March 5th, 47th Street to Transition to Steve Dain Drive

 City Honors Fired Transgender Teacher After Emery School District Balks 

Introducing Steve Dain Drive

School Board Digs In Its Heels Against Honoring Its Fired Teacher

The City of Emeryville has announced it will officially change the name of 47th Street to Steve Dain Drive on March 5th when employees from the public works department add the new signs to the existing street sign posts.  Both the old street name and the new name will be posted for a period of 18 months the City reports but they will start calling the street by its new name in March.  Only the portion of 47th Street West of San Pablo Avenue will get the name change.  

In an announcement made last May, the City took on the task of honoring the late Steve Dain, a teacher at Emery Unified School District who was fired by the district in 1976 after he surgically transitioned from a woman to a man.  City Council members expressed anguish that Emery School Board members had stopped a grassroots drive last year to honor the teacher the district had fired for “immorality” and it was suggested the City could act on its own by renaming the street, correcting the historic wrong. 

The district’s high school is located on the future Steve Dain Drive, the same school where Mr Dain taught 45 years ago.  The AC Transit bus yard is the only other entity that will have a Steve Dain Drive address.

School Board President
Brynnda Collins
Refuses to comment regarding
the district's role in the
firing of its transgender teacher
for "immorality".

The City Council took over the job of acknowledging Mr Dain after the School Board reversed themselves upon having made an initial move towards naming their newly remodeled gym for the fired teacher.  Since then the Board has reneged on a plan to pass an official resolution apologizing for firing the teacher who had once been awarded the title of teacher of the year at Emery.  Notably, the Board’s refusal to acknowledge the wrong done against Mr Dain by the district comes at the same time they have been honing their public message of "inclusionary equity".

The City has not announced plans for any official March celebration associated with the name change but there is talk of a street closing block party perhaps in the fall of 2021, depending on the status of the COVID pandemic by then.

Both AC Transit and Emery Unified School District have been notified of the impending renaming of the street City officials said.

School Board president Brynnda Collins and Superintendent of the Schools Quiauna Scott were both contacted to comment on the refusal of the district to account for the firing of Steve Dain and its failure to apologize but both leaders refused to respond.  

City/School District Fails on Acknowledgment of Wrongdoing Against Transgender Teacher

 What To Do About Steve Dain?

Emeryville Settles on Inaction 

Opinion/News Analysis

Hey Emeryville!  November 20th was national Transgender Day of Remembrance.  A day that honors the memory of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.  What did you do to observe it?

The answer is nothing.  Nothing was done by our government in our name to observe the date or even to set its own terrible record right with regard to the mistreatment of transgender people.  Regardless that in 1976, Emeryville fired a transgender teacher for who he was and with lots of recent talk about that not representing who we are emanating from our government, nothing is being done.

Still 47th Street
The City of Emeryville said this sign would 
read 'Steve Dain Drive' by this time.

The just passed national Transgender Day of Remembrance November 20th, followed Transgender Awareness Week November 13th through the 19th; an auspicious time for a ribbon cutting ceremony if there ever was one to reassert our Emeryville values.  But that was not enough to get Mayor Christian Patz to follow through with his pledge to re-name 47th Street Steve Dain Drive.  Mr Patz, who’s mayoralty ends on December 1st, took up the charge for the City, promising the name change after Emery School District failed to acknowledge the wrongdoing of the firing of Mr Dain.

Call it just another failure to honor Steve Dain, who was humiliated by the government here in Emeryville, for being transgender.  That humiliation goes on today following his 2007 passing.  With neither government agency able to do the right thing by Mr Dain and therefore all transgender people, the humiliation is on us, the people of Emeryville.  Indeed, WE fired Mr Dain for who he was and WE refuse to apologize here and now for that act of public cowardice. 

Transgender Flag Flying
at Emeryville City Hall
As far as Emeryville is 
ready to go at this point.

Surprisingly, Mayor Patz claims that 47th Street is already named Steve Dain Drive (it is not).  He says he has done it and he was given an award for it in September.  At the 8th annual East Bay Stonewall Pride Awards ceremony on September 13th, Mr Patz, accepting the award, told the group,  "I worked with the School Board to honor Mr. Dain, but just as in the 70s, there are too many bigots in public office.  Thankfully, I work with an amazing City Council and together, we were able to rename the street in front of the school Steve Dain Drive."

