comments for adherence to our rules and
guidelines. It will also reduce spam. When the poster has shown
that they are willing and able to follow the rules, his or her
ability to post instantly will be activated. Similarly, any
established com-menter who frequently violates
the rules may be relegated to pre-moderation at any time as a
sort of “penalty box.”
• The “up-voting” function that allows anyone to “like” a
comment will be removed. Too many posters are using tools to
circumvent our limit of one vote per person and are creating a
false impression that their com-ment has been embraced by large
numbers of other people. These abuses have made the voting
meaningless.
• “Screen” names of a poster will need to be consistent across
all topics. Currently, we allow a poster to comment under different
screen names in different Town Square topics, but do not permit
them to change names within a single topic discussion. This will be
changed to prevent the use of multiple names.
• The length of comments will be limited to 2,000 characters, or
about 200 words. This will be automated and no one will be able to
exceed this length. This will prevent excessively long posts that
can easily dominate or overwhelm a discussion.
• Extremely short comments of 200 characters (about 30 words)
will also generally not be allowed. Most of these short com-ments
are emotional outbursts only designed to denigrate or be dismissive
of another person or an organization. They don’t seek to engage
others in a conversation. Deletion for shortness will be at the
moderators’ discretion.
• The frequency of comment-ing by a poster will be limited. No
poster will be permitted to make consecutive comments on a topic.
The comment of at least one other person must be made before a
commenter may post again, and repeated comments from the same
poster that dominate a dis-cussion will be removed. Modera-tors may
make exceptions, such as in the case of a second short post
correcting content in the previous post.
Changes planned for Town Square, the Palo Alto Online forum
New policies will ‘pre-moderate’ new users, limit length of
comments and make other changes to improve quality of reader
forum
by Palo Alto Weekly staff
MEDIA
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Palo Alto Online’s Town Square forum will see new restrictions
aimed at improving public discourse.
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There are plenty of conversations happening on Town Square.
Check them out at PaloAltoOnline.com/square.
TALK ABOUT ITPaloAltoOnline.com
-
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • January 29, 2021 •
Page 9
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Page 10 • January 29, 2021 • Palo Alto Weekly •
www.PaloAltoOnline.com
Upfront
W hen Palo Alto officials adopted a position in 2018 in support
of the Bay-Delta Plan, which aims to protect the Yosemite ecosystem
by restricting how much water cities can draw from the San Joa-quin
River and its tributaries, they knew were swimming against the
prevalent political tide.
Prompted by water conserva-tionists and environmentalists, the
City Council went against recom-mendations from the city’s
Utili-ties Department staff and its wa-ter supplier, the San
Francisco Public Utilities Com m iss ion, which relies on the
Tuolumne River for much of its water. It also defied the Bay Area
Water Supply and Conservation Agency, a coali-tion of 27 municipal
agencies that buy water from the SFPUC.
Now, the city’s appointee to BAWSCA, City Council mem-ber Alison
Cormack, is drawing criticism from some of these same
environmentalists after she took a stance that they say contradicts
Palo Alto’s official position. Rather than endorsing the council’s
2018 position, Cormack publicly backed on Nov. 30 the position of
the water suppliers, who have criticized the Bay-Delta Plan’s flow
restrictions as a threat to their water supply.
The plan, which targets the San Joaquin River and its three
tribu-taries, the Stanislaus, Merced and Tuolumne rivers, requires
the “un-impaired flow” at these rivers to be at least 40% between
February and June to protect salmon, steel-head trout and other
species that rely on the rivers.
Conservationist groups, includ-ing the Tuolumne River Trust,
said the plan is necessary to protect the environment and dismiss
the alle-gations from the SFPUC and other water supply agencies as
“scare tactics.”
That debate resurfaced on Nov. 30, when the SFPUC held a
work-shop to discuss the Bay-Delta Plan, which the state Water
Resources Control Board officially adopted in December 2018.
Sandkulla told the commission at the workshop that the Bay-Delta
Plan could result in a loss of 90 million gallons per day of water,
potentially requiring a 50% reduction of water for resi-dents in
BAWSCA’s service area.
“Losing that much supply would severely impact people and
busi-nesses at communities that rely on the system,” Sandkulla
said.
Peter Drekmeier, a former Palo Alto mayor who serves as policy
director at Tuolumne River Trust,
pushed back against these figures. He said BAWSCA is not serving
its constituents by opposing a plan that seeks to protect the
river’s ecosystem.
“Saying that they care about the Bay Delta ecosystems but doing
very little to improve conditions and putting out an alarming
num-ber, which we’ve shown to be false, like 50% rationing, does
not serve the public interest,” Drekmeier said at the workshop.
Cormack, who serves on BAWSCA’s board of directors, also spoke
at that meeting. But far from channeling the council’s ad-opted
position in 2018, she echoed her BAWSCA colleagues in sup-porting
“voluntary agreements” between the state board and water suppliers.
These measures would allow water agencies to SFPUC to avoid the 40%
requirement by committing to other measures that don’t address
water flow, including habitat restoration.
“A voluntary agreement will be much better and ultimately more
acceptable than a forced legal resolution for all who rely on the
Tuolumne River,” Cormack said in a prepared statement at the Nov.
