Follow Up Friday: EBI Pedestrian Path

EBI Path Traded Away, Nothing Gained

City Hall Promises Forsaken

Introducing a new Tattler feature: Follow Up Friday.  We look back on previous stories; what's happened after our spotlight shined on it?  If there was a problem identified, has it been solved?  Has there been no change and the amount of elapsed time made the issue newsworthy again by virtue of that fact?  Look to Follow Up Friday to wrap it all up or to highlight for us all how lame our city can be.

The City of Emeryville has reneged on its own requirement to spend $525,000 to build a replacement pedestrian amenity, money made in trade for removing a developer's requirement to build a bike path at a San Pablo Avenue construction project in 2016.  The EBI pedestrian path, a General Plan mandated pedestrian corridor would have connected 45th and 47th streets and helped pedestrians in the Triangle neighborhood make north/south connections in that notoriously disconnected neighborhood.

  

Last year at this time, we were informing readers about the folly of trading one pedestrian path that was to be built and paid for by a developer as part of a development agreement with the City with another much more expensive path close by that would cost the City more than $1 million more.  

The EBI Path was "in the can", all the details worked out and ready for construction.  Residents in the Triangle neighborhood would now be using the path except the City Council in April of 2016 voted to amend our General Plan to remove the path at the insistence of the Escuela Bilingue Internacional, a private school on San Pablo Avenue.

At the time, the City Council told Triangle residents they needed more exercise and the removal of the short-cut path would force them to walk more, a good thing.  Providing other reasons to remove the pedestrian amenity, the Council also stated the path would be a safety risk and asserted gang rapists would be lurking there.

Nonetheless, after giving away the path, the Council told Emeryville residents they would use the in-leau fees paid by EBI to instead make a replacement path connecting the same streets but further east.  The Tattler reported that switch would cost an additional million dollars at least but the City officially continued to work towards that goal.

Until recently.

The mid-block replacement connection nixed, City Hall has now also ruled out using the EBI money to open the long lost "Pickle Works" path connecting Doyle and 53rd streets, long a source of frustration for bikers and walkers seeking convenience in our town and once talked about as an alternate thing to spend the EBI money on.  High costs associated with seizing the property from a private land holder is cited as the reason.

Any replacement path would cost more than the $525,000 the City got from EBI and the budget being in turmoil at City Hall such that it is, it appears pedestrian needs, once traded away, will not be addressed by Emeryville. City Hall has no plans whatsoever to replace the lost EBI pedestrian path, the money remains unspent and pedestrian needs unmet.

In Emeryville, Only the Poor Get Stuck With Bike/Pedestrian Paths

The Rich Are Gloriously Free From Pedestrians and Bicyclists

Opinion

Dialectical Materialism
The workers control the means of
production and bikes, an inherent 
contradiction of the petty 
bourgeoisie, will spell doom to 
capitalism and its running dogs. 
We will destroy bikes and create
a classless society. 

We live in a wacky town here.  Take last Monday's performance at the Bicycle Pedestrian Committee meeting by Emery Schools Superintendent Debbra Lindo; the City Council is "classist" she says because they are foisting a bicycle/ pedestrian path on the School District as it builds the Center of Community Life.  Unlike the neighboring private school across the street, the hoity toity Escueala Bilingue Internacional, who didn't have to build a proposed path adjoining their facility she noted. They got a pass from the Council she took pains to remind everyone.
Everybody knows bike/pedestrian paths are horrible, tacky things, dreadful really.  But only the disadvantaged public school has to endure one directly adjoining its facility thanks to the plutocrat apologists on the City Council, Ms Lindo says.

These comments, lambasting the Council for its classism were so far out in left field (so to speak), the Bike/Ped Committee at first had no idea what she was talking about.  The Superintendent had to explain her tortured logic twice to the Committee.  Even then some Committee members seemed confused.
Ms Lindo is so desperate to stop the ECCL Path, she is so distracted at the thought of it that she's biting the hand that's feeding her; her partner in the Center of Community Life, the City Council.

All the talk Monday of looming criminals loitering on the path, threatening the children were over the top to be sure.  But it's the "classist" charge leveled at the City Council, with its bizarre Marxist overtones that's especially revealing about the desperation taking hold at the School District.  Everything gets turned on its head it seems at the School District as they attempt to bully their way forward with the Center of Community Life...everything gets turned on it's head, even Karl Marx it would appear.

Here's how the wealthy live: Lots of street,
 no bike/pedestrian paths

We're wondering where the Superintendent is going with this spurious and ridiculous charge directed at the City Council.  We're hoping Monday's performance, entertaining though it might have been, is not an indication of a new trajectory for the Center of Community Life.  We've got too much money wrapped up in this thing for it to falter.  So while we may chuckle at the increasingly erratic antics, we're getting worried this whole thing may not pan out.

