Emeryville's Mayor, Vice Mayor Called Out As "Developer Shills" by Local Media
 |
| Mayor John Bauters A "developer shill". |
development in the greater Bay Area in the “developer shill’ bracket produced by a local rental housing lobbying group known as YIMBYLAND in an open election of its followers. The mutual love fest between YIMBY and corporate developers and Mayor John Bauters was particularly pronounced in the fantasy football-like bracket, netting Mr Bauters a position in the quarter finals, the group announced earlier this week.
Being selected for the YIMBYLAND developer shill bracket is no small thing, and Mr Bauters as well as the vice mayor, Courtney Welch, had to throw Emeryville’s local housing control over to developers in order to compete.
The celebration of Mr Bauters and Ms Welch by YIMBYLAND is just the latest in the tender and devotional relationship grown between these two Council members and the nation-wide developer lobbying organization known as YIMBY, a developer funded group that wants to clear the field for developers to deliver the rental housing that is the most profitable kind of housing to build.
The result of having City Hall committed to allowing large corporate developers build what they want is the transformation of Emeryville from a city of mostly home owners into a city of mostly renters. But Emeryville citizens don’t want what YIMBY wants. Our General Plan is unequivocal: the City Council is to deliver more ownership housing, not more rental units. To the extent residents know what these two City Council members are doing with our housing policy is problematic for the Mayor and Vice Mayor. In this way, Mr Bauters and Ms Welch have had to operate under the citizen radar in Emeryville.
More Rental Apartments Than Rain
 |
| Vice Mayor Courtney Welch A "developer shill". |
This implementation period, with all the new rental apartment towers approved by the City Council, has allowed Emeryville to crush its ABAG RHNA numbers by 203%, even more than the percentage over normal rainfall in Emeryville for this year, the most in recorded history (177%).
Mayor Distances Himself From YIMBY
Emeryville has earned the accolades from YIMBY, especially since Mr Bauters was elected. The San Francisco Chronicle in 2021 called Emeryville's City Council one of California's "most YIMBY city councils". However, the YIMBY agenda is not what Emeryville citizens are: pro-gentrification, pro-capitalist, free market fundamentalism associated with neoliberal economic modalities. It’s funded by real estate corporate developers, Big Tech and right wing think tanks like the Koch brothers and is popular in the Bay Area only insofar as the organization can keep the right wing attachment hidden from view. Accordingly, neither Mayor Bauters nor Vice Mayor Welch have told Emeryville citizens the two of them had made the YIMBYLAND list of shills for developers. Mr Bauters has not said anything about it publicly while Ms Welch made a brief mention of it on her Twitter account.
It’s almost as if they don’t want Emeryville citizens to know about all the hard work they’ve done to help developers build so many market rate rental apartments. The Mayor told the Tattler the list is “humorous” but he said he didn’t know why so many YIMBYLAND supporters voted for him.
Why indeed. Perhaps Mr Mayor, it’s because corporate developers appreciate what you’ve done for them over the years and they want to show their gratitude.
 |
| The Developer Shill Bracket Emeryville's Mayor and Vice Mayor beat out almost every Bay Area pol when they made the 'Developer Shill Bracket'. The Vice Mayor came out from the 'mixed-use zone' while the Mayor took up position in the 'industrial zone'. Mayor Bauters made it to the quarter finals only to be beaten by state senator Scott Wiener who wrote SB35 which forces cities that have fallen behind their government mandated housing allotments (not Emeryville) to deregulate their housing development policies. |
YIMBY is good
ReplyDeleteYIMBY is as YIMBY does.
DeleteThank you for posting this. Too many people don’t know what is going on at the state level as well. Sacramento is rolling out the red carpet for YIMBY and has all but destroyed local control of planning. SB423 seeks to finish the job. Please support the Our Neighborhood Voices initiative. Because if we don’t take back local control, it won’t matter if you defeat Bauters and Welch in the next election. ourneighborhoodvoices.com
ReplyDeleteGreat story! If the mayor and vice mayor are too embarrassed to say anything about their YIMBY support to the people they are supposed to represent, then they should be too embarrassed to do the free work they've been doing for YIMBY.
ReplyDeleteEmeryville is way more livable than back when I moved here in 2006. The housing situation is better, and the perks to pedestrians and cyclists are far better. Mayor Bauters and the city council deserve better recognition for what they’ve accomplished than the snark in this post.
ReplyDeleteThe snark you’re sensing comes from YIMBYLAND who said Emeryville’s mayor and the vice mayor are “developer shills”. I’m just the messenger. Why do I consider this newsworthy? Because it comes straight from the Bay Area’s most controversial and consequential pro-developer housing lobby, YIMBY. The fact that they think it’s humorous and advantageous to engage in ironic next level snark with the epithet is not my doing. YIMBY employs all manner of cynical gamesmanship in their project to help boost the prospects of their developer paymasters. This kind of calculating is everywhere in rightwing land. We’re not doing that. We are just going to report what they say when it is informative as to how they operate in the public commons. And this is very informative for Emeryville residents.
