Councilman Bauters' Corporate Campaign Donors Enjoy Beloved Status

 

Tough New Tobacco Regulation Belies Emeryville's Lax Marijuana Regs

Bauters Donor Ohana Cannabis Enjoys Lofted Status

News Analysis

Buoyed by data from the American Cancer Society and a push by Council member John Bauters at the March 19th City Council meeting, the City of Emeryville moved to toughen up its anti-tobacco policies with the introduction of a new ordinance making it a crime to sell tobacco products within 1000 feet of any park, playground or ‘youth oriented facility’ including schools.  Marijuana retailers however, face much less restriction in Emeryville, even though its connection to lung disease including cancer, like tobacco, is undisputed.  A major seller of cannabis in the City, Ohana Cannabis, enjoys a central location on Peladeau Street, directly on one park and less than 1000 feet from at least two other parks, a playground and a school.  Ohana is also a major contributor to Mr Bauters’ election campaigns. 

Large Billboard for Ohana on Powell Street
Legal and perfectly fine for children.

Ohana is a large corporate cannabis retailer with several locations throughout California and has been a major contributor to Mr Bauters’ election campaigns including his current campaign to become an Alameda County Supervisor.  California election campaign law forbids any special treatment towards corporate donors by elected officials of course, but it is noteworthy that Ohana has received very favorable treatment from John Bauters and the City of Emeryville.  

Emeryville has determined that marijuana sales are not appropriate near youth oriented facilities including schools or parks and the municipal code forbids any dispensary to be located within 250 feet.  In 2020 however, Ohana, moving to their current location at 5770 Peladeau Street, requested and received a waiver from Emeryville’s prohibition against dispensaries located near parks.  The City considers the Emeryville Greenway to be a park and Ohana is located directly on the Greenway, specifically the ‘Peladeau Park’ section.  Getting around the 250 foot law and approving the deal, the City Council found, “The Greenway, by its design, is not meant to serve all age groups” and therefore it is unlikely to have children present, according to the October 22nd staff report.  And with that finding the Council approved Ohana for that site. 

Billboards for Tobacco: Illegal
Dangerous for children.

 

The Peladeau Park section of the Greenway, completed in 2018, was built as a “gathering/picnic area with a plaza, pathways, synthetic lawn and play area” according to the City’s website. The City constructed the park with $800,000 in California State Parks and Recreation funds as well as funds from Emeryville's Park and Transportation Impact fees. Nothing was made so as to preclude children from using the park because to do so, Emeryville would run afoul of the law that requires public parks to be made for all people.  

And thus, the power of the business lobby is revealed.

Ohana is using its resources to help it conduct business like many other businesses do.  The law in Emeryville reflects the lobbying efforts of favored businesses and so whereas shops selling tobacco will not be allowed to be within 1000 feet of places where children congregate, marijuana sellers must have a 250 foot buffer and Ohana with its political campaign donations, specifically, no buffer at all.  The children don't have a lobby.  

By law, the money given to Council member Bauters over the years can have no relationship to any favorable treatment of Ohana Cannabis, as everyone knows. 

Council member Bauters did not return calls for this story.

City Hall to Shut Down Public Phone-in Comments in Reaction to Nazis

 At City Hall, It's Nazis, 1, the Council, 0

Opinion

Emeryville City Manager
Paul Buddenhagen
Democracy must suffer in order to
go after Nazis or men with cameras.

The Nazis are back!  The same group of five Florida based residents are once again phoning in their special brand of hate to our Council Chambers.  Tuesday night, hoping to make a bigger impact, they kept rotating between themselves, using different names and trying to disguise their voices so they could turn the five of them into 15 commenters.  Mayor Courtney Welch kept playing 'wack-a-mole', cutting their mics at the first whiff of disruptive hate speech but a new one would simply take his place albeit with a new improvised voice pattern.  This childishness flummoxed the Mayor who kept allowing the “new” ones to speak, even though it was obvious it was the same five, taking turns over and over. 

After the theatrics finally died down, the City Manager Paul Buddenhagen made a hair-on-fire announcement: all citizen phone-in comments are to be curtailed at council, planning commission and committee meetings “for the foreseeable future” he said.  Take that, Nazis!

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way.  The popular phone-in option at City meetings started in 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic and was continued on afterward, constituting what came to be known as “hybrid” meetings, meaning in-person comments and phone-in comments are both available to the public.   After City Hall noted a substantial uptick in citizen participation, the hybrid meeting format became settled and permanent Emeryville policy by Council fiat.  The idea was that a much greater number of people would attend meetings if they were made more convenient.  And it worked. 

