Private Business Advocacy Organization to Receive Emeryville Taxpayer Public Money (Again)

 Corruption Journal:

Gift of Taxpayer Money Going to the Private Chamber of Commerce (Again)

If the Recent Past is a Guide, the $30,663 is Just the Camel's Nose Under the Tent

Former Mayor Assured Residents This Day Would Never Come

New Council Is Nonplused: 'What Could Go Wrong?'

At the May 19th city council meeting, the Emeryville council politicians unanimously agreed to issue a government check in the amount of $30,663 to the Emeryville Commerce Connection (ECC), a replacement organization to the former Chamber of Commerce, in order to promote dues paying restaurants in town; the money representing a public to private exchange former City Councilman John Bauters notably said was never going to happen again.   The controversial taxpayer payment to the private and exclusive ECC organization funds a ‘Restaurant Week’ event in Emeryville this October.  By way of transparency, the private organization says they will show the City how they spent taxpayer's money at a later date. 

The private ECC organization taking public money was debated in 2024 when the organization was newly forming amid assurances from then Councilman Bauters who offered that the group would never get any public money like the private Chamber of Commerce did before them.  Mr Bauters used his argument as a way to take away from Councilman Kalimah Priforce’s publicly made concerns about possible conflicts of interest if the group ever was in a position to take public money.  It is ironic that Mr Priforce, who has now two years later voted with his colleagues to give a tranche of public money to ECC, is receiving push back from his colleagues for again expressing worry about possible conflicts of interest he made before the vote.  In that vein, Mr Priforce expressed reservations about the private ECC receiving taxpayer money at both the 2024 meeting and also at the May 19th meeting, even though he ended up voting with his colleagues to fund the ECC in the end.  

Former Mayor John Bauters
'The new chamber of commerce, the 
Emeryville Commerce Connection, is a private
organization that will never receive public money
like the old chamber of commerce did.' 
Until on May 19th they did.

In the intervening two years, the tax exempt A 501(c)(6) organization ECC has made something of a name for itself for its opacity, drawing out the line of questions from Mr Priforce who told Mary Lou Thiercof, the organization's CEO he was not comfortable giving public money to the secretive group.  As a condition of his support, Councilman Priforce asked the CEO if she could reveal who sits on the Board of Directors, noting that information is not on the ECC website.  In response, Ms Thiercof assured the Councilman she would email him the list of Board members privately.  Notably, the other City Council members expressed no concerns about a secret Board of Directors for the organization they were about to give public money to. 

Finally delivering his YES vote to the ECC (with reservations), Council member Priforce said he thought Restaurant Week delivered good value for the City's brand and he doubted the City's public Economic Development Advocacy Committee’s (EDAC) capacity to pull that off effectively.

Perhaps sensing this day would come and recognizing the checkered past of the former Chamber of Commerce and all their gifts of public money bestowed on them by the City Council, former Mayor John Bauters notably told his colleagues on March 19th, 2024 that the ECC would not ever get any public money from Emeryville.  Pushing back against a questioning Councilman Priforce, who even then was concerned about possible conflicts of interest from the newly formed ECC that might arise as a result of them taking public money, Mr Bauters issued a strong rebuke to Mr Priforce.  Mr Bauters assured everyone that the ECC is not getting any public money and they won’t in the future.  He lectured his colleague Priforce,  “Chambers [of commerce] aren’t supposed to be run by the City.  A group of business owners and residents came together [to form ECC] and there’s no City money in that….zero dollars.  So there’s no conflict.”  Bauters pointedly took issue with the Priforce concerns, “There’s nothing wrong with a group of private individuals or businesses choosing to associate and work together [as long as they don’t take public money]” said Mr Bauters (brackets added by the Tattler).  

The private recipient of Emeryville taxpayer's money
is not transparent. 
Membership in the secretive organization at first was
by invitation only.  Now membership can be taken away
based on 'team player' unquantified capriciousness.   
  

It is interesting that Councilman Priforce who was prescient in his concerns about possible conflict of interest by ECC in 2024, now two years later is still being reprimanded by his colleagues for raising concerns about possible conflicts of interest when it is no longer a possibility that ECC will get public money but now a reality. 

As the ECC announced its formation in 2024, CEO Thiercof assured the Council the organization, like the Chamber of Commerce before, would be “open to all Emeryville businesses”, a claim that has since been quietly retracted.  After at first allowing membership to businesses by invitation only, the ECC now says membership is not granted to all, businesses can be permanently excommunicated if they offer any public criticism of the ECC, Ms Thiercof told the Tattler, “a lifetime ban will result”.  Notably, businesses that are represented by the City of Emeryville’s own public Economic Development Advisory Committee (EDAC), namely every business in Emeryville, are free to criticize the workings of the committee or even the City Council in any way they see fit.  That illustrating a primary difference between the private sector and the public sector.

Council member Priforce noted the ECC grew out of the EDAC and that committee, still extant, is publicly accountable and transparent, its meetings open to the public.  The new private and secret ECC business support organization getting public money is a source of concern for Council member Priforce who stands alone in his concern.  The other four Council members did not question Ms Thiercof about receiving public money in 2024 or on May 19th.

Emeryville Commerce Connection CEO
 Mary Lou Thiercof 
She told the City Council
ECC is open to "all Emeryville businesses "
but later she quantified that, closing the organization
to some Emeryville small businesses.
 ECC is taking public money regardless. She warned 
noncompliant business members will face a 
"life time ban" if they criticize the ECC.

The $30,663 given to the private ECC has been taken out of the City’s Economic Development Fund that the EDAC uses and so this gift demonstrably comes at the expense of public accountability.

Gifts of public money to private organizations can sometimes turn bad, commonly morphing into ongoing support after starting with a well meaning one time gift.   Notably, the former Chamber of Commerce started as an independent self sustaining organization but after receiving public money for specific projects, morphed into unconditional and ongoing free rent of a large City rented office space and a monthly stipend of $45,000 per year for its periodical newsletter called the Emeryville Connection that was printed and sent to every Emeryville residence.  Infamously, the Chamber’s newsletter was highly partisan, to the point that they even told Emeryville voters who to vote for in Council races….audaciously all done with taxpayer money.  That violation of public trust was illegal and after the Tattler reported on it, the City Council stopped giving taxpayer money to the Chamber for the Emeryville Connection.  Eventually City Hall stopped the free rent too, ultimately causing the Chamber to file for bankruptcy.  