It's all talk now in Emeryville.  Two elected officials, Christian Patz of the City Council and Susan Donaldson of the School District, rode in to set Emeryville right but both dropped the ball.  Mr Patz let his mayoralty run out and Board member Donaldson wrote a public letter, posted in the Tattler in May, stating that the Board would finally and officially apologize for the firing of Mr Dain.  But without any interest among her School Board colleagues, Ms Donaldson has also quietly dropped the issue.

The electeds in Emeryville (at least two of them) have a message for you Steve Dain: The people of the City of Emeryville didn’t care about you when you were alive and we sure don’t care about you now.  And with that, it seems it's time for Emeryville to move on.  With this unpleasant issue forgotten, it’s back to brunch in Emeryville apparently.

School Board Member Proposes Official District Apology for Steve Dain Firing

School Board Member Donaldson: District Needs To Apologize for "Unjust Firing"

1976 Termination of 'Teacher of the Year' Still Isn't Resolved 

at Emery

A week of rapidly moving events at the Emery Unified School District including bad press from the Bay Area's LGBTQ community have culminated in a board member announcing she will propose the district draft an official apology for the 1976 firing of an Emery teacher who after gender confirmation surgery, transitioned to a man, ending in his termination for what the district called at the time, “immoral conduct”.  School board member Susan Donaldson said she will propose to her colleagues at the beleaguered district they write an official letter of apology to acknowledge the wrong done by the district against its former employee, Steve Dain in his “unjust firing”.

Emery School Board Member
Susan Donaldson

The announcement comes after the Emeryville City Council last week pledged to rename the street fronting the high school where he taught, Steve Dain Drive’.  The City was moved to action a year after the School Board failed to act on promises to honor Mr Dain in some other capacity following a board vote against naming the school gymnasium after Mr Dain.
Mr Dain died in 2007.

Current board president Brynnda Collins drew the ire of the LGBTQ community and the news outlet, the Bay Area Reporter during the naming debate last year after she reprimanded her colleague, then board president Barbara Inch for proposing the district honor Mr Dain with the gym name at all, calling it abjectly “political”.  She proceeded to call down Mr Dain, telling her colleagues that instead they should name the gym after “a pillar of the community”.  It was a comment that City Council member Patz called “transphobia”.
Ms Collins refused to elaborate or clarify her ‘political’ charge for purposes of this story.

The idea for honoring Mr Dain initially came some six years ago from then board member Christian Patz who learned of the fired teacher that earned ‘teacher of the year’ commendation from the district the year before they fired him.  Mr Patz proposed naming the newly rebuilt gym after Mr Dain who had been a PE teacher at Emery.  The concept did not go over well with his colleagues who subsiquently deep sixed the idea.  It wasn’t until later, after Mr Patz was elected to the Emeryville City Council and his spouse, Barbara Inch was elected to the School Board, the idea was brought up again.  The board however still resisted the idea of naming the gym by fiat with a simple up or down vote as they could have.  Instead the board members voted to consider other people to name the gym after and then do ranked choice voting.  That vote allowed three choices and Steve Dain lost to a former coach at the high school, Elio Abrami.

Board President Brynnda Collins
Naming the school gym after
the former gym teacher
Steve Dain is "political".

Steve Dain came in second place in a field of 12 choices.

Board member Brynnda Collins voted for Mr Dain as her third choice while member Cruz Vargas didn’t vote for Mr Dain at all, offering instead a vote for Steph Curry, a person who has no association with Emery Unified School District.
Mr Vargas refused to return calls from the Tattler.

President Collins, aware of a public relations kerfuffle stemming from last year’s rejection of Mr Dain followed by last week’s City Council street renaming, has been contacting local leaders (and the Tattler) to let them know she is happy the City is renaming 47th Street Steve Dain Drive.  However, she refused to comment to the Tattler whether the District would go ahead with their promise to honor Mr Dain in some other way as they promised they would last year.

Here is a portion of the text of Board Member Donaldson’s letter proposing an official apology from the district:

I will be proposing to the school board that we issue an official letter of apology to Steve Dain’s family regarding his unjust firing in 1976.  I am in support of the city naming a street after him and am so happy to see that honor, but I would like the school board to officially apologize for the action it took many years ago.  As a board, we have updated our policies to reflect that we will provide a "Safe, Nondiscriminatory School Environment for Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming” students and staff.  Now we must be the change that we ask our students to be by acknowledging this wrong from our past and apologizing for it.  There is more work to do, but an apology is a start.

