The city passed an initial moratorium in early December, which also had a limit of 45 days. The goal of the moratorium is to give the city Planning Department time to assess the situation of dispensaries in Richmond, examine how other cities in California are dealing with regulating them, and come up with a recommendation for how to manage the clubs, collectives and dispensaries that provide medical marijuana. Richmond currently has no laws on the books regarding dispensaries, and a handful already exist in the city.

The director of the Planning Department, Richard Mitchell, recommended the extension, but did not specify how far along city staff were in attempting to gather information on the issue. California law allows for a moratorium to be extended for another 10 months if the city needs the time.

“One of our major problems in our fair city is people that are dealing drugs openly on the streets and elsewhere,” said Richmond resident Sims Thompson. Thompson is concerned that club members could potentially buy marijuana from a dispensary and then sell it illegally on the street for a profit.

Lisa Hirschhorn is a consultant for GDP Collective, a dispensary that’s been at Hilltop Mall for almost five years, and she supports some kind of regulation around dispensaries. GDP Collective does have a business license from the city and according to Hirschhorn, has attempted to abide by city regulations as much as they exist.

“I think that there’s an avid need for the patients here in the city of Richmond, and we together need to form resolutions and ordinances,” Hirschhorn said in an appeal to the council to work on regulation, yet find a way to keep medical marijuana available in the city. She thinks clubs that skirt the law hurt the legitimacy of businesses that operate according to the rules.

Some residents are concerned about the clubs whether or not they abide by the law.

“Why do we have to have it here in Richmond?” asked Corky Booze, an active Richmond community member. “Our kids need better than this.”

Rebecca Vasquez, director of the Holistic Healing Collective in Pt. Richmond, said she hasn’t felt any additional pressure from the city about her dispensary since the initial moratorium went into effect, despite talk by councilmembers at previous meetings about finding a way to get rid of the clubs completely.

State proposition 215 allows California residents to legally seek marijuana treatment for medical purposes. The proposition also defines collectives and cooperatives as legal avenues for patients to obtain marijuana, paving the way for dispensaries.

“The low-income people don’t have access to the nutrition information and the Y[MCA] and 24 Hour Fitness, so that’s why we’re here,” Schilling said.

A study released last summer asserted that Contra Costa County is losing an estimated $1.3 billion each year to health care costs related to obesity and overweight and lost productivity. The California Center for Public Health Advocacy (CCPHA) conducted the study based on data from 2006, and found that Contra Costa’s rate of obese and overweight adults was 62.56 percent, not far from the national average of roughly two thirds of the population.

At 70, Schilling is sharp and energetic, and might be the best advertisement for her program that money can buy. She recruits most new members through tables she sets up at the Richmond Flea Market on Saturdays and the Friday farmers market at the Civic Center. Word of mouth also brings in some new people looking to lose weight and eat better. Right now the program has about 100 members, and has seen 800 people come through in the last four years.

The difference between Schilling’s program and a gym membership is that it combines both exercise and nutrition into one program at the same cost. There are bilingual aerobics and nutrition classes, and one-on-one consulting time with Schilling is also available. Members say the program also fosters camaraderie and becomes a social outlet for them.

“I get to meet new people, hang out with friends,” said Beatriz Esqueda, 35. Esqueda has been a member of the program for two years, and has lost 40 pounds.

Perhaps most importantly, Weigh of Life is cheaper than most gym memberships or weight loss programs – $27 a month. The bottom line is a major factor for many of Schilling’s members, which becomes particularly clear in the nutrition classes when they discuss their shopping habits. She makes an effort to stay mindful of that when giving advice. Each year she completes an audit of grocery stores in the area to compare prices and shares the results with her pupils. Schilling also holds competitions for shedding pounds, inches, or for attending class regularly, in which the winners receive a portion or all of their membership off for the the next month.

While Schilling recognizes that the cost of the program needs to stay low to be accessible to the population it serves, membership fees don’t cover all the expenses of the classes and she has to look for additional funding elsewhere. The biggest grants she has received are from Kaiser, augmented with a couple of other smaller ones from other organizations. She has even kicked in some of her retirement savings to help the program.

