Maurice Kaufman 'Resigns'

Nora Davis' Star Begins to Set

Two Down, Two More To Go

News Analysis/Opinion
Long time Emeryville Public Works Director, Maurice Kaufman surprised many in town Monday when he announced he intends to quit effective in May, giving no reasons other than his desire for a new direction in his life.  This resignation of a department head at City Hall leaves speculation open that the major change in elected public officials in Emeryville last November, the election of three new progressive Council members, is the driving force behind this major shake up.  Given the particulars, we can say with few reservations that Mr Kaufman, hired by and the champion of former Councilwoman Nora Davis, was likely forced out.  This being a personnel matter and therefore not subject to public scrutiny, it’s all tight lips among the Council members and City Manager.  But to this consequential change we say: it’s about time and don’t let the door hit you on the way out Maurice. 
 Some were surprised as noted but not us; a severely out of balance polity can only continue to exist for so long before one way or another a correction is bound to take place. What is surprising is why it took so long to push Maurice along towards the exit.  

Primarily a traffic engineer, Maurice Kaufman had his time here but now he’s a dinosaur, a left over relict from the Nora Davis years when developers (and the cars they bring to a community) were king.  We remember when Maurice told us he's fine with traffic calming for bike safety as long as it doesn't impede car traffic.

Traffic Engineers Like Efficiency
Maurice Kaufman likes cars moving quickly
and efficiently.

 
Mr Kaufman was selected by Ms Davis to support her pro-business/developer philosophy, a role he performed quite well over the years.  It’s just that the people of Emeryville finally decided they’d had enough of that and they ‘voted with their votes’ for a change.  So slowly (very slowly) now the staff at City Hall is starting to finally show signs that the will of the people is being placated. With the head of Public Works gone it’s two down, two more to go on that account. 

Keeping on Nora Davis’ staff at City Hall with the new City Council was/is a piece of regrettable Californication in Emeryville.  A little have a nice day, we could never do anything so harsh as to fire somebody flawed public policy.  And the City Council continues to leave the remaining Nora Davis selected department heads on at their continuing peril.  For surely as night follows day, the will of the Council has been and will continue to be subverted by such a staff.  Want evidence of that? 
Here’s a little taste down through the years of Maurice Kaufman, Nora Davis’ favored City Hall staff manager (partial list): 

• - In 2015, Maurice attempting to stop traffic calming on 45th Street, lied to the new City Manager about our Bike Plan’s requirements to deal with excess car traffic there. A Tattler Public Records Request proved it with a damning document. 
• - The Programs Director of Bike East Bay, formerly known as the East Bay Bike Coalition, the Bay Area’s premier bicycling advocacy group, wrote a letter condemning Maurice for harming the cause of safe bicycling. 
• - Maurice helped draft the Environmental Impact Statement for the Sherwin Williams Project that killed the Horton Street Bike Boulevard. He helped write the Statement of Overriding Considerations that made it official. 
• - Maurice waived fines for developer Pulte Homes who illegally cut down 20 street trees. No reason was given for the pass given to the developer. 
• - Maurice, always hostile to traffic calming for bikes, showed that he doesn’t even understand the idea behind traffic calming when he worked against the Horton Street Bike Boulevard. 
• -Maurice was aware a bike boulevard had too much traffic on it to satisfy the Bike Plan but he didn't inform the City Council, purposely keeping the elected officials in the dark.
• - Maurice paid a contractor the final payment for an unusable bike path, leaving the City with no recourse to fixing it. 
• - Maurice allowed a developer to trash our newly made basket weave brick sidewalks on San Pablo Avenue. Again the final payment was presented to the developer leaving the City with no recourse. 
• - Public Works took years to replace burnt out light bulbs for a crosswalk at Anna Yates Elementary School. 

Imagine if there were ever another Democratic President elected in Washington (that would mean Donald Trump decided to allow it, admittedly a stretch)...now imagine if she decided to leave in place Trump's staff and cabinet and tried to govern.  That's what's been going on in Emeryville.  Elections as they say are supposed to have consequences.  
To the City Council: We're finished with Council member Nora Davis...she had her 30 year run and now it's time to move on.  Insofar as you gave Maurice Kaufman the heave ho last Monday, let's keep that momentum going.

So long Maurice Kaufman. We wish you all the best and no hard feelings… it’s just your time has passed in Emeryville.  Next!