30 meeting. “This is actually an opportunity to lead the way in
California, since we are far from the only region in the state that
faces this issue.”
Her position sparked an immedi-ate backlash among local
support-ers of the Bay-Delta Plan. Hours after the workshop,
Drekmeier at-tended the council’s virtual meet-ing and asked how
it’s possible for the council to take a position in fa-vor of a
plan, only to have a single member take an opposing position and
support another plan.
“It’s unconscionable,” Drekmei-er told the council. “It’s clear
the science supports exactly what Palo Alto endorsed two years ago
and I hope you revisit this. It looks really bad when Palo Alto is
represented in front of the commission and saying the opposite of
what was voted on two years ago.”
Earlier this month, Drekmeier took his comments a step further
when he submitted a letter to May-or Tom DuBois and the council
re-questing that Cormack be replaced as a city representative.
“Palo Alto deserves a represen-tative who respects and advocates
for the City’s official position on issues such as the Bay Delta
Water Quality Control Plan,” Drekmeier wrote. “Council Member
Cormack has failed to do so.”
Other residents echoed his sen-timent. Stephen Rosenbloom said
he was shocked when he heard Cormack speak at the workshop
A fter the Capitol insurrec-tion on Jan. 6 by a faction of
Donald Trump support-ers, major social media compa-nies took the
unprecedented step of banning a sitting U.S. president from their
platforms.
Now, companies like Facebook are grappling with how to
effec-tively moderate content to prevent future violence while
politicians from both sides of the aisle con-sider policies to
regulate social media platforms from spreading misinformation
without limiting free speech.
On Jan. 22, during an online panel titled “The Storming of the
Capitol and the Future of Free Speech Online,” four experts from
Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, which focuses on digital
technology and govern-ment policy, discussed how so-cial media
platforms have helped cultivate political radicalization and
extremism, the potential
consequences as these same plat-forms aggressively crack down on
false information, and the govern-ment’s role in regulating social
media in the near future.
The experts found there’s an in-credibly challenging feat ahead
for both entities.
“When it comes to incitement, it’s very, very difficult to
develop a clear concrete standard that will apply prospectively to
any type of situation that might lead to law-breaking or violence,”
said Nathaniel Persily, a co-director of the center.
To understand what led to the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6,
Re-nee DiResta said it helps to know that the event was not an
overnight result of online coordination of one, large group of
Trump sup-porters or conservatives.
“This is not one faction, if you will, this was multiple
factions that came together,” said DiResta, a research manager at
the Cyber
Policy Center’s Internet Observa-tory. “So there’s a need to
under-stand ways in which network ac-tivism online manifests and
ways in which these factions form.”
DiResta suggested the event re-flected a process of polarization
that was years in the making and included various groups such as
militias, white supremacists and, more recently, followers of the
far-right conspiracy theory known as QAnon. Groups like these can
occupy “echo chambers’’ further strengthened on online platforms,
she said. That, coupled with an ef-fective disinformation campaign,
where Trump and his allies ques-tioned the integrity of the U.S.
election system based on mislead-ing and false information,
demon-strated how social media played a role leading up to the
insurrection.
“There was this repetitive pro-cess that we saw over and
over
Can social media giants stop an insurrection before it
happens?
Panel of Stanford cyberpolicy experts discuss ramifications of
leading tech companies’ ban of the former president
by Lloyd Lee
Council member’s position on water plan makes waves
Critics say Alison Cormack failed to accurately present city’s
positions on Bay-Delta Plan
by Gennady Sheyner
TECHNOLOGY
ENVIRONMENT
Facebook, which is headquartered in Menlo Park, is at the center
of the national discussion about the responsibility that social
media companies have in controlling the spread of
misinformation.
Magali G
authier
Alison Cormack
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-
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • January 29, 2021 •
Page 11
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Page 12 • January 29, 2021 • Palo Alto Weekly •
www.PaloAltoOnline.com
Upfront
different expenses away, we’re still, we think, much more
competitive from a cost point of view,” he said.
Construction time is also a big selling point, especially for a
re-gion where supply can’t meet the demand.
Unlike traditional stick-built homes, modular homes are put
to-gether off-site in a factory, without any of the on-site
construction de-lays that might arise from factors like
weather.
Solving the land problemThere are, however, hurdles
both generic to any type of af-fordable housing development
and unique to modular housing, Brownrigg said.
“Challenges for all of us in the Bay Area is the availability of
land — I’d actually put that as No. 1,” he said. “Then, No. 2, just
the red tape and cost of building.”
One way United Hope Builders wants to address issues of land
availability is by targeting “non-traditional landholders” such as
the churches and other religious organizations throughout the Bay
Area that own often wide-open parking lots. Citing research from
U.C. Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation think tank,
Brownrigg claims there are about 5,000 acres of unused land
con-trolled by religious organizations in the Bay Area.
“We think there’s an opportu-
nity to work with other mission-aligned people in the Bay Area
who want to create great, beauti-ful, environmentally sound,
af-fordable housing,” he said.
And to move through red-tape, Brownrigg said modular units can
come already compliant with state code before developers have to
put them together.
Specific to modular housing, however, one of the biggest
hur-dles is facilitating the shift in the housing industry’s
approach to development, where, traditionally, design decisions
such as flooring, windows and appliances are made over a longer
period of time rather than early-on as required with modular
houses.
