The Rise of the Fake Community Benefits Agreement

Councilman Bauters, Schools Supe Rubio
Push Fake CBAs

Illegitimate Projects Legitimized

Community Engagement Hijacked
by Fake Grassroots Agreements

“A Community Benefits Agreement ("CBA") in the United States is a contract signed by community groups and a real estate developer that requires the developer to provide specific amenities and/or mitigations to the local community or neighborhood. In exchange, the community groups agree to publicly support the project, or at least not oppose it. Often, negotiating a CBA relies heavily upon the formation of a multi-issue, broad based community coalition including community, environmental, faith-based and labor organizations” -Wikipedia

News Analysis

A Community Benefits Agreement is a powerful tool a developer can use to legitimize his project to facilitate a quick approval by a municipality.  CBA’s are also popular with elected officials as any future bad effects brought on by a development can serve to decouple the effects from the politician’s responsibility.  Given the out-sized power of CBA’s, it’s easy to see how they would be tempting to developers and even politicians to abuse for their own benefit rather than the greater community; the very definition of ironic.  This being Emeryville, it should not be surprising that’s exactly what’s happened.    

Here in Emeryville two recent development projects have been sold to the public by developers and politicians using obfuscating tactics of the fake CBA: the Sherwin Williams project and the Emeryville Center of ‘Community’ Life.  In the case of the Sherwin Williams “CBA”, a private and exclusive group of people brokered a deal with the developer Lennar Urban behind closed doors, the greater community shut out of the process and at the Center of ‘Community’ Life, the “CBA” was struck between the Emery Unified School District and the developer Turner Construction, without any community members whatsoever.  Both these projects subverted the purpose of actual Community Benefits Agreements.  

ECCL Fake CBA

Superintendent of Emery Unified
School District
John Rubio
Beneficiary of the ECCL fake CBA.

The Center of ‘Community’ Life “CBA” was created by former Board of Trustees President John Affeldt and the Superintendent of the Schools John Rubio as a way to mollify critics of the decidedly undemocratic tactics the School District made use of to push through that project.  Tattler readers will recall how scores of parents and community members denounced the School Board’s heavy handed shutting out of the public as the Board went about their unilateral decision to close Anna Yates Elementary School as part of the Kindergarten through 12th grade vision of the Center of ‘Community’ Life.  This was done despite assurances to the community they would be permitted to weigh in on the wisdom of closing the elementary school as guaranteed by the Measure J 2010 plebiscite that started the ECCL.  

Beneficiary of the ECCL Fake CBA

Sensing exposure to claims of fraud by the community, Mr Rubio and Mr Affeldt sought relief in the form of the warm community blanket of a CBA.  However since a real CBA would also expose the School District to the desires of the actual community and a possible ratcheting back of the K-12 model, Mr Affeldt and Mr Rubio instead delivered a fake CBA, leaving questions about its illegitimacy unanswered.  The CBA was written entirely by the School District with no actual community support, a clear subversion of the purpose of a CBA.

PARC Fake CBA

City Councilman John Bauters
Beneficiary of the PARC fake CBA.

The Sherwin Williams proposal was in trouble as developers sought to move the housing project past the new ‘progressive’ City Council majority.  Both the developer and the City Council needed help legitimizing an agreement that would cheapen the public commons as Sherwin Williams demonstrably does.  Further City Council candidate John Bauters was seeking a way to bolster his community visibility as he sought election to the Council in the months before the November 8th election.  Mr Bauters very visibly helped form the Park Avenue Resident Committee (PARC) to negotiate directly with the developer regarding specific amenities for the project, promoting it in his election campaign literature.  The agreement, sold to the public as a CBA by the developer, the City Council/City Hall, and PARC and especially Mr Bauters was not a CBA.   

Beneficiary of the PARC fake CBA.

The PARC, which was comprised of a handful of residents, operated behind closed doors in private and was specifically closed to any individuals not selected by PARC and even more egregiously, Emeryville’s premier community activist group Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE) was specifically not allowed in.  Well known for promoting all resident's interests, the entire community, RULE asked to be able to join as a coalition partner but they were rebuffed by PARC.  
The discrediting exclusivity of the fake Sherwin Williams CBA did not stop the City Council from loudly proclaiming PARC as a legitimate broker of what they characterized as a real Community Benefits Agreement, especially the former Mayor Dianne Martinez, ironically herself a RULE backed Council member.  
However, explicit in the definition of a CBA is the existential democratic nature of it.  The PARC Agreement is not a CBA regardless of what is being proclaimed by interested parties.

The agreements being made in the community’s name now in Emeryville are not Community Benefit Agreements by definition.  Rather they are simple development side agreements.  There is nothing wrong with these kinds of side agreements being made; in fact both of the agreements highlighted here have demonstrably improved the resultant projects, more so the Sherwin Williams project.  Having said that, these agreements being characterized as CBA’s amounts to more than just hyperbole or bombast.  The problem with issuing fake CBA’s as the power elite in Emeryville is doing is that it comes at a cost; actual CBA’s are proportionally cheapened and real community involvement is hijacked to serve an antithetical goal, raising up of the elite and pushing down of the community.