Introducing Fannie Lou Hamer Park

Emeryville's First Large Park in 40 Years:

Fannie Lou Hamer Park

Opinion/News Analysis

Emeryville, you've been lied to.
It doesn't have to be more housing.
We could build a large park instead.

Emeryville residents, long agitating for public parks, could finally get a new large park at the Sherwin Williams site along Horton Street as part of a City Council led drive to deliver on the promise of 26 acres of new parks built in our town before 2028.  The fallow Sherwin Williams site could be turned into a large new park almost eight acres in size and would be funded by the sale of a park bond floated by a newly chastened City Council who, since the 1980's has been terribly remiss in the building of parks to keep up with our population growth.  We propose the new park, the biggest built in Emeryville since the Watergate peninsula was constructed, be called Fannie Lou Hamer Park named in honor of the famous civil rights leader of the 1960’s and as such would represent our values in social justice and recognize the citizen's need for a leafy green open space respite from the daily tribulations of congested urban life.  After a long multi-decade program of building housing and shopping malls in Emeryville, Fannie Lou Hamer Park would provide a much needed counterpoint to that as well as redress the long-on-talk, short-on-action issues of livability our town has been subject to.  Fannie Lou Hamer Park could correct a lot of wrongs and make our town as nice as other towns.

The Why's and How's of Fannie Lou Hamer Park 
Emeryville is vastly underserved by parks/open space according to the American Planning Association and other good government/city planning institutions.  But not for long:

• The Sherwin Williams site is Emeryville’s last large piece of fallow ground available to build a large park on, and fallow land is the least expensive location to build a park.
• Emeryville’s residents to park acreage ratio, now almost unimaginable at nearly 500:1, has increased every year since 1979 and FLH Park offers a chance to reverse that.
• No cost to relocate any businesses, building tear down or clean-up (like we incurred at Doyle Hollis Park).
• Financed by floating a general obligation park bond leveraging Emeryville’s copious assessed valuation. 
• The property is acquired by standard private to public eminent domain after paying the developer fair market value.
• The trade off is clear; 30 affordable units above our existing average to be provided by the Sherwin Williams project and a small art gallery versus an eight acre public park.
• Beautiful tree framed sight line to our future iconic South Bayfront Bike/Pedestrian Bridge that will touch down in the park.
• The Horton Street Bike Boulevard is saved.
• Much less traffic in Emeryville. 
• Chances for citizen recharging and even solitude available that only a large park can provide.
• Parks foster civic pride and citizen engagement.
• We get the park now rather than waiting for 12 years. 

The above list offers a cogent and rational take one would expect to have traction in a normal democratically served municipality.  Unfortunately here in contemporary Emeryville, citizens acting as rational cogent agents has been supplanted by a different paradigm.

Fannie Lou Hamer
1917-1977
"I'm sick and tired of 
being sick and tired"
A great moral force of the civil rights
struggle.  Naming our park after her
would continue the pre-Ronald Reagan
tradition of elevating labor leaders
and social justice crusaders by naming
grand civil projects; libraries, town halls
and parks in their honor.
Interest in learning about
Fannie Lou Hamer by children would
be served and Emeryville's values
would be proudly proclaimed.

The Pro-Developer Meme 

The idea that Emeryville would begin a program of building enough parks to catch up with our exploding population growth, an idea considered rational and normal in a different era in a different town, sounds idealistic if not crazy in a town grown used to a naysayers paradigm that has overtaken our town these last decades.  In Emeryville, we’ve been mugged by these naysayers who tell us we’re simply not good enough to have what other towns have.  A strange Patty Hearst Stockholm Syndrome has replaced a former culture of expecting civic spaces that are liked and wanted by the residents.  Now many residents here readily accept what developers and the Council tell us is our only option; let the developers do what they want in our town.  Lots of Emeryville residents feel pride in all the new development projects and are happy developers are paying any attention to us. 
  

Like the thirty year project promulgated by right wing think tanks that gets us repeating the line that limited government is best, after a while it begins to seem like common sense; government is bad, inefficient, wasteful…isn’t it?   It’s no accident that the American people, who 40 years ago used to think the government is good at solving problems now thinks government itself is part of the problem. 