A study on modular construc-tion by McKinsey and Company,
published in June 2019, found that while modular homes can cut the
development schedule by 20% to 50% and construction costs by 20%,
“modular projects currently tend to take longer to design than
traditional projects” because of the early decision-making
process.
This, as a consequence, also requires larger down payments at
the front end, and Brownrigg finds that it can discourage some
developers who may rely on low-income housing tax credits to fund
an affordable housing project.
Without greater control of the construction process, Brownrigg
said, a developer may be nervous to pull tax credits early on since
there are very strict deadlines be-tween the moment tax credits are
issued and when a tenant moves into the property.
To date, United Hope Build-ers has raised $4 million through
foundations and private investors. Some of the largest investors
in-clude Anastasia Vournas and Bill Uhrig, who is the owner of
Three Cities Research investment firm,
Housing(continued from page 7)
in favor of voluntary agreements, given the council’s officially
ad-opted position. Her statement, he told the council on Jan. 11,
should “disqualify her as a representative of the Palo Alto City
Council on BAWSCA, since she refused to separate the official
position of the City Council from her own beliefs.”
David Warner, a resident who supports the Bay-Delta Plan, called
Cormack’s statement “a step back-ward” and said he was taken aback
by her comments.
“Council member Cormack should either vigorously retract her
statements verbally, in front of SF-PUC, and reiterate Palo Alto’s
po-sition or she should resign from the BAWSCA board,” Warner
said.
Cormack emphasized that in taking a position in favor of
vol-untary agreements, she was acting as a representative of BAWSCA
rather than of the council. Even though her statement identified
her as a council member, she emailed the commission on Dec. 18 to
clarify that she was speak-ing as a BAWSCA director rather
than a council member and to apologize for the omission.
“I absolutely made a mistake in not making it clear. That was
brought to my attention and I promptly corrected the record in
writing,” Cormack told this news organization.
Her position on the Bay-Delta Plan, however, hasn’t changed. She
said she doesn’t oppose the plan, which she noted includes
provi-sions for voluntary agreements. The state Water Board in fact
ap-proved a resolution in December 2018 that encourages
stakeholders to “continue to work together to reach voluntary
agreements that incorporate a mix of flow and non-flow measures
that meet or exceed the new and revised water quality objectives
and protect fish and wildlife beneficial uses, and to present those
voluntary agree-ments to the State Water Board for its review as
soon as possible.”
Yet in its July analysis of non-flow measures, the Water Board
noted that “substantial scientific evidence indicates that
reduc-tions in flow and alteration of the natural flow regime
resulting from water development has been a ma-jor driver of
historic declines of
native fish populations and a ma-jor impediment to the
restoration of salmon populations in the San Joaquin River and
other Central Valley watersheds.”
Non-flow measures alone, the analysis states, “are not
sufficient to support and maintain viable popu-lations of native
fish populations.”
“Actions like creating habitat, modifying structures, or
enhancing channel forms are often relatively short-term solutions,
requiring re-peated application and/or mainte-nance in order to
continue to pro-vide benefits, and do not address restoration of
key watershed- or river-scale regulating processes,” the Water
Board’s analysis states.
While Cormack said she favors the Bay-Delta Plan’s incorporation
of voluntary agreements, she is far less enthusiastic about the
portion of the plan that the 2018 council and environmentalists
like Drek-meier and Warner see as its most critical components: a
requirement for unimpaired flow. When asked about her position on
the 40% re-quirement for unimpaired flow, Cormack said that she had
learned over the past two years that “non-flow measures” can help
achieve the desired environmental benefits.
“In the same way that I support amending the proposed voluntary
agreement to improve outcomes, I could support the Bay-Delta Plan
with amendments that include and consider non-flow measures,”
Cor-mack said. “This is one way to bal-ance the needs of water
users for re-liable supplies with improvements in the ecosystem of
the river.”
Cormack also made a public statement at the council’s Dec. 14
meeting underscoring that that her comments at the SFPUC work-shop
did not constitute opposition to the Bay-Delta Plan and did not
conflict with council policy on this issue. She also told her
colleagues that when the council appoints a BAWSCA director, that
person “does not serve as an instrument of our municipal interests
but as steward of the 26 member agen-cies” and the nearly 2 million
cus-tomers they serve.
“I’m working hard to find an in-tersection between Palo Alto’s
cur-rent position and my responsibility as a BAWSCA director,”
Cormack told the Weekly.
While her colleagues hadn’t taken any actions to replace
Cor-mack as the city’s BAWSCA ap-pointee, some residents remain
unconvinced by her explanation. David Schrom suggested in a Jan.
8 letter that if Cormack was repre-senting her BAWSCA colleagues in
her comments at the workshop, she should have at least clarified
that Palo Alto rejected voluntary agreements in favor of the
Bay-Delta Plan. If she did not speak at the behest of BAWSCA,
Schrom wrote, then her “flagrant disregard and implicit
misrepresentation are sufficient reason for you to find an-other of
your members to represent you, me and other Palo Altans on the
BAWSCA board.”
“If we’re to reap the benefits of your past and future decisions
made on the basis of extensive review of applicable science, we
need an advocate who understands the responsibilities of fully and
accurately upholding those deci-sions,” Schrom wrote.
Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be emailed at
[email protected].
Water(continued from page 10)
Talk about this topic, and read what others think about it, on
Town Square, the community discussion forum at
PaloAltoOnline.com/square.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?PaloAltoOnline.com
City Council (Jan. 25)Economic recovery: The council discussed
and approved the city’s proposed economic recovery plan, which
includes $500,000 for upgrades to air-filtration systems in city
facilities and $150,000 for changes to University Avenue. The
council approved most of the measures in the plan unanimously but
voted 4-3 on the University Avenue funding, with DuBois, Kou and
Stone dissenting. Yes: UnanimousBike projects: The council approved
a community engagement plan for bike improvements on segments of
Fabian Way, East Meadow Drive and the Waverley path in south Palo
Alto. Yes: Unanimous
Parks and Recreation Commission (Jan. 26)Election: The
commission elected Anne Cribbs as its chair and Jeff Greenfield as
its vice chair for 2021. Yes: UnanimousBoulware park: The
commission heard an update about proposed improvements to Boulware
Park. Action: NoneFoothills Park: The commission discussed proposed
visitor limits and entrance fees to Foothills Park. Most
commissioners favored a limit between 400 and 650 visitors at one
time, as well as allowing staff to modify the limit as needed. They
also supported the creation of an annual pass for Foothills Park
entry. The commission plans to vote on a formal recommendation on
Feb. 23. Action: None
Planning and Transportation Commission (Jan. 27)Bicycles: The
commission heard an update about bicycle projects that would be
funded through the county’s Vehicle Emissions Reductions Based at
Schools (VERBS) program Action: None
CityViewA round-up of Palo Alto government action this week
and both helped lease the factory site on Bay Road, according to
Bains. To get the factory open by the third quarter of this year,
the organization will need to raise an-other $2 million.
With the opening of United Hope’s factory, Bains also hopes to
bring around 100 jobs to East Palo Alto, where employees will earn
equity by owning 20% of the factory.
The organization is projected to produce around 400 homes per
year at a minimum for the Bay Area, Bains said.
As for the homes already deliv-ered, two families who are
clients
of WeHOPE will be surprised with them in the next few weeks,
with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the site planned on Valentine’s
Day.
Editorial Assistant Lloyd Lee can be emailed at
[email protected].
Council considers large apartment proposal A commercial site at
the busy corner of Fabian Way and Charles-
ton Road may soon be redeveloped to create one of Palo Alto’s
largest apartment projects in decades under a proposal that the
City Council is scheduled to consider next month. (Posted Jan. 28,
8:54 a.m.)
County scrambles to reinstate eviction protectionsThe Santa
Clara County Board of Supervisors voted unanimous-
ly Tuesday to bring back its eviction moratorium, which prevents
landlords from evicting tenants behind on rent due to COVID-19.
(Posted Jan. 27, 9:07 a.m.)
Woman arrested for hate crimeA Santa Clara woman was arrested
Jan. 22 in Palo Alto on sus-
picion of assaulting a man with her laptop computer on
California Avenue in an alleged hate crime, police said Monday in a
press release. (Posted Jan. 26, 9:53 a.m.)
‘Residents-only’ requirement forever bannedPalo Alto is
permanently barred from limiting access to visitors
to Foothills Park on the basis of residency under an injunction
that a U.S. district court judge signed off on Monday. (Posted Jan.
25, 4:37 p.m.)
Gunman attempts to rob man working in yardPolice are
investigating an attempted armed robbery that tar-
geted a man working outside of his Palo Alto home on Webster
Avenue during the afternoon on Jan. 20. (Posted Jan. 21, 4:51
p.m.)
These and other news stories were posted on Palo Alto Online
throughout the week. For longer versions, go to www.PaloAlto
Online.com/news.
Online This Week
About the cover: Paul Bains stands outside a modular home
delivered to East Palo Alto’s Safe Lot. His new nonprofit plans to
manufacture similar homes in a factory on Bay Road to house the
area’s homeless population. Photo by Magali Gauthier. Cover design
by Douglas Young.
-
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • January 29, 2021 •
Page 13
Upfront
again for months in which an incident — an incident that was
documented, it really happened in the world — was recast as part of
a broader narrative, and then sometimes those narratives were
additionally recast into the realm of conspiracy,” DiResta
said.
This process was well docu-mented through research con-ducted by
the Election Integ-rity Partnership, a coalition that’s composed of
Stanford and other research groups.
Their analysis found cases in which a real image of ballot
enve-lopes from the 2018 midterm elec-tion in a dumpster or a video
of a person who appears to be collect-ing or delivering absentee
ballots on behalf of another person — sometimes called “ballot
harvest-ing,” which is legal in some states — were misleadingly
packaged as evidence of massive voter fraud. They were then
amplified through social media accounts owned by right-wing media
outlets, conser-vative influencers and, as shown in these two
cases, Trump’s son, Don-ald Trump Jr., who has 6.6 million
followers on Twitter.
“For people who occupy certain echo chambers, this is what they
saw over and over and over again,” DiResta said. “So when Trump’s
loss manifested, they were primed to believe that this was a result
of a massive steal ... (and) that generated extraordinary amounts
of anger.”
