Emeryville City Manager Announces He's Quitting

 Paul Buddenhagen Lasts Less Than Two Years as Emeryville City Manager

Is City Hall Dysfunction a Reason For His Departure? 

And so another Emeryville City Manager bugs out.  

Paul Buddenhagen announced to the people of Berkeley yesterday he will be leaving his Emeryville job where he’s been for less than two years, to take up the position of Berkeley City Manager.  While he will take a much larger salary than the $280,000 he receives in Emeryville, that fact was not mentioned as a contributing factor.   Mr Buddenhagen is familiar with Berkeley, having served as Berkeley’s Deputy City Manager before his Emeryville stint.

During his short stint in command at Emeryville, Mr Buddenhagen’s governing style dovetailed with the City Council majority.  One of his first acts was to close down Emeryville’s formerly popular ‘Coffee With the City Manager’ program that invited average citizens to come to City Hall to freely ask questions and solicit ideas.  Coffee With the City Manager has been a once a month scheduled event since 2015 (with a break during Covid), started by then Manager Sabrina Landreth.  Every Emeryville City Manager up until Paul Buddenhagen continued on with the tradition. 

Paul Buddenhagen
Emeryville's newest former City Manager.
Despite a guiding philosophy matching the 
City Council majority, he departs in September.

 

The curtailing of citizen engagement has not happened in a vacuum.  The City Council majority, led by the two termer John Bauters, has largely forgone accountably, commanding a government famously unresponsive to its constituents.  Mr Bauters and now Mayor Courtney Welch have tightly controlled citizen participation, disallowing constituents or the local press access.  Unlike previous Council members, they are not available - not by phone, emails or any other venue.  The only way the Tattler has been able to get any answers to questions at all from Mr Bauters has been as a result of rushing him with our camera as he is caught in public.  Mr Buddenhagen has also governed with a ‘no public access’ policy, probably taking his cues from Mr Bauters.  Notably, two Council members do make themselves available to answer constituent’s questions, Vice Mayor David Mourra and Council member Kalimah Priforce.

Mr Buddenhagen has managed City Hall with an illiberal undemocratic guiding philosophy with timidity as a default.  In response to a man with a camera, he permanently closed down more than 90% of the people’s building in 2023.  More recently he closed down the popular Zoom capability for citizens to remotely speak at meetings because of some Nazis who had called in with racist comments. 

While it is compelling that the City of Berkeley is offering Mr Buddenhagen more money than Emeryville is willing to pay, we can’t be sure that's the only or even the primary reason for his leaving.  For the last two years, the Council, controlled by Mr Bauters and gladly taken up recently by Ms Welch, has been a locus of uncivil and boorish behavior.  Recriminations are routinely handed down from the dais against citizens as well as against the dissenting Council member Priforce.  The dysfunction and turmoil may have contributed to Mr Buddenhagen’s decision to depart.  

City Manager Buddenhagen will leave for Berkeley in September.  He did not answer calls for this story.

City Hall to Shut Down Public Phone-in Comments in Reaction to Nazis

 At City Hall, It's Nazis, 1, the Council, 0

Opinion

Emeryville City Manager
Paul Buddenhagen
Democracy must suffer in order to
go after Nazis or men with cameras.

The Nazis are back!  The same group of five Florida based residents are once again phoning in their special brand of hate to our Council Chambers.  Tuesday night, hoping to make a bigger impact, they kept rotating between themselves, using different names and trying to disguise their voices so they could turn the five of them into 15 commenters.  Mayor Courtney Welch kept playing 'wack-a-mole', cutting their mics at the first whiff of disruptive hate speech but a new one would simply take his place albeit with a new improvised voice pattern.  This childishness flummoxed the Mayor who kept allowing the “new” ones to speak, even though it was obvious it was the same five, taking turns over and over. 

After the theatrics finally died down, the City Manager Paul Buddenhagen made a hair-on-fire announcement: all citizen phone-in comments are to be curtailed at council, planning commission and committee meetings “for the foreseeable future” he said.  Take that, Nazis!

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way.  The popular phone-in option at City meetings started in 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic and was continued on afterward, constituting what came to be known as “hybrid” meetings, meaning in-person comments and phone-in comments are both available to the public.   After City Hall noted a substantial uptick in citizen participation, the hybrid meeting format became settled and permanent Emeryville policy by Council fiat.  The idea was that a much greater number of people would attend meetings if they were made more convenient.  And it worked. 

