The Secret News

Residents and City Officials Celebrate New PARK at Afternoon Reception, Sunday, Sept. 6

(clockwise from left) AC Transit Board official Greg Harper (left), former Emeryville Mayor and Councilman, chats with fellow Emeryville resident; commemorative and self-congratulatory plaque paid for with your tax dollars (an estimated $1,000). Councilman John Fricke, who designed the play structure and was the most vocal supporter of the park (the other 4 Council Members initially opposed it) said he felt the plaque was in bad taste and asked that his name be left off; Council Members (from left) Nora Davis, Mayor Dick Kassis, Ruth Atkin, and Vice-Mayor Ken Bukowski do the honors.
(Click photos to enlarge).

(Photos and caption by Tracy Schroth)

Pay Attention and Look Ahead,

and Save Our Town From a Future of Declining Services and Increasing Debt

Have you not been paying attention to what has happened in Emeryville over the past 20 years? As a long term resident who has watched this city turn into a strip mall, I am very concerned. This small city could have been a model for all of the nation, small enough to provide the very best of education from pre-natal through college bound; small enough to provide small businesses with subsidies to keep a feeling of relationships and connections; small enough to provide neighborhoods of caring people. What did we do instead? Turn it into a developers’ and bondholders/bankers’ dream, indebt the citizens of Emeryville so that the general funds are depleted and there is not enough funding for schools, neighborhoods, and our community services, including police and firefighters.

Watch how the game is played; try sitting through planning meetings as the staff of Emeryville recommend over and over again to ignore height, width, and setbacks. Yes, I said, over and over again. Take a look at the records. Pay attention to the council, who have cut back citizens’ speaking time to 3 minutes, and then watch the council berate every citizen who gets up and shares their concerns; sometimes for as long as 20 minutes. Look at how the city has been built. Where is the housing for those with limited economic means; where is the housing for families; where is a true living wage?

What has happened is appalling, and still we sit and pay little attention. You can rant from a Republican/Democrat stand, but that is futile. This is about the quality of living, life, and the desire to have a relational community and not a strip mall town.

What are you going to do when you truly find out how much each and every one of you owe in indebtedness to the Redevelopment Agency?

I ask you to pay attention to the detail and look ahead. We are in deep trouble, we have misunderstood the bubble of supercapitalism and we will go under if we continue in this way. Pay attention, save Emeryville, and stop the subsidies to development. We owe too much already and we no longer need to pay the developers for development in this city.

Ruth Major, M.A. Ed.
Early Education Consultant, Infant Parent Mental Health & Birth to Three Specialist

Ruth Major has lived in Emeryville for 25 years

Council Majority Ignores Residents’ Pleas to Consider Other Developers



by Reem Assil and Kate O’Hara

Scores of residents, hotel and construction workers, and small business owners rallied Tuesday evening at an Emeryville City Council meeting to protest preferential treatment of D.C.-based developer Madison Marquette. While on a 4 to 1 vote, the council did approve a “sweetheart deal” with Madison Marquette – the fifth consecutive extension of an exclusive agreement to develop shopping complex Bay Street Site B – City Councilmembers repeatedly told Madison Marquette that they expect the corporation to work with the community and address community concerns.

Among the speakers at the public hearing was Maha Ibrahim, Field Representative for State Assemblymember Nancy Skinner in whose district the Bay Street project is located.

“I support collaboration between all parties as they work to ensure that the character of Emeryville’s development reflects the interests of the residents and workers who are the backbone of its success,” Assemblymember Skinner said in a written statement.

In a surprising twist, Merlin Edwards, a member of Federal Oakland Associates, which recently competed for the Oakland Army Base redevelopment bid, spoke at the meeting. Edwards said he was offering no opinion on the exclusive agreement with Madison Marquette, but “simply [wished] to offer an alternative.” Federal was one of the two top contenders for redeveloping the massive former Oakland Army Base, a high-profile process in which his company proposed a retail and hotel project for the site; the project would have included connections to local training programs to put residents to work.