Transparency effortsPrior to the Capitol riot, and
even before the Nov. 3 election, Facebook and other social media
companies made efforts to combat misinformation on their platforms.
Twitter slapped fact-check labels on tweets; Instagram attached
links to official information on COVID-19 and the U.S. election
underneath users’ photos; and Facebook temporarily tweaked its news
feed algorithm so that news from more reliable publications were
more prominently displayed.
In October, Facebook said the company’s measures led to
prom-ising results, touting it had removed 120,000 pieces of
content that vio-lated its policies on voter informa-tion and
promised to do more.
But this type of content modera-tion, leading up to the outright
ban of Trump and some of his allies, increasingly pushed many
conser-vatives who felt they were censored by tech companies to
make the dig-ital exodus to other platforms such as Parler, which
advertised itself as a free-speech friendly platform. Parler’s app,
at one point No. 1 on Apple’s and Google’s app stores after the
election, was shut down when Amazon barred the site from its
web-hosting services on Jan. 9.
This hasn’t stopped other plat-forms like Gab from growing as it
seemed to target disillusioned conservatives by similarly calling
itself the “free speech social net-work.” Nothing in U.S. law makes
it explicitly illegal to give a certain group a platform, even at
the risk of
hosting smaller, “domestic extrem-ist groups,” said Alex Stamos,
di-rector of the Cyber Policy Center’s Internet Observatory and
former chief security officer at Facebook.
“You’re going to continue to see the separation from the
companies that are trying to go after the (ex-tremist) groups
versus those that aren’t, which is not something I think we
actually have a good his-tory of or demonstration of what’s going
to happen,” he said.
DiResta, however, noted that al-though a large number of popular
conservative influencers and their followers made the recent move
to other social media and messaging sites, what also needs to be
ac-counted for to measure the long-term impacts of the migration is
engagement between those users.
“Account creation isn’t the only metric,” she said. “The
question becomes: Do we see sustained en-gagement on those
platforms? Did all of the millions of accounts that were created
... actively continue to participate?”
Larger social media and tech companies have already applied
comprehensive moderation policies and many are also members of the
Global Internet Forum to Counter Terorrism. Stamos believes that
rather than going back to a normal where, for example, baselessly
ac-cusing voting machines of deleting votes can be considered
“accept-able political discourse,” these plat-forms will likely
have to keep up or increase moderation of content, fact-checking
and rule enforcement as it did during last year’s election and
after Jan. 6 riot.
A tussle between law and tech
From a U.S. legislative stand-point, there’s also the question
of what laws need to be considered or amended to regulate forms of
speech that could incite violence from proliferating, mainly
Sec-tion 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which has
come under increased scrutiny.
The law essentially protects in-ternet platforms from assuming
responsibility for the speech of its users, including hate speech,
which is protected by the First Amendment. There are excep-tions to
the case, including intel-lectual property or content that may
violate federal law such as sex-trafficking material.
Daphne Keller, director of the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on
Platform Regulation and for-mer associate general counsel for
Google, said Congress has intro-duced over 20 bills in the past
year that would amend Section 230 in different ways.
But major “constitutional hur-dles” stand in the way of
regulat-ing speech that may incite violence through laws that are
effective and won’t violate the First Amend-ment, said Keller, who
elaborated on the topic in a Jan. 22 post on the center’s blog.
Legislators do have some le-gal precedents to start from. The
most relevant is the Brandenburg v. Ohio case, where the Supreme
Court ruled the First Amendment
does not protect speech that is “di-rected to inciting or
producing im-minent lawless action and is likely to incite or
produce such action.”
Persily, the co-director at the Cyber Policy Center, who is also
a constitutional and election law expert, finds that to apply the
case to speech online, one question begs to be asked: At what stage
can companies know some form of speech will lead to imminent
lawless action or violence?
“What kind of judgments do (platforms) need to make in or-der to
really have a good forecast about the likelihood of imminent
lawless action?” he asked. “It’s al-most always going to be too
late.”
Once legislators can decide on the kinds of speech that should
and can be prohibited, they’ll also have to figure out how to hand
this responsibility to private internet companies.
“If you take a pretty vague rule prohibiting speech and then you
outsource it to risk-averse plat-forms ... they will over enforce,
and the overenforcement may hit people that we don’t like today and
people that we do like next week,” Keller said. “One group of
people we can pretty strongly predict that it will hit is members
of vulner-able minority groups.”
More than two weeks after the Capitol riot, Facebook announced
on Jan. 21 that it will defer its deci-sion to permanently ban or
restore Trump’s account to the company’s independent Oversight
Board. The group, which was first officially announced last May, is
made up of global experts and civic leaders who take on “highly
emblematic cases” that need further examina-tion if Facebook made
decisions, such as the Trump ban, in accor-dance with its own
policies, ac-cording to the board’s website.
On that same day, a group of 40 House Democrats led by Anna
Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, and Tom Ma-linowski of New Jersey submitted
letters to the CEOs of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, accusing the
platforms of helping to foster the “insurrectionist mob” and urging
the executives to re-examine their algorithms that “maximize user
engagement.”
It’s a follow-up to a bill the two House representatives
proposed in October, Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms
Act, which amends Section 230 to hold internet platforms
accountable if their algorithms boost content that violates or
interferes with civil rights. In other words, it’s an at-tempt not
to regulate speech, but to regulate the reach of speech, which
Kellers believes platforms have the ability to execute but
currently can’t enforce through U.S. law without First Amendment
scrutiny.
