BART board users want agency to seek out lawful suggestions on reinstating its only Black director
Days right after Lateefah Simon was forced to vacate her position on the BART Board of Administrators, two users want the agency to seek out outdoors authorized tips to ascertain if she could be reinstated.
Simon, the only Black director on the board, was stripped of her seat Wednesday immediately after she not too long ago moved out of her district, inspite of assurances she reported she acquired from BART officials that her shift held her inside of district boundaries.
Simon’s ouster prompted outcry on social media from supporters and numerous nearby officers who argued Simon shouldn’t have been pressured to vacate her seat.
The agency’s Board of Directors has 60 times to appoint a alternative to fill the District 7 seat vacated by Simon, who was re-elected in 2020. In a Friday afternoon letter to BART Normal Manager Bob Powers, board Administrators Bevan Dufty and Janice Li explained the agency need to pause that procedure.
As an alternative, they wrote, “expert exterior counsel should really be enlisted instantly to support BART and the public to establish both (Simon’s) legal suitable to return or her means to be appointed by the Board of Directors.”
“We unequivocally assist Director Simon and we, thus, aid just about every legal avenue she has to retain her seat and serve her constituents and the entirety of the BART District,” the administrators stated.
In a Thursday statement, Simon mentioned she moved from her Richmond household to an apartment advanced across the road from North Oakland’s MacArthur BART Station soon after receiving a number of threats in response to her get the job done on police reform. Legally blind and transit dependent, Simon told The Chronicle she moved into an condominium elaborate throughout the road from MacArthur Station simply because it made available easy entry to BART.
“Before shifting, I informed prime BART officers and sought their input, and was confident that the constructing is within just District 7,” Simon said in her assertion. “I would not have moved my family if not.”
Simon’s district bundled a portion of MacArthur Station, even though not the place across the street that involved the station’s garage parking or apartment complexes developed on BART house, in accordance to a map of BART’s district boundaries.
The problem of Simon’s home could have been moot less than new district boundaries approved Thursday by the BART Board of Directors. The new boundaries clear away Richmond and Berkeley stations from District 7 even though including the entirety of MacArthur Station, such as the condominium the place Simon life, and 5 other Oakland stations.
It’s unclear, nevertheless, when all those new district boundaries get effect and regardless of whether the Board of Administrators would fill the District 7 seat applying the new boundaries.
Dufty reported in a cellphone job interview “that’s one of the questions” that merits trying to get outdoors legal suggestions.
“I imagine the residents of District 7 have earned just about every work on our aspect not to be disenfranchised from the prospect that essentially won that election in 2020,” Dufty reported.
Powers, the BART standard supervisor, stated in a statement that the company would operate to make board customers who relocate mindful of whether their new deal with stays in their district’s boundaries. He indicated that the assurance Simon stated she gained from BART officials arrived from “individuals that report directly to the BART board, not the Common Manager’s Business office.”
“It appears bad information may have been supplied to Director Simon, and on behalf of the District. I wholeheartedly apologize for that,” Powers reported. “… BART desires more voices like Lateefah and I am saddened she is no longer a board member. I will observe the board’s direction and aid even so desired to fill the District 7 seat.”
Ricardo Cano is a San Francisco Chronicle team writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @ByRicardoCano
