Public Comment
Placebreaking on Hopkins: A Dossier
Part Three: The public engagement debacle
The April 24 letter to Hahn
Speaking at the council’s May 10 meeting, Monterey Fish owner Paul Johnson concluded by stating that the merchants are “pretty much on the same side as the Hopkins residents.” He was referring to people living on or near Hopkins who had organized a protest over the bike lanes.
On April 24, Hahn received an open letter signed by neighbors, merchants, and customers of the shops in the area. Cc’d to the entire council and posted on the Planet, the letter was also included in the packet sent to the council on May 6. Johnson is the second of the letter’s 118 signatories. (A longtime resident of north Berkeley and patron of the Hopkins-Monterey businesses, I also signed.)
The letter argues that “[t]he two-way bike track should be flatly rejected as way too dangerous for cyclists, pedestrians and motorists alike,” citing the same factors as the ones noted by the dissident cyclists, most of whom also signed the letter. The letter, too, recommends repaving the street, “which by itself improves conditions for cyclists.”
It notes that staff professed ignorance about the volume of bicycle traffic on Hopkins, and that “the intersection of Monterey and Hopkins is not on the city’s annual bike usage survey.” That intersection, the letter contends, “is [t]he most unsafe area in the corridor”—“unsafe for everyone, but mostly for pedestrians” and above all to children, the elderly, and the disabled. The danger comes from reckless drivers who fail to yield to people on foot and “dangerously nose into the crosswalks to try to find their own opportunities to pass through”; and from “bikers who blow through the intersection.”
It follows that pedestrian safety “should be the primary focus” of any plan to reconfigure Hopkins. Accordingly, the letter recommends doing “the non-controversial things (restriping, additional cross walks and stop signs), and any safety measures that could be easily and cheaply reversed if, upon reflection, it becomes clear that something else would serve everyone better (painting sharrows, for example).
The letter also flags the removal of parking. As of April 24, staff had “yet to answer the question of how many parking spots will be lost.” The authors of the letter counted a minimum of 35 spaces, including all parking spots on both sides of Hopkins from Monterey to Gilman. They note that that there are many apartments and condos on the street, some of which have two or three bedrooms but “less than one parking spot per unit.” None have more than one spot. The apartment at the corner of Hopkins and Hopkins Court has eight units and no off-street parking at all.
As of April 6, neither Hahn nor staff had not suggested where residents who will lose their parking are going to park. Since then, they’ve been no more forthcoming on that matter and the other concerns raised in the letter.
Emailing Transportation staff
Threaded through the April 24 letter are complaints about staff’s repeated failure to answer questions from the public. Like the merchants’ objections, those complaints belie the claim in the May 10 staff report that “[t]he proposed design concept was developed through a robust public and stakeholder engagement process.” In fact, the process afforded zero opportunity for meaningful exchange between the planners and the public at large.
People were offered three ways to participate. First, they could email the members of the Project Team, Beth Thomas, Principal Planner in the Transportation Division, and Ryan Murray, Associate Planner, Bicycle and Pedestrian Programs.
Murray responded to my emailed queries. I’ve been told that he also replied to others, except when asked about the number of parking spaces slated for removal, a question I never posed.
My exchanges with Murray’s senior colleague, Beth Thomas, were an exercise in aggravation.
Staff conducted three online “Community Workshops”: one in October 2020, a second in March 2021, and a third in October 2021; three online “Community Meetings” in early 2022; and a meeting devoted to the Alameda-Hopkins intersection on May 2, 2022.
As should be clear by now, the Hopkins project is complex. In order for members of the public to participate in an informed fashion, they needed to see the materials to be presented beforehand. We never did.
On March 5, 2021, five days before the second workshop, I emailed Thomas. After stating that I had registered for the upcoming meeting, I asked: “Could you please provide links to any materials that staff will be presenting? Thank you.”
Four days later, Thomas replied:
“I hope you received the Zoom link by now to tomorrow evening’s meeting. We’re still putting the finishing touches on the presentation materials, but plan to post them on the project website later this week after the meeting. Thanks for your interest in this study, and I hope to see you at the meeting.”
No apology—indeed, no acknowledgment of my request.
I emailed back:
“Thanks, Beth. It’s all very well to post the materials after meeting, but they ought to be posted before the meeting so that participants have an opportunity to reflect on them and prepare their remarks. If the materials aren’t ready before the meeting, then the meeting ought to be re-scheduled at a later date.”
Thomas did not reply.
