WRITTEN PUBLIC
COMMENTS RECEIVED
From: Jessika Vasquez
To: City Clerk
Subject: FW: Study session item A1 commissioner reappointments [correspondence not comment] Date: Monday, May 6, 2024 11:28:54 AM
Please see email below from Mark Elliot.
Jessika
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Elliot < >
Sent: Saturday, May 4, 2024 5:48 PM
To: WebCBH MAYORANDCITYCOUNCIL <[email protected]> Subject: Study session item A1 commissioner reappointments [correspondence not comment] [You don't often get email from . Learn why this is important at https://aka ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ]
CAUTION: External Sender
Use caution when clicking links or opening attachments
[Huma: please include this written correspondence in the meeting record. It need not be read at the meeting.] Dear Mayor Friedman and members of the city council:
Rent Stabilization commissioner appointments are on the agenda and that would seem to make this an opportune moment for you to consider the future of the commission. I want to urge you to hold off on reappointing the rent stabilization commissioners, regardless of their merit, and instead bring forward at the next meeting an ordinance to sunset the commission.
Consider that the RSO commission hasn’t met for months. And even when it did meet regularly our commissioners wasted their good time, meeting after meeting, while staff invested time that in retrospect could have been used for more pressing problems.
In my view it is past time for city council to call it quits. First two tenant commissioners resigned. Then replacement tenant-commissioner Sokoloff stepped away 18 months ago. He was followed by landlord commissioner Mader and, more recently, at-large commissioner Milkowski. Now we understand that two more at-large and tenant commissioners are calling it quits. Good on them.
So let’s thank commissioners Miller and Gurman for their service and decline these reappointments; and then relieve the Clerk’s office of the obligation to reopen recruitment.
I don’t see how you can disagree. If this commission were a priority to the city, we would have seen the RSO liaisons meet even once to deal with the dysfunction. Clearly the public feels the same. Nobody attends these meetings nor pays the commission’s work any attention. Only Dan Yukelson and I tune in.
So I want to suggest that you proclaim this commission a success and then move on to important rent stabilization problems which aren’t addressed: unregistered rental units, unlicensed landlords, unchecked short-term leasing, and, as always, construction without permits. So much to do! If you fold this commission I hope you will take responsibility for cynically tossing the hot potato of rent stabilization to a new commission comprised of members that had no particular expertise or familiarity with complex tenancy law. The city left this commission unprepared. As I recall the commissioners received about 12 minutes worth of substantive preparation to do their job. More time was spent on the Brown Act than on tenancy law.
Thank our commissioners and then wish them well. Should they apply for another commission appointment, I think you should accord the former commissioners preferential consideration just as you seemed to do with Lou Milkowski who departed the commission not long ago for the planning commission. Don’t these former commissioners deserve preferential consideration too? I think they do.
Respectfully,
Mark Elliot