Before forwarding the money to ECC, City Council members David Mourra, Courtney Welch and Sukhdeep Kaur all praised the private membership organization, Mr Mourra stating, “I can’t think of a better organization to invest this [public] money into”.

 The Emeryville Commerce Connection posts that their goal is to “bring [certain favored] people together” on their website (Tattler added brackets).  They indicated they would let the Council know how they spent the public money at some later date.

The old Emeryville Chamber of Commerce and their corrupt receipt of public money is HERE,  HERE,  HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

One Party Rule Skews Politics in the Bay Area: Progressives Face Erasure

 When Procedure Becomes Punishment: The East Bay’s Censure Politics and the National Democratic Crack-Up

In December, 2024 the Emeryville city council majority took a controversial and precedent setting move to censure and sanction their colleague Kalimah Priforce for being late on his FPPC filings, a harsh sentence considering many council members over the years have run afoul of the FPPC schedule and that the accusers themselves were also revealed to be late on their own FPPC filings.  Nonetheless, Mr Priforce was released from his censure and sanction in January as per City Hall rules.  But his colleagues on the council are still not satisfied.  So they have now moved to block the Councilman from all boards and committees as well as all regional boards and committees, the same punishment as when they placed him under official sanction but this time without the benefit of a legal vote to sanction.  Mr Priforce, the only progressive on the council and unsurprisingly also the most popular council member, is under permanent censure and sanction, put there by his conservative colleagues without transparency and accountability.  They have done so because of Mr Priforce’s progressive populist politics and because they can.  

It is no coincidence that Emeryville’s Council member Priforce, a Democratic Socialist, is shunned by the centrist majority establishment at the Democratic Party of Alameda County and in the region.  Indeed, politics outside Emeryville’s borders is controlling the anti-Priforce narrative and dictating a project of action against our Council member.  To understand why the politics in Emeryville is so mean and skewed against the popular Kalimah Priforce, one needs to look outside our little town.  

Mayor Kaur's latest silencing of Mr Priforce for asking questions “at the wrong time”  (covered by the Tattler)  is part of this new censure and sanction culture among the Corporate Democrat majority against a progressive Democrat that’s happening now around the whole Bay Area.

News Analysis

If you want to understand a political era, don’t start with campaign slogans. Start with process: who gets heard, who gets disciplined, and who gets told—explicitly or implicitly—that their job is to sit down and comply.

In Emeryville, Council member Kalimah Priforce’s formal censure brought by his four Council colleagues in 2024 may have ended on paper, but close observers realize it persists in practice—as a “shadow censure,” an unofficial regime where the status quo remains: the same narrowing of debate, the same chilling of oversight, and the same public scolding deployed as a governing style.  The four couldn’t defeat him at the polls (he won with the highest vote percentage among all five Council members), so this is how they take him down.

Igor Tregub
Chair of the Alameda County Democratic Party
He signed an anti-ceasefire in Gaza letter for the 
right wing Jewish Community Relations Council.

The city’s newest mayor, Sukhdeep Kaur, has become a focal point of that critique after a council meeting exchange in which Priforce sought to ask questions of staff during deliberations—a routine practice in many cities, and historically in Emeryville. Instead, he was admonished from the dais. Residents in the room pushed back, arguing the rebuke was out of line and selective. The episode is now preserved in the meeting record.

The immediate question is simple: Why is a Council member being disciplined for doing the job voters elected them to do—asking questions, interrogating assumptions, working in such a manner as to empower citizens and demanding clarity?

The larger question is bigger: Is Emeryville becoming a local case study in how centrist Democratic majorities use ‘decorum' and ‘censure’ to suppress democratic-socialist dissent—rather than defeat it on policy?

And if that sounds dramatic, look north to Richmond—where this same political epistemology is being tested, argued over, and normalized.

From ‘Accountability’ to Containment

Kalimah Priforce
 Emeryville City Council Member
A progressive Democrat, he voted for a ceasefire
in Gaza.  He's got a target on his back, put there
by establishment Democrats.  Priforce is the 
most popular council member in Emeryville.

Censure is often described as a tool of accountability. But in practice, it can function as something else: a vote of institutional ostracism by a domineering majority—a formal declaration that a colleague is outside the circle of legitimate participation.

That was the vibe in Emeryville when the Council majority voted to censure Mr  Priforce after a heated, highly attended meeting that local outlets framed as political theater and civic dysfunction.   East Bay Insider, a center right political Substack platform, described the special meeting as raucous and reported Mr Priforce argued the council provided no evidence of wrongdoing.

The Emeryville Tattler went further, portraying the episode as political punishment made possible by a structural flaw: Emeryville’s ethics enforcement is largely internal—City Council judging City Council—without an independent ethics commission to create a firewall between politics and discipline.

That structural critique matters because it points to the heart of the “shadow censure” argument: when a body can discipline a member without meaningful independent review, “ethics” can become a weapon—especially when power is held by a stable establishment majority and the target is a lone progressive dissenter.

Even critics of Priforce should be able to recognize the danger. If a council can define ‘decorum’ as ‘don’t embarrass the majority’, then democracy becomes stage-managed compliance.

Emeryville’s Long Political Backstory: Redevelopment, Power, and Whom City Hall Serves

This fight didn’t begin with one personality clash or one mayoral gavel.

Emeryville’s modern identity has been shaped by redevelopment-era politics: aggressive commercial transformation, land deals ostensibly in the public interest and a model of governance that often treated this model of growth as an unquestioned public good.

The City’s own redevelopment history notes that Emeryville’s redevelopment plans date back decades (including a 1976 plan and the Shellmound Park redevelopment plan adopted in 1987).  That redevelopment focus included major projects like Bay Street, built on land tied to heavy industrial contamination and the layered history of the Shellmound area.

Sukhdeep Kaur
Emeryville Mayor
She's leading a charge in Emeryville to
erase the progressive Democrat,
Council member Kalimah Priforce.

UC Berkeley alumni and documentary filmmaker Andrés Cediel documented the Shellmound controversy directly in a 2005 documentary examining the Native American cultural archeology that was destroyed and buried under Bay Street development.  KQED too has reported on how the Bay Area shellmounds—central to Ohlone life and burial practices—were erased through rapacious development across the region.