Here too we’ve foreclosed on our own agency to service a long standing right wing meme that insists like trickle down nostrums created in Washington, we have to let developers develop our town…the fact that we have almost 500 residents per acre of park/open space compared to Oakland’s 67 acres per resident only highlights how much better and more desirable Oakland must be according to this meme.  The meme permits a kind of twisted thinking that makes it unreasonable that we could expect to get the 26 acres of parks that our own General Plan requires we build within 12 years.  We’ve become a people who dream of nice things like other people in other towns do but have no expectation at all in getting them, thanks to the pro-developer meme.  

The meme in Emeryville is so ubiquitous, so pervasive that “progressive” City Council members are not at all distinct from the old school conservative Council members on this subject: even though they campaigned on parks, there’s little chance they would consider Fannie Lou Hamer Park because the developer doesn’t want to do it.  The meme is so powerful that even the “progressive” Council members will retract when confronted by the idea that we could build a park, they retract instead of offer a reason why we cannot build a park; reason takes a holiday thanks to the meme.  It is cast as reasonable to not provide reason; developers must be placated and no other vision is entertained. To do otherwise, to build Fannie Lou Hamer Park at the Sherwin Williams site, is so far off the radar that to propose it is tantamount to proposing an Emeryville space program.  

And it’s not just the Council “progressives” and otherwise who cannot even imagine building a park, it’s the citizens too, seduced by the pro-developer meme that Emeryville just isn’t good enough to get what other towns have, who vote for Council members who promise parks but don’t deliver, who worked on our General Plan that promises parks that’s not worth the paper its printed on, who publicly profess the love of parks who dismiss the idea we could build a park here and now for reasons they refuse to specify.  

And the new City Council candidates plying for our votes in November are telling us exactly the same as Council members seeking election have said for decades: they like parks, they’re going to deliver parks they say but they don’t think the Sherwin Williams site is appropriate for reasons not specified other than the dog whistle of the pro-developer meme.  Of course anyone who is aware of the pro-developer meme will not be taken in by the new crop of wanna be Council members.  They seem to be playing to new resident rubes and those mesmerized by the meme.

In coming weeks, Fannie Lou Hamer Park will likely fade into the ether like bike boulevards here and the other things the residents say they want but run afoul of the desires of developers.  Our polity is stark and bereft.  As opposed to what the residents get in other towns not taken over by an alien ideology overlain public policy.  And that’s really sad but it’s also who we’ve become; a town with no pride.  So remember Emeryville, next time you hear anyone say anything good about our town: we’re actually measurably much worse than our neighbors.  We have almost 500 residents per acre of park/open space land and that number is rising with no clear way to reverse the trend or improve on that.

Parks in Emeryville are always going to be built at some future date.  Say, about 12 years from now.  A newly arrived Emeryville citizen, looking at our General Plan and its built-in impending sunset in 12 years, might assume the City is going to engage in a massive flurry of park building at the end of the sunset period.  Cynical old timers who haven't been hoodwinked by the pro-developer meme know better.  They know the score; 12 years from now when we write our next General Plan (with lots of citizen participation mind you), the same 26 acres of parks that will make us as good as other cities will be in there...only a new 20 year clock will have been reset and a new program of placating developers will begin afresh.  The only place to build parks in Emeryville then will be on the site of existing viable businesses and expensive buildings.
Or we could build Fannie Lou Hamer Park now and prove the cynics wrong.

The City of Emeryville is Anti-Bike

The City Staff Thinks Bikes Are OK*
*as long as they don't inconvenience vehicles

 Mayor, Vice Mayor 

Have a Staff Infection

Emeryville Mayor Martinez
Agrees with the staff:
Now is not the time
to implement the Bike Plan.
She's been infected.

Opinion
The people of Emeryville want a bike boulevard on Horton Street.  How do we know that?  Well, for one, because it's specified in our city's General Plan and our GP is the most democratically vetted GP of any in the Bay Area.  Our GP even won an award for the record high levels of support from the residents.  Further and more compellingly we know the people of Emeryville want a bike boulevard on Horton Street because that's what they directly voted for in November of 2014 when they cast their votes for Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue both of whom were definitive at the time: a vote for them is a vote for the Horton Street Bike Boulevard they assured us.

The people like the idea of the Horton Street Bike Boulevard but the staff at City Hall sure doesn't.  In fact they've worked for years trying to make sure the traffic calming provisions spelled out in our Bike Plan don't come to pass on Horton (or any other street in Emeryville designated as a bike boulevard).