Many of the grants Schilling finds are for nutrition programs targeting children, but she believes women are an important part of the equation.

“I feel that these women are the gateway for their families – the food they buy, the shopping decisions they make,” Schilling said.

Among the CCPHA report’s recommendations for mitigating obesity and health related problems is that cities start taking health and fitness into account when devising their general plan. Richmond has done this in an extensive section of the latest version of the city general plan. The draft cites six fast food restaurants or convenience stores for every supermarket in Richmond, implying that for some city residents, more nutritious food is likely to be farther away and more expensive. The plan proposes attempting to improve that ratio by trying to entice new supermarkets to the city, encouraging more stores to provide fresh produce and supporting community agriculture and farmers markets.

Perhaps even more surprising than the state’s low marks, though, were one city’s high ones — Richmond was one of four cities in California to earn an overall A on the ALAC’s annual tobacco policy report card. And of the A-achievers — Albany, Calabasas and Glendale — Richmond showed the greatest improvement.

ALAC leaders joined local politicians and medical professionals to release the state’s report card at Richmond’s City Hall Tuesday, in an effort to highlight the city’s success and encourage other cities to follow in its lead.

The ALAC report coincided with the organization’s national report that reviews county and city policies in all 50 states and issues grades in four categories: tobacco control and prevention spending, public smoking regulations, cigarette taxes and aid to those who want to quit smoking. While California earned an A for its secondhand smoke regulations, it was lagging in the other criteria. The ALAC gave the state an F for its spending on tobacco control, and D’s for its cessation coverage and cigarette tax (California taxes $0.87 per pack, in contrast with the national average of $1.34.)

Jane Warner, ALAC president and CEO, urged other cities to make tobacco control a top priority.

“Just a year ago, Richmond had three F’s and a D. And now you see the result of just one year of commitment,” Warner said.

After receiving the previous year’s failing report card, Councilmember Tom Butt said the city council drafted and passed several ordinances to improve its grades. In particular, the council voted to ban smoking in all multi-unit housing — which the ALAC considers the strongest smoke-free housing ordinance in the nation. It will take effect in January 2011. The city also passed comprehensive outdoor smoking bans and prohibited tobacco sales in pharmacies.

Butt said the legislation is mostly designed to protect the public from secondhand smoke, but “if in the process we discourage people from smoking along the way, then that’s great.”

He said overall the council felt very little political heat for passing strict anti-smoke laws, though some residents felt the council should be focusing on other issues.

“There’s no law I could pass that’s going to cut Richmond’s homicide rate [immediately], but if I read a study that says I might save a dozen lives by voting yes on an ordinance, that’s amazing,” Butt said of the multi-unit housing regulation.

The ALAC also used the forum as an opportunity to announce the organization’s support for the California Cancer Research Act, a November 2010 ballot initiative to raise cigarette taxes by $1 in California, as well as to fund cancer research and tobacco control programs.

Tobacco-related illnesses kill nearly 40,000 Californians every year and cost the state $18 billion annually, according the ALAC.

Asians usually view mental health problem as a stigma, according to Ito. They tend to consider mental illness as shameful and as something to be kept as a family secret — which they don’t tell to strangers. “ ‘I’m not crazy’ is the first thing in their minds when thinking of mental health problems,” Ito said.

Based in Richmond and Oakland, Ito’s organization is helping the Asian American community address emotional or mental health problems through professional counseling.

Asian Community Mental Health Services (ACMHS) was established in 1974 to provide multilingual counseling and mental health resources for Asian Americans in Alameda County and Contra Costa County. It has offices in Oakland and Richmond, and offers counseling services in eight Asian languages, including Chinese, Mien, and Laotian.

Most of ACMHS’ clients are recent immigrants who are having trouble adjusting to mainstream American culture, or have stress related to their finances or social status. Many Southeast Asian immigrants still suffer from trauma from wars in their home countries, or from living in refugee camps.