Susan Donaldson
Member, Emery Unified School District Board of Trustees

Elio Abrami Gym Name: Not Political (presumably)
However, the newly named Elio Abrami Gymnasium
will have a Steve Dain Drive address.

Breaking News: Council to Name 47th Street 'Steve Dain Drive'

Council Moves to Honor Former Emery Teacher After School District Twice Fails

Breaking (City Hall):
Tonight the City Council moved to change the name of a portion of a street in town after an Emeryville PE teacher that was fired by the Emery Unified School District for “immoral conduct” in 1976 after he had gender confirmation surgery, transitioning to a man.  The unanimous vote  to rename 47th Street between San Pablo Avenue and Doyle Street ‘Steve Dain Drive’, came after the Emery School Board failed to name the school gymnasium honoring Mr Dain last summer following a tumultuous public debate there.  The vote tonight directs the staff to bring the issue back to the Council for the final OK at a future meeting that hasn’t been announced.  Emery High School and the gymnasium are located on 47th Street, a piece of infrastructure owned by the City of Emeryville.

Council member John Bauters was the most animated among his colleagues during tonight’s discussion, stating he found the School Board had “reached a new level of disappointment” and that he was “very unhappy” over their refusal to make amends for the unpropitious firing of the Emery teacher, “terminated for who they were” Mr Bauters said.  However the lone School Board supporter of the naming of the gym to honor Mr Dain last year, Board member Susan Donaldson, expressed support for the renaming of the street in a phoned in comment to the Council tonight.  “I was on the losing side” Board member Donaldson told the Council recalling last year’s School Board retrenchment on the Steve Dain issue, but she praised the Council’s vote to “right this wrong” done by the district to the former Emery teacher.

Former Emery Teacher of the Year Steve Dain
His courage will finally be remembered for all
time with the naming of our street in his honor.

The short section of 47th Street to be renamed has the AC Transit’s bus yard facility and the Emery gym and high school on it, fittingly the same address where Mr Dain was a teacher for ten years.  Notably, during his time at Emery, Mr Dain was elected teacher of the year before he was terminated by the district.  He died in 2007 at the age of 68.
There are no residents or businesses located on the portion of the street to be renamed.

After the school district balked on naming the gymnasium after Steve Dain last year, Board members announced they would seek to honor him in some other unspecified way but they failed to do that, a fact noted by Council member Bauters tonight.  Councilwoman Dianne Martinez raised the issue of Emeryville’s legacy with the renaming of the street, recalling that Steve Dain is “an important part of our history.”
But it was Mayor Christian Patz that seemed to best capture the mood of the Council, “you should be allowed to be who you are” he said as he cast his YES vote.

The City Council will make the vote official at a subsequent meeting followed by a street sign replacement, probably this summer.

'Safe Routes to School'? Maybe, But Not After the 'Flashing Beacon' Lightbulbs Burn Out

Q: How Many Public Works Employees Does it Take to Screw In a Light Bulb?

A: More Than 13

Opinion
Emeryville City Hall tells us they care about children.  But how much do they really care?  They care enough to apply for a $500,000 grant to install crosswalk flashing warning lights as part of a "Safe Routes to School" federal program.  Unfortunately, they don't care enough to change the lightbulbs when they burn out.  Changing lightbulbs is not a task the 13 employees at Emeryville's Public Works Department is adroit enough to handle.

Safe Routes to Schools?
43rd Street at San Pablo Avenue-
The existing in-pavement flashers are
being removed but the flashing sign
beacons will remain.
Safe....until the light bulbs
burn out.

After securing the grant money, the City is directing the work now starting on three intersections along San Pablo Avenue at 43rd, 45th and 47th Streets in anticipation of the eventual completion of the Center of 'Community' Life at 47th and San Pablo.  These are the crossings children will be using to get to school and button activated flashing beacon signs are the central part of the scope of work.

The problem is we've seen this story before and it doesn't end well...
Simple maintenance and follow through is not big at the Public Works Department.  Consider the crosswalk at 43rd Street and San Pablo.  Ten years ago, anguished parents appealed to the City to help children safely cross that busy street near Anna Yates Elementary School.  The City responded with a $20,000 program to install button activated flashing beacons on signs and in asphalt pavement embedded lights at that intersection; a vast improvement.
(On a side note, now, only the flashing beacon signs will remain at the 43rd Street crossing; the pavement embedded beacons are being removed as part of the new Safe Routes to Schools program, leaving the claims of improved safety in question, at least for that intersection.)
The last flashing beacon light bulb finally burned out a couple of years ago at the San Pablo Avenue/43rd Street crosswalk leaving parents and citizens attempting the traverse at the mercy of busy California State Route 123 (aka San Pablo Avenue) drivers.  Complaints to the Public Works Department over the years about burned out lightbulbs have fallen on deaf ears, all the hyperbolic talk of child welfare and safe routes to schools notwithstanding.