Vice Mayor Donahue
Agrees with the Mayor.
He's also infected.

The citizens voted for Dianne and Scott, finally getting a City Council majority that appeared to support the resident's desires for a bike boulevard on Horton Street....that's good.  But we were saddened when the two voted down the Bike Plan provision for traffic calming at the now infamous April 5th City Council meeting vote covered by the Tattler.  What's up with that?  They were very clear before the election they would vote for Level Four traffic calming as the Bike Plan delineates and then they reversed themselves and supported the staff who says NO to Level Four calming claimed to be something too restrictive against car traffic.

Staff Infection
The Mayor Dianne Martinez and the Vice Mayor Scott Donahue have been infected by virulent anti-bike sentiment festering at City Hall; they have a staff infection.  After listening to the residents before the election, now they're listening to the staff.  Whereas before they thought there should be a process and we should follow the General Plan's remedy for too much car traffic on bike boulevards, now they think like how the staff thinks; the General Plan is too radical, especially as it pertains to bike boulevards.  Dianne and Scott have joined a long procession of City Council colleagues who have been similarly infected: OK applying stencils to the streets or putting up purple bike boulevard signs but once drivers begin to become inconvenienced, well that's "too extreme" as the City Manager likes to put it.

The lengths the staff is willing to go to stop the Bike Plan's traffic calming is pretty exceptional.
To wit:

• August 2015   The Director of Public Works attempted to stop a required bi-annual traffic count on the 45th Street Bike Boulevard by falsely claiming the General Plan says such counts should only be conducted when there has been residential construction on or near a bike boulevard in question. The intended effect was to deny Bike Plan required data that would support the implementation of traffic calming.
• July 2015   The Director provided false testimony about traffic count documents when he reported to the City Manager that the 45th Street Bike Boulevard was below the threshold for Bike Plan mandated traffic calming.  A traffic count from the spring of 2015 (unmentioned by the Director) provided by the developers of the Sherwin Williams project that showed a gross excess of traffic on 45th Street according to the Bike Plan. 
• February 5th, 2016    The City Manager told the Tattler that Level Four traffic calming as described by the Bike Plan is "too extreme".  Earlier, the Public Works Director said any traffic calming beyond level three causes traffic to move inefficiently, something he says he's duty bound to stop.

The Staff
Their effect is corrosive and infectious on the
body politic if the Council doesn't inoculate
themselves with the disinfectant of 
independence and allegiance to the people.

What's also exceptional is the fact that our two newest Council members are so unexceptional; so far no Council members have shown a willingness to go against the staff on bike boulevards.  But what sets the Mayor and Vice Mayor apart is the iron clad promise they made to voters they would implement Level Four traffic calming on Horton Street if elected.  Other Council members have made vague references over the years to their support of the Bike Plan and about how much they like bicycling and other innocuous stuff.  Dianne and Scott bumped it up a notch with a specific promise.

We're still not sure why this overt bait and switch has happened (other than another outbreak of staff infection).  Vice Mayor Donahue has so far refused to comment.  Mayor Martinez has told the Tattler that while she agrees the staff has a jones against bike boulevard traffic calming that she doesn't share, she's too weak to stop them (presumably) and that Level Three traffic calming is the best we can do, "a bird in the hand..." and so on she said.

After a year and a half with these two progressives on our City Council, we've been worried that the same old pattern would repeat itself.  The fact that there's been no shake up at City Hall has proved to be a harbinger of the status quo being unperturbed by the new condition of a progressive Council majority.  One would expect a radical new direction selected by the voters to be reflected in a new culture at City Hall but these two decided to keep the same crew on.  The same department heads selected by the long ensconced pro-developer Nora Davis council majority have been left be in their corner offices, their power undiminished.  The resultant push back against Level Four traffic calming for Horton Street is what one would expect in such a scenario.

At least two more bike boulevards, 45th Street and 53rd Street, are now over their traffic thresholds and are over due for traffic calming as mandated by the Bike Plan.  After the progressives on the council joined their conservative colleagues in opposing the implementation of Horton Street traffic calming, we expect they'll do likewise for the other bike boulevards.  Barring some major change, we can't see the Bike Plan mandated traffic calming (over level three) being implemented for any street.