DeleteThank you for your comment.
Have to agree that Emeryville is getting better. I can go to work, do grocery shopping and most everything else by walking and using public transportation. Have even more access with my bike. is is a much healthier way to live than sequestered in a car dependent suburb where fast food and retail chains dominate the community.
DeleteYikes. This blog is psychotic. Emeryville is killing it and beating the state in stemming the effects of the housing crisis and is truly building a vibrant city. You read this blog and it sounds like it’s some hell hole.
ReplyDeleteYour buddy on council, Mr. Priforce, has a personality flaw where he assumes the world revolves around him and that if that people don’t explicitly come out in support of him he thinks they are against him and he needs to war with them. He isn’t suited for politics and can’t think critically. Priforce went seeking a YIMBY endorsement in his election from some of the groups that have supported Bauters and Welch in the past and when no YIMBY group wanted to spend time in Emeryville last election he immediately assumed it’s they were against him when in fact he was as small potatoes, so he decided to just NIMBY redpill to find a base and is regurgitating organized NIMBY group nonsense now without even have an iota of understanding of the issues. Like for example while stoking this blog’s attacks on two progressives on council on his Twitter he is out there posting nonsense from the state NIMBY ballot initiative funded almost entirely by a rich, white, 80-something, Alameda based, horse-breading jewelry heiress who is upset the state requires cities allow affordable and wants to flip the state upside down. Priforce is so clueless he is resharing their paid propaganda editorials attacking another state wide affordable housing bill that requires affordable housing be allowed and streamlined in cities simply because it sounds like an attack on YIMBYs that his complex has decided he needs to have beef with.
Emeryville is not “vibrant”. It’s a bedroom community. Like every other bedroom community, Emeryville is all about low slung, auto centric shopping malls, fast food ubiquity, no downtown and cookie cutter architecture. The only way Emeryville substantially deviates from your basic bedroom community is the lack of parks here. Emeryville COULD be vibrant but we would have to follow our General Plan and not fall victim to leaders who follow a (pro-developer) ideology or who are narcissists. These last two archetypes keep tripping us up.
DeleteThe Tattler is not psychotic, rather, it’s democratic. You’ll note almost all our advocacy stems from Emeryville’s democratically produced General Plan (and its attending documents). The General Plan is the will of the people of Emeryville. It comes out of a grand tradition of American city planning and most if not all its provisions are in accordance with the American Planning Association, the nation’s preeminent planning institution. Our General Plan received an award from the State of California for being the most democratically vetted general plan in the state when it was certified.
Democracy is what gets the Tattler jazzed. You’ll see evidence of that in our masthead. So when you read that we are advocating for building more ownership housing over rental units, that’s not us touting our opinion. That comes directly from the General Plan. We support the people of Emeryville, not outsider corporations that seek to profit from subverting our Plan and imposing their profit making schemes on our town. That’s YIMBY: a consortium of outside development corporations, tech corporations and right wing think tanks that is trying to bulldoze not only Emeryville but even ABAG as well. We recognize the imperative of the scientifically generated RHNA job/housing balance from ABAG and that’s why we know Emeryville has built way more than its share of market rate housing, having crushed our RHNA numbers EVERY implementation period since its inception. Other towns in the area don't do that.
The General Plan encodes ABAG’s jobs/housing balance for Emeryville at 16,600 people by the sunset of the Plan. The Tattler supports that. Council member Priforce disagrees with that and he thinks Emeryville should have more people. That’s one of many disagreements between Mr Priforce and the Tattler BTW.
I refuse to engage with your sophomoric YIMBY/NIMBY procrustean binary. BTW, you got that from ….(who else?) the people with a material interest in taking over the narrative: YIMBY. Only dullards or sycophants like former Council member Dianne Martinez dumbs down public debate by invoking the YIMBY/NIMBY false choice. We're not doing that here.
The rest of your complaints should be brought up with Council member Priforce (who BTW won his election in a landslide). Thanks for commenting.
News Update:
DeleteI reached out to Council member Priforce after reading this comment of yours, Mr Anonymous. He informed me he doesn't respond to people who refuse to give their names in the course of public debate. If you want to know the answers to the questions you pose here, you're going to have to reveal who you are. It seems reasonable to me. There you have it.
Brian weren’t you kicked out of a committee or not re-elected in a committee for Emeryville.
DeleteTo Mr Anon at 7:41-
DeletePeople aren’t elected to City committees. The City Council appoints them. That means if you are in the good graces of the most powerful City Council member (the one the others follow, now that’s John Bauters), you will get appointed if you apply to a committee. If you are a dissenter or if you have different ideas about public policy, you won’t get selected. It’s that simple.