Richmond is home to thousands of Southeast Asian war refugees who started arriving in the US since 1975. Laotians consist of the majority of the Southeast Asian community in Richmond. According to counselors working at the ACMHS office in Richmond, Laotians are generally not accustomed to seeking assistance for mental health problems.

Torm Nompraseurt, a community organizer with a Laotian organizing group in Richmond, says that the term “mental health issues” means being “crazy” in the Laotian language. He believes this is a barrier for Laotians to seek mental health counseling.

“The word itself already makes people resistant to go and ask for help. Because of the term and the American use of ‘mental health,’ if you go to a mental health clinic, it means you’re crazy,” Nompraseurt said.

“People talk about their stress and issues to families and our community leaders. But if you ask them to go see the mental health counselor, they say ‘No, I’m not gonna go there,’” he said.

Meyho Saephan, a counselor with the ACMHS Richmond office, said Laotians whom she had served in Richmond would turn to family members when they had personal issues or mental stress. She recalled one young Laotian couple who fighting and called all their family members from both sides to mediate the conflicts, instead of seeing a marriage counselor.

However, experts are concerned that Asians’ unwillingness to seek professional counseling may make their problems worse. Ito knows of many suicidal cases among Asian Americans in Contra Costa County and Alameda County.

“When they come to seek professional counseling, the problems are usually very severe, because they don’t use counseling services unless they have exhausted all options.” Ito said.

In order to encourage the Asian community to talk about their problems to professionals, ACMHS has done many promotion campaigns including sending out flyers, pamphlets, launching youth programs in schools, holding workshops, and participating in community festivals.

To those who come and seek help, Ito said they would try to treat them in ways that are appropriate to their Asian cultural background, and avoid treating them under western standards.

When a person denies they might have mental health problems, ACMHS walks him through the process, until he realizes that he might have a mental health problem. Sometimes the process takes as long as one year.

With more access and awareness of mental health problems, Nompraseurt is optimistic. “We have a couple of Laotian college graduates who study psychology and it’s going to be better,” he said, referring to the potential of these graduates to help Laotians in Richmond. “Because they understand how the community works and how to talk to the community.”

Robert Parker and Archie Hall, avid fishermen who are both AC Transit bus drivers, were spending their day off trying out new fishing poles.

“A lot of the time, it’s just for sport. But if you catch a medium-size halibut, he’s going home,” said Parker, 40, a lifelong resident of Richmond.

Parker says he only eats about five fish caught from the bay each year because he knows that many contain high levels of mercury and other contaminants.

But eating fish caught from the Inner Harbor area may be particularly risky.

Long-banned pesticides — primarily DDT and dieldrin — still poison these waterways, even though the company that processed them has been bankrupt for over 40 years.

Twelve years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency removed sediment containing three tons of DDT from the site. But since then, repeated sampling of water, sediment and fish has found pesticide concentrations that could be harmful to the environment and to human health. Fifteen acres of marine sediment and five upland acres in the Inner Harbor remain a federal Superfund site.

Cleanup goal not met

“At the five-year review, we said it’s clear we haven’t met our cleanup goal,” said Sharon Lin, the EPA’s current project manager for the United Heckathorn Superfund site. “We did not achieve the remedy because we did not fully understand the contamination.”

The EPA is currently determining the need for a new cleanup plan, with a decision due in late 2010.

Fisherman Parker had no idea that there is a DDT-contaminated Superfund site less than a mile from where he cast his line. He’s not alone.

Dr. Jonathan Chevrier, who has extensively studied human exposure to DDT, said he had never heard of the site, just a few freeway exits from his job at UC Berkeley.

“I was really surprised . . . We tend to think that exposure to DDT and DDE is not a problem in the U.S. anymore,” said Dr. Chevrier, a post-doctoral scholar in epidemiology at Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

Torm Nompraseurt, a community organizer for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), worked with the EPA at the time of the original cleanup to educate local Laotians about the dangers of eating pesticide-contaminated fish. Before receiving inquiries from Richmond Confidential, Nompraseurt did not know that the site was still contaminated either.