“The value in identifying these barriers is to figure out how to
get around them,” Keller said. “If we want a good law, we need to
un-derstand the hard limits. And the hard limits are: What is
actually implementable ... and what will get struck down by the
courts.”
Editorial Assistant Lloyd Lee can be emailed at
[email protected].
Social media(continued from page 10)
air to then be told by the dispatch-er that the person is a
wanted felon considered armed and dangerous. This type of
information is criti-cal to know, not only for the of-ficer dealing
with the person, but also to others working in the city so they can
instantly respond and assist,” she said.
Also, more staff would be need-ed, she said.
East Palo Alto police Chief Al Pardini said his department is
looking into encrypting its com-munications in 2023.
Currently, the San Jose, Morgan Hill and Sunnyvale police
depart-ments have made the switch to encrypted radio channels,
Nelson said. Mountain View plans on making the transition in March.
Every law enforcement agency within Santa Clara County will be
switched over to encrypted trans-missions by the end of this year,
she said.
Alternatives for accessFor news organizations, the loss
of access to police radio transmis-sions is thorny.
The FBI and the California De-partment of Justice (DOJ)
main-tain that media members are not authorized to receive
information that is obtained from the Califor-nia criminal
telecommunications system, Atherton’s Chief Mc-Culley said. A
person receiving CLETS information must have “a right to know” the
information and a “need to know” of the informa-tion under DOJ and
FBI mandates.
“I understand from the media standpoint it’s kind of like radio
silence,” Sunnyvale Capt. Hank Syu said.
Some police departments throughout the country offer a way for
credentialed media to listen in on radio transmissions: decryption
licenses.
A license with the Denver Police Department in Colorado allows
the media to utilize a decryption “key,” which gains limited access
to specific police channels and transmissions. While the
decryp-tion is offered at no cost, the me-dia organizations must
purchase specific radios, have liability, worker’s compensation,
commer-cial general liability, media profes-sional liability and
cyber liability insurance policies, according to a copy of the
licensing agreement.
They can be prohibitively ex-pensive, however, and the terms of
use can be burdensome, said Mailyn Fidler, a legal fellow for the
Reporters Committee for Free-dom of the Press’ Technology and Press
Freedom Project.
Encryption of radio transmis-sions in 2018 in Riverside County,
California, led to a legislative at-tempt to continue access by the
news media.
Then-state Assemblyman Todd Gloria introduced a 2019 bill, AB
1555, that would have required any law enforcement agency to
pro-vide access to the encrypted com-munications to “a duly
authorized
representative of any news service, newspaper, or radio or
television network, upon request.” AB 1555 went through revisions
in the as-sembly and state senate before Gloria withdrew it due to
its fail-ure to make it to a vote under leg-islative deadlines.
Nick Serrano, Gloria’s commu-nications director, told the Desert
Sun newspaper of Palm Springs at the time that they noticed a
nation-wide trend toward police encryp-tion of radio
communications.
“We believe news media have a right to access police radio
com-munications. As much as this is an issue of transparency and
right-of-access, Assemblymember Gloria also sees this as a public
safety issue. We rely on media outlets to provide emergency
information to the public and much of that is garnered through
their access to police radio communications.”
Though the legislation failed to progress, one Riverside County
police department found a way to continue providing some level of
information to the news media.
In a phone call on Wednesday, Lt. William Hutchinson of the Palm
Springs Police Department described how his department pro-vides
media access to its comput-er aided dispatch (CAD) system, which
offers call information in real time. The press page is differ-ent
from the one the police see in that Hutchinson can control what
information goes out. He regu-lates traffic stop information, for
example, because he doesn’t want to release information about the
location of unmarked patrols. But violent crimes, thefts and other
in-cidents that affect the community are listed.
The system cost less than $2,000 to create and about $1,000 to
add on to the current CAD pro-gram, he said.
Julie Makinen, executive editor at The Desert Sun, said she
ap-plauds the Palm Springs Police Department for trying to come up
with a solution. But “the fact is, it’s not the same as listening
to the scanner,” she said.
The information doesn’t tell news staff whether an incident that
starts off as innocuous has escalat-ed into something worse, she
said.
“A domestic violence incident that turns into a police-involved
shooting doesn’t show up on a page with only one line,” she
said.
Local news media are conduits on behalf of a community,
espe-cially if there’s a school shooting or other emergency
incident.
“I think it’s critical for public safety,” she said of media
access to the transmissions. “The media is a partner, informing the
public and directing people away from the site,” she said.
The encryption “is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,”
Makinen said.
Staff Writer Sue Dremann can be emailed at
[email protected]. The Almanac Staff Writers Kate Bradshaw and
Angela Swartz and Mountain View Voice Staff Writer Kevin Forestieri
contributed to this story.
Encryption(continued from page 7)
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Page 14 • January 29, 2021 • Palo Alto Weekly •
www.PaloAltoOnline.com
Upfront
county continues its deep com-mitment to equity and ensuring
access for our communities most at risk of contracting COVID-19,”
said Dr. Jennifer Tong, associate chief medical officer for the
Santa Clara County Health System.