I made the same request before the third workshop, held on October 28, 2022, and got another brush-off. I gave up.
The Zoomed meetings
The second vehicle of public participation in the Hopkins planning process was Zoom.
As a vehicle of democratic decisionmaking, Zoom is inherently problematic. Key aspects of communication are dictated by the hosts—in this case, city staff. For example, the hosts decide whether to use a Zoom format that offers members of the public the option to make themselves visible. The format used for the first three virtual meetings included that option; the one used for the last four did not.
At one of the meetings held in early 2022, undated on the transcript that the city provided in response to my Public Records Act request, Chris Howell thanked the staff and consultants “for all the hard work so far.” Then he wrote: “Can’t see any of the community attendees? Is that on purpose?”
Consultant Janet Chang, responded: “Hi Chris. This is a Zoom webinar format rather than a typical Zoom meeting, which is why you can’t see any other participants.”
Translation: Yes, it was intentional.
The crucial, unasked question: Why did you choose the Big Brotherish format?
Another way that Zoom impedes democratic participation is that the hosts decide whether to use a format that offers the Chat and Q&A functions. The format used for the first six meetings offered those functions; the one chosen for the May 2 meeting about the Alameda-Hopkins intersection did not.
Even if the chosen Zoom format does include Chat and Q&A, the hosts select the questions and comments to which they will respond. Moreover, genuine dialogue requires follow-up. The public had no opportunity to respond via Zoom to staff’s responses, and as the April 24 letter indicated, post-Zoom follow-up was spotty.
That said, some of the staff responses to selected questions that were posted in the available Q&A and Chat sidebars were revealing. Unfortunately, on April 26, the original date of the council action on the Hopkins project, the questions and responses posted in Q&A and Chat were taken offline along with the tapes of the workshops and community meetings. The online records contain only the staff presentations.
On March 24, I emailed Murray, asking why the tapes were going to be deleted. Here’s his reply:
“The presentation pdf themselves will remain for archival purposes, but the recordings will be taken down. With the City's new policies on what we are to post to the website, it has to be "actionable" by a member of the public. So, pre-Council meeting, the recordings serve as context to the pdf's and serve to educate the public. The potential "action" for the public is to then give public comment at the Council meeting. Post-
Council meeting, there is no more action for the public, and thus the recordings will be removed. As stated above, the pdfs will remain as record of the engagement process with the project. Historically, it was not even standard practice to post any recordings of these types of engagement meetings to the project website, but we are all trying new and unique ways of engagement here in the pandemic era.”
The potential for public action on a matter is a peculiar criterion for retaining public records. Erase such records after the council has acted, and you limit understanding of the history that led up to that action. Moreover, after the council has acted, the public is still capable of its own action.
On the morning of May 23, I emailed Berkeley’s Public Information Officer, Matthai Chakko, asking for a link to the council action that approved the “City’s new policies” on what staff is to post to the city’s website. Chakko emailed back at end of the same day: There’s some miscommunication here. The links to the recordings will be added to the Hopkins project.”
Indeed, two hours earlier, Murray had sent me this email, presumably issued in response to a query from Chakko:
“Apologies for the delay - I am backed up with multiple projects but heard you were asking for the recordings of our final zoom webinars. See the links below. Thanks for your patience while we update our website.
I replied: “Thanks, Ryan. What about the comments and staff responses posted in the Chat and Q&A sidebars?”
Murray emailed back:
“Those were never posted publicly, but I see no reason why I can't produce those for you - are you ok with me including them in your PRA for the Social Pinpoint comments [see below] you've requested? I am working on redacting all the personally identifying information so it just takes me a bit of time.”
As of June 6, the online records of the virtual meetings still contain only the staff presentations. As for the Social Pinpoint comments, read on.
The Social Pinpoint exercise
Social Pinpoint was the third option for public participation was what is described in the May 10 staff report as “[a] virtual crowd-sourcing platform” that
“was used to solicit specific public comment on the proposed near- and long-term design options and placemaking opportunities. The public was invited to participate in the Social Pinpoint exercise for approximately five weeks after the workshop. Over 700 individual comments were recorded from the Social Pinpoint exercise over the 5-week period.”
I didn’t participate in that exercise, and I haven’t spoken to anyone did. In researching this article, I Googled “Social Pinpoint.” Up came the website of the sponsoring company, PLACED. The homepage carries this introduction:
“Social Pinpoint provides a flexible suite of digital tools to enhance your community and stakeholder engagement….With a highly experienced team of online engagement experts to provide training, support, and guidance on best practice, we ensure you achieve optimal project outcomes.”