Andrew Lincoff was a part of the EPA subcontracted team that recently collected mussel and sediment samples from the Lauritzen Canal. (Photo by Leah Bartos)

Even at the time of the original cleanup, Nompraseurt said his group had a hard time getting people to stop fishing. (The California Department of Public Health warns that adults should eat no more than two fish per month caught anywhere in the San Francisco Bay.) He said people were skeptical that the fish could be toxic, since they were still alive to be caught. Some even thought the warnings were a capitalist conspiracy to get them to patronize markets. Perhaps more important, Nompraseurt said the fishing custom is a matter of economic survival.

“In a poor community, you don’t fish for fun. I know that,” said Nompraseurt, who came to Richmond as a Laotian refugee in 1975.

“In the Laotian community, from what I know, every single household goes fishing,” he added. “Our folk eat three times more than the state advisory. If you look at that in terms of risk, that means our folk have three times more risk.”

From industrial boom to toxic bust

United Heckathorn began formulating pesticides in 1947, back when Richmond was thriving from the industries that World War II brought. Most of those industries and jobs are now gone, but their legacy lives on in the pollution that they left behind.

United Heckathorn shut down all operations in 1966 and the site was abandoned, just a few years after the 1962 release of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s seminal work revealing the dangers of DDT. The pesticide was banned in the United States in 1972. It has since been banned in much of the world but it is still used in several African and Asian countries to protect people from malaria.

In 1980, the California Department of Health Services detected chlorinated pesticides and metals in soil samples from the United Heckathorn site, which they were inspecting as a part of their abandoned sites project. Five acres of land and about 15 acres of underwater sediment were designated a state Superfund site. The federal EPA took over in 1990 and put the site on the National Priority List, an inventory of hazardous waste sites that qualify for long-term cleanup financing under the Superfund law.

In the mid-1990s, subcontractors poured a concrete cap over four and a half acres of the land portion of the site — just south of Cutting Boulevard, extending to the Santa Fe Channel — and dredged about three tons of DDT from the Lauritzen and Parr canals.

The EPA’s 2008 fish sampling revealed that DDT concentrations in fish caught in the Lauritzen Canal ranged from 526 to 11,000 parts per billion. The EPA is aiming for DDT concentrations no higher than 5,000 parts per billion, to meet the limit set by the Food and Drug Administration.

Dangers of DDT

Researchers, including Dr. Chevrier at UC Berkeley, have found that consuming DDT may cause serious health problems. Scientists believe that most human DDT exposure occurs through consumption of contaminated food, Chevrier said.

The Levin-Richmond Terminal Corporation currently operates its shipping business from the former United Heckathorn site. (Photo by Leah Bartos)

Dr. Chevrier coauthored the Pine River Statement, a report synthesizing data from 494 papers about the human health consequences of DDT exposure, published in Environmental Health Perspectives this September.

It summarized original research correlating DDT measurements in blood levels with a range of health effects, including various cancers and damage to endocrine, neurological, and reproductive systems. The data show that children and pregnant women and their fetuses may be particularly vulnerable.

Even without knowing the actual levels of DDT in individual Richmond residents, Dr. Chevrier said, “For these people that are eating fish everyday, I would be concerned…based on what I know about levels of DDT.”

EPA still investigating

Sharon Lin, the EPA’s current project manager for the United Heckathorn site, worries that the chronic nature of DDT-related health conditions make people apathetic about the potential risks.

“When you have an acute health problem, it’s easier to communicate . . . People just get more angry about it,” Lin said.

Lin said that she wants to upgrade the existing fishing advisory and again get the word out to the community about the risks of eating fish from the harbor area. She added that community education and press coverage created public concern surrounding the initial cleanup project. That helped spur the agency to clean up the site quickly. Lin estimated that least 75 percent of the contamination was removed in the first cleanup, but this time around, there hasn’t been the same public outcry surrounding the remaining pollution.

“The initial cleanup decision from when we listed the site [was] in 1990 and then we did the cleanup in 1996, and that’s really speedy for EPA,” Lin said. “There [was] an urgency from the community to take the waste out and we felt compelled to respond.”

