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BART’s Board of Directors at its meeting in Oakland on Thursday morning passed a sanctuary resolution declaring the agency’s commitment to being a secure and inclusive transit system for all passengers regardless of demographic or immigration status.
During public comment, numerous speakers urged the board to support the Safe Transit resolution.
“The Bay Area’s success relies on the contributions of hard-working immigrants and refugees,” said Linda Olvera with the California Sanctuary Campaign. “Many of these same people are now hiding and running scared.”
Jane Martin with Service Employees International Union – United Service Workers West said people shouldn’t have to be afraid when trying to go to work or school or to pick up their children.
“California has taken the lead to being part of the resistance,” Martin said. “We’re really excited that you’re going to be a part of that resistance as well.”
Just two speakers criticized the resolution, arguing that there may not be a demonstrated need for such a policy and asking how often people are detained in immigration-related cases on BART.
Director Debora Allen asked BART police Chief Carlos Rojas when the last time a BART rider was asked for immigration papers, and Rojas said he was not aware of any incidents of that nature.
Rojas said an individual was arrested on an immigration warrant, but said that arrest occurred more than five years ago.
Just before noon, the board voted 8-1 with Allen casting the sole dissenting vote.
“We will now be spending our resources keeping BART riders safe, not deporting them,” said director Nick Josefowitz, who sponsored the bill along with director Lateefah Simon.
“Under Safe Transit, BART will focus its resources on our top priorities — transporting our riders with affordability, accessibility, and accountability — not harmful, wasteful anti-immigrant policies,” Simon said. “I am proud that BART is the first transit system in the nation to pass a Safe Transit policy, and I hope other regions follow.”
In an unrelated matter, the board passed an inflation-based fare increase of 2.7% as well as a 50-cent surcharge on fares paid for with paper tickets. They also reduced the discount for youth riders ages 5 to 12 from 62.5% to 50%, and established a new 50% discount for youth ages 13 to 18.
Those changes go into effect in January 2018.
“It’s 2017, it’s time to end the paper tickets,” Allen said. “I’m happy to support that. This is a step in the right direction.”
In a narrow 5-4 vote, the board also repealed the controversial “seat hog” ordinance, which would have prohibited riders from taking up more than one seat during commute hours with warnings for first-time offenders and a series of escalating fines of up to $500 for repeat violations.
Police had concerns the ordinance would cause delays, target the homeless and lead to unnecessary use of force incidents. It was never enforced.
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One of the most disgusting aspects of commuting on BART was the smelly, urine soaked bums sleeping across two seats during rush hours. The seat hog ordinance was one of the first things BART has done in a long time to improve service for its paying customers–not anymore.
When has BART ever asked anyone for immigration papers? Can’t they spend more time improving the rider experience?
BART continues to mismanage public funds. Raising the sanctuary issue at the same time as fare increases is a smoke screen to stay away from the real issues. After “negotiations” were completed last year, the BART board and their union cronies announced salary increases of 2.5, 2.5, 2, and 2% for the next four years. These increases are in place despite the fact that BART employees are already some of the highest paid transit workers in the entire world!! BART management is now raising fears agin in what they call inflation adjustments, Which inflation are they talking about? The wage inflation they created??!! Certainly, energy costs have not gone up. In fact, take a look at the link. http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-solar/. California is actually paying Arizona and surrounding states to take our excess electricity off our hands.
One BART management agreed to the crazy salary increases mentioned above, they went to the public and secured $3.6 billion in bonds in November as they claim they can’t afford new trains or infrastructure improvements. Gee, I wonder why! With interest, those bonds will cost all of us over $7 billion in the coming years. Oh, and did I fail to mention we are all paying additional sales tax and property tax to support BART.? We are all the fools tolerating this behavior.
California is a one party state. This is not in the best interest of the people just as one party R states are also not in the best interest of the people. You need a viable option to keep the party that has the most power in check and we have not had that in a very long time here.
Gee, what a surprise – the BART board batting 0-for-3 on recent decisions/votes….
Deborah Allen is perhaps the only voice of sanity on the BART board, and we should all remember her name, so that she can be retained on the BART board whenever her term comes up. But it seems that most of the rest of the board should probably be voted out at the next opportunity.
When reading the voter-handbook statements of BART board candidates, it is usually hard to tell how they line up on issues, as they typically make innocuous, platitude-filled statements. But these positions are very important to both BART riders and taxpayers in general, and so it is important to put some time into studying the candidates. One good rule of thumb is to NOT vote for anyone who is associated, or used to be associated, with the very union that the board has to negotiate with….
With all the problems Bart is facing, their administration thinks spending time on passing a sanctuary city proclamation is of upmost importance? Unbelievable! How about improving safety so 60 thugs can not once again take over a train at the same time and assault and rob your passengers? Isn’t that a little more important? With their mentality BART will continue to lose riders while increasing fares and expecting more bail out money from us taxpayers.
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