Under “Company,” we read: “People will always be affected by change, which is why the power of community engagement goes beyond a one-way conversation.”
This is mostly marketing gibberish, but the idea of going beyond a one-way conversation is spot-on. Unfortunately, whether anyone who engaged in the Social Pinpoint exercise on Hopkins got that far and what sort of conversation, if any, occurred is a mystery to the general public. Staff never posted any of the 700 comments or indicated whether or how they influenced the final conceptual design.
My May 7 PRA request
On May 7, I submitted a California Public Records Act request to the city asking to see “all documents concerning the exercise, including but not limited to contracts between the city and PLACED/Social Pinpoint, communications between PLACED/Social Pinpoint and city staff, the 700 individual comments, and any staff responses to those comments, any feedback analysis or metrics that staff derived from those comments, and any communications between staff and any member of the city council regarding this exercise and its outcomes.”
Regardless of the city’s response, the problem with Social Pinpoint, at least as it was used for the Hopkins project, is that, it further privatized what ought to have been a public and collective exchange. Democratic decisionmaking requires an open, collective format that allows members of a community to share their views with each other and to respond to those views.
On May 24, I emailed City Clerk Mark Numainville the following message:
“The attached email from Transportation planner Ryan Murray states that in response to my PRA request to see the 700 comments on the Hopkins Corridor project that Transportation staff purportedly received via the Social Pinpoint exercise, staff are ‘redacting all the personally identifying information’ before providing the comments.
The Social Pinpoint exercise was part of what staff described as ‘a robust public engagement and stakeholder process’ on the project (see Item 33 on council’s 5/10/22 agenda). The exercise was never presented nor should it have been conducted as a vehicle of private correspondence between members of the public and City staff. What, then, is the legal rationale for redacting personally identifying information from the comments?”
In reply, I received several emails from paralegal Keith Nesbit alluding to the legal precedents for such redaction.
Oddly, then, on May 27, I received three documents, all snippets of undated Chat exchanges, none of which I’d formally asked to see, that contain personally identifying information.
On May 27, I also received a page of results from a Social Pinpoint survey open from October 26, 2021, to December 1, 2021, regarding preferred style of bench seating (contemporary, historic, or outlier), “playful sculpture seating,” bicycle rack, color of paving (should it “match the rose-colored concrete paving at the North Branch Library?”), public art, and “low water landscaping.”
Also in the May 27 packet were undated four maps of Berkeley sprinkled with purple dots indicating density of either support of opposition for an unspecified matter. Where the density is great, it’s impossible to count the dots.
Missing from the May 27 packet were the contract between the city and PLACED/Social Pinpoint, communications between city staff and PLACED, staff responses to the Pinpoint responses, and any communications between staff and councilmembers regarding the exercise and its outcomes.
On May 31 asked the city to clarify the meaning of the maps and to provide the remaining documents I’d requested. Nesbit replied that he had “reached out to provide the contracts” and would “provide [them] within the statutory response period.”
The California Public Records Act requires public agencies to respond in writing to a request within ten days. If necessary, an agency may take an additional two weeks to provide the requested documents. It’s now a month since I submitted my request on May 7.
Whose fault?
At the May 10 council meeting, the only member of the council who mentioned that “a lot of neighbors” had complained about staff non-responsiveness was Councilmember Kate Harrison. “I don’t want to put down their idea that this process was flawed,” she said.
Harrison attributed the failings to Covid-induced constraints. “You’re on a computer screen, you don’t see anyone else, you’re given only one minute to speak.”
To be sure, a digitally facilitated gathering cannot replicate the immediacy and open-endedness of a face-to-face meeting. (Caveat: At many in-person meetings of the Berkeley city council, members of the public are given only one minute to speak.)
But the virtual formats—email, Zoom, and Social Pinpoint—were not the source of the problems detailed above. I’ve been on Zoomed meetings with more than a hundred people where everyone who wished to be seen by others was visible; where pertinent materials were posted before the meeting; where people were given more than one minute to speak; and where there was a chance for follow-up during the meeting. If anything, the online media, including in this case the city’s website, should facilitate, not impede, the posting of public information.
The failings of the Hopkins social engagement process were the fault of the people who ran it.
Part One: Placebreaking on Hopkins Street:
A Dossier Zelda Bronstein 05-22-2022
Part Two, Hopkins Dossier: Bike Lanes and Business Zelda Bronstein 05-28-2022