However, the persisting contamination may be partially a consequence of the quick cleanup.

Lin said that the cleanup crew was also somewhat derailed by unexpectedly finding 187 tons of salvage metals — presumably from the scrap metal yard adjacent to the site — that had to be removed.

A barge from Mason Dredging company along the west side of the Lauritzen Canal. (Photo by Leah Bartos)

“We did the best that we could. We were trying to find out what’s causing the high levels of contamination in the channels,” she said. “This time, we’re taking the time and we’re trying to do it right.”

In more recent years, the EPA has collected additional mussel tissue, water, and sediment samples, and has looked into a leaking storm drain to further examine the extent and potential sources of the contamination.

The EPA is currently preparing a focused feasibility study, which will reassess the risk to human and ecological health. Lin said she plans to have a decision on whether to require additional site cleanup by late 2010.

A right to fish?

Robert Knowles, District Nine regional representative for the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said that while it’s important to remove the contaminated materials, it is also crucial that people heed the state’s warnings against eating local fish.

The California Department of Public Health warns that adults should eat no more than two fish per month caught anywhere in the San Francisco Bay.

“[The EPA] can do all those things, but it will take years for them to remove all the DDT in fish because it accumulates in them over time,” Knowles said. “So the only way to prevent exposure is to educate people about the contamination.”

However, some worry that the message is not getting through. Michael Kent, the Contra Costa County Hazardous Materials ombudsman, has worked with the EPA to educate local fishermen about the risks of eating harbor fish.

“I’ve gone down to the pier and talked to fishermen, and you get guys that just kind of laugh at you,” Kent said. “I’m not saying that’s reflective of everyone…but they’ve been eating fish for a long time and they might not be feeling the health effects.”

Some people, though, might not be getting the message at all. Kent said that his department has posted various warning signs near the Harbor Way fishing pier, but the warnings have been vandalized or stolen. He said his department hasn’t worked on the United Heckathorn site since 2004, when it last attempted to post a sign.

But with or without signs, Torm Nompraseurt, the Laotian organizer, said he’s angry that the Inner Harbor is still polluted over a decade after the major cleanup. He worries about the people who have been unknowingly eating pesticide-laden fish.

“Sometimes, putting a sign up doesn’t mean anything, unless you talk face-to-face about the impact of the chemicals,” Nompraseurt said.

“The state can’t control folks’ cultural consumption and the way of life,” he said, emphasizing that in the economic downturn, having the option to subsist on fish is even more important.

“That’s why we’re still fighting. People should have a right to fish.”

Click for Richmond Confidential’s original coverage of the United Heckathorn story.

Laotian Organizing Project (LOP) is an community organizing group set up in 1995 by Asian Pacific Environmental Network, an activist group in the Bay Area aiming to help Asian Pacific Islander communities seek environmental and social justice. The LOP aims to educate and train the Laotian community in Richmond to stand up and voice their concerns about the well being of their community.

The LOP’s most recent campaign is against the expansion of the Chevron refinery in Richmond. After a three-year campaign, the LOP and other activist groups eventually won the case and the court ordered Chevron to halt the project in June this year.

And they’re still working on the Chevron campaign, as the case has been brought back to court. The LOP aims to collect 1,000 postcards with signatures from the community by January to present to the Richmond City Council. By talking to people at supermarkets, parking lots and grocery stores, they collected 800 postcards since this September.

Speaking of the recent one-million donation from Chevron to five non-profit organizations in Richmond, one of the two staff organizers with the LOP, Torm Nompraseurt, 54, said it is insulting to him. “They had 20 billion profit last year and if they really want to help the Richmond community, they should have done more,” he said.

Richmond is home to thousands of Laotian war refugees whom arrived in the US from 1975 to the early 1990s. According to LOP, 10,000 Laotians currently live in West Contra Costa County. And, most of them are of low income. In LOP’s opinion this makes them vulnerable to social injustice.