This is what poverty in America looks like: 
Not a pretty picture

A tony neighborhood; no bikes.  Oh, to be rich!

Will New Emeryville Families Choose The New Public School?

Public vs Private

Two Tiered Education In Emeryville?

Opinion

Left unsaid during last month's contentious deliberations over the resident generated appeal of the Esquela Bilingua Internacional school is how the newly approved private school will impact our public schools.  Concerns over excessive traffic, noise and improper land use were bandied about at the May 19th special council meeting with neighbors registering legitimate fears of Triangle neighborhood quality of life reductions but the most impactful eventuality is the likely hood that this new private school, right across the street from the soon to be built publicly financed new school, will draw much needed Emeryville middle class students away from the public school.  

Is a two tiered education system looming in our future?

This possible encumbrance on efforts to improve the schools comes at an inopportune time; just as a head of steam has been built.  Emeryville residents have stepped up to the plate and they have shown a willingness to go the extra mile to build a public school district here we can be proud of as evidenced by last November's Measure J $400 million bond and the twin school parcel taxes recently passed.  Citizens have indicated they want to protect their new investment and they have joined to push the city council to bring family friendly housing to attract new Emeryville families for the school.

Insofar as the city actually delivers on all the new talk of building family friendly housing, the specter of a new force that would draw these new families away from the public school is disconcerting to say the least.

Supporters of the new 400 student private school have stressed that it will serve as an asset to our public school by offering high quality after school programs in Spanish instruction would have a point if all Emery students could benefit.  But as it is being proposed now, the programs open to the public school students would require substantial tuition.  To enroll as a full time student, tuition will cost a minimum of $15,500.

A vexing scenario is the eventuality that the two schools, public and private, will exist side by side but with radically different cultures; a troubling two tiered education system.  Since newly arriving middle class families will have the means to pay the $15,500 tuition, it's easy to see how the private school will be construed by parents as the superior school, drawing the more affluent children.   Adjacent to the private school would sit the inferior public school with it's poor children.  This threatens our critically important charge to build up a diverse student population, representative of the whole of Emeryville.

Last November's Measure J school bond literature noted the new school will attract families to Emeryville, some 700 new students in all; the minimum number needed to make the new public school economically viable.  If nothing else, the lack of available land in Emeryville for new housing causes one to seriously question this number and the public school will be left to fight for the few middle class students that do locate here.

We're worried this new private school just made our job to bring substantial numbers of new Emeryville kids to the public school a lot tougher.

New Private School Ok'ed, Dissenters Attacked

Drink this and you'll want to quash dissent

Woe Be To The Dissenters

Is The Water OK In Emeryville?

Opinion

Is there something in the water here?

We have to ask:  What is it about Emeryville that makes the power elite so keen to automatically attack dissenters?  Take last month's resident appeal of the Esquela Bilingue Internacional school:  Three resident citizens were attacked after they took issue with the neighborhood damaging aspects of the private school to be located on San Pablo Avenue.

These courageous neighbors spent $200 of their own money to try to force this private school operator to work with the neighbors and limit some of the worst impacts the school will bring to the Triangle neighborhood.  This audaciousness was enough to make School Board Member Pat Hooper and Planning Commission member Frank Flores launch into a personal attack against the appellants: they discredited the appeal and called these Triangle neighbors "NIMBYists".  The spokeswoman for the Oakland based school it should be noted, piled on and derisively called the three Triangle neighbors "appellant landlords"; a clear attempt to discredit and try to re-cast the three residents as some kind of exotic money grubbing interlopers.

NIMBYism

The three neighbors, by their appeal, forced the traffic for student drop off and pick up, some 400 students in all, away from the residential 45th street and over to 47th Street.  The project before the appeal would have resulted in a massive amount of cut-through driving on 45th Street from San Pablo to Adeline Street. Now the cars will turn onto 47th Street, and turn around in the school parking lot and re-emerge onto 47th and back to San Pablo, leaving the residential neighborhood unimpeded.

Further, the appellants got the school to agree to 'Transit Demand Management' practices, including carpooling and van pooling, thereby lowering the total vehicle loads to our streets.

Also, the three neighbor appellants forced concessions on the school to make the new pedestrian path jogging around the back of the school to be gated to keep out nefarious types late at night, owing to the lack of visibility for the police.

These concessions would only have been made as a result of the appeal since the Planning Commission was not interested in lowering the impact on the Triangle neighborhood.  Together, the concessions make the Esquela Bilingue Internacional school a less impactful presence on the Triangle neighborhood and a better project for the whole town.

These three neighbors who bravely faced the anti-dissenter gauntlet at City Hall should be thanked for their work improving the livability of our town.  Instead, these three Emeryville residents had their integrity challenged by our government in the accusations leveled by Ms Hooper and Mr Flores.