But then the Nazis came to town.

The Emeryville City Council is right to disallow disruptive hate speech and they should cut the mic of anyone doing it.  Racist hate or any speech targeting people for who they are is not public meeting free speech but profanity IS Constitutionally guaranteed free speech.  But City Hall is now taking that out too.  Perhaps seeing the Nazi ‘crisis’ as an opportunity, the delicate Emeryville City government is now also stoping the use of profanity for citizens, so perturbed they are over these four letter word using Nazis.  This is another panic driven over-reaction and we will challenge this.

To react like the City Council is doing is to put the Nazis in the driver’s seat.  With the harsh anti-democratic prohibitions in place, it can fairly be said these Nazis are now driving public policy in Emeryville.  This kind of over the top reactionary response from City Hall is just what the haters want.  The Council needs to calm the fuck down.  The use of profanity is a Constitutional right.  Racists and fascists are everywhere in America now.  We’re not going to let Nazis destroy our city and we’re not going to let the City Council destroy our city (in order to save it).  We’re going to continue on with democratic governance here, just as we always have.  

So City Council, reel in your City Manager and let the Nazis phone-in and speak.  And let the democracy loving people phone-in and speak and let them all use Constitutionally supported free speech.  When the Trump crowd spews their meeting disrupting hate filled venom, cut their mics.  Don’t make Emeryville residents suffer a major loss of access in order to try to strike a blow against Nazis. Nazism should not be on par with our Emeryville government.  We’re supposed to be better than them.    

Emery Sued For School Campus Rapist

 Emery School District Sued For Negligence in Campus Rape Case

A San Jose based law firm announced yesterday they are representing a 16 year old Emery High School girl who alleges she was forcibly raped on campus by a school district employee last November.  The complaint for childhood sexual damages, filed with the Superior Court of California at Alameda County today, seeks damages for sexual assault of a minor, negligent hiring by District employees and negligent supervision by the District.  The perpetrator, Daniel Parham, a 2020 graduate of Emery High School who took employment at the school as a security guard, was arrested and charged with statutory rape according to a press release issued by the law firm Cerri, Boskovich & Allard. He posted bail and currently awaits trial.  

Lax Security at Emery School Campus
This unattended self closing gate was left propped
open Tuesday, something that happens "all the time"
according to a City employee.

The complaint alleges Emery employees breached their duty to protect the safety of the students in their care by “permitting the plaintiff to be isolated [with the perpetrator] in the senior center and/or the science room and/or the gym office behind closed/locked doors and/or failing to detect and deter such isolation.”   Also alleged, Mr Parham “groomed” the girl, discussing intimate topics with her over one-on-one electronic communications. After gaining the Plaintiff’s trust, he went on to sexually assault her (including intercourse) on school grounds on at least three different occasions from late October 2023 through early November 2023.

The security guard had been frequently groping other students and allegedly further sexually assaulted at least one other minor female on “multiple” occasions on campus. 

Emery has been negligent when students have been sexually assaulted on campus before.   In 2017, a previous Superintendent failed to report to the police an incident as is required by California law.

A spokesperson for Emery’s Superintendent, Quiauna Scott, told the Tattler the District would issue a statement “next week”.  

City Manager Will Not Re-Start Regularly Scheduled Meetings With Citizens

Formerly Popular 'Coffee With the City Manger' Program Cancelled Indefinitely

Emeryville’s City Manager, Paul Buddenhagen, has decided to not re-start the popular ‘Coffee With the City Manager’ public events conducted once a month at City Hall before the pandemic, at least for the time being.  The one hour, open-to-the-public sessions were conducted monthly in the City Manager’s office until 2020, allowing citizens to freely interact with and ask questions at the seat of government power in Emeryville.   The program was started in 2014 and continued on for about six years, initiated by then City Manager Sabrina Landreth in response to a Tattler challenge.  Mr Buddenhagen has refused to say if he will bring the program back someday.

Emeryville City Manager Paul Buddenhagen
Democracy can be messy and uncomfortable.
He has not said if he will ever re-start the 
once popular coffee events.

Before Ms Landreth, Emeryville’s City Manager John Flores, for years, regularly scheduled meetings with Emeryville private citizen, the power broker and Chamber of Commerce Board member, John Gooding every Monday morning at 9:00 for one hour to discuss anything on Mr Gooding’s mind.  The content of those years of meetings were off record and kept strictly private.  Uncomfortable with the lack of transparency of that, the Tattler suggested that perhaps regular people, ALL people should also have a time to interface one-on-one with their government.  The secretive Mr Flores was not fond of that idea and he refused it but the democratically inclined Sabrina Landreth agreed and she began the program that ultimately became very popular with Emeryville citizens.  