Community members, under the banner of the “Coalition for a Better Bay Street”, vowed to continue to push for a more inclusive and livable Bay Street project that provides family-supporting jobs for residents, affordable housing, and vital neighborhood services such as a stronger education system and more local-serving businesses. The Coalition wants to work directly with the developer to reach a formal agreement that will benefit all parties.

“The City council majority, and a handful of developers have had a run of the city for years, and we want it back,” said Tracy Schroth, seven year resident of Emeryville and member of Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE)—one of the organizers of the rally and protest.

Madison Marquette received the extension from the City even as they insisted they had “no plan” on the table for the Bay Street project, saying previous plans submitted for Site B have been since abandoned. After raising the ire of concerned residents by claiming there was “nothing” to meet about at this time, Madison Marquette’s representative received a barrage of questions from council members inquiring why the company has shunned requests to meet with community, and yet were still meeting with tenants and operators including hotel operators.

“I’ve been told by residents that you won’t meet with them,” an exasperated City Council Member John Fricke said to Madison Marquette’s legal representative at the council meeting. Underscoring the need for community input, he continued, “If you don’t have community support, you won’t have a project.”

Fricke was the lone vote against the extension of the Exclusive Right to Negotiate, the special agreement the City of Emeryville has extended to Madison Marquette for 5 years in a row.

“These issues need to be worked out before tenants and operators are chosen,” said Wei-Ling Huber, President of UNITE-HERE! Local 2850. “What if the operator chosen is Sam Hardage?” Hardage, owner of the Woodfin Suites Hotel, is in a protracted legal battle with the City over wage theft of hotel housekeepers in Emeryville amounting to nearly $200,000.

________________________________________________________

Reem Assil is a community benefits organizer for EBASE (East Bay alliance for a sustainable economy), and Kate O’Hara is community benefits program director for EBASE.

EBASE advances economic and social justice by building power and raising standards for working families.

Group Demands Action From City Council,
Criticizes Special Treatment for Developer of 2nd Phase of Bay Street

What: Emeryville residents, workers, small business owners and members of the Coalition for a Better Bay Street will stage a rally in front of City Hall to protest the possibility of a fifth extension of an exclusive agreement with the city to develop the second phase of the Bay Street project. Madison Marquette, also developer of the first phase of Bay Street, is requesting an estimated $50 million public subsidy for the second phase of the project, slated to be a mixed‐use retail project including a 23‐story hotel and condo tower and 900-car parking garage. The rally comes after an historic town hall where more than 100 residents, workers, and small‐business owners called on the City Council and Madison Marquette to work with the community to create a better project through a formal community benefits agreement. Their requests to date have been ignored.

When: Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 6pm, Press Conference and Rally; 7 pm, City Council Meeting

Where: Emeryville City Hall, 1333 Park Ave.(@ Hollis St.)

Who: Sponsored by the Coalition for a Better Bay Street, which includes Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE), East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), and UNITE‐HERE Local 2850. The rally will feature residents and workers speaking out about their vision, including good jobs for local residents, affordable housing for families, funding for schools, and residents having a voice in how their city spends public dollars.

Why: “Bay Street 2 will cost us—the taxpayers—about $50 million in subsidies,” says Tracy Schroth, seven‐year resident of Emeryville and member of RULE. “What do we get in return? What does this $50 million buy in benefits for the people who live and work here? The City Council majority and a handful of developers have had a run of the city for years, and we want it back.”

Based on more than 400 community surveys collected earlier this year, an overwhelming majority—82%–are not supportive of or have mixed feelings about the current Bay Street Site B proposal put forward by Madison Marquette.

An open letter to the Emeryville City Council and all interested Emeryville residents.