We're not sure why the Emery Unified School District was so insistent to place our new elementary school directly on the busiest street in Emeryville; San Pablo Avenue with its 1600 vehicles per hour speeding through these intersections, but now we're stuck with it.  Presumably, with the new flashing beacons provided by the federal government, children will be able to safely cross (so says the School District)....safe until the light bulbs start burning out.
Unfortunately again, the safety of our children is placed in the hands of the can't-be-bothered-to-change-lightbulbs Public Works Department and its Director Maurice Kaufman.  Too bad we can't get the feds to commit to changing the bulbs...then maybe we really would have safe routes to schools.  All these new lightbulbs being installed is going to be too much for Maurice Kaufman to handle.

How many Public Works employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?  We wish it were merely a bad joke.  The actual truthful answer to that question; more than 13, isn't funny.

Vexing for the likes of Emeryville
Now what do we do?

Emeryville Planning Director Doubles as Artist

Charlie Bryant, Artist

Interesting but his work is a bit derivative   

Opinion/Art Criticism

Charles Bryant
Emeryville Surrealist
"Ceci n'est pas un arbre"
"This is Not a Tree"  2013

Who could have guessed our own Planning Director, Charlie Bryant, would emerge as an appropriationalist artist of the surrealist genre?
Art lovers at last Thursday night's Planning Commission were treated to a Charlie Bryant premier, an original art work he unveiled from his dais he calls "This is Not a Tree", a semantic flight of fancy homage to the well known 20th century Belgian surrealist, Rene Magritte.  But whereas Magritte's seminal 1929 work, 'This is not a pipe' is oil on canvas, Mr Bryant's 2013 piece is purely conceptual in nature.

"Upright Bushes"

Rene Magritte
Belgian Surrealist
"This is not a pipe" 1929

Charlie unveiled his would be demuirgic conceptual art during his normal day-to-day work of city planning in Emeryville, in this case at the July 25th Planning Commission meeting. As the Emery School District was presenting their application for the contentious Center of 'Community' Life project, one permit dealt with the cutting down of all the existing trees on 47th  Street.  Since Emeryville has an Urban Forestry Ordinance and permission must be sought to cut down trees, Mr Bryant stepped in to reassure any tree loving Commissioners that the decision before them wasn't as dire as it seemed, "They're not really even trees [on 47th Street],  they're more like upright bushes" he told them.

As Michel Foucault, the late French post-structuralist philosopher and social theorist reminds us in his dissertations regarding Magritte; this work is a rhetorical gestalt, a 'sign symbol' that forces the viewer to confront seemingly nihilistic linguistic and semiotic ambiguities.  The appropriated phenomenological asymptotic epistemologies inherent in Mr Bryant's work can be seen as less than seminal in this regard.
His 'tree period' really amounts to nothing more than a cheap rehash of 85 year old ideas.

Perhaps Emeryville residents should see this as it really is: less art (or even city planning) and more deceitful cheapening of the public commons.

This is really not a tree

Center of 'Community' Life: Citizens See Neighborhood Impacts, City Sees Nothing

Why Won't the City Look After Our Interests?

General Plan Deep Sixed

Where Was Charlie Bryant?

Opinion
What are our expectations of our City Hall?
If nothing else, we expect them to fight for our interests.  Specifically, when we put $21 million of our money down for a project, we expect that City Hall will make sure our money goes to support our interests, not the School District's interests.
So why when the School District took our $21 million and proposed how our part, the City's part of the Center of "Community" Life (ECCL) would be built, City Hall had nothing to say?  They were given a forum to speak up at the Mitigated Negative Declaration Special School Board meeting on Monday.  They were expected to make sure the citizen's interests would be forwarded, but the City said nothing.

It's not as if there were no improvements to be made for the residents with the contentious project.  In fact an ad hoc group of unpaid independent citizens did just that.  They saw what the School District was proposing to do with our money and they made 18 pages of recommendations to better improve the project for residents while the City sat on its hands.

Charlie Bryant, 'I See Nothing'

City of Emeryville's Planning Director
Charlie Bryant
MIA: I see nothing... nothing!