Nompraseurt says he was the first Laotian settled in Richmond. He escaped from Laos before the Communist took over his country in 1975, and immigrated to the US as a refugee. Having worked in social services in Richmond for almost 30 years, he says he now knows every single Laotian family here.

South Asian immigrants from Laos and other South Asian countries, Nompraseurt said, are not used to participating in the political process, because they didn’t have a political culture comprable to that of the US.

“Because of their cultural background, people are scared to speak in front of the authorities,” Nompraseurt said. “On the other hand, they’re shy. People who speak for the first time, we can see, they were nervous and they were shaking.”

This is what the LOP has been striving to change.

The first successful change they brought about was a multi-lingual emergency warning system in Richmond after a fire in Chevron in 1999. The fire caused environmental and health hazard, yet at that time there was only one English-language warning system.

LOP then encouraged the Laotian community to campaign for a multi-lingual warning system by testifying at the Richmond City Council meeting, To prepare, the LOP invited people to house meetings before the council meeting and explained to them how they could achieve this goal.

They also taught people how to speak succinctly and tell their personal stories to move the city council. “We had to prep people several times before the meeting to make sure they were ready,” Nompraseurt said.

The warning system eventually got approved, which built the fame of the LOP in the community as well as in the city. And the Laotian community realized they could actually change policies.

Over the past ten years, the LOP has also organized campaigns against rent increases, and to establish a South Asian student advisory program at Richmond High school.

Through those campaigns, the Laotian community is more willing to participate in the political process now. “Most of our leaders are now sophisticated to talk about the issues and campaign on behalf of the community,” said Nompraseurt. Now the LOP has about 25 campaign leaders and a couple hundred of members.

The LOP also works on communication between older and younger generations as well. According to Sandy Saeteurn, 26, the other staff organizer with the LOP, they invite the Laotian women elders to teach gardening and sewing — activities essential to Laotian culture — to young Laotian girls.

“What’s sad is we’re losing our own culture. Through the project we adopt the American way while have our own culture preserved,” Saeteurn said. “We teach the seniors to learn how to vote and how to voice their opinions; and the youth learn from seniors our own culture. We’re seeking the balance between both generations.”

Although Nompraseurt has been encouraging people to speak for their own rights and participate in the political process, he himself doubts how political decisions are made. He thinks sometimes the process lasts too long and things might not change, despite of all their efforts.

“But we have to have people take part,” he said. “Because if people don’t get involved, it’ll get worse; if people are involved, you might get something out of it.”

The biggest achievement, Nompraseurt believes the LOP has, is “to make sure people understand that they can — not just understand—that they can fight against injustice policy.”

“We have done that in terms of Chevron. People said Chevron is too big to fight,” Nompraseurt said. “We said no. That was the process we needed to go through. And we won it.”

However, Zuniga, a 44-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, is concerned that this tranquil scene might not last long. She’s waiting for the bank’s decision to put the house into foreclosure, as her mortgage is eight months behind.

Since Zuniga was laid off early last year, she’s been worried about losing her house. “It’s too much stress, thinking of it every day: when it’s going to happen, what they’re gonna do, whether you have enough money to pay this month,” she said. “It’s hard, it’s very hard.”

In Richmond, many people are in a similar financial situation as Zuniga. As of today, 1,600 houses in Richmond are in foreclosure and pre-foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac.com, an online aggregator of foreclosure information. Besides the financial stress experienced in foreclosure or pre-foreclosure, people may also suffer from severe mental stress, which can affect their physical health.

According to John Bateson, the Executive Director of Contra Costa Crisis Center, the center has received about 40 percent more calls in 2009 on their crisis line complaining about worries on economic-related issues, compared to last year.

“We’ve received a lot of calls from people who are impacted by the economy, whether they’ve had a home foreclosed, whether they’ve been laid off, whether they’ve lost retirement savings, etc.,” he said. “They all share the common problems like their finances are insufficient to meet their bases and their stress with how they’re going to provide their families,” Bateson continued.