Emeryville; the more things change the more they stay the same.  Where's our Jonas Salk?  We're pretty discouraged here.

2015: A Watershed Year For Emeryville Residents

Year End Wrap Up:

In 2015 Emeryville Policy Turned Towards Residents, Away From Business 

Two Unprecedented & Consequential Decisions

More than a five changing to a six.
Real, fundamental and lasting change came
to Emeryville in 2015.

As 2015 fades from the rear view mirror in Emeryville, two incontrovertible and unprecedented City Council decisions made over the year stand as harbingers of a new pro-resident culture for our town: the landmark Minimum Wage Ordinance and the bellwether Market Place decision.  Emeryville's long standing regional reputation as a pro-business town died at the hands of these two game changing public policy decisions, making 2015 a year to remember; a year when residents replaced the business community as the power to be contended with here.  It was change shepherded along by the first year of the new progressive City Council majority of Jac Asher, Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue. 

1- The Minimum Wage Ordinance

 Emeryville's City Council took on the intractable problem of increasing income inequality in 2015 (after years of exacerbating it by overseeing an Emeryville service sector building boom) with our new Minimum Wage Ordinance, putting every worker in town on a path to $15 per hour plus guaranteed paid sick leave.
Emeryville being a small town smack in the middle of the hottest economic region in the United States seemed like a likely place to take on growing inequality in our nation, a rare issue something all five City Council members could agree upon.  The amount per hour the Council settled on ($14.44 adjusted for inflation) is the amount it would take a worker, putting in 40 hours per week, to be ineligible for government assistance in the form of food stamps and other such programs.  As such, any hourly wage less than that amount effectively represents a taxpayer subsidy to the business sector.

The united City Council faced a united business community against the ordinance, predictably.  As they always do when asked to pay their fair share, those anti-minimum wage, pro-business voices predicted a wholesale failure and exodus of businesses in Emeryville, something that clearly has not happened half a year after the implementation of the ordinance.  The new ordinance puts Emeryville on the map as no longer serving to exacerbate regional problems but instead serving as a leader in solving problems.

2- The Market Place Development Decision

In 2015, Emeryville's City Council said NO to a developer.  That had never happened before and the effect has been very consequential and promises to be evermore so moving forward.
The developer in question, City Center Realty, wanted to build the Market Place development, a series of rental apartment towers clustered around the Public Market on Shellmound Street, some 456 units total.  The new progressive City Council said they wanted more affordable rental units than what City Center Realty proposed.  The Council wanted at least 50 units of affordable housing but the developer said they could only make the whole project profitable by building no more than 33 units...any more than that and the project "won't pencil out" City Center said.  The Council held firm as well on the new Family Friendly Housing Ordinance, something City Center said they also couldn't afford.
The City Council didn't buy that from the developer and they held their ground: 50 units or no project they said.  The developer threatened to build the project without ANY affordable units as a result of the Council's audacity.  That's when the right wing in Emeryville started screaming that the Council must do as the developer said; all pretty standard fare for Emeryville so far but the Council majority still said NO....an exceptional thing.
And then the developer caved on the affordability and the family friendly units.
Emeryville will now get 50 units of affordable housing; the same percentage rate (50:456) as exists now in the aggregate in the whole town; the Market Place development will not make Emeryville less affordable as a result of the City Council holding firm.

The Market Place decision is a game changer because it removes the former argument always posited by the right wing in Emeryville that if we don't do everything every developer says, they'll pack up and leave town: a horrible prospect for our town they say every time.  Now we know for sure: developers will lie to get their projects built and maximize their profits.  When they say a revision to their proposal won't pencil out, we know they're lying.  This new empowerment of City Hall over developers promises to have profound effects on all future development in Emeryville; now we get to have planning in our town, just like other towns.

Breaking News- Negoiations Complete, City Council Calls Developer's Bluff, Major Concessions for Residents

Market Place Developer Concedes: Will Build Affordable Family Friendly Housing

Progressive City Council Majority/Residents 

Emerge Victorious

Details are leaking out of City Hall today bringing light to what's shaping up to be a major victory for affordable housing in negotiations with the developer of the Market Place development at the hands of the progressive Council majority.  Details have not been confirmed but insiders tell the Tattler that City Center Realty Partners, the developer of the contentious Market Place development, finally folded and accepted the Council majority's terms for building more affordable units, now some 50 in total as well as increasing the number of family friendly units to match what is required by City Ordinance.

