RULES COMMITTEE: 4/16/2025
Item: B.1
File ID: ROGC 25-141
TO: Honorable Mayor & FROM: Toni J. Taber, MMC
City Council City Clerk
SUBJECT: The Public Record DATE: April 16, 2025
April 3, 2025 – April 10, 2025
ITEMS FILED FOR THE PUBLIC RECORD
Letters from Boards, Commissions, and Committees
Letters from the Public
1. Letter from Mike Wagner, dated April 3, 2025, regarding: Public Record Submission - Angel Rios/ Kit O'Doherty.
2. Letter from Purushottam M., dated April 3, 2025, regarding: Connecting San Jose Down Town with San Jose International AirPort:.
3. Letter from Barbara Gallaty, dated April 4, 2025, regarding: [SanJoseAction] Re: No encampment zone no enforced: (EIH Rue Ferrari rvs at Eden again] no encampment zone not respected neither criteriaWeekly Update on Your Vehicle Concerns Request - SR# SJ311PSR20250309-0071.
4-60. Letters from 57 members of the public, dated April 4 – April 9, 2025, regarding: Restore Virtual Comments at City Council meetings.
61-71. Letters from 11 members of the public, dated April 4 – April 8, 2025, regarding: Protect Our Parks: Parkland and Public Golf Courses.
72. Letter from Wayne Gazzola, dated April 7, 2025, regarding: Public Record Submission - Communication on Mahon's Proposal to Criminalize Houselessness. ____________________________
Toni J. Taber, MMC
City Clerk
TJT/tt
Public Record: 5
Public Record: 6
Public Record: 7
Public Record: 8
Public Record: 9
Public Record: 10
Public Record: 11
Public Record: 12
Public Record: 13
Public Record: 14
Public Record: 15
Public Record: 16
Public Record: 17
Public Record: 18
Public Record: 19
Public Record: 20
This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources. the challenge of finding solutions to preserve access for everyone while continuing to facilitate public comment by providing a virtual option.
Ending the process of remote participation, is to deny a large segment of the community the opportunity to participate in our democratic process. Some examples include:
— Disabled residents who rely on technology to speak, or who otherwise have to arrange rides with Paratransit.
— Immunocompromised residents who take on unnecessary risks to their health by spending hours in a packed room.
— Working people without the ability to arrange their schedules around hours-long council meetings. — Parents with small children who can't take time off to attend City meetings.
For example, budget season is the most critical time of year for civic engagement. The ban on remote comments means the people most in need of an equitable city budget will be sidelined throughout the process.
The possibility that the ban on remote comments might only last months is no comfort to those who wish to comment on current City Council, Committee and Commission matters in order to ensure that quality of life in San Jose is maximized. I ask that you immediately restore virtual public comment to ensure that you and the City once again benefit from the voices silenced by your recent decision.
Emily hendon
95125
You may not use my contact information for any purpose other than to respond to my concern regarding the topic listed above, nor may you share my address with any other organization(s) or individual(s).
—
This mail was sent on behalf of a San Jose resident via District 5 United Community Working Together
4/9/25, 12:52 PM Mail - Rules and Open Government Committee Agendas - Outlook https://outlook.office365.com/mail/[email protected]/inbox/id/AAQkADhhYzk3NTk1LTBmZDAtNDc4Yi1hN2Q0LTZjNmZjNTk5MT… 2/2
This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources. the challenge of finding solutions to preserve access for everyone while continuing to facilitate public comment by providing a virtual option.
Ending the process of remote participation, is to deny a large segment of the community the opportunity to participate in our democratic process. Some examples include:
— Disabled residents who rely on technology to speak, or who otherwise have to arrange rides with Paratransit.
— Immunocompromised residents who take on unnecessary risks to their health by spending hours in a packed room.
— Working people without the ability to arrange their schedules around hours-long council meetings. — Parents with small children who can't take time off to attend City meetings.
For example, budget season is the most critical time of year for civic engagement. The ban on remote comments means the people most in need of an equitable city budget will be sidelined throughout the process.