The City of Emeryville actually did raise one concern.  In a letter to the School District,  Charlie Bryant, the head of the Planning Department, representing the citizens, asked the District to clarify that while the School District was telling neighbors that they would have approximately one athletic event per week at the Center of 'Community' Life and would turn off the outdoor lights by 9pm, the City, in its letter wanted to make clear that it might have City-sponsored events there and plans to keep the lights on until 10pm.  Since our $21 million is paying for the field and the lights after all.

That’s it as far as any resident's concerns are concerned from Charlie Bryant and the City as they as they hand over our $21 million to the School District.

Residents, by themselves, raised all 18 pages of concerns. In particular they explained the numerous inconsistencies that the Center of 'Community' Life  proposal has with the City’s General Plan. The residents were right to speak out for nearly every side of this project as it turns out, is inconsistent with Emeryville's General Plan or specific plans such as the Bike/Ped plan. 

General Plan Ignored By City
The General Plan calls for an east-west greenway on 53^rd street with various pedestrian and bicycle-friendly features, the General Plan would require a "connected city" that breaks up super blocks and that would have a bicycle-pedestrian path on the western edge of the property, and the General Plan calls for 47^th Street to be a key 'Green Street'.

The ECCL plans are inconsistent with all of these and don’t even show the bike/ped path in 'Phase 2' of the project. 

In addition to Charlie Bryant, we have an entire Building and Planning staff here at City Hall that ought to be experts on our City’s General Plan and that ought to be speaking up for residents in an effort to see that the General Plan is followed.  Instead, this job was left to residents alone, while the City of Emeryville acted as the School District’s accomplice in furthering the fiction that the ECCL project could not possibly be improved by more thoughtful comments.

Who's minding the store here?  Mr Bryant and company are paid after all to look out after our interests.

So where residents themselves see 18 pages of improvements they expect to get for their $21 million, Charlie Bryant and City Hall, who represent us, sees nothing.

                                       

Center of Community Life Violates City Mandated Environmental Requirements

Dominoes Start to Fall at Community Center

Newly released CEQA environmental impact documents reveal Emeryville's Center of Community Life will not meet the City's General Plan requirements for a planned 'Greenway' on 53rd Street and a planned 'Pedestrian Priority Zone' and 'Green Street' for 53rd and 47th Streets the Tattler has learned.  Additionally, the School District announced Monday that it plans on providing only 98 bike parking spaces, 24 less than recommended at the community center/school.

The Green Street and Greenway mandates are General Plan concepts designed to encourage walking and bicycling on certain key streets.  The Plan identified these streets to help connect the city's neighborhoods by calming vehicle traffic, providing generous plantings, consistent street furniture and such to make walking and biking more pleasant and by increasing sidewalk widths.  The Center of Community Life is so cramped on its site, the School District has pushed it out and impinged on space needed to accommodate the Green Street and Greenway designations it was revealed Monday.

The Pedestrian Priority Zone, too is an idea the General Plan identified to help pedestrians in five key areas of the city.  The goal according to the General Plan is to make pedestrian safety and movement a top priority in these identified zones.  The plans for the Center of Community Life have been revealed to negate the Pedestrian Priority Zone designation as well, mostly by sidewalk constrictions.  The Pedestrian Priority Zones are meant to service "neighborhood centers and schools".

The bike parking requirements (122 spaces) were calculated by the city's Bicycle Pedestrian Committee using a 10% metric; bike parking spaces for 10% of the daily users of the site.  This represents an increase in bike parking over other developments in town owing to the fact that the Center of Community Life contains a school and owing to the fact that it has a designed lifespan of 50 years.  The Committee is looking farther into the future and imagining increased bike use.  The School District says  the site is too cramped to allow for more than 98 bike parking spaces.

The Center of Community Life environmental impacts have not stopped with the degradation of the green status of 53rd and 47th Streets, the School District has battled over the 'ECCL Path', a bike/pedestrian path alongside the school site, a General Plan required amenity they don't wish to build.  And in a blow to sustainability, the School District announced too in February it would not meet LEED certification with the Center of Community Life.  City Hall has been encouraging sustainable building, including LEED certified building for our town.  The School District claimed it doesn't have enough money to build with an eye towards sustainability.

CEQA, or the California Environmental Quality Act is a statute that requires municipal and other agencies to identify significant environmental impacts.  LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a voluntary consensus-based market-driven program.