I used to be on the Bike Committee back when Nora Davis was queen of Emeryville. But Nora was ‘old school’ and she was so confident of her power, she would put people she didn’t even like on committees like Abe Lincoln used to do. She put me on the Bike Committee. Nowadays, in Trump’s America, its winner take all and the City Council cannot countenance people with different ideas on our committees. That’s why visually every vote on the committees is now unanimous.
I dropped off the Bike Committee when it became clear it had become just a rubber stamp committee and I re-applied, knowing I would be denied by Mr Bauters (so I can write a Tattler story on the new culture of our City committees).
Our Cit committees have all turned into rubber stamping committees. That’s why the Bike Commiittee recently voted to remove the ability for residents to see how good of a job City Hall is doing with keeping bikers safe on our bike boulevards by counting the number of cars on these important bike corridors like how the General Plan says to do. It was a constant source of embarrassment for the Council for the public to see too many cars, making for unsafe biking. So the Bike Committee voted to simply remove the traffic counting and remove the source of constant embarrassment from the Council when they forwarded the new Active Transportation Plan.
That’s the function of the committees now-a-days: to lend support and legitimacy to the City Council.
Hey there ANONYMOUS, which already says a lot about your character since you're a coward and can't use your real name. Additionally, it's against FPPC rules if you're an elected - hope you're not. Maybe someone on this site can look up your IP address.
DeleteYIMBY - is a dark money funded organization who writes bills and pushes for votes at city level. The prior comments are correct, they want to build, build and build to create shacks for people to sleep in. They don't give one iota about people of color, they never speak to what WE (brown & black & Asian) people want, they shove down our throats what THEY want for US to accept (their scraps).
City Council is an institution FOR the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE. Stop trying to tell people how to act - only requirement is that you are a resident and 18 - PERIOD.
This is probably why ANONYMOUS is coming after Priforce - is he too "uppity" for you? Should he stay in his lane and respond "yes sir, no sir" - please, the racism around your post is palatable.
And you don't like OUR NEIGHBORHOOD VOICES - if you're going to talk about our group have the guts to name us. I’m a member and proud of it. We are fighting for people to have a voice in what happens in their cities and not be pulled by the nose by developers. Our RESIDENTS should get the say PERIOD. And you’re out here talking about Reyla? Have a few seats, when you come back and look at your council SCHILLS and their donations then you can talk.
Kind of how in TN they are fighting the NRA, same, but with DEVELOPERS.
Why Is California YIMBY Hiding the Names of Big-Money Contributors?
https://www.housinghumanright.org/why-is-california-yimby-hiding-the-names-of-big-money-contributors/
And if you would like a say to what is built in YOUR neighborhoods join us at https://ourneighborhoodvoices.com/
Councilmember Priforce here. Brian Donahue is correct, I make it clear across all my social media that I do not respond to anonymous profiles/posts/comments. There is nothing wrong with anonymous comments, as freedom of speech is the most important component of any democracy.
DeleteHowever, there is no right to receiving feedback if attacks towards one's character is made, especially by an elected official or former elected official who chooses to be anonymous. I live in Emeryville, but I'm from Brooklyn and there's a cowardice about this kind of behavior that I don't respect, let alone acknowledge.
However, leading with empathy is my motto so if the anonymous commentator would like to reveal themselves, I would be more than happy to address any false statements and correct them either through this medium or offline. I know of no one, especially in Emeryville, who can claim that I have not and would not speak to them.
I am a public servant, entrusted by the people, to serve - first and foremost. Thanks to everyone for your support, for keeping us as your elected officials accountable, and a special shoutout to Jovita Mendoza for reminding me that I am not alone in my fight for an Emeryville free from fear and developer control.
Yimby was started by Tech, specifically YELP and then Facebook. It was conceived as both a way to bring intensive development to the Bay Area to house Tech workers and as an investment vehicle for their profits. It is not based in professional planning understanding of housing and communities but in propaganda like “building more will bring down rents”. How’s that working?
ReplyDeleteEmeryville was very good at building condos at one time and we need to get back to that. We cannot turn housing over to private equity without impoverishing the majority of people.
THANK YOU! For years real estate investors have been pushing a false narrative in order to enrich themselves, by cozying up to City Council and Chamber members.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend that everyone review campaign donations - enough is enough with the dirty local politics. If any council people really care about affordable housing you can:
* demand the state implement a statewide 20% low & very low inclusionary housing ordinance
* write a statewide ordinance banning short term rentals for full homes
* implement a state wide vacancy tax (over 1 million in the state per CensusReporter.org), use the funds to build more low & very low affordable housing.