But then the Nazis came to town.

The Emeryville City Council is right to disallow disruptive hate speech and they should cut the mic of anyone doing it.  Racist hate or any speech targeting people for who they are is not public meeting free speech but profanity IS Constitutionally guaranteed free speech.  But City Hall is now taking that out too.  Perhaps seeing the Nazi ‘crisis’ as an opportunity, the delicate Emeryville City government is now also stoping the use of profanity for citizens, so perturbed they are over these four letter word using Nazis.  This is another panic driven over-reaction and we will challenge this.

To react like the City Council is doing is to put the Nazis in the driver’s seat.  With the harsh anti-democratic prohibitions in place, it can fairly be said these Nazis are now driving public policy in Emeryville.  This kind of over the top reactionary response from City Hall is just what the haters want.  The Council needs to calm the fuck down.  The use of profanity is a Constitutional right.  Racists and fascists are everywhere in America now.  We’re not going to let Nazis destroy our city and we’re not going to let the City Council destroy our city (in order to save it).  We’re going to continue on with democratic governance here, just as we always have.  

So City Council, reel in your City Manager and let the Nazis phone-in and speak.  And let the democracy loving people phone-in and speak and let them all use Constitutionally supported free speech.  When the Trump crowd spews their meeting disrupting hate filled venom, cut their mics.  Don’t make Emeryville residents suffer a major loss of access in order to try to strike a blow against Nazis. Nazism should not be on par with our Emeryville government.  We’re supposed to be better than them.    

City Manager Will Not Re-Start Regularly Scheduled Meetings With Citizens

Formerly Popular 'Coffee With the City Manger' Program Cancelled Indefinitely

Emeryville’s City Manager, Paul Buddenhagen, has decided to not re-start the popular ‘Coffee With the City Manager’ public events conducted once a month at City Hall before the pandemic, at least for the time being.  The one hour, open-to-the-public sessions were conducted monthly in the City Manager’s office until 2020, allowing citizens to freely interact with and ask questions at the seat of government power in Emeryville.   The program was started in 2014 and continued on for about six years, initiated by then City Manager Sabrina Landreth in response to a Tattler challenge.  Mr Buddenhagen has refused to say if he will bring the program back someday.

Emeryville City Manager Paul Buddenhagen
Democracy can be messy and uncomfortable.
He has not said if he will ever re-start the 
once popular coffee events.

Before Ms Landreth, Emeryville’s City Manager John Flores, for years, regularly scheduled meetings with Emeryville private citizen, the power broker and Chamber of Commerce Board member, John Gooding every Monday morning at 9:00 for one hour to discuss anything on Mr Gooding’s mind.  The content of those years of meetings were off record and kept strictly private.  Uncomfortable with the lack of transparency of that, the Tattler suggested that perhaps regular people, ALL people should also have a time to interface one-on-one with their government.  The secretive Mr Flores was not fond of that idea and he refused it but the democratically inclined Sabrina Landreth agreed and she began the program that ultimately became very popular with Emeryville citizens.  

Every City Manager from Sabrina Landreth up until the pandemic either liked the idea of the Coffee With the City Manager or they felt it would be too costly politically to stop the popular program.  The pandemic appears to have provided the perfect, if quiet reset to secrecy at City Hall for Mr Buddenhagen.   

Mr Buddenhagen has shown himself to be prone to secrecy in his job.  He closed off most of City Hall to the people following a moral panic because of a man with a camera in 2023.  He has refused to say if the people's hall will ever be open to the people again.

The Police Department re-started their ‘Coffee With a Cop’ program after also ending it during the pandemic.  The police coffee program was also started up in 2014, inspired by the ‘Coffee With the City Manager’. 

Ms Landreth, arguably the most progressive City Manager in Emeryville history, famously exalted “A transparent government is an accountable government” as she welcomed people into her office at the opening of her first meeting with the citizens.   

