Déjà vu - Seeing a Visioning Process Coming all Over Again

Bear with me as I tell you the story of a costly local neighborhood saga, I promise it will make sense and in fact end up being the likely pre-cursor of what is about to unfold regarding police processes in Redwood City.

Ten years ago, I moved to Redwood City to live at Docktown on the water. At the time, I thought Redwood City was moving towards creating what at the time was colloquially referred to as Sausalito of the South Bay. I was excited and looked forward to creating a green, environmentally sensitive community that would help the City of Redwood City lead the way in creating and expanding housing solutions that were responsive to problems such as sea level rise. In the last ten years, London has moved to create floating communities (https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2018/02/15/london-floating-homes-osm.cnn); Amsterdam’s IJBurg (https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/about-amsterdam/amsterdam-neighbourhoods/ijburg) floating neighborhood has been featured worldwide as a model for other such projects and Dubai is in the midst of creating a floating neighborhood modeled on Venice (https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/dubai-floating-venice-resort/index.html). Not to mention the work of people like Giancarlo Zema (https://www.giancarlozema.com/ ) and Koen Olthuis (https://www.waterstudio.nl/ .)

While originally a private marina, through a number of unanticipated and convoluted events, Docktown ended up being managed directly by the City of Redwood City. The city claimed and in fact the army general they hired to manage the marina informed the residents that they wanted to create a “gem” on the water a la Koen Olthuis. In supposed support of this goal, the city started a very detailed Inner Harbor Visioning process. That process ended up including over ten meetings over the course of almost one year (https://www.redwoodcity.org/departments/community-development-department/planning-housing/planning-services/general-plan-precise-plans/inner-harbor-specific-plan). However when the visioning recommendations of the Inner Harbor Task Force were seen not to be aligning with what the City Manager and City Council had quite clearly predetermined they wanted as an outcome, the process and the final report were stopped in their tracks. Instead city representatives pointed to the California State Lands commission, to the state legislature and to other government bodies as having jurisdiction and not allowing any of the work to be acted up on. The City produced it’s own specific plan and today Docktown is a ghost of itself. A large proportion of residents ended up being bought out at a cost so far of over $20M to the taxpayers when only spending $2-3M would have created a “gem” that would have been a beacon for the area.

So why do I bring this up now?

Watching what the country is going through now as regards the murder of George Floyd, you would think that the City of Redwood City would take advantage and take the opportunity to lead as regards budgeting and policing. Instead just the way Redwood City was ahead of the curve with Docktown and is now instead behind the times; the events this week reminded me of what is likely to be the reality ten years from now regarding local policing. The City Council’s tone deaf attitude regarding budgeting was not an auspicious beginning. While I do realize that local government budgets are set month’s in advance; Covid19 has forced local and state governments to quickly pivot, make cuts and reimagine original plans. Add the new civil unrest and calls for reallocating funds away from the police not to say defund or abolish police departments and you would have thought the Council would have understood that proposing a budget that actually increased the budget of the police department would be inflammatory. But not in Redwood City.

Council members will try to continue as they always have. Who cares about budget concerns, internal staff raises were approved regardless of everything going on. Council members are telling everyone they are listening and welcome residents’ input. During Wednesday’s Special Council Meeting/Townhall with the Chief of Police, Chief Mulholland, explained that in comparison to other areas of the country Redwood City is ahead in the sense that what is in the calls for further improvements are items that are already in process; he deflected all calls for further improvements by pointing to City Council and state regulations. Next, City Council members will also point the finger at the state.

The City is acting like they are at the forefront of the policing issue and that there is nothing relevant locally. Watching Chief Mulholland last night go through how the City is already doing what it can in reference to each of the 8ToAbolish agenda items was to have a flashback to Bill Ekern presenting to the Inner Harbor Visioning meetings. In addition, to watch Mayor Diane Howard read a prepared response to a supposed public question meant that they had all already been given the questions that formed the main part of the event. It was truly horrifying.

As one member from the public reminded the council, this is an election year. Rest assured it won’t be long before there will be a long visioning process outlined. Residents will spends hours and hours preparing and discussing all kinds of real positive change and then after about a year (not too long after the election actually) everything will all of a sudden be stopped and the City Council will continue as it always has and feels it can continue to do. By simply not keeping up with the times and compounding that with eliminating some of the good in the system, Redwood City will likely actually go backward instead of forward and certainly be far outpaced by other cities and communities.

I hope I am wrong, but I doubt it.