Councilwoman West: "Blackmailer"

Councilman Kurt Brinkman Accuses Colleague of Blackmail

Opinion

Blackmailer?  Or...

Oh Jennifer West, how could you?  We are so very shocked and disappointed!   After more than four years on the City Council, we thought we had come to know you as a decent and reasonable person.  Now we come to find out you're nothing but an unethical blackmailer.
Either that or your colleague, Councilman Kurt Brinkman is a retrograde buffoon making capricious accusations.

It's getting bad on the Emeryville City Council.
We haven't seen collegiality dip this low on the Council since the days of Councilman Ken Bukowski.

Buffoon.
We report, you decide.

Tuesday, Mr Brinkman accused Ms West of blackmail from the Council dais after she said she would have a hard time voting to hand over $21 million of City money to the School District to build the Center of 'Community' Life (ECCL) on San Pablo Avenue without assurances that a General Plan mandated bike/pedestrian path along the western edge of that project be built.   The Council voted in 2013 to order the School District to build the required path, and the District responded with a plan to build the path in 'phase two' of the ECCL project, a construction phase that even the School District itself admits may never happen.  Mr Brinkman who had voted with the minority in 2013 to amend Emeryville's General Plan to permanently eliminate the path, saw Ms West's attempts Tuesday to fund the path with Capital Improvement Fund money sooner rather than later (or ever) as unethical, "blackmail" he called it, a charge Councilwoman Nora Davis agreed with.
For her part, Ms West seemed baffled by the accusation from her colleague.  Afterwards she told the Tattler, "I'm trying to improve ECCL so we can be proud of it and to show how much we support bikes and pedestrians."
Where Kurt Brinkman levels the charge blackmail, some more reasonable people might call Ms West's action with regard to the ECCL bike/ped path as an entirely proper negotiation with her colleagues to fund something she finds valuable.

"The Tattler is Fox News.  The Tattler lied
when it reported I have voted to tear
down buildings in Emeryville" 

Councilman Brinkman it seems is going off the rails of late.  He's getting rather testy.  With his resignation at the end of his term in November announced last week,  Kurt granted an interview with the blog  E'Ville Eye wherein the accusations flowed freely.
He took pains to explain he never reads the Tattler but when he happened to read the May 22nd story condemning him for being part of the City Council majority responsible for demolishing old buildings in town, he was outraged.  He told the E'Ville Eye he hasn't ever voted to tear down any old buildings in Emeryville.  He held up his own home built in 1910 as proof; instead of tearing it down, "I restored it" he said.
Left unmentioned was his 2011 vote to tear down the City Hall defined "architecturally significant" turn of the century brick Golden Gate Key Building on San Pablo Avenue.  Or another early twentieth century brick building deemed architecturally and historically significant by City Hall at 3900 Adeline Street, now slated for demolition after Kurt voted to move forward with the wrecking ball last year.

3706 San Pablo Avenue
The site of the "architecturally significant"
former Golden Gate Key Building, circa 1915
"Well. I...uh...um...I don't like to tear down...
um...what I mean to say is...um...uh"- Kurt Brinkman

Councilman Brinkman told the E'Ville Eye that criticism of his policy prescriptions is something he accepts even though it amounts to "verbal diarrhea".  He saved the most venom for the most frequent critic of his policies; the Emeryville Tattler and its editor, reserving the epithet "the Rush Limbaugh of Emeryville" although he couldn't think of an instance where the Tattler had posted something untruthful.

But after Tuesday's performance and after Mr Brinkman deviously shut down a democratic citizen's grass roots ballot initiative meant to allow Emeryville voters to decide for themselves about removing the City's infamous Business Tax Cap in 2011, and reported by the Tattler, we have to ask, who's the real Rush Limbaugh here?    

'Transit' Center Project Mysteriously Missing from Emeryville Capital Improvement Presentation

'Transit' Center Pushed Down the 
Memory Hole

Opinion
If the City of Emeryville planned on spending $4.2 million on a specific capital improvement project between the years 2014 and 2019, wouldn't you think that project would appear in a City Hall produced document for public edification entitled 'Capital Improvement Program Fiscal Years 2014-15 to 2018-19'?   Especially if smaller projects representing less public money were highlighted in the document?
That's what we thought.  So we were surprised when the City Staff gave a thorough account of planned capital spending and the 'Transit' Center, a Wareham Development project planned for Horton Street with it's $4.2 million publicly purchased amenity of four Amtrak bus bays, was completely  left out of the document handed out to the public and discussed yesterday morning.  Other  projects, like the Senior Center Rehabilitation at $1.9 million, the Peninsula Fire Station Renovation at $1.3 million, the Art Center at $3.9 million were explained in detail by the Staff but strangely, the 'Transit' Center at $4.2 million was not.  
"It was an oversight", Public Works Director Maurice Kaufman explained when asked.

An "Oversight"... Was it Really?

The City used the Saturday meeting to explain about the Capital Improvement Program which is essentially a 'wish list' for City projects to benefit the people.  The City also wished to elicit comment from the public about the CIP.
They took pains to describe the negative repercussions on the CIP as a result of the demise of the Emeryville Redevelopment Agency (RDA) and about how the City had rescued some projects from the clutches of the State of California when Sacramento declared Redevelopment Agencies illegal state-wide last year.  Emeryville had four projects so rescued and some former RDA funds were permitted to be unlocked.  The State is basically letting us use our own money to fund these projects. The four projects are the Center of 'Community' Life on San Pablo Avenue, the Art Center at City Hall, the South Bayfront Ped/Bike Bridge over the railroad tracks and the 'Transit' Center project.   Other projects in the CIP wish list are to be funded by the City with money generated without the Redevelopment Agency. The three projects included by Staff were described in detail Saturday but the 'Transit' Center never made it into the document or the discussion.  Observant people with a knack for budgetary spreadsheets might have seen the small text entry of the $4.2 million in an adjoining financial accounting however.

The crowd Saturday was asking for capital improvement funded amenities one would expect from residents: parks (for dogs and people), bike and ped infrastructure, street trees and those kind of things.  Nobody there was clamoring for bus bays.  In fact we've never heard any Emeryville resident ask for more bus bays from the public coffers.  Yet that's what we're getting.  And that illustrates the point: The 'Transit' Center project is not popular with the people of Emeryville.  There already are bus bays at the Amtrak station near the proposed "Transit' Center.  The people in Emeryville don't think it's a wise use of limited public money. The Emeryville Planning Commission, a body hand picked by the City Council, agrees with the residents; they twice voted NO to the 'Transit' Center, stating there wasn't enough in public amenities to justify the $4.2 million public cost.  But the City Council majority overrode the Planning Commission and voted to grant the public money to favored developer Rich Robbins, CEO of Wareham Development  anyway.
Now that that's done, obviously, they want it to just quietly disappear.  They'd rather not needlessly crow about it and remind people that it's developers that call the shots in this town.

Sometimes it's the little things that give away the bigger picture in Emeryville.  Like when our City Attorney Mike Biddle leapt out of his seat, grinning ear to ear, and shook the hands of Wareham representatives in attendance at the January 21st meeting after the Council voted (3-2) to override the Planning Commission and give the green light and public money to Wareham's Rich Robbins.  Sometimes it's the non-existent things that tell the tale; like when the 'Transit' Center got pushed down the memory hole.