The stress brought by the economic recession has been seen nationwide. According to the annual survey conducted by the American Psychological Association in 2009, 80 percent of Americans are stressed about their personal finances and the economy. As many as 47 percent of the survey sample reported having headaches, 35 percent had upset stomachs and 34 percent experienced muscular tension because of stress.

Because of the bad economy, Zuniga said, she’s having a hard time finding a full-time job. She was doing housecleaning work for a property company in San Francisco but was laid off when the company sold the property. Her husband lost his job as a construction worker in June last year. Now she’s doing housekeeping for a family in south Berkeley for nine hours a week, while her husband does odd jobs.

The stark drop of Zuniga’s family income has left her unable to pay the house mortgage. Her monthly payment was $2,400, yet now it’s only less than half of that.

Zuniga bought the three-bedroom house in northern Richmond in late 2004. At the time, it was valued at $360,000. But over the past five years, its value dropped to $66,000. The monthly mortgage is $2,250 and Zuniga hasn’t been able to afford it since this past January. She now can only pay a $1,500 monthly mortgage, yet the bank rejected her application to refinance.

Since she arrived in the United States at 15 years old, Zuniga has been doing housecleaning work in California over the past 30 years. Before she left El Salvador for the United States, all she heard about was the American dream. “People told me like this: ‘This is a dream, you’re going to find everything here.’”

She said she had been working very hard and thought her American dream had come true when she bought the house. However, now she’s concerned that the dream might be walking away.

Zuniga can’t help thinking of what would happen if her house went into foreclosure. “I think about it every day. I need to get some help. It’s really hard,” Zuniga said with tears in eyes, as she covered her face with her hands holding the notification paper from the bank warning about foreclosure. “I try to be strong, be strong every day, but it’s not easy.”

“I’m working, and I really want to keep the house,” she said.

Last December, she passed out at work and ended up in the hospital for five days. The doctor said her blood pressure was at a very high level, which Zuniga said she never had before. And the doctor suspected this might have been caused by long-term mental stress brought on by financial stress.

Bateson, with the Contra Costa Crisis Center, said that mental health and physical health issues are often interrelated, especially when people turn to addictive behaviors to cope with their problems. He suggested people should turn to professional counseling services to help ease the mental stress.

Most of Zuniga’s friends recently lost their houses during the economic downturn. Zuniga said one of her friends has been through foreclosure and now rents an apartment. This female friend, who is divorced with two children, complained to Zuniga that she couldn’t fall asleep thinking about her financial issues.

Zuniga said she has been praying to God every day and goes to church four times a week. She’s now looking for more jobs. “That’s my only hope, to find another job, or the bank can modify the loan.”

“Like most other cities, we have dispensaries coming into Richmond,” said Councilmember Tom Butt, who introduced the legislation in the form of a 45-day moratorium. “Basically what we want to do is get control of the situation and figure out what we want to do about it.”

Butt said he introduced the ordinance after hearing complaints from residents about the recent openings. A dispensary called Holistic Healing Collective opened on Nov. 23 in Point Richmond, and one called East Bay Patients Association opened across from the Pacific East Mall in the Richmond Annex area about ten months ago. Richmond has at least two other dispensaries – one more in the Pacific East Mall and a fourth at Hilltop Mall. At some dispensaries patients are allowed to use marijuana on the premises, and at some they are not. The existing dispensaries will not be affected by the moratorium.

The ban on new clubs went into effect immediately, and will last at least until January 15. After that, the council could extend it for another 22-and-a-half months if the city needs more time to put together regulation.

It’s possible that tightening regulation in other Bay Area cities is part of what’s driving people to open dispensaries in Richmond. Oakland only allows four pot clubs to operate in the city, and passed a ballot measure over the summer to become the first city to levy a separate tax on medical marijuana. San Francisco requires annual reviews and implemented a permit fee in 2005 that’s now up to $8,459, driving some operators out.

Rebecca Vasquez operates the newly-opened Holistic Healing Collective in Pt. Richmond, but lives in Sacramento, where there is currently a moratorium on new dispensaries.