I recently attended a Town Hall meeting that did not address the following issues:

• Subsidies for developer Madison Marquette – I want to know, and so should all citizens, the amount of the subsidy the council is planning to give. I want to know how much money the city will receive from the proposed project over a 2-year, 5-year and 10-year time period. I want to know why the council has renewed the ENA (exclusive negotiating agreement) several times and plans to do so again. I want to know why the council will not open bidding to other developers.
• Proposed assessment of property owners – the above info will provide numbers on revenue intake and thus possibly make a proposed property assessment unnecessary or minimal. I am opposed, and so should you be, to any assessment without knowing the amount of money the city will receive from any proposed subsidy. I want to know how much money the city wants to subsidize the developer with. If there is an assessment at some point, I want all persons owning property to pay the same amount – that will eliminate political bickering over who uses more services.
• Belt tightening action by the city – it is my understanding that the city is considering cuts to salary and benefits and that same is suggested by the city manager to be considered within a year. It is reasonable to assume that City Manager Patrick O’Keefe and City Attorney Mike Biddle are the highest-paid employees, with the city attorney being paid a probable six-figure income. The city attorney wrote/writes his own contract and has had it renewed over many years, perhaps now through 2011. How does the sitting city attorney get to write his own contract? The city manager, I think, also gets a six-figure salary and I think has also had his contract renewed through 2011. I think the city council should make clear why they have permitted Biddle to write his own contract many times; and, if applicable, why they have permitted O’Keefe to also write his own employment description. I think their exact salaries and benefits is public information and I want that information to be made known to all citizens of Emeryville. Insofar as I am aware, neither the city attorney nor city manager have offered to take less money when, in fact, any cuts should start with them – the highest paid persons, and then proceed to those who are paid less. I believe that the city attorney and city manager discuss cuts to the city’s employees’ salaries, but why have they not included themselves? I think this is Orwellian – in his novel, Animal Farm, Orwell said, “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.” I don’t think that should be an acceptable stance by either Biddle, O’Keefe, or the city council. I believe that the two highest-paid employees should not be able to pass the problem of decreasing city revenues to those they gaze down upon from lofty heights of salary and benefits. I also ask the council why these two positions have always been renewed with the same persons occupying them and whether there been efforts to actively consider other individuals? After all, the current fiscal problems of the city have occurred on their watch. If these concerns are not addressed, and if the information requested is not provided, I think Emeryville citizens should either consider a recall of the council or, in the alternative, should vote the council out. Given that they have protected Vice Mayor Ken Bukowski, their self interest is more than clear.
  

Walt Watman
Emeryville resident

(Edited email from Council Member John Fricke to Emeryville residents Aug. 14)

One prime example of the City Council majority’s genuflection to developers is the ‘Transit Center’ (proposed for the lot just north of Emeryville’s train station).

At the upcoming Council meeting August 18, the Council majority will likely support a project that will:

• Exacerbate traffic congestion
• Vastly exceed the maximum building height allowed by the city’s zoning ordinance
• Funnel millions of dollars in taxpayer money to Wareham Development. (I will miss the meeting due to a family vacation.) (See below for my past email messages about the proposed project.)

Although this proposal has gone through several iterations in the past several years, the developer’s hyperbole hasn’t changed much. Among the developer’s misrepresentations:

The project would result in the clean-up of a toxic site.
Decades ago, the toxic soil was surrounded by a wall and capped. Periodic soil sampling continues to indicate that the toxics are staying put, and therefore pose no harm. The same cannot be said for the risks of removing the toxic soil.

The project will improve public transit.
Not unlike the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, the developer seems to have finally acknowledged that the ‘Transit Center’ has no transit. The project has thus received a re-branding: it is now called EmeryStation West.