While many so called "processives" say they want affordable housing they don't - they are pushing SB-423 which will claw back Builder's Remedy requirements:
* reduce affordable housing requirement from the 20% to 10%
* no union labor requirement
* no CEQA review (do you all remember that the IKEA sits on the Sherwin Williams dirty site)
* no coastal protection (i guess they want us to be like Malibu and cut off all beach access for regular poor people)
and more, more, more
Please READ the bills - many local electeds won't go against their state legislators b/c of political aspirations, revenue streams and simply relationships.
I know b/c i'm an elected and deal with this dirty crap every single day. OUT WITH SPECIAL INTEREST IN LOCAL ELECTIONS
Emeryville has more affordable housing options than Brentwood even though it’s a far smaller community. In the last eight years, Brentwood permitted just 18 low- and very low-income homes; Emeryville permitted 164 (115 of those VLI homes!!). I hope Brentwood learns how to facilitate affordable homes as well as Emeryville one day. Opposing new development—or adding unrealistic constraints that make building impossible—will only make housing more expensive.
DeleteEXCACTLY! We have pushed and now have NO IN-LIEU fees and added inclusionary affordable housing. When you have developers that run the electeds you get no affordable housing like it used to be. That is why i'm so passionate, because i saw all the dirty behind closed door stuff.
DeleteAnd why are the affordable housing requirements unrealistic? Because you want to protect their profit margins? Whey do we manage price gouging in other industries but not in housing? if they don't' want to build then let's eminent domain the land and build it ourselves.
And housing is going to keep becoming more and more unaffordable - over 100 bills since 2016 that are written by the builders and the dark money funded YIMBY. Keep drinking the kool-aid, and you will make it worse for the people .
Follow the link to see all the bad bills being pushed thru Sacramento (and don't forget Wiener and Wicks are pushing SB-423 which reduces affordable housing from 20% in SB-35 to 10% - but sure they care about poor people. Trickle-Down isn't working...
https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/california-land-use-housing/
Propose an alternative
ReplyDeleteI'm frankly surprised to hear about John's association with YIMBY this story shows. I know him and I aways took him as supporting the community over corporate power. He should say something to the community about this. If nothing else, this is a bad look for him. I can't speak to the vice mayor.
ReplyDeleteHere's a description that matches my experience of Emeryville far better than the dim vision in the Tattler's latest post.
ReplyDeletePosted on: April 12, 2023
https://www.ci.emeryville.ca.us/civicalerts.aspx?AID=1269
Emeryville is ranked No. 2 on the list of 15 Eco-Forward cities and towns across the U.S by Opendoor, an e-commerce platform for residential real estate!
Living in Emeryville offers residents an opportunity to experience art, innovation, free public transit, and some of the best bicycle routes in California. Filled with shops and restaurants, our bikeable, walkable, and transit-rich community sustainably boasts one of the region’s most robust local economies while maintaining a strong commitment to progressive social, economic and environmental values.
Thanks for posting, Will.
DeleteFor clarification, the first part of your post is from a business. The second paragraph you have forwarded here is directly verbatim from the City of Emeryville. It’s hyperbole bordering on government propaganda.
The bicycling claim from the City is particularly egregious. Our city has dropped the ball on bike safety on our bike boulevards. They have failed to provide the traffic calming that the General Plan prescribes and over the last two years, they have failed to even conduct the traffic counts needed to quantify the traffic calming and that’s also delineated by the General Plan. Never mind the unethical nature of the City’s negligence, if someone gets killed or injured on one of our bike boulevards, we will be severely exposed legally. There will be a Tattler story about this soon. An update Tattler story I should say because I have alerted the City of this problem for more than 10 years ongoing. The lack of interest from the City derives from the fact that the business community does not want the kind of traffic calming that the General Plan calls out. Emeryville is not to be considered ‘progressive’ if they knowingly fail to protect the safety of bicyclists, especially at the behest of people with material interest in not protecting safety.
With all due respect Will, we have a right to expect better than what we’re getting….at least they should be transparent and accountable.
As a city we've moved up from enjoying our unique livability to basking in national recognition, but don't let this deter you from your sourness, Brian. As you've done for so long, please keep channeling your discontent into demands that our local officials do even better.
ReplyDeleteIt’s really not as melodramatic as you imagine Will. My “discontent” is very pedestrian. For purposes of this story, we collectively decided that we want to increase our home ownership over rentals in Emeryville. We’re allowed to do it and so that’s what we should do (until we collectively change our minds). We should not let interlopers representing capital deceive us. They can try to persuade us but we should not let them deceive us. That’s it.
DeleteThank you for this story. It is important to have journalists flush out information about politicians who refuse to share. These two politicians are obviously not wanting to have this made public. This helps us to understand why housing is being built the way it is. Again, thanks.
ReplyDelete