The possibility that the ban on remote comments might only last months is no comfort to those who wish to comment on current City Council, Committee and Commission matters in order to ensure that quality of life in San Jose is maximized. I ask that you immediately restore virtual public comment to ensure that you and the City once again benefit from the voices silenced by your recent decision.
Also, the "required" question asking for a street or cross street is a barrier for some people. I understand not everyone has an address or temporary residence. As a City Council who claimed to be responsive to the community, you shouldn't make cross streets questions required. You should just ask for zip code. That will give you all the information you need to know.
Tomara Hall
95112
You may not use my contact information for any purpose other than to respond to my concern regarding the topic listed above, nor may you share my address with any other organization(s) or individual(s).
—
This mail was sent on behalf of a San Jose resident via District 5 United Community Working Together
4/9/25, 12:53 PM Mail - Rules and Open Government Committee Agendas - Outlook https://outlook.office365.com/mail/[email protected]/inbox/id/AAQkADhhYzk3NTk1LTBmZDAtNDc4Yi1hN2Q0LTZjNmZjNTk5MT… 2/2
This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources. hamper people's First Amendment right to petition their government, however, the City should rise to the challenge of finding solutions to preserve access for everyone while continuing to facilitate public comment by providing a virtual option.
Ending the process of remote participation, is to deny a large segment of the community the opportunity to participate in our democratic process. Some examples include:
— Disabled residents who rely on technology to speak, or who otherwise have to arrange rides with Paratransit.
— Immunocompromised residents who take on unnecessary risks to their health by spending hours in a packed room.
— Working people without the ability to arrange their schedules around hours-long council meetings. — Parents with small children who can't take time off to attend City meetings.
For example, budget season is the most critical time of year for civic engagement. The ban on remote comments means the people most in need of an equitable city budget will be sidelined throughout the process.
The possibility that the ban on remote comments might only last months is no comfort to those who wish to comment on current City Council, Committee and Commission matters in order to ensure that quality of life in San Jose is maximized. I ask that you immediately restore virtual public comment to ensure that you and the City once again benefit from the voices silenced by your recent decision.
Adria Colomer
95112
You may not use my contact information for any purpose other than to respond to my concern regarding the topic listed above, nor may you share my address with any other organization(s) or individual(s).
—
This mail was sent on behalf of a San Jose resident via District 5 United Community Working Together
4/9/25, 12:53 PM Mail - Rules and Open Government Committee Agendas - Outlook https://outlook.office365.com/mail/[email protected]/inbox/id/AAQkADhhYzk3NTk1LTBmZDAtNDc4Yi1hN2Q0LTZjNmZjNTk5MT… 2/2
This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources. the challenge of finding solutions to preserve access for everyone while continuing to facilitate public comment by providing a virtual option.
Ending the process of remote participation, is to deny a large segment of the community the opportunity to participate in our democratic process. Some examples include:
— Disabled residents who rely on technology to speak, or who otherwise have to arrange rides with Paratransit.
— Immunocompromised residents who take on unnecessary risks to their health by spending hours in a packed room.
— Working people without the ability to arrange their schedules around hours-long council meetings. — Parents with small children who can't take time off to attend City meetings.
For example, budget season is the most critical time of year for civic engagement. The ban on remote comments means the people most in need of an equitable city budget will be sidelined throughout the process.
The possibility that the ban on remote comments might only last months is no comfort to those who wish to comment on current City Council, Committee and Commission matters in order to ensure that quality of life in San Jose is maximized. I ask that you immediately restore virtual public comment to ensure that you and the City once again benefit from the voices silenced by your recent decision.
The limitations of public comment being only for in person limits those with disabilities, those that are part of the working class and those thst are historicallt disadvantaged to either take time away from their impacted lives to engage in a system that is requiring them to hurt their means. Having public comment for only in person is to the benefit of people of privilege and wealth Brodie storey
95112
You may not use my contact information for any purpose other than to respond to my concern regarding the topic listed above, nor may you share my address with any other organization(s) or individual(s).