That history matters because Emeryville’s political center of gravity has long tilted toward pro-development governance skewed towards connected developers—a tendency documented by academic and policy observers who describe how redevelopment tools (subsidies, tax incentives, land assembly) were deployed to remake the city’s economy.  A landmark labor-oriented report by EBASE, a locally based social justice organization, on Emeryville redevelopment likewise treated the city’s boom as a political-economic project with winners and losers—not simply ‘growth’.

So when residents today watch City Hall clamp down on the council member who’s politics are most associated with anti-corporate populism—tenant protections, accountability rhetoric, and ‘people first’, especially working people—they read it not as a random interpersonal conflict, but as continuity: a city political machine defending its equilibrium.

Richmond’s Mirror: Censure Politics Goes Regional

In January 2026, the City of Richmond became the regional mirror of this new politics.

A proposed Richmond resolution formally censuring Mayor Eduardo Martinez described alleged conduct in sweeping moral and civic terms and sought to censure and bind the mayor to trainings and structured engagement.  Mr Martinez had forwarded an internet post that was construed as anti-semitic, a transgression he said he had done inadvertently and without malice and for which he apologized publicly.   The press covered competing narratives: harm and accountability on one side, and claims of political targeting and silencing on the other.

ABC channel 7 quoted Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) leadership calling for accountability, while also quoting Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) arguing Mayor Martinez was being targeted because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy and that the response should not be “isolation or silencing”.

KQED reported Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller of Temple Beth Hillel describing the posts as “shocking” and outlining fear within a small community, while also emphasizing the value of conversation and learning over immediate resignation demands.

Local News Matters later reported that the council did not ultimately adopt the censure resolution that night, instead advancing a separate “atonement plan” proposed by Martinez—while the censure item was pushed to a future meeting amid procedural wrangling about agenda order and time.

This is the pattern: whether in Emeryville, Richmond or elsewhere in the Bay Area; censure fights become proxy wars over legitimacy—who gets to speak, what counts as acceptable politics, and whether the institution will rehabilitate dissent or punish it.

‘Shadow Censure’ as Governing Style

In Emeryville, the claim now is that formal censure has given way to something quieter but arguably more corrosive: procedural discipline as a daily operating system.

What does that look like?

-Questions treated as disruption.

-Rules interpreted narrowly only when one member presses too hard.

-Public reprimands that signal to staff and colleagues: don’t engage the dissenter.

-A majority bloc that governs by denying oxygen rather than winning debate.

When ‘process’ becomes punishment, the public loses twice: once because oversight is weakened, and again because the whole council learns to fear conflict more than it fears being wrong.

Why This Is Happening Now: The National Rise of Populist Socialists—and Establishment Democratic Failure on Affordability

To understand why these fights are intensifying, zoom out.

Across the U.S., democratic-socialist and populist-left politics have grown—not because of a TikTok algorithm, but because material conditions are crushing people, and the establishment wing of the Democratic Party has offered promises that don’t cash out in daily life.

Start with housing:

-Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that renter cost burdens have hit record highs, with tens of millions of households paying unaffordable shares of income.

-HUD reported more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2024, the highest on record, and an 18% increase from 2023.

-California’s affordability crisis remains structurally entrenched, as the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office continues to track persistent housing-cost pressures.

-Multiple sources show a majority of California renters are cost-burdened (paying >30% of income toward housing), which turns “affordability” from a talking point into a lived emergency.

So when establishment Democrats run on affordability and inclusion while housing costs, homelessness, and rent burdens continue climbing, many voters conclude: the establishment is performing progressivism, not delivering it.

That’s the fuel.

Now add the organizational fact:

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has expanded dramatically since 2016—DSA’s own “State of DSA” notes that the organization is more than ten times larger than a decade ago, with the overwhelming majority of members joining after 2016.  It’s no coincidence that our own Kalimah Priforce, a DSA member, is the most popular politician in Emeryville.

This growth is not an abstraction. It translates into local races, local canvasses, and local governing fights. And it triggers establishment backlash—often framed as “responsible governance,” but experienced by insurgents as containment.

International media coverage of insurgent socialist campaigns (including New York’s) has highlighted both the appeal—rent freezes, transit affordability, public options—and the counterattack: establishment officials and aligned donors treating left candidates as existential threats rather than internal debate partners.

In other words: the ‘anti–Zohran Mamdani’ sentiment is not really about one person.  It is about a broader insurgency that threatens the donor-mediated equilibrium of the Democratic Party.

The East Bay Version of a National Story

What makes Emeryville and Richmond important is not that they are famous. It’s that they are legible.

They show how a centrist establishment Democratic majority manages a left insurgent when it cannot easily remove them: not by debating them, but by disciplining them.  Not by winning policy, but by controlling procedure.

And if that is what is happening—if Emeryville City Council rules are being applied selectively, if deliberation is being narrowed, if censure logic is lingering as ‘shadow censure’—then Emeryville isn’t just having a personality conflict:  it’s rehearsing a regional and national fight inside a five-seat chamber.

The question for residents, then, is not whether they like any particular Council member.  The question is whether they want a city government where asking hard questions is treated as misconduct.  Because if procedure becomes punishment, the next target won’t be a democratic socialist.  It will be the general public—finding out, too late, that the Council no longer debates anything that matters.

Onni Project Threatens City Hall With Regulatory Capture

City Hall, Enthralled  
Captured by Onni

Work Performed at 1313 Park Ave is Done to Onni's Benefit

"Regulatory capture is a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating."

News Analysis/Opinion
Resident communities get to plan their cities as they see fit.  That's a given.  All the planning documents ensconced in City Hall, made with lots of voluntary citizen work and taxpayer money is evidence of this.  And planning, by definition, means regulation and thus the people of Emeryville have created a regulatory framework to facilitate the building of the town as they envision it.  It’s a good thing.

The proposed Onni Development with its 700' Tower
So seductive to the City Council, they have allowed the
 Canada based Onni Corporation to capture our regulatory
safeguards meant to protect Emeryville's residents.

Except of course for those who end up being regulated.
We needn’t go into a lot of expository rhetoric parsing how the regulated tend to push back against the regulators in such a dynamic.  Suffice it to say the public commons are a contested space and there is always a yin to every yang in the administration of a democratic public policy.
What’s evolved of late in Emeryville however upsets this familiar apple cart; a new grand mal of late capitalism excess embodying total corporate empowerment; private for-profit entities, especially billion dollar entities pushing for and getting carte blanche access to the levers of public power.