Every City Manager from Sabrina Landreth up until the pandemic either liked the idea of the Coffee With the City Manager or they felt it would be too costly politically to stop the popular program.  The pandemic appears to have provided the perfect, if quiet reset to secrecy at City Hall for Mr Buddenhagen.   

Mr Buddenhagen has shown himself to be prone to secrecy in his job.  He closed off most of City Hall to the people following a moral panic because of a man with a camera in 2023.  He has refused to say if the people's hall will ever be open to the people again.

The Police Department re-started their ‘Coffee With a Cop’ program after also ending it during the pandemic.  The police coffee program was also started up in 2014, inspired by the ‘Coffee With the City Manager’. 

Ms Landreth, arguably the most progressive City Manager in Emeryville history, famously exalted “A transparent government is an accountable government” as she welcomed people into her office at the opening of her first meeting with the citizens.   

Hate Speech at Emeryville City Council Meeting

Neo-Nazi Hate Fest in Emeryville Council Chambers

It was bound to happen here eventually.  Trump’s America came bursting into the Emeryville City Council chambers in a co-ordinated attack Tuesday, out-of-town neo-Nazis phoning in racist public comments; calling out Jewish, gay, transgender, and Black people.  The group responsible, the ‘Goyim Defense League’ is identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a Florida based hate group.  All manner of hateful epithets including the ’N word’ were used by the speakers in our Council Chambers.

Five people identified themselves with fake names and four were shut down by Mayor Courtney Welch for violating Emeryville’s prohibition for public commenters using “threatening, profane or abusive language which disrupts the orderly conduct of meetings”. 

Mug shot of former Petaluma resident
neo-Nazi leader Jon Minadeo.
Mayor Welch cut his mic.

 

The same five people (sometimes using different names), have been calling in for public comment at city council meetings in Blue States across America including but not limited to San Francisco, Petaluma, Sonoma, Sacramento, El Cerrito, San Jose, Walnut Creek, Laguna Beach, Monterey, Saratoga, Walla Walla WA, Snoqualmie WA, Framingham MA and Norwalk CT.  At the January 24th council meeting in Walla Walla, one of the speakers identifying himself as ‘Andy Zemite’ but in Emeryville went by ‘Rex Yuden’, yelled “Heil Hitler” just before his mic was cut.  That speaker may have been the group’s leader, former Petaluma resident Jon Minadeo. 

Goyim Defense League (GDL) is a small network of virulently antisemitic provocateurs led by Minadeo  who moved from Petaluma to Florida in December 2022. GDL is a parody of the anti-hate Anti-Defamation League’s name by replacing “Anti-Defamation” with “Goyim Defense” -- “Goyim” being a disparaging Yiddish and Hebrew word for non-Jews.

Minadeo was arrested in 2023 and jailed 30 days for illegally distributing racist literature in Florida.

Former Emeryville resident Marc Albert reports on the group disrupting the Petaluma council meeting:  https://krcb.org/2023110793047/news-feed/petaluma-to-weigh-resuming-public-comment-following-racist-disruptions

The Walnut Creek attack can be seen here: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/neo-nazi-walnut-creek-city-council-white-supremacist-antisemitic/

Watch at your own risk.  Contains extreme hate speech.  City Council Meeting March 5th, 2024  Hate speech starts 1:25:10 and extends to 1:34:50:

Bauters Comes in 2nd, Will Face Nikki Fortunado Bas in November

 Breaking News

Bauters to Face Run Off Election in November

Tonight, with 74 of 74 precincts reporting, Emeryville City Council member John Bauters will be heading to a November run off in his Alameda County Board of Supervisor’s race, having failed to secure enough votes to win the election outright.  Mr Bauters needed to win more than 50% of the vote in northern Alameda County to become the next District 5 Supervisor but he only was able to garner about 20% according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office.  Oakland City Council member Nikki Fortunato Bas will also be in the run off election with Mr Bauters, having secured approximately 27% of the vote today.

The November run off election will now become a do or die for Mr Bauters’ political career as a loss today to secure a greater than 50% victory means he will not be allowed to run for re-election to the Emeryville City Council in November , a race he had announced he planned on making back before Keith Carson, the current District 5 Supervisor suddenly announced last December he would retire upon completion of his current term in November 2024.

The failure to win tonight highlights a real gamble Mr Bauters took when he threw his hat into the ring last December.   If he loses in November, he loses everything and he will go back to just being citizen John Bauters, stripped of all his official political power.  At least until the next election.