The county also is partner-ing with community clinics and
launched a pilot mobile vaccina-tion clinic to ensure vaccine
ac-cess to residents and staff of long-term care facilities.
“We are coordinating efforts with local fire departments and
emergency medical services pro-viders and sending vaccinaters into
the field to ensure those at greatest risk can be vaccinated as
quickly as possible,” Roy said.
County leaders say the ability to expand vaccine eligibility is
de-pendent on vaccine supply.
This week, the county received 20,125 additional first doses of
vaccine, which is “far fewer doses than health systems in the
county have capacity to provide,” accord-ing to the county public
health department.
Residents can get more infor-mation about vaccine allocation and
administration by health care providers on the county’s COVID-19
vaccine dashboard at
sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard-vaccine.aspx.
State order lifted, outdoor dining resumes
This week, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties returned to the
state’s most restrictive COVID-19 level, the purple tier, after
Califor-nia health leaders lifted statewide regional stay-at-home
orders on Monday.
Under the purple tier, outdoor dining, personal care services
and professional, collegiate, adult and youth sports may resume
with modifications. Restaurants can once again offer outdoor
dining. Personal care services, such as nail and hair salons, can
have indoor and outdoor clients. Outdoor family entertainment
centers and outdoor card rooms also can reopen, and gatherings of
up to three households can resume outdoors only. Places of worship
also can resume outdoor services.
Mandatory travel restrictions, which require a 10-day
quaran-tine for most persons who return to Santa Clara County after
trav-eling farther than 150 miles, will stay in effect, Santa Clara
County Counsel James Williams said dur-ing a press conference on
Monday afternoon.
The county is keeping the travel restriction order in place due
to the high infection rate in other parts of the state,
particularly in southern California, where three variants of the
coronavirus that
are spreading throughout the state have been found. The travel
restrictions also appear to have re-duced the amount of travel,
which is one of the main ways the virus has spread, Williams
said.
“We are still nowhere yet out of the woods,” he said, noting the
county still has high hospital rates.
The county’s local directives, which predate the state’s
regional stay-at-home order, are still in ef-fect. Noncontact youth
sports can resume if they are outdoors, but contact sports are
still prohibited. The San Jose Sharks can resume play at SAP Center
provided they adhere to regulations, Williams said.
Businesses and individuals must follow both the state and county
orders, and where there is a conflict between the two, the stricter
rules must be followed.
In San Mateo County, outdoor dining and personal services
re-sumed Monday with required modifications. The county is not
imposing additional local restric-tions and remains in alignment
with the state.
“This is a huge sigh of relief for our struggling small
businesses, but we’ve got a ways to go still before life returns to
normal,” San Mateo County Board of Su-pervisors President David
Canepa stated in a press release Monday.
“Science and data tell us that wearing our masks stops the
spread. So I will repeat once again, wear your damn masks,” he
said.
Sutter/PAMF to open mass vaccination center
Also this week, Sutter/Palo Alto Medical Foundation has signed
an agreement to set up a mass vaccination site at the San Mateo
County Event Center, the county’s health chief, Louise Rog-ers,
said on Tuesday.
The large site will enable Sut-ter/PAMF to begin vaccinating a
greater number of its patients — so long as it has supplies,
Rog-ers said during an update to the county Board of
Supervisors.
A Sutter/PAMF spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the medi-cal
provider is “actively working to expand capacity throughout
Sutter’s footprint, and large-scale vaccine clinics are an
important part of our strategy to continue to deploy as much
vaccine as pos-sible to eligible patients.”
The vaccination clinic at the San Mateo Event Center is
ex-pected to open to Sutter patients age 75 and older next week. It
is a walk-up format, not drive-thru, and will be by appointment
only. Sutter patients, including those served by Palo Alto Medical
Foundation, who are 75 years or older can make an appointment by
calling a dedicated hotline at 844-987-6115 or self-booking through
My Health Online, the Sutter Health patient portal.
Sutter has approximately 3 million patients in its system
throughout northern California.
Like other health care providers, it has been experiencing a
surge of patients at its acute facilities and is testing thousands
of patients per day for COVID-19, the organiza-tion stated.
“At this time, Sutter is priori-tizing the state’s most
vulnerable populations including those who are 75-plus years of age
and our community health care workers because they are at greatest
risk according to CDC guidance. As vaccine supply and appointment
capacity expands, we will broaden eligibility and notify our
patients. We share in the excitement and hope that comes with the
CO-VID-19 vaccine and are working extremely hard to meet eligible
patients’ scheduling requests,” a Sutter spokeswoman stated.
Dr. Anand Chabra, San Mateo County’s section chief for
CO-VID-19, said the county has vac-cinated 48,826 people, a total
of 6% of the county’s population (a number that includes children,
who are not eligible for the vac-cines). The county has been
allo-cated 58,750 doses thus far. The number of vaccinations given
is likely higher, since the county doesn’t have data on all of the
vaccinations given at long-term care facilities, where there are an
estimated 12,000 residents. Those doses are administered by
phar-macy teams from CVS and Wal-greens using the federal supply of
vaccines.
About 30,000 of the county’s 38,000 health care workers have
been vaccinated, Chabra said. The county has also vaccinated 16,000
people who are ages 65 and older, which is about 12% of that
popu-lation, he said.