Enter the specter of ‘regulatory capture’ to Emeryville; that being an abdication of the checks generally imagined to be inherent in representational governance, by a rapacious private sector intent on seizing the commons.  In a word, Emeryville  City Hall, in the thrall of the recently proposed Christie Avenue Onni project, has abdicated control of the regulatory regime to that corporate entity.  Meaning, the developer of the Onni project gets his say utterly in virtually all the circumstantial aspects of this looming mega-project in our town.  And that’s not all. The regulations that are being lifted for the benefit of Onni now, will expose the citizens of Emeryville to future development of a kind that will likely be at least as voracious. 

Onni Residential Tower Unit Mix as Proposed
A portrait of regulatory capture.

While this regulatory capture is unwritten of course, it can easily be seen in the City Council chambers when the existing tower separation regulations are repealed at Onni’s say so.  Done without public debate.  Did we mention this developer’s proposal would be constrained by our tower separation regulations?  …And when our family housing unit mix is repealed, again for Onni’s benefit and without debate.  …And when our General Plan’s provisions for acres of park per new residents are pushed aside, again all for the benefit of the Onni developer and again, without a public debate.  ...And when our General Plan's provisions to make our town a town of no more that 16,600 souls by 2029 are pushed aside, again to the benefit of Onni and again, without public debate.

It all adds up to a corporate capture of the constraints on greed that were set up to serve the citizens’ interests.  Barring a citizens’ revolt against Onni, the public will receive nothing but crumbs for all the destruction of the commons this project with its 700 foot luxury apartment tower and accompanying 200 foot office tower will bring.

Regulatory capture is evident when a single private entity is able to steer the government to its corporate bidding on multiple fronts, simultaneously and without real public debate.  It becomes weaponized when there are enough local calculating politicians with hidden agendas and/or when the private entity behemoth is out of scale with the local government.  City Hall, clearly enthralled with the billion dollar Onni Corporation and wont to hand over the reins likely represents a less corrupt version sometimes called non materialist regulatory capture or cognitive capture, meaning government regulators begin thinking like the regulated.  As opposed to a simple series of illicit money transactions taking place behind closed doors.  That's probably not taking place here.  Probably.

Onni, at 638 units is an extremely large development, and it would remake our town even if we still had control over our regulatory system.  The problems the Onni project brings are legion if not familiar for such a large project; massively increasing traffic and congestion, increasing pollution in all its forms, the blocking of views and the creation of a generally alienating environment of course all come with any large development project to a small city.  But Onni, being a 100% rental project also dramatically drives down the ratio of homeowners in our town, a town that already has the lowest percentage of home ownership in the East Bay.

Onni Residential Tower if Built as Required
Emeryville's existing family friendly unit mix regulations
provides housing for families.  A portrait of a town trying to
make up lost ground after a generation of losing families.

But what’s at stake specifically is our capacity for our own autonomy as we attempt to make our city a city for families, to build park land, to address legitimate concerns over crowding of towers and to limit our city's population to 16,600.  All things we have identified as desirable for us.  All things the law allows us to pursue.  And unfortunately, all things the developer of Onni has captured and turned away from us.
And woe be it to anyone who attempts to defend our public regulatory system in such an environment.  Indeed, the old familiar epithet of NIMBYism has already entered the Onni debate such as there is one.  But there is nothing beyond a debate tactic to conflate the idea that people who don’t want more traffic in their town or their views blocked and those who don’t want to see outright regulatory capture by a specific developer.  One is democratic and the other isn’t.

Residents Per Acre of Park Land
Emeryville Already Has the Least Acreage of Parks in the East Bay
The Onni project will drive down our already lowest
in the East Bay acres of park per resident.
Onni provides park land at 2200 residents per acre. 
Emeryville's existing average is about 512 residents per acre.
The General plan says we should have no more
than 333 residents per acre.

Number of People Per Rental Unit
Emeryville Already Has the Fewest Families in East Bay
Emeryville compared with our neighbors.
Onni will drive down Emeryville's average even lower.
Our schools will suffer the consequences. 

Tower Separation Regulations to be Repealed Just In Time For Onni Developer

"No Connection" Between Regulation Rollback and Desires of Onni Developer, City Council Assures Us

Planning Director Suggests City Staff Expressed Poor Judgment in 2013 When the Regulations Were Crafted 

News Analysis
The City Council members and the staff at City Hall has a tough task they’re engaged in.  They’ve got to move quickly to repeal Emeryville’s existing ‘tower separation’ regulations meant to protect the residents in order to help out a billionaire developer seeking regulatory relief for his proposed towers all while assuring the residents they’re not doing that.  It’s been an illuminating exercise in government chicanery watching the Council members’ strain as they carry water for the developer of the Christie Avenue Onni project and it’s two towers (one at 700’ and one at 200’), all while they deny they’re doing it…sometimes in the same sentence.

After Emeryville's Planning Director Charlie Bryant made a brief presentation at the July 9th Tuesday Council meeting wherein he said staff had goofed when they added tower separation to the city planning regulations back in 2013, he noted the Council is now being offered a chance to correct that mistake by completely rolling back the regulation.  Staffs' findings from 2013 that were made in support of the tower separation regulation were not presented Tuesday night, only that by overturning it, the Council would be "cleaning up" a terrible staff mistake.  Charlie Bryant, Emeryville's Planning Director, without explaining why, tried to quantify the mistake for the Council members, "This regulation was not based on any extensive research, rather it was based solely on staffs' professional judgment at the time" he said.

Emeryville Planning Director Charlie Bryant
The staff made a mistake in 2013 (lack of research)
with the tower separation rules.  He says the City
Council now has a chance to correct the staffs'
lack of "professional judgment".

For the record, tower separation regulations were to protect against overcrowding of high-rise towers; a condition pejoratively called ‘Manhattanization’.
The Council however jumped at Mr Bryant's reasoning Tuesday and “clean up language” was trotted out as the reason for abolishing the tower separation regulation by three Council members.  They assured the citizens it’s only a coincidence that they are “cleaning up” this regulatory burden the Onni developer says is unacceptable, now, just in time for approval for that controversial project.
Councilwoman Dianne Martinez seeking to allay any condemnations from citizens, was unequivocal and she sought to completely uncouple the Council’s action from the wishes of the Onni developer,  “It’s clean up language and it would apply to ANY high-rise.”  she said.  She made no other specific mention of the questionable timing of the rollback.