We use the word courageous to describe the three neighbors because of Emeryville's infamous lack of tolerance for dissenters at City Hall.  The three neighbors likely knew they would be attacked by the government officials and undaunted they brought their appeal anyway.  We continue to be exasperated by this culture at City Hall and we thank these three neighbors for working to improve the livability for our town.

Audacity

The drama of the San Pablo Avenue private school appeal had audacity all right.  But it came not from the appeal generated by three Emeryville neighbors, it came instead from the thuggish reactions of government officials Pat Hooper and Frank Flores.

Emeryville Gets Another Private School

Reprinted from the San Francisco Business Times:

Emeryville residents voice opposition

Escuela Bilingue buys Emeryville building despite opposition

San Francisco Business Times - by Blanca Torres

Date: Friday, June 3, 2011, 3:12pm PDT

• Blanca Torres
• Reporter
• Email: btorres@bizjournals.com

It’s official, Escuela Bilingue Internacional is moving to 4550 San Pablo Ave. in Emeryville.

The school, which teaches students in English and Spanish, agreed to pay $3.5 million for a 28,000-square-foot space on a 1-acre parcel that now houses Social Vocational Services and Living Hope Christian Center.

The seller in the deal was Sterling Bank & Trust.

Developers had planned to reuse the site for an apartment building before the current recession took hold, said Aileen Dolby, a broker with Colliers International who represented Sterling Bank.

“Multiple user and investors were interested in property because of its location and the price which was below replacement cost,” Dolby said.

Emeryville’s planning commission approved the school’s move into the space in March, but that decision was appealed by nearby residents who said the school would cause traffic, noise and parking problems, according to the Emeryville Tattler, a local blog. The neighborhood near the building is called the Triangle.

Pues, lo siento, Triangle residents, your pleas were dismissed. A few weeks ago, the city council approved a motion to deny the appeal of the planning commission’s approval and grant the school a permit to proceed.

“One of the Emeryville City Council members commended our parent community for their level of commitment and involvement in the school. Thank you to everyone who has helped us create a permanent home for EBI and its generations of future students!” wrote Jon Fulk, head of Escuela Bilingue in a memo to parents.

The school’s purchase will be a partnership between the school and a philanthropic fund administered by Oliver & Co., a construction firm.

Escuela Bilingue, based in Oakland, plans to set up a second campus in the two-story building. The campus will accommodate up to 400 students in grades kindergarten to eighth.

The school will begin moving in the fall and in subsequent phases as the leases of the existing tenants expire. The full move is expected to be complete within six years.

Triangle Residents Appeal Bilingual School

Private School Slated For San Pablo Ave Appealed By Neighbors 

A small but determined group of Triangle neighborhood residents have petitioned the city council to appeal a March 27th Planning Commission decision to locate an expansion campus of Oakland's Escuela Bilingue Internacional, a private K-8 bilingual school, on San Pablo Avenue in Emeryville.

The neighbors say the school, slated to accommodate 400 children plus staff, will generate myriad negative impacts to the Triangle neighborhood such as traffic, noise and parking and these are primary reasons cited for the appeal but the greatest agitation seems to be from the project's lack of a neighborhood impact study.  The lack of a proper study will leave the decision makers and the neighbors in the dark as to possible looming problems associated with the project the appellants say.

Triangle resident and appellant Eric Gascoyne complained that the project has been rushed without a proper vetting by the neighbors, "The city pretty much rammed this through" he lamented.  Further, he says that since tuition starts at $17,000, the school is too expensive for Emeryville resident's children, "They're not really serving the community...it's a business".

The school's existing
Alcatraz Avenue campus
will remain for the time being

In a letter to the city council, the Triangle resident appellants posit that a plan submitted to the city by the school meant to ameliorate some neighbor concerns does not go far enough and they draw attention to a problem with public safety regarding a 300 foot public pathway easement between the proposed school and the residential neighborhood.
One Triangle neighbor who wished to remain anonymous, described the path as "a place waiting for somebody to get mugged.  The path has 90 degree turns with blind spots so the cops can't see down the length of it".

Mr Gascoyne noted the city's San Pablo Avenue plan mandates that the street is supposed to be for locally serving retail.  After injecting that the school is really just a non locally serving business he told the Tattler, "Any other business would be required to respect the neighbors, but you can't say anything against a school."

The school is proposed for 4550 San Pablo Avenue near 47th Street.

The council will hear the appeal of the Escuela Bilingue Internacional school at a special public hearing slated for May 19th at 6:00 at City Hall.

The Triangle residents plan a community meeting about this school on Saturday May 14th at 12:30 at the Senior Center located at 4321 Salem Street.