BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
City Councilman Greg Tanaka says the decision to lock the public out of the upper floors of Palo Alto City Hall, and replace the people at the bill-paying window in the lobby with a machine, correspond to his idea of customer service.
During the pandemic, the city closed the upper floors of the building at 250 Hamilton Ave. Once the lockdowns ended, City Manager Ed Shikada decided to continue the practice in the name of workplace safety. The change was never brought to City Council for public discussion and an up-or-down vote.
“We need to make sure that employees are accessible because they’re helping to serve the public,” Tanaka said in an interview. “Some stuff can be done online. But the city in general is a physical place, and not everyone is tech-savvy.”
Tanaka said that even he doesn’t get his emails responded to by Shikada sometimes. When people don’t get their questions answered over the phone or online, they’ll show up in person, he said.
“We need to make it easy for people to meet who they have to meet,” he said.
That’s why Tanaka also takes issue with city employees having a schedule where they get every other Friday off. He wants the city to set up one-question surveys so members of the public can give feedback after they interact with city employees.
“By the time people talk to me, they’re so mad. They’re so mad at the city, and it shouldn’t be like that,” he said.
Tanaka gives a platform to people who are upset with the city during his weekly office hours, live-streamed on Facebook and YouTube. He often stands alone on council in his criticism of city employees.
Shikada told council about the change in an email on June 30, 2021, that went over how City Hall would be “reactivated” coming out of the pandemic.
“In keeping with current workplace safety best practices and support contact tracing, access above the Ground Level will require badge access and visitors will be escorted,” Shikada said, according to a copy of the email provided by city spokeswoman Meghan Horrigan-Taylor on Wednesday.
Horrigan-Taylor said there have been incidents of vandalism at City Hall, but she declined to give any examples.
A review of police logs published by the Post going back to 2009 show two reports of vandalism at 250 Hamilton Ave. City-owned chairs were vandalized in July 2015, and the building itself was damaged in March 2018.
“The city does not have a way to secure most workspaces above the ground floor, or to know if anyone is upstairs after hours. Key card access is our best option,” Horrigan-Taylor said. “The alternative would be to have security downstairs, but even that would be less effective.”
The elevator to the upper levels can only be unlocked with a key card. City employees man a desk for walk-in service from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays except for Fridays, and a computer kiosk sits in the lobby for people to call employees down.
“This is a reflection of the need in today’s work environment to prioritize workplace safety, which is not unique to Palo Alto,” Horrigan-Taylor said.
Tanaka has a good point. During the pandemic many cities permanently locked the door on interaction with the public. City Councilmembers in some cities now hide from the public, not answering even basic questions.
Any council member who agrees with locking the public out of a public building shouldn’t be re-elected.
[Comment removed because of Terms of Use violations — Please don’t put links in your comment or quote copyrighted material.]
Apologies for citing an outside link. My point was that almost 10 years ago (2015) the city spent big buck$$$ on an interactive “Wayfinding System” and other “improvements to help people find their way around city hall since it was supposedly so tough for people to read regular signs like those found in office buildings elsewhere. I remember thinking that if those seeking city contracts couldn’t figure out how to get to the right staffer that they didn’t deserve a city contract.
Now that’s all money down the drain.,