City Decides Behind Closed Doors to Stop Conducting Traffic Counts Meant For Bike Safety

 Bi-Annual Traffic Count for Bike Safety Quietly Ended

Done Without Public Input

City Won't Say Why 

(But Councilman Priforce Knows Why)

Sometime between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2021, government officials at the City of Emeryville secretly met behind closed doors to stop and retract long standing bike safety public policy spelled out in the City’s Bike Plan that counts the number of vehicles using the bike boulevards in town, the Tattler has learned.  City Manager Paul Buddenhagen revealed in a recent email to the Tattler, there was a private meeting or series of meetings between undisclosed City employees at City Hall that took place where the decision to overturn the City’s Bike Plan and stop the bi-annual vehicle counts was made.  The meeting(s) were conducted before Mr Buddenhagen was hired he noted and he said he had no knowledge of of it until recently, regardless that the Tattler inquiry request for information started a year ago.  Mr Buddenhagen did not offer anything more about the meeting(s) but he did say he thinks the traffic counts are unhelpful because bike boulevards are not very good and that he prefers protected bike lanes. 

From Emeryville's Last Official Traffic Count, 2019
Every bike boulevard was unsafe because of too many cars.  It's gotten a
lot worse since then.  The City can't be held to account if it doesn't take account. 
Business owners' concerns take precedence over bike safety.

The counting of vehicles on the bike boulvards is meant to provide a Bike Plan backstop over which a regimen of traffic calming provisions are to be implemented for bike safety, often seen as an inconvenience for vehicle drivers and anathema to businesses. 

The Bike Plan was certified by the City Council in 2012 at a cost of $200,000. However bike boulevards have been ignored by the City since the beginning, as the bi-annual traffic counts show.

Council Member Kalimah Priforce
Traffic data is no longer being collected
because it shows too many cars on the
bike boulevards is "bad data" and is
 "embarrassing" for Emeryville.

Bike boulevards are described as streets where cars are allowed but bikes are preferred.

The surprising email from the City Manager came after a protracted year long Tattler fight to learn why the City’s bike boulevard bi-annual traffic count policy was not being followed anymore.  During that time, nobody at City Hall could or would answer our questions about it.  The last time the bi-annual traffic count was conducted (2019), it showed an excess of traffic on all five Emeryville bike boulevards and consequently, the City is on the hook for providing more traffic calming infrastructure.  Increased traffic calming measures on the bike boulevards have been strenuously objected to by several businesses in town, especially Wareham Development who have offices on the Horton Street Bike Boulevard.  Rich Robbins, CEO of Wareham, has been a contributor to many City Council members' re-election campaigns over the years.

Mayor John Bauters
Our bike boulevard network is not a priority,
"I've been doing a lot of other things" he said.

Use of the California Public Records Act has not brought any documents to light, bolstering Mr Buddenhagen’s suggestion that the non public meeting(s) conducted were meant to be secret.

Bike Safety is the stated reason why no bike boulevards should exceed 3000 vehicle trips per day according to Emeryville’s $200,000 Bike Plan.  The City says the 3000 number was incorporated by recommendations from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities.  The Horton Street Bike Boulevard had 4127 vehicle trips per day on it in 2019.  With the Sherwin Williams housing project now nearing completion and over 1000 new renters using Horton Street, that number has likely gone up considerably and bike safety has commensurately suffered.  But because the City has stopped the traffic counting, it remains an unknown quotient. 

Emeryville’s Bike Plan makes it clear that bike safety goes down on bike boulevards as the volume of car traffic goes up. From the Bike Plan:  

Volumes of motor vehicles determine the frequency of passing events; at 1,000 vehicles per day, cars pass a bicyclist approximately every two minutes, while at 3,000 vehicles per day, cars pass a bicyclist every 46 seconds. The rate of automobiles passing a bicyclist indicates the number of potential conflicts and affects the comfort of the bicycling environment.  Bicycle boulevards with volumes higher than 3,000 vehicles per day are not recommended.

The Bike Plan continues,

Counts should be conducted every two years. If a bicycle boulevard goal is not met, the City should consider treatments that will allow the bicycle boulevard to meet goals. If additional treatments are not possible, or if treatments are unlikely to result in conditions that meet the above goals, the City should consider a different type of bicycle facility.

Mayor John Bauters, who regularly likes to display how much he likes bicycling on his X (Twitter) feed, told the Tattler he doesn’t take our bike boulvards very seriously.  After he was informed at a recent public bicycling event, bicyclists are unsafe because of too many cars, he indicated he had other priorities, “I’ve been doing a lot of other things” he said.  He said he didn’t know why the bi-annual traffic counts had been stopped and didn’t express any interest in finding out.  Council member Kalimah Priforce on the other hand was quite forthcoming.  He said the traffic data is embarrassing for the City and that’s why the traffic counting has been stopped.  “Showing too many cars on bike boulevards is bad data for the City” he said.  He added, “It would be embarrassing if we’re telling a narrative that’s different than what the data reveals.”