—
This mail was sent on behalf of a San Jose resident via District 5 United Community Working Together
4/9/25, 12:54 PM Mail - Rules and Open Government Committee Agendas - Outlook https://outlook.office365.com/mail/[email protected]/inbox/id/AAQkADhhYzk3NTk1LTBmZDAtNDc4Yi1hN2Q0LTZjNmZjNTk5MT… 2/2
Public Record: 54
Public Record: 55
Public Record: 56
Public Record: 57
Public Record: 58
Public Record: 61
Public Record: 62
Public Record: 63
Public Record: 65
Public Record: 66
Public Record: 67
Public Record: 68
Public Record: 69
Public Record: 70
Public Record: 71
arrivals must submit themselves to being contained in for twenty days straight before ’graduating’ to the upstairs dormitory. Shelters in Portland can no longer be accessed without being checked in by a professional staffer. I watched that town go from good to bad to awful.
The reasons behind why shelters are becoming even less desirable places than they were 10-20 years ago have much to do with the housing first agenda which the National Coalition to End Homelessness has taken to literally bribing private agencies into adopting. It also has to do with the desire of social workers to professionalize the act of ’serving’ the unhoused and justifying the need for more funds instead of enabling unhoused persons to do for themselves.
There is also a cultural aspect to consider..
About ten years ago a seemingly simple question arose in my mind; ’why not pack a warehouse full of bunkbeds and put them on the free rental market? why have our options been reduced to paying for an arm and a leg for our own undersized private unit, being chased around oustide, or of being treated like prisoners in missions?’.
And I thought to myself that people are homeless, not helpless, and they need options more than they need help. My background being in physics, my instinct was proof by disproof; I sought out holes in my own idea.
Instead of finding such a thing cannot be done or has not already worked, I instead found that it (communal living in general) is too easily sabotaged by those with a vested interest against it. Aside from the numerous vested interests there are to be found against communal institutions (especially those which go so far as to legitimize communal living/ sleeping), on a cultural level these places present too much of a contrast to the surrounding domestic society.
For starters – before I ever began reading history books by the dozen – a strange thing I observed in my years of experience is that unhoused peoples coming together as a community in a healthy fashion seemed to be perceived by the surrounding populace as a greater threat than was individual acts of degeneracy by isolated campers. Why would people coming together threaten those nearby more than all the hoarding, stealing, and drug use which a system of compartmentalized tents give rise to? It is because we are still tribal creatures, and this is still tribal warfare. Accordingly, although it is looked down on, it is OKAY to devolve into a street life because you come from a broken family and/ or the domestic social life didn’t fit you; it is OKAY to turn to drugs as a means of connecting to other humans, and it is OKAY to piss and shit yourself after getting high on public sidewalks once the daily ostracism and punishment of domesmtic society takes its toll. It cannot, however, be OKAY for you to come together as a tribe and heal yourselves in holistic fashions, for it is only when it is divided that a family falls.
Basically, I am saying that ’homelessness’ is a family issue more than it is a private housing issue. Healing our families, and legitimizing alternative (or restoring very old) forms of family for those who come from a broken family is really where our focus ought to be if we hope to improve the issue in any meaningful way rather than shuffle it around. Today economists might refer to what I am trying to describe and to suggest we redirect our focus to improving [as opposed to simply housing people] as ’social capital’. Many who experience it out here will tell you ’homelessness’ is a simple matter of loneliness. More specifically, I am arguing it is an attempted return to a tribal way of life for those who have failed to find purpose in the domestic way of life; a street family to substitute for the nuclear family that didn’t work out.
By now I’ve read laundry baskets full of history books, and I am convinced there is a tug-a-war which consistently arises between communal and domestic forms of society. Living communally is in our DNA – we are inherently tribal creatures. Transitioning from a communal scheme to one in which private property, monogomous marriage, the nuclear family, and the private home are all fundamental principles of organization which we accept as ’normal’ today. But these principles weren’t normalized overnight, nor did this occur without mass indoctrination1, centuries of conditioning, and much strife – bloodshed even. There was a time when people were governed according to what social group they belonged to rather than by what geographic territory they currently inhabit. This is such a fundamental paradigm shift in both governmental systems and in the notion of identity construction that only a fool would think he could change it in a short time – in his own lifetime even.
