Mayor Martinez: Lying & Science Denialism Rates a D-

 Mayor Dianne Martinez

Continuing our tradition of looking back on each year-long mayorship of the rotating Emeryville City Council members/cum mayors, with Dianne Martinez now moving aside to make way for John Bauters, we take this opportunity to look back on Mayor Martinez’s tenure as Emeryville's highest elected official.  The Tattler continues with the tradition of these mayoral wrap-ups; the assignment of letter grades for each mayor—and to that end, we report Dianne Martinez has received a D- for her efforts as our mayor.

Opinion

Emeryville Mayor in 2021
Dianne Martinez

A glaring piece of bad politics came last June 15th when the Council majority voted to cut down the people’s street trees at the Sherwin Williams development site at the request of Lennar Development Corporation, Mayor Martinez leading the charge.  Before her June 15th vote, she also had voted to kill the same trees in a losing bid in 2019.  Ms Martinez, hoping people had forgotten, appallingly attempted to rewrite history when she announced at the June meeting she had been in favor of saving the trees in 2019.  “I was on the side of doing everything we could [to save the trees] but now, I’m on the side of (having the healthiest and most vibrant trees on Horton Street), she said, parroting the developer’s talking points.  Ms Martinez’s colleague, the former Councilman Christian Patz, at the same June 15th meeting told the assembled crowd that the developer had presented no new information from the 2019 Council vote (when the trees were saved).  The Mayor, undaunted, then voted to kill the trees again after happily announcing that the developer had gone behind the back of the Council and gotten permission from the staff regardless and so any vote to save the trees would just be a wasted protest vote.  This was the politics of the public be damned at its most cynical.

In addition to her terrible vote in June, before the voting and before hearing her colleagues openly deliberate on the matter, Mayor Martinez stated that she had already made up her mind to kill the trees, attempting to unfairly coerce her colleagues into voting with her.  She announced, “Let me indicate for you how I’m going to vote tonight”  (see video at 33:40) without letting the other Council members have their say in a fair and open manner.  In so doing, Mayor Martinez worked to close down open and meaningful Council debate.  All City Council members are supposed to listen to what the others say before deciding.  They should come to meetings with an open mind.  They are actually paid to have an open mind in matters of public policy.

Lying Mixed With Science Denialism

Shockingly, Mayor Martinez later denied she ever made the “Let me indicate for you…” announcement.  It’s not as if these meetings are not recorded and on the City’s website for all to see.  So we're not sure what she thinks she's doing with this.

The dreadful behavior exhibited around the June 15th Council decision is added to Ms Martinez’s blanket rejection of scientifically collected housing data by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) of which Emeryville is a dues paying member.  Mayor Martinez continued to vote to give developers a free pass, increasing their negotiating strength with her constantly stated position that Emeryville needs more (market rate) housing.  Her housing claims exactly mirror developers' and are in direct contradiction to ABAG who reports that our town is far ahead of our housing mandate every measuring period.  The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported on this, to Ms Martinez's dismay.

The lone Emeryville City Council member who utterly rejects ABAG’s housing data, “I think the ABAG recommendations are too low”  she told the Tattler in 2018, Ms Martinez refuses to tell the people how she knows that or how much housing Emeryville should have.  This position of hers means she is not working to leverage Emeryville’s value when developers come knocking with their housing project proposals.  If we are always desperate for more housing, we'll let developers have their way with us, leading to less livability for existing residents in the negotiations.  

And that leads us into another area of bad policy from Mayor Martinez: Emeryville’s lack of action on delivering more parks to our worst-city-in-the-Bay-Area park acreage to resident ratio.  Emeryville added zero new park acreage during her term (and only one acre during her entire City Council term of seven years despite the City adding more than 2000 new residents during that time).

For all these reasons (especially lying to the people) plus a lack of action for bike transportation and no action on getting a public library like she promised (see question #10) , Mayor Martinez gets a D- .  Not a fail, but almost.