The wholesale denials that this action the Council is taking has anything at all to do with the Onni project were noted by citizens at the meeting.  One resident who wished to remain anonymous told the Tattler later he found it “curious” the Council members were all so adamant about denying any connection with Onni.  It’s worth noting and it’s also curious that the roll back of the tower separation regulations is happening at the same time the Council is also considering rolling back Emeryville’s family housing ‘unit mix’ regulations, also an existential problem for the Onni developer (or so he has said).  Strenuous denials have been issued from the City Council there as well, about any nexus between rolling back the family housing unit mix regulations and the desires of the Onni developer.  It’s just another coincidence, the Council says.

The Proposed Onni Project
The developer wants Emeryville's  existing
'tower separation' law to be repealed.
The Council says it's all just a coincidence.

Where four Council members left it as self evident that our 2013 tower separation regulations are terrible things that must now be rooted out and rolled back, unworthy of even offering explanation, Council member John Bauters thought a few words about it should be offered to the public.  The tower separation regs are unnecessary, Mr Bauters told the crowd, because future environmental impact reports for projects (presumably that means Onni), will take up any concerns about what the proper distance of towers should be.  That’s a pretty extraordinary plea against the whole idea of city planning but one Mr Bauters bolstered when he said if we don’t get rid of our separation rules, we’re going to get “sprawl”.  The Councilman didn’t explain how that would work and as such, it was presented as another self evident fact.  But the most incongruent evidence for why the Council must roll back the tower separation regulation was presented in a non sequitur he offered up, claiming regulations in general remove the ability for the "Council to review projects”.  Mr Bauters told the crowd that if the tower separation regulations are removed, the Council will get a chance to review (the Onni) project for the public benefit that somehow would not be possible were there to be tower separation regulations on the books.  Again, no explanation of how that works was offered.

Mr Bryant, throwing out a lifeline for the struggling City Council, volunteered that the tower separation regulation, "... was in merely one page out of over four hundred pages of regulations” that were generated by staff as they sought to overhaul the zoning and planning regulations in 2013 he said.

The City Council will finally remove tower separation from the books at their July 23rd meeting when they do a required ‘second reading’ of the ordinance that forever removes the regulations so unpopular with the Onni developer.

Breaking News: City Council Considers Minimum Wage Ordinance Roll Back

Business Owners Convince City Council to "Hit Pause" on Minimum Wage Ordinance

BREAKING- (City Hall)
In a major turn around of long standing City policy, tonight the City of Emeryville is considering a roll back of its landmark Minimum Wage Ordinance.  After hearing from individual Emeryville business owners following an agendized presentation of the Minimum Wage Ordinance, the Council suddenly moved to consider overturning central provisions of its hugely consequential ordinance, set to increase workers wages on July 1st.  Expressing urgency, the Council directed the City Manager to make a vote possible before that date.
The roll back action was initiated by Mayor Ally Medina and enthusiastically taken up by Council member John Bauters who called upon his desire to “hit pause” on the ordinance.

Emeryville’s Minimum Wage Ordinance was enacted in 2015 after consideration of business community concerns and testimony from the minimum wage workers in town.  Tonight however, after hearing only from the business community, the Council proclaimed that the provisions for wage increases be stopped before the July 1st wage scheduled increase, a job the City Manager said would be very difficult owing to a lack of time. 
There was very little back and forth among the Council members tonight about the ramifications of this drastic proposal; the majority of their time was spent finagling around Brown Act directives to make sure any vote taken to overturn the ordinance would be legal.

Council member Christian Patz took issue with the cavalier manner in which his colleagues jumped into amending the long standing ordinance.  The other Council members expressed no such reservations.  A special meeting will be announced soon by City Hall so that the State required two ‘readings’ of a change to the ordinance can come in under the July 1st wire.

The Tattler will report in more detail on this fast moving story in the days to come.  Watch this space…

City of Emeryville Makes Police Station Fire Trap Legal by Proclamation

Building Official Promoted to Fire Official Proclaims Formerly Illegal Fire Hazard OK

City Manager Says it's "Less Than Ideal"

Public Safety Still at Risk at Police Station

Unidentified employees at the Emeryville Police Department, operating without authority and in secret, purposely altered their building's approved design by adding locks to a set of public fire escape doors and in so doing permanently blocked legal egress, putting public safety at risk over the last six years.  Such is the City's finding according to James Holgersson, Emeryville's City Manager as presented at Tuesday's City Council meeting.  With the untoward and eyebrow raising official version of the facts, the City finally provided answers to some basic questions in the slow rolling police station scandal.
Left unanswered at the City's revelatory mea culpa meeting however is why in 2012, after the building received final signed off approval from the Building Department and the Fire Marshall following a major remodel, the police felt it necessary to place locks on the doors, taking away the only emergency escape from the second floor public lobby.  Regardless, the City Council failed to act to return the public fire egress on Tuesday, citing a legal technicality freeing them from forcing the police to unlock the doors.

For their part, the police on Tuesday cited unspecified "changes in Police Department security policy functions" in 2012 as the reason for their unilateral locking of the fire doors.  The City Council notably,  didn't bother to ask what the "changes" were that necessitated such a drastic move by the Police Department.
The City Manager reported inexplicably the police might have been "unaware" the locking of the public fire doors would put public safety at risk and that regardless, the Building Department is "rarely notified when such changes are made" (even though by law it is required to).

For the record, it is illegal in Emeryville and other cities to perform unauthorized work on buildings, including work that impacts a fire escape path of egress without permission from the Building Department.  Mr Holgersson is alleging the work performed by the police was not authorized.  Police personnel are not given powers to interpret the fire code on their own and any unilateral claim made by them that they would escort people out of a public lobby in the event of a fire is not recognized by law.  Only a city's fire official could render such a judgment.  Such a judgement for Emeryville's police station didn't exist for the first six years of this scandal.

The findings presented to the City Council included the admission that the police operated without permission from the Building Official or the Fire Marshall and that the locked doors violated the California Fire Code and left the public with no legal fire escape for six years.  The City Manager revealed that a correction to the violation only occurred starting sometime after July 1st of this year when the City Council elevated the chief building official, Victor Gonzales to include the title of Emeryville Fire Official.  Mr Gonzales, with his new title subsequently ruled the locked doors OK because he says, the Police Department has given their promise to escort the public to safety in the event of a fire.  The State grants the Fire Official of any municipality authorization to so ignore the Fire Code it was noted.