My purpose is only partly to erase the dogma preached by housing first advocates – that ’homelessness is a housing issue’. Again, Houselessness is a family issue. From its inception thousands of years ago, the private home was [and it remains] a tool to legitimize the supremacy of and to serve the needs of the nuclear family (as opposed to the tribe which has largely been de-constructed and rendered a taboo topic). Anthropologists often note how labor markets in any society of the last thousand years tend to center around the private home 2/3
(and by extension the nuclear family). Without a family a person loses motive to perform labor in such labor markets. What the housing first strategy amounts to for many persons who come from broken families is this; they are shoved into isolated and overpriced boxes which in effect separate them from what at some point became their most significant source of family – their street family (their tribe). Drugs become an excuse to reconnect with others in such a divided state. Hoarding of goods and territoriality [characteristics of a domestic existence] instead of a conscious sharing of goods and an unconscious cultivation of trust is the inevitable result of living next to rather than with one another. We see this outcome in tent communities here in California and elsewhere.
What is rarely tolerated however, is outdoor communal sleeping – regardless of the fact that such an approach is much cleaner and cost efficient. For a time I seen this method in effect in Oregon, and it had very positive outcomes – so positive I dare say many observers would be suprised to find it is the cultivation of community more than the establishment of a tent which motivates people. This I’d reason is because it is shame and safety that are the feelings which ultimately motivate us. Some degree of safety can be found in tents, but even then many rely on safety in numbers – by the presence of others. When a person arrives to a town and they have no where to go and no encampment established, and especially if they are new to the act of sleeping outside, then it is natural to seek safety in the presence of others who are in the same boat. Shame can and usually is hidden from with the use of private walls and tents. But it is all too often overlooked that in a more natural and human state, we overcome shame with a sense of tribal belonging; so long as we have a group of people close by to call our own and with which we may face the surrounding world, then it matters little what others think of us or how they label us.
My primary purpose however, is not to convince the council that they should pursue shelter reform or to piss in the wind as I have trying to reinvent communalism. It is instead to convince you all that a reasonably educated person has put his life into this matter, and he has come to the conclusion that shelters – communal living arrangements in general – cannot be reformed unless or until government itself is reformed. Like education, housing is a thing that is very difficult to change, mainly because government won’t allow it to change. And this is a thing which goes well beyond any one city or transient body of council persons.
One might wonder if it is possible to just criminalize unhoused persons without worrying about what humane alternatives they have, and to this I can only be optimistic and presume I am writing to intelligent people.
No further consideration of this break in my chain of reasoning warrants considering; to criminalize unhoused people should be considered equivalent to pursuing shelter reform, as pursuing the former will sooner or later require addressing the latter.
So, while I wholeheartedly believe shelter reform is necessary, again, it is futile unless or until government itself is in some way changed. To this I bring to mind the words of the influential economic historian Karl Polyani, "too much change, too fast, is dangerous".
I have come to accept that real change is like planting the seeds to a tree which you may not be around to reap the fruits of. Real change happens gradually and in harmony with its surroundings – it does not violently uproot and overthrow entire systems which people have learned to rely on. People are creatures of ecology; if you suddenly uproot them and force them into a different environment it will surely have unforseen and unintended consequences. In the end it will not serve the city of San Jose. At best, if we let this come to pass, it will serve the political ambitions of one imbecile. My father used to say to me that, ’evil spirits are things you feed, and the more you feed them, the more they’ll demand of you’. What Mahons proposal really is is an attempt to create drama – to create political energy for his fledgling political career to feed on.
Notes: 1e.g. nomadic tribal spiritual beliefs overlaid with formal religious beliefs which had interwoven into them inherent qualities of the domestic life; centralized/ hierarchical/ patriarchial systems of authority, sedentarism, monotheism and monogomy – rigid loyalty to a set person, group, or god in general.
Thank you,
Wayne W. Gazzola
3/3