Greetings, Russell City Community,

This is an important update to the Russell City community from the redress fund working group*. The City, County, and Office of Education are taking concrete steps towards making redress payments to owners whose property was taken by the County in the 1960s and annexed to the city of Hayward. This month, Supervisors Haubert and Bas took formal action to appropriate their $100,000 respective pledges to the redress fund, which now has $1.2 million.

The working group is also working productively towards a relationship with a local non-profit foundation to serve as fiscal administrator of the redress fund. This is an important relationship for accountability of public funds. It is anticipated that this relationship will be formalized within the next 30-45 days.

The working group is sensitive to the aging population within the Russell City community, so every effort is being made to move to the next steps of determining eligibility and issuing redress payments to surviving owners, first generation descendants of owners, and residential tenants.

(*District 2 Supervisor Elisa Marquez, Hayward Mayor Pro Tem Julie Roche, and Hayward City Council Member Angela Andrews are the elected officials within the working group, along with County and City staff members.)

Please direct questions or concerns to City Attorney Michael Lawson at Michael.Lawson@hayward.ca-gov or (510) 583-4455.