Rogers acknowledged there are some groups who should be
vac-cinated that currently fall through the cracks. Some small,
infor-mal group care facilities aren’t in the county’s licensing
data-base and need to have access to
the vaccines. The county is also working on a plan to reach
home-bound seniors, who might need to have public health nurses
visit them at home. The county also has transportation for its
Health Plan of San Mateo patients to be transported to vaccination
cen-ters, she said.
To further address equity issues, the county is looking at
working with local pharmacies and to find local partners to
administer vac-cines at neighborhood sites where it is easy for
people to walk to and receive the vaccine. Sub-zero freezers, which
are required to store the vaccines, however, pose a challenge to
this localized ap-proach, Rogers said.
The main concern is still supply. Counties and medical providers
don’t know when they will receive vaccines, nor the amount they
will receive, in a timely manner, which doesn’t allow for planning,
Rog-ers said, but she is hopeful that the logistics and
communication will improve under the Biden administration.
Some issues could also arise in terms of supplies beyond the
vac-cine dose. Kaiser has expressed concern about having enough
needles, for example.
“Everyone is constrained except for Sutter/PAMF for supplies,”
Rogers said.
Some supplies, such as needles, come with the vaccines, but
there have been five-dose vials from Pfizer that actually have six
doses-worth of vaccine in them, Chabra said.
The county also added a new data dashboard related to the
vaccines Tuesday morning on its website, which can be accessed at
smchealth.org/data-dashboard/vaccination-demographic-data.
Reporter Jana Kadah works for Bay City News Foundation. Staff
Writer Sue Dremann can be reached at [email protected].
COVID-19(continued from page 5)
All of the following are sub-ject to the county’s Mandatory
Directives, which describe spe-cific operating regulations.
• Outdoor dining may resume; indoor dining remains prohibit-ed.
Bars, breweries, distilleries, and pubs may serve alcohol only
outdoors and only in the same transaction as a meal.
• Personal care services may resume indoors and outdoors.
• Professional and collegiate sports may resume.
• Adult recreational sports ac-tivities may resume.
• Youth sports may resume subject to the state’s and coun-ty’s
guidance.
• Most businesses that are al-lowed to open indoor operations to
the public must limit capacity of their publicly accessible space
to 20%.
• Outdoor gatherings with up to three households are now
al-lowed for any purpose.
• Larger outdoor gatherings with up to 200 people are al-lowed
only for political, reli-gious or ceremonial purposes. Indoor
gatherings of any kind remain prohibited.
• Most people who travel into the county from more than 150
miles away must quarantine for 10 days upon their arrival.
• Lodging facilities may not provide lodging services for
non-essential purposes, such as tourism, recreational or leisure
purposes. Non-essential travel should be avoided, especially in
light of new variants of COV-ID-19 that are circulating glob-ally
and in the United States.
• All businesses must continue to require workers to do their
jobs from home whenever pos-sible. Workers can go into work only to
complete the job duties they can’t complete from home.
Source: Santa Clara County Department of Public Health
What the purple tier allows in Santa Clara County
CITY COUNCIL ... The council plans to hold its annual retreat to
set its priorities for 2021. The virtual meeting will begin at 9
a.m., Saturday, Jan. 30. Those wishing to participate by Zoom can
do so by dialing 669-900-6833 and using Meeting ID: 362 027
238.
CITY COUNCIL ... The council plans to approve several contracts
for construction of the new public safety building at 250 Sherman
Ave., as well as authorize the selling of bonds to finance the
project. The council also plans to form a working group to work on
updating the Housing Element and to consider a colleagues memo from
council members Lydia Kou and Greer Stone about preserving local
control for land use issues. The virtual meeting will begin at 5
p.m., Monday, Feb. 1. Those wishing to participate by Zoom can do
so by dialing 669-900-6833 and using Meeting ID: 362 027 238.
BOARD OF EDUCATION ... The school board will hold a study
session to discuss reopening schools in the fall; recruitment,
hiring and retention of diverse staff; student mental health; and
equity goals. The virtual meeting will begin at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday,
Feb. 2. The meeting will be broadcast on Cable TV Channel 28 and
midpenmedia.org. Those wishing to participate by Zoom can do so by
going to pausd.zoom.us/j/97888498129 or dialing 669-900-6833 and
using Meeting ID: 949 9734 6242.
COUNCIL FINANCE COMMITTEE ... The committee plans to meet at 7
p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 2. The agenda was not available by press
deadline.
UTILITIES ADVISORY COMMISSION ... The commission plans to
consider approving the fiscal year 2022 Wastewater Collection
Utility Financial Plan and hear an update on the 2020
Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. The virtual meeting will
begin at 4 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 3. Those wishing to participate by
Zoom can do so by dialing 669-900-6833 and using Meeting ID: 966
9129 7246.
ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW BOARD ... The board plans to review the
proposed sign replacements at Macy’s in Stanford Shopping Center
and a preliminary design for the proposed auto dealership at 1700
Embarcadero Road. The virtual meeting will begin at 8: 30 a.m.,
Thursday, Feb. 4. Those wishing to participate by Zoom can do so by
dialing 669-900-6833 and using Meeting ID: 990 0735 9509.
Public AgendaA preview of Palo Alto government meetings next
week
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