"Less Than Ideal"
The City Manager, James Holgersson told the City Council that although the locked fire escape doors at the police station are now legal by proclamation from Mr Gonzales (as of July 1st), public fire safety there is still not good; a condition he called "less than ideal".  The Alameda Fire Department agreed with the City Manager; an Emeryville representative calling the condition "less safe" than the California Fire Code's provision that the public be able to vacate a building on its own in case of fire.

The City Manager, after noting the less than ideal public fire safety at the police station recommended the City Council approve one of three solutions that would comport with the Fire Code. Mr Holgersson's recommendations were not popular with the Council who said NO to all three citing Mr Gonzales's new ruling that the law doesn't mandate such a public fire escape.
The three fire escape choices offered to the City Council Tuesday included a new exterior stairs added to the building, moving of the public lobby downstairs and the construction of a new ground level public lobby addition to the building.  Of the choices offered to the Council, inexplicably left out was the cheapest and easiest; the simple return to the previous condition; that being taking the locks off the fire doors.

New 'In House' Fire Official
On June 21st, before Victor Gonzales was elevated to Emeryville Fire Code Official (on July 1st), when he was serving only as the chief Building Official, Mr Gonzales told the Tattler, regarding the lack of a fire escape,"Mistakes were made and we're working on a fix."  The City of Emeryville is now maintaining the "fix" is to make Mr Gonzales the Fire Code Official and then deem what was formerly illegal, now legal by proclamation by this in house fire official.  Notably, an independent fire official, as Emeryville had prior to July 1st, might have ruled in favor of the California Fire Code version of a fire escape, causing the City embarrassment and costing money.  In that case, Mr Gonzales himself would have been on the hot seat as chief Building Official owing to his failure to act to protect the public over the six years, warned as he was about the situation.

The City Council failed to act on Tuesday and did not indicate a plan to cure or correct the "less than ideal" public safety situation at the Emeryville Police Department building regardless of the still lingering questions the public has a right to know the answers to.

Emeryville Police Excoriates E'Ville Eye Blog

Police Officers Release Letter Refuting 

E'Ville Eye Editor

A recent smear campaign directed at the Emeryville City Council and the Emeryville police from the E'Ville Eye blog has prompted the Emeryville Police Officers' Association to release a letter defending the rank and file against the attacks on their officers, what they refer to as "negative posts" made by Rob Arias, the editor of the blog, and several of his readers.  The letter released to the Tattler late Friday evening refutes claims made by Mr Arias that the EPD is being manipulated by the Emeryville City Council, an alleged conspiracy he says that is responsible for what he calls a spike in crime, caused by the City Council members directing the police away from enforcing the law. 

E'Ville Eye Editor Rob Arias
Alleges the City Council is
manipulating the police.  The police
deny Mr Arias's "negative posts".

Mr Arias has directed the E'Ville Eye, Emeryville's pro-business news blog, in a conspiratorially minded direction with a recent flurry of stories blaming the City Council for driving businesses away and driving up crime because of their support for Emeryville's Minimum Wage Ordinance.  At the same time he is also asserting that back room dealings by the Council have laid plans to stamp out what he calls "police instincts" to quell law enforcement.  Without offering evidence, Mr Arias has informed his readers the Council wants Emeryville's police to be councilors for criminals instead of law enforcement agents because he says the City Council has made an  agreement that arrests are not necessary, rather "criminals will self-rehabilitate if we give them enough chances."   He has called upon the City Council to "stop undermining the force and let them do their job.", a charge specifically refuted by the police officers in their letter.

Any private agreements among the City Council members as Mr Arias suggests would be a violation of the law owing to the California code known as the Brown Act that requires public business to be conducted in public.  The Brown Act, also known as the 'sunshine law',  is clear, especially where a quorum of elected officials occurs behind closed doors as would necessarily be the case if Mr Arias' claims of conspiracy to manipulate the police were true.

The Emeryville Police Officers Association (EPOA), the public service union that represents the rank and file at EPD, is a natural adversary for Mr Arias it should be noted, who has long used his blog to rail against unions, including specifically Emeryville's public service unions.

Here is the letter received from the EPOA:

February 16th, 2018

Emeryville Police Officers' Association Supports Elected Officials

It was recently brought to the attention of the Emeryville Police Officers' Association Board off Directors that certain social media posts attributed statements to unidentified members of the Police Department which in some respects were critical to the relationship between the Emeryville Police Officers;' Association, the Mayor, and the City Council. 

While we continue to build upon our excellent relationship with the City and the community, we are not insensitive to the fact that members are always engaging in conversation with members of our community on various issues.  Some members of the community have their own set of beliefs that may influence their account of contact with our members.  We believe that our members exercise great restraint and discretion in engaging in conversation on topics that may be controversial.  It is our belief members will avoid disparaging our City government or the Police Department. 

Although we do not have any specifics on what was actually said or who may have said it, we have reached out to all our members asking them to be judicious and respectful in conversations about our Police Department and the city's elected officials.

Our police officers have always had a great relationship with and support from our elected city officials.  The police officers, sergeants and elected officials of Emeryville share interest in the safety of the community and are committed to working together to fight crime.  In a small City like ours, EPOC membership has a unique opportunity to make a significant contribution towards a better quality of life for our residents.  It is only in continued cooperation and collaborative effort between the Mayor, City Council, and the Emeryville Police Officers' Association that we will be able to realize Emeryville's true potential.  It is in this unified effort that we believe: Our size is our strength.

Finally, we want to acknowledge that our membership has thousands and thousands of contacts with citizens each year.  These recent negative posts represent a fraction of the number of comments made by citizens about us.  By far and away the majority of our contact with our community is very positive and social media reflects the professionalism and integrity of our members.

We look forward to working with residents, Mayor and the City Council to continue growing the quality of life in Emeryville.