Mr Buddenhagen for his part refused to say if the City would go back to following the City’s Bike Plan and resume the traffic counting. 

A Guy With A Camera Causes Most of City Hall To Be Permanently Closed

Really Emeryville?  You're Going to Permanently Close Swaths of the People's Hall to the People Because of a Guy With a Camera?

Emeryville: Imagine Democracy, Accountability

News Analysis / Opinion

A man with a camera came to peacefully, quietly and legally make a video of the publicly accessible portions of Emeryville’s City Hall.  Would the public servants we hire who work at City Hall allow him unmolested, to use his camera?  Or would they panic and call the men with guns to come and remove the videographer?  The answer is of course, the latter as the Tattler reported back on July 28th.

Now, large portions of our previously open City Hall have been quietly closed off forever.  Fully 2/3rds of the old part of Emeryville City Hall are now closed to the public indefinitely.   The grand front steps and front doors of the beautiful Beaux Arts people’s hall are no longer accessible.  Inside, the entire lower level, the main floor and the Council Chambers all used to be open but are all now closed to the public (the Chambers are open during meetings only).  

This is what counts as accountability
for Vice Mayor Courtney Welch
A majority of City Council members
refuse to be held to account:
John Bauters, Courtney Welch and 
the newly appointed Sukhdeep Kaur.   

This closing of our democratic hall of governance was done because of a peaceful man with a camera and an interest in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.  So says City Manager Paul Buddenhagen who told the Tattler after repeated inquiries, the man with the camera caused him to reconsider open government in Emeryville.  It is closed he said because of “security” but also because of “Covid”.

After several Tattler attempts, Mr Buddenhagen refused to elaborate what he meant by “security” and “Covid” as legitimate reasons to close our City Hall to us.

Before the mystifying closures, the public could walk all around the open areas of our hall as the man with the camera did.  The only difference was the camera.   However cameras are perfectly legal.  It is legal to film in public.  Somehow in Emeryville though that basic freedom we all enjoy is seen as a security risk.  

We don’t get it.  If a person can be in a public place, they can film in that place.  The Supreme Court has been very clear on that.  Cameras are not menacing and the public, especially public employees have no expectation to privacy in public.  In fact, we are expressly allowed to check up on our government and our public employees.  It’s the first law of the United States.  But our City Manager takes a dim view of this most basic right we Americans enjoy.  

And then there’s Covid.  Why, we asked, when the State of California lifted the Covid emergency order did the City of Emeryville then invoke this as a reason to close our hall of government?  Why did City Hall remain open for months before the man with a camera came, when the State of California still had the emergency order in place?  Again, the City Manager refuses to explain. 

Emeryville City Manager Paul Buddenhagen
Men with cameras are so scary, City Hall
must be closed to stop them.  Lack of community 
access to their government is a small price
to pay to stop cameras.

Put bluntly, phony unqualified Covid and security scares are not good enough reasons to close our property off to us.  This is an abuse of power.  We were told our old City Hall would be open to the citizens after the City moved back to the original City Hall site in 2000.  Before that, Emeryville’s City Hall unceremoniously occupied the 12th floor of a private tower at Watergate for decades.  One of the worst features of the Watergate City Hall location was the not-so-subtle message of closed back room politics sent out to the citizenry.  After the LaCoste corruption scandals of the 1970s and 1980s, reformist civil servants wished to highlight a new day and a new democratic vision for our town.  Reopening Emeryville’s beautiful turn-of-the-century Beaux Arts City Hall was central to the new vision.  So was the ample use of glass in the new addition.  It was to be transparent, literally and figuratively.  The grand front stairs were once again to be open to the public in a nod to the salve of democracy and openness for Emeryville.  But this noble vision has now been taken from us not because of the corrupt former police chief John LaCoste but because of a guy with a camera.

In Trump’s America, there’s a paranoia that has settled in.  Democracy has taken a hit.  In Emeryville, too.  A cult of personality has taken over the mayoralty, resulting in groupthink and homogeneity on city committees, accountability and transparency are in retreat as most City Council members now refuse to talk to the local press and now our beautiful City Hall is closed not because of security or Covid but because of a guy with a camera.

This is why we can't have nice things in Emeryville.