Traffic Congestion

As first proposed, the Transit Center included hundreds of parking spaces next to a street (Horton Street) that is not designed to accommodate such a volume of traffic. The latest proposal includes even more parking spaces. In addition to the proposed office building next to the train station (300 parking spaces), the developer would also construct a parking garage across the street (600 spaces). The city staff report is conspicuously silent on the impact of 900 cars accessing city streets designed for far fewer cars. Horton Street is a bicycle boulevard, and is the last north-south street in Emeryville – running nearly the length of the city – that remains pleasant for bicyclists and pedestrians. 900 cars would surely change that.

Building Height

The current proposed height of 17 stories (160 feet), has changed little since the developer first proposed the transit center and condo tower. The city’s zoning ordinance allows a maximum building height of five stories (50 feet).

In Washington, D.C., lobbyists manage to get special exceptions inserted into legislation to benefit a particular industry or client. So too in Emeryville, where the city council is about to approve a new zoning law that carves out a specific exception for the site of this proposed project.

In the area around the train station, the proposed zoning law provides maximum building heights of seven and five stories. The maximum height is reduced the closer one gets to older residential areas – EXCEPT for the one parcel where Wareham Development intends to construct its 160-foot office building. Here is a map of the proposed maximum building heights (6MB):

http://www.johnfricke.com/DraftGenPlan-MaxBldgHeight.pdf

Often, a developer will justify exceeding the maximum height by saying that anything less will simply “not pencil.” In this case, the developer is both asking for three times the current maximum height, and a multi-million dollar subsidy from the city.

$8 Million Taxayer Subsidy

Wareham Development has received millions in city subsidies, the most recent of which is for a project next to the greenway at Powell:
http://www.johnfricke.com/05-14-09.html

For the proposed project next to the train station, the developer wants an $8.3 million subsidy. The state budget recently approved will require Emeryville to give back millions of dollars to the state. The money will come from the same budget that the city has for granting subsidies to developers. By continuing to grant subsidies to developers, the city council will be forced to reduce funding for projects that would provide concrete benefits to the residents.

About a year and a half ago, the city council debated imposing an impact fee on developers. The money would have been used to pay for infrastructure improvements and public amenities (such as new parks and open space) that would be necessary as more people moved to and worked in Emeryville. The city council majority let this impact fee quietly die, but the longstanding practice of lining the developers’ pockets with city subsidies continues unabated.

John Fricke
1057 43rd Street
Emeryville, CA 94608
510/601-8846
jfricke@JohnFricke.com
www.JohnFricke.com

My past email messages about the Transit Center:

http://www.johnfricke.com/03-09-06.html
http://www.johnfricke.com/03-22-06.html
http://www.johnfricke.com/02-18-07.html
http://www.johnfricke.com/03-05-07.html
http://www.johnfricke.com/03-19-07.html
http://www.johnfricke.com/12-20-07.html
http://www.johnfricke.com/02-02-08.html
http://www.johnfricke.com/01-25-09.html

Check out news coverage of Emeryville’s Town Hall Meeting last Tuesday, July 28:

Beyond Chron:

Historic Town Hall Asserts
New Vision for Emeryville
by Tracy Schroth and Reem Assil
Jul. 31‚ 2009

More than 100 Emeryville residents, local workers, and advocates gathered on July 28 at an historic community town hall meeting to call on the Emeryville City Council to ensure the second phase of a major retail-project — Bay Street Site B — results in good jobs for residents, affordable family-friendly housing, and investment in the local public school system. It was one of the largest grassroots gatherings Emeryville has seen in years.

Read more…

San Francisco Business Times:

(Unedited text of email sent by John Fricke to Emeryville residents Saturday, July 25).

Dear Emeryville neighbors,

Residents United for a Liveable Emeryville, a resident organization, is sponsoring a community meeting to discuss the future development of the land adjacent to the Bay Street shopping mall:

Tuesday, July 28th, 6 p.m. Emeryville Senior Center 4321 Salem Street

The city council majority intends to negotiate an agreement with the developer of the Bay Street shopping mall to expand the mall to the north. This agreement will likely include giving the developer tens of millions of dollars in subsidies. I oppose these subsidies because the money should instead be used to pay for concrete benefits to the residents, benefits such as constructing a permanent rec. center, providing a pedestrian/bicycle bridge across Interstate 80, and improving access to public transit. The community meeting on Wednesday will be an opportunity to discuss how to make the project meet the needs of Emeryville residents.