Emeryville Police Officers' Association 

Cop in Schools Idea Causes Meltdown Between City Council & School Board Member

Cop on Campus?:

Rift Between City Council and School Board Member Opens

Board Member Vargas Makes a Power Play

Testy Exchanges at Meeting

Vargas to Subvert Will of the Council

In an impassioned imbroglio played out before the cameras on October 5th, Emery School Board member Cruz Vargas, citing student discipline problems at the ECCL campus, proposed to fellow members of the City/School Committee that a full time Emeryville police officer with the right to arrest students exhibiting behavior issues be provided and paid for by the City of Emeryville.  It was an idea that landed with a resounding thud but not before the City Council members present directed a strongly stated contradictory barrage at Mr Vargas leaving him pained but undaunted, pledging to take his idea on the road and go around the holders of the purse strings, straight to parents.  Surprisingly, the cost to the City for such an officer, likely more than $100,000 per year, was hardly even mentioned by the City Council members, concerned as they were over what they characterized as the inappropriateness of the whole thing.  

School Board member
Cruz Vargas
He's going over the City Council's heads
and take his cop in the school
show on the road.

The ‘cop in the school’ idea, called a ‘school resources officer’ (SRO), has many critics but regardless been used by some school districts to bring 'order'.  However, in schools with large numbers of black and brown children, it has been universally panned by pedagogical experts, social justice champions and those concerned with equity issues nation wide.  Police officers trained in arresting adults, thrust into an environment where normal adolescent behavior can be misconstrued as criminal activity, SROs have been credited with contributing to the oft referenced ‘school to prison pipeline’ especially for young African Americans, what Council member Christian Patz calls a “reframe to criminality”. 

Regardless of the popularity of SROs among law and order types, the City Council attendees at the meeting took their turns joining with member Patz soundly rejecting member Vargas’ SRO objective, notably Council member John Bauters who delivered a memorably devastating and indelible riposte from the dais (see link below).  Admonishing Mr Vargas’ claim the SRO would be good for the police as well as the children, Councilman Bauters countered that schools are “not a place for PR for police” adding, “When cops encounter children who are acting like children, their instinct in many cases its treat them with the training they know.”  He talked at length on the negative effects ‘over policing’ has on many African American children before he clarified that he is not anti-police, and specifically not anti Emeryville police he stressed.

Council member Ally Medina expressed concern over inequity resulting from the use of SROs that academic studies have shown.  Noting the lack of training police have in dealing with child psychology, a problem that in America skews against schools with high levels of minority students like Emery, Councilwoman Medina quoted such studies when she addressed member Vargas, “Suspension levels are higher for minority children in heavily secured schools” she said.

Council member Christian Patz told his colleagues member Vargas had not presented a cogent reason why a police officer is even needed at ECCL, noting a lack of complaints over student behavior issues and the large numbers of administrators and teachers on the campus that has a palliative effect on discipline, let alone any possible criminal behavior.  Mr Patz counted 13 administrators on campus making for a top heavy 1:53 admin to student ratio.  If teachers are added, that makes it a 1:14 ratio and if the entire adult staff on campus is added, then there is a 1:10 ratio with students, an extremely large percentage among school districts.  Besides the highly monitored effect this large number of adults watching over the children has on tamping down bad behavior, it is also a primary reason why Emery spends so much money per student, higher than all neighboring school districts it was noted.  Mr Patz reminded Mr Vargas of Emery's low suspension rates and high attendance numbers to further illustrate his point that an SRO is not needed.

"I don't know what it was in my remarks that 

led to the impression I had an open mind on this.  

I want to make it very clear; I'm opposed to it".

-Council member Christian Patz

With a recalcitrant Board member Cruz Vargas and an equally oppositional City Council, a testy exchange between the Council members and member Vargas ensued.  Despite a united front of the City Council against the SRO proposal, the five individuals Mr Vargas would have to sway to pay for it, he saw fit to counter attack, perhaps giving hint to his next move.  After warning them he would go directly to parents to force the issue he scolded the City Council, “I don’t appreciate this issue being politicized” he said adding with vituperative finish, “the majority of the people at this table are out of touch with the parents.”  
Driving his point, member Vargas said he had been to a PTO meeting and gleaned, “the vast majority of parents in the school” support his SRO idea to which Councilwoman Dianne Martinez, who’s husband was at that meeting fired back, “I don’t appreciate you speaking for me as a parent” after asking if he was sure about his “vast majority” deduction, she questioned him; “Are you extrapolating?”   Mr Vargas shot back that the Board supports his SRO idea prompting Mr Patz to inquire, “Are you speaking for the whole Board?”  After some retrenching speech by member Vargas when Board member Barbara Inch volunteered she is not in favor of the SRO idea, it was revealed the School Board had only voted to place the issue on a future agenda to discuss it.  Having caught Mr Vargas in the fabrication of Board support, Mr Patz pounced, “[Putting it on an agenda is] very different than saying the Board supports it. It says the Board supports talking about it”

To get his cop in the school idea funded, these are
the five people Cruz Vargas needs to convince. 
It's the same five he has gone to war with.

After the City Council members finally all had their say, none of it supportive of the SRO idea, member Vargas told everyone present he would hold a town hall type meeting about this and that he was happy the City Council was open to the idea of bringing a police officer to the ECCL campus and spending taxpayer money for it.  He thanked the Council for "having an open mind on this" and for their receptiveness for holding a town hall meeting.  Council member Christian Patz was incredulous upon hearing that, "I apologize, I don't know what it was in my remarks that led to the impression I had an open mind on this.  I want to make it very clear; I'm opposed to it" he said.  Council member John Bauters was less circumspect, "Not one Council member should have given the impression to you [that a police officer on the campus is a good idea]. It would be political adventure for you to hold some sort of meeting to do what we have told you is not of interest to us" he protested. 

The entire dramatic City/School Committee meeting may be viewed HERE.
John Bauter's historic speech within the meeting may be viewed HERE.

Emeryville City Council: 'I Got Your Pledge of Allegiance Right Here'

City Council Sticks It To Trump/Fox News

After voting at their last meeting to dispense with the public administering of the loyalty oath known as the Pledge of Allegiance before each City Council meeting, tonight the Council led the first halting if out of key rendition of the populist collectivist Woody Guthrie song from the Depression era, 'This Land Is Your Land'.  It's out with God and country and in with godless communism in Emeryville.  The minute right wing Council matriarch Nora Davis is out the door, her (formerly) beloved Emeryville City Council goes all flakey.  What's next?  Providing accountability at City Hall?

