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necessary. <br />Other communities, comparable to RWC, like Eugene, OR, have redirected funds to <br />non -police response teams that can cover a large percentage of 911 calls with little <br />need for backup and for a fraction of the cost. Redwood City should adopt these <br />common-sense, cost-effective, and safer alternatives to policing, through greater <br />support and engagement with the County's SMART program, for example. <br />In other areas, there are already city programs that require additional funds to <br />handle the vast -- and likely growing -- needs in this year of global pandemic. For <br />example, the city Emergency Rental Assistance fund has a waitlist currently. <br />Providing housing is a way to address many of the issues, especially <br />homelessness, that the police currently address. Additionally, RWC public schools <br />are gearing up for a dramatically different return to classes this fall, yet the <br />California state government is not guaranteeing PPE and other resources for the <br />entire year. Surely this too is an area where part of the policing budget could be <br />shifted to provide much needed masks, gloves, additional transit, etc. As you may <br />have seen, school districts and cities across the U.S. are taking courageous and <br />creative steps to shift police out of schools and reallocate resources to much- <br />needed areas to directly support teachers, staff, students, and families with <br />students. <br />To gather evidence of community support for defunding the police and shifting <br />those funds to nonviolent community services in RWC, I organized this petition. As <br />of right now, over 875 people have signed it and many have included powerful <br />comments. Most are from the RWC area, but you will notice that the petition has <br />attracted attention well beyond, signaling that we have a chance to lead nationally. <br />On behalf of the signees, I submit the attached PDF of signatures and comments to <br />the city council as you vote on the budget for this next fiscal year tonight and as you <br />consider important choices for the remainder of this historic year of protest and <br />pandemic. <br />I hope that you will hear -- and act -- on this call of the community and those who <br />look to RWC for leadership. Now is certainly the time for visionary moral leadership <br />and rethinking business as usual. I hope RWC will join other cities around the U.S. <br />taking such steps. <br />As Franklin D. Roosevelt asserted in his first inaugural address, "when there is no <br />vision the people perish." Policing and the allocation of resources in our community are <br />urgent, serious, and important issues in any year -- but the events of this year have shown <br />just how important vision in leadership is for the well-being -- and survival -- of people and <br />our communities. May we, as FDR urged years ago in the depths of the Great Depression, <br />turn from fear (and what more is the massive resourcing of policing than an assertion that <br />we fear one another?) -- and instead invest in courage, creativity, and compassion in the <br />spirit of what FDR called "our interdependence on each other." <br />Sincerely, <br />