CITY BUDGET. At its last two meetings, the city council has been determining how to close current and projected budget deficits through budget reductions and new sources of tax revenue. My questions about the fairness of a tax to support park landscaping and street lighting have not been addressed.

REDUCING CITY EXPENDITURES. Several months ago, the city council decided to reduce the costs of running the city. The combined budget reductions will save about $1.2 million, and include such things as reducing the frequency of street sweeping and not filling vacant city staff positions. Despite these cuts, there will still be a budget shortfall. The city council decided to make up the shortfall by drawing money from a fund set aside in past budgets for economic downturns. (Many cities and the State of California did not set aside money in past budgets, and are now being forced to make severe cuts to balance their budgets.) The city council chose not to lay off employees so that basic city services such as police, fire, maintaining city parks, maintaining sewers, etc., will not be impacted.

If the economy does not recover in the next year or two, the money that the city council has set aside may become depleted before the economy recovers. In addition, new demands on the city budget will arise in the coming years. For example, maintaining new amenities such as the public park at 61st/Doyle, a future park and pedestrian bridge to the Bay Street shopping mall will increase the city’s budget. To meet these demands, the city council has discussed various tax measures, including increasing the gambling tax, and creating a tax to pay for landscaping and lighting.

GAMBLING TAX. Emeryville currently imposes a tax on card clubs. (For quite some time, Emeryville has had only one card club, the Oaks.) Last Tuesday, the city council voted to put a tax measure on the November ballot. If approved by the voters in November, the tax rate on card clubs will be increased from nine percent to ten percent. I intend to vote for this tax measure.

LANDSCAPE AND LIGHTING ASSESSMENT DISTRICT. At two recent city council meetings, I have repeatedly raised concerns about the inequitable tax rates for this proposed annual property tax assessment. This tax measure would not be decided by registered voters in Emeryville, but by those who own property in Emeryville. (The ballots are mailed to the property owners.) If it passes, the assessment tax would appear on the annual property tax bill, and would be calculated by multiplying the square footage of the property by the tax rate. (Compare this to the property tax which is calculated by multiplying the assessed value by the tax rate.) Those of you who own a condo or house would pay an additional amount on the property tax bill. Those of you who rent an apartment in Emeryville may see your rent go up to pay for the additional tax.

As currently proposed, there would be different tax rates for the following categories (amount in parentheses is the annual tax based on 1,000 square feet): Industrial ($27.50); commercial/retail ($68.75); office building ($82.50); and residential ($127.96). These differing rates are supposed to reflect the degree to which the people associated with these different categories use the landscaping and lighting in the city.

In comparing the residential rate to the other rates, I noticed that the residential rate is fifty percent more than the rate for office buildings, and double the rate for commercial/retail. (The rate for industrial is low but seems about right since an industrial property probably doesn’t use the city’s landscaping and lighting as much as a retail or office property.)

As a property owner, I am willing to pay to maintain the landscaping in our parks and the lighting on our streets. But making residential property owners (or a tenant through a rent increase) pay a higher rate strikes me as unfair, especially when you compare what a different consultant came up with about a year ago. This other consultant was asked to determine what one-time fees to charge developers of residential projects, office building projects and retail projects. (After developers objected to this development fee, the city council majority quietly dropped it.) The fees would have been used to pay for creating new parks. His conclusion: charge basically the same rate for residential developments as office building or commercial/retail developments. Considering that far more people work and shop in Emeryville than those who live in Emeryville, this one-to-one ratio seems fair.