“Because there’s no moratorium yet, my attorney told me to open up here,” said Vasquez, referring to Richmond. Now that she’s in business, however, Vasquez supports a moratorium on future dispensaries in the city. “I think once you get a lot of these, issues start coming about.”

The City Council’s vote echoes a move it made in July 2005 to enact a moratorium on dispensaries and examine the policy surrounding medical marijuana providers. The council referred the process of developing regulations to the city staff members tasked with creating an updated general plan for Richmond. Butt says the initiative subsequently fell by the wayside, the council lost track of the issue and regulations were never put in place.

“I’ve been operating for four years with the belief that the moratorium I voted in in 2005 has been in force,” said Councilmember Maria Viramontes, expressing shock and disappointment that any dispensaries had opened recently.

As nonprofit organizations, medical marijuana retailers are not required to apply for business licenses, and Richmond doesn’t stipulate any other specific processes the clubs must follow to open for business. The city does not always know when a dispensary opens, because there is nothing in the process to distinguish it from any other building occupant or nonprofit.

The new ordinance requires the city Planning Department to work with the City Attorney’s office and the Police Department to create options to fit two scenarios: one in which dispensaries would be entirely banned from operating within Richmond, and one in which they would be allowed but have their locations and operating procedures regulated. City staff will examine issues of crime and safety around dispensaries, revenue, and compliance with Proposition 215, the 1996 voter-approved initiative that legalized medical marijuana.

Councilmember Jim Rogers also indicated that he plans to introduce an additional motion at the next City Council meeting that would make dispensaries illegal in Richmond.

It’s not clear how the city will enforce the moratorium. Deputy Police Chief Ed Medina told the council that his department can only shut down dispensaries that are shown to be acting criminally; otherwise they aren’t breaking any laws.

“They’ve given no findings that any of the dispensaries in Richmond have caused any sort of hazard to the public or public safety,” said Armando Soto, director of the East Bay Patients Association. Soto is primarily concerned that the process creating regulation for dispensaries include input from those who operate and use them.

State proposition 215 allowed California residents to legally seek marijuana treatment for medical purposes. The proposition also defined collectives and cooperatives as legal avenues for patients to obtain marijuana, paving the way for dispensaries.

The T11 treadmills, produced by BH Fitness Corp., carry a price tag of just under $3,200 each.

Police Chief Michael Banks said. “Keeping our firefighters fit is a key part of maintaining a high level of service.”

Particularly appealing to Banks is that 80 percent of the cost, $20,300, will be picked up by a federal firefighters’ assistance grant the fire department applied for last year, meaning the machines cost the city only $5,075.

At Fire Station 64  in the 4800 block of Bayview Avenue, a new treadmill should mean more frequent walking and jogging by time-pressed firefighters in the understaffed department, said engineer Rico Rincon. The worn treadmill currently in the station has sat in a recreation room since before Rincon joined the staff 7 years ago.

He said his comrades in his station are pleased to get new equipment amidst an era of unfilled vacancies and budget reductions.

“People hardly use the treadmill at all,” Rincon said, adding that slipping belts and inoperable gauges have reduced the machine’s performance. “Finding time to work out is hard enough, but when the machines are beat down it’s just one more reason not to.”

Rincon said he would use the machine.

“I can’t speak for the others, some of them really like to use the elliptical machine we have, but I know I will use the treadmill.”

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said she and her council colleagues agreed with Banks’ rationale, which is key to approving any spending when budgets are so constrained.

“Chief Banks felt this was a necessity for his department’s health and wellness program to ensure that firefighters are maintaining their endurance in order to serve our community as emergency first-response providers,” McLaughlin said.

The health and performance of personnel may be especially important during these cash-strapped times, Banks said. His department, like most others in Richmond and in cities across the country, has been forced by budget pressures to do more with less.

With 86 firefighters, the department is down from the 94 it fielded two years ago.

“We just can’t fill the eight vacancies for the time being,” Banks said.

In budget year 2008-9, the department was hit with a 12 percent budget reduction, followed by another 8 percent cut agreed on in 2009-10, Banks said.