Pledge of Allegiance Out, This Land is Your Land In

Fox News Bait:

This Land is Our Land-

No Allegiance to the Pledge of Allegiance in Emeryville

In yet another sure sign Emeryville has turned away from its conservative former self, last night the loyalty oath to God and country aka the Pledge of Allegiance was booted out of Emeryville and replaced with the lilting lyrics of a soft spoken Great Depression era populist from Oklahoma whose collectivist vision of America is sure to rile the feathers of more than a few conservatives.  The City Council voted to dispense with the standard recital of the Pledge of Allegiance before every meeting to now raising voices in a chorus of This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie at the start of each Council meeting from now on.

A lack of allegiance to the new President
 probably had something to do with the
City Council's decision to jettison
the Pledge of Allegiance.

 Mayor Scott Donahue led the drive to quit with the traditional recital of the Pledge at Emeryville City Council meetings but he acknowledged its positive community unifying effects and he suggested the community instead sing a verse or two of the popular 40's era song about how we're all in this boat together.  The Mayor's Council colleagues were quick to agree the Pledge has no place at Council meetings, especially with its god references but they only reluctantly signed onto the idea of singing and the vote to change the rules and procedures for the City to include This Land is Your Land won in a 3-2 split decision.  Council members Ally Medina and Christian Patz, self deprecating of their singing skills, outright said they would not be singing.
The Council also directed the City Clerk to prepare verses of a pledge to the California Constitution and the US Constitution for the Council members to make before they join the community in the singing in the People's Hall.

The Tattler has long advocated for dispensing with the McCarthyist loyalty oath that is the Pledge of Allegiance, it being quintessentially un-American with its calls for unswerving obedience and relinquishing of agency.  It would appear the Council agreed last night but singing the Woody Guthrie song before every meeting was the Mayor's idea.

The era of the Pledge of Allegiance in Emeryville, decades ensconced at City Hall, is now over; the new procedures are to be installed for the start of the first meeting in February at City Hall.

Pledge of Allegiance: Its Days Are Numbered in Emeryville

Emeryville Patriotism in the Age of Trump

Publicly Administered Loyalty Oath 
At City Hall Should Exit With Trump's Entrance

Opinion
"I pledge allegiance to the United States...".  "Without benefit of critical thinking, I swear my loyalty"- how's that sound, especially now that Donald Trump will wield near supreme power?  How about, "No matter what Donald Trump has planned for us, I pledge my allegiance to him".  How's that sound?  Those stand-in pledges can now be construed to be at the black heart of the Pledge of Allegiance, an un-American loyalty oath wherein the speaker unthinkingly gives up his or her own agency to do the bidding of the federal government (and by extension, its executive).  Starting on January 20th the beneficiary of that bidding has a new neo-fascist face most Emeryville residents will be uncomfortable with.
The American loyalty oath, before bootcamp-like in its coercive adherence, now suddenly seems positively Pyongyang-like.

The eagle wants us to make a pledge of allegiance:
to ban pesticides and end habitat destruction. 

That is unless the Emeryville City Council does its patriotic duty and dispels with the public administering of the Pledge of Allegiance before every Council meeting; something they have pledged, so to speak, to consider at the Council meeting on January 17th.

A change in how our local government sanctifies its democratic legitimacy is shaping up.  Mayor Scott Donahue is directing the Council to consider all manner of loyalty oath Pledge replacement possibilities to satisfy the function of bringing the community together at public City Council meetings including the singing of the Woody Guthrie classic 'This Land is Your Land' and/or the public recital of Walt Whitman poetry.  It represents an important shift away from the banal provincialism of Emeryville reliant on kitsch sophistry as it is to a more aspirational civic engagement as it could be.

Many towns in the Bay Area don't do the loyalty pledge before their public meetings.  Indeed, there's no law saying the oath must be administered, so why do we do it?  We can see plenty that's put at risk by administering the oath but nothing that can be gained that couldn't be gained by a less authoritarian and demanding avowal such as the populist unifying hosannas from Mr Guthrie or Mr Whitman.

“May we think of freedom, 

not as the right to do as we please, 

but as the opportunity to do what is right.” 

- Walt Whitman

Besides the oath being un-American, we've noticed the City Council, while asking us to join them in reciting the oath, don't like to say it themselves.  Even former Councilwoman Nora Davis (how we love to say that), the premier conservative on the Council, stood silently as do her colleagues whenever the oath is being administered.  It is the crowd in the Council chambers, cowed as they are, that freely give away their agency hands on hearts and sign on to relinquishing their critical thinking rights so wantonly as they speak the words.  The hypocrisy of this Council on this score has been blinding; if you're going to ask us to say the pledge, don't you think at least you yourself should say it, City Council?

Under God
Kicked to the curb: Jesus wants us to
continue praising him at City Hall.

Nonetheless, now it would seem, those days are behind us.  We like the Mayor's idea especially of having the community unite in song with the palliative effects brought on from This Land is Your Land with its Trump-canceling collectivist vision of our community and country.  This will likely get the right wing all agog and agitated, a nice side benefit.
The Council will also consider various non-theocratic pledges, for instance from a contest held by TheHumanist however inspiring as some may be, those represent just more of the same; a pledge.  The government should not ask our community to pledge it anything.  Loyalty is to be earned, not coerced.  We urge the Council to reject the Pledge of Allegiance being replaced with another pledge, even one that kicks Jesus to the curb.

We hope this City Council rejection of the American loyalty oath will spill over to the School District where it's needed at least as much as at City Hall.  We have long been agitating against the Council led administrating of the McCarthyist loyalty oath especially at the School Board meetings.  How blinkered is it we have to ask, that the School District spends so much time teaching the value of critical thinking skills to the students only to subvert that message every School Board meeting when everyone enters collective amnesia and again nearly on automatic, goes through the anti-critical saccharine display of phony rectitude and piety.   Back in the dark days of 2011, the School Board was on the verge of dispensing with the loyalty oath but reactionary forces rose up to make sure the District stayed on the straight and narrow with God and country.

It shouldn't take the terrifying idea of President Trump to spur the City Council into action on this and we're not sure if that's indeed what was instrumental in their turn around; really it doesn't matter.  We just welcome rationality in association with public policy at City Hall and we applaud the Council for this symbolic but still important rejection of heretofore unneeded and unhelpful nonsense.

We're a community here that has allegiances we'd like to proclaim, yes, but we're a community that has allegiance to redwood forests, gulf stream waters and the collectivist idea that the land was made for you and me.