Since there is more square footage in an office building, an office-building property owner will pay much more for this assessment tax than a residential property owner. But that doesn’t mean that the higher rate for residential is necessarily fair.

Furthermore, the vote is not the same as an election where each voter gets one vote. When voting on an assessment district, property owners who would pay more money get more votes. For example, a person with a 1,000-square-foot condo would get 127.96 votes, but a property owner of a 100,000-square-foot office building would get 8,250 votes. This means that a small number of property owners who own the large office buildings in town could have effective control over the outcome of the vote.

The tax burden should be more fairly distributed between the business-oriented uses and the residential uses. The city council can change these rates, but once the ballots are mailed out, the rates will be set.

Best,
John

by Reem Assil

With state and local budget crises looming and the economy struggling to recover, a report released this week shows residents and workers in Emeryville want a say in how their “shopping-mall of a city” spends their public tax dollars. United through the Coalition for a Better Bay Street, residents and workers see a key opportunity to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable city through the second phase of a large-scale development project.

“In the midst of a recession, with the possibility that redevelopment funds may shrink in the city, it is more important than ever for residents and workers to have a say in how tax dollars are spent,” said Jennifer Lin, Research Director at the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy and co-author of the report.

The new report, entitled Bringing Main Street Back to Bay Street: Win-Win Solutions to Create Good Jobs and Livable Communities in Emeryville, comes as the City Council is considering an estimated $47 million subsidy for the second phase of the Bay Street project. The agreement between the City and the developer to pursue development is set to expire in September. The community report outlines how the City, the developer Madison Marquette, and the community together can achieve quality jobs for local residents, affordable family-friendly housing, and improvements in the public school system.

“We don’t want our home to be a soulless, regional shopping mall,” said Tracy Schroth, a member of Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE). “We really look forward to sitting down with [developer] Madison Marquette and the city to come up with an agreement. We see this as a huge opportunity to create something really good, for the developer, for the city, and for all the residents who live in this community.” Schroth was one of the residents knocking on doors last February surveying over 400 Emeryville residents. The surveys showed that an overwhelming 82% were opposed to or had mixed feelings about the second phase of the Bay Street project in its current form. Based on the last publicly available information, the project proposal includes a 23-story hotel and condominium tower, up to 130,000 sq ft of retail, and up to 900 parking spaces.

In order to achieve this vision of a Main Street-type Bay Street, the report points to establishing local hire and first source hiring processes that would allow Emeryville residents a first-chance at new job openings, creating family-sized affordable housing that is accessible to a range of incomes, and considering creative resource sharing between the City and the School District. “People living and working in Emeryville need better paying jobs. … Since there is a subsidy involved in the next phase of Bay Street, they should be creating quality jobs, not just creating more working poverty,” said Cristal Ticong, a worker at Emeryville’s Hilton Garden Inn.

According to the report, the first phase of Bay Street represented a missed opportunity. While providing some affordable housing benefits and generating significant tax revenues for future development, it did little by way of quality jobs for local residents, transit, bike, and pedestrian-friendly development, and promotion of locally owned, local-serving businesses.

The report will inform a public discussion at an historic Community Townhall Meeting where residents, small business owners, workers, advocates and other community leaders will gather to call on the City Council and the developer of the second phase of Bay Street to work with the community to achieve a “Better Bay Street”. Free copies of the report will be available at the town hall. Click here to access the online version.

The Coalition for a Better Bay Street consists of residents, workers, and advocates organizing to ensure that the second phase of the Bay Street development creates good jobs and livable neighborhoods. Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE) is a citizens group working to improve the quality of life in Emeryville. The East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE) is celebrating 10 years of building power and raising standards for working families.

Reem Assil is a community organizer for EBASE. Reem is inspired by both her love for community and her understanding of the importance of building power in the labor movement. Her formative experience with coalition building and community organizing comes out of organizing in the Arab American community, in which her heart lies.