The project located at the existing Public Market on Shellmound Street, originally planned for 33 affordable units in the 456 total rental unit mix.  That plan was rejected by Council members Jac Asher, Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue (the progressive majority).  The new plan, now agreed to by the developer calls for 50 affordable units, bring the project at or very nearly at parity with what exists in Emeryville as far as affordability goes town-wide in terms of percentage, a progressive Council majority goal.
In addition to rejecting the non-parity affordable housing, the progressive Council majority also rejected the "family flexible" plan put forth by the developer.  After negotiation, City Center Realty Partners now agrees to build actual family friendly units as called for by the City's new family friendly housing ordinance.  Originally the developer sought to ignore the new ordinance and instead build some number of what City Center called "family flexible" units, a cheapening of the provisions laid out in the ordinance.

Notably, veteran Council members Ruth Atkin and Nora Davis voted in favor of the previous iteration of the Market Place development, the deal favored by the developer, with only 33 affordable units and no family friendly units.

Details of the negotiations and the final agreement will be revealed at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

City Council Moves to Increase Housing Affordability to 12%

Council Makes Bid For Greater Affordability for Renters

Residential Developers to Face 
New 'Bonus Point' Program

But Will It Work?

News Analysis
Last Tuesday, the City Council finally took up the problem of a flawed and overly lenient set of planning and zoning regulations that have heretofore allowed and even encouraged a plethora of overpriced for rent studio and one bedroom apartments to be built in Emeryville over the last several years.  It's been a problem the residents and even the developers themselves have been in agreement about: rents keep skyrocketing and something needs to be done about it.  Tuesday, the Council finally did something about it.  They have imposed a set of incentives to encourage developers to built new residential development with 12% affordable units included in the mix.  But with an opt-out the Council provided allowing developers to simply write a check to the City instead of building affordable units in a project, will Emeryville actually achieve greater affordability moving forward?
The numbers as they say, don't 'pencil out' for a good outcome for affordability.

The Background
Emeryville has been on a major housing spree over the last 20+ years, filling our town with luxury apartment blocks, doubling our population.  Before last November's election when there was a pro-developer Council majority at the helm, developers were given a green light to do whatever they wanted regarding building housing.  Now however they're facing a more circumspect City Council majority.  Developers are insisting we keep up the building boom, citing the economic law of supply and demand, insisting rental rates will finally go down if the Council will only let them build out the last few parcels of land left in Emeryville with market rate housing.  So their solution to the problem of overpriced rentals is to build more of them.  But Emeryville has already built more than its share of market rate housing, especially rental housing.  In fact, we have more than doubled what the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) recommended for our town as documented in their Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA).
Ironically, before the decades long building spree, affordability wasn't on the mind of anyone in Emeryville.  The doubling of our housing stock has only served to decrease affordability, despite the contrary proclamations of economic laws from profit seeking developers.
Seeking to disrupt the spiral of unaffordability, the City Council majority last February moved to impose a temporary moratorium on large new residential projects for the last parcels of fallow land left but they were rebuffed by the old guard of the Council in a 3-2 vote requiring a super majority 4-1 vote.  The failure of the moratorium is what is driving this Council majority's new policy proscription.

The Solution

Emeryville isn't completely without affordable units.  The Planning Department at City Hall puts the number at 11.17% city-wide as of now.  The new Bonus Point system proposal seeks to increase that number to 12%, still low by Bay Area standards but an improvement over the current condition.
The developers can still build 'by right' whatever they want regarding including affordable units.  A 'by right' project bumps up against our zoning and planning regulations as spelled out by our General Plan, the document Emeryville residents crafted to make the town they want to live in.  However developers, always seeking ways to maximize their profits, routinely request permission to build bigger projects than the General Plan normally allows, bigger than what they can build by right.  The permission is granted in the form of 'bonus points'.  This is essentially a baked in set of negotiating parameters between the developers and City Hall.  If a developer wants say a taller building, he must provide something to temper the project, like traffic amelioration.  To be included in the new list of bonus points is the 12% affordability plan. Developers will get the points they want to increase their project's density if they build in at least 12% affordable units as prescribed by City Hall.  

'Affordability will move 

from 11.17% up to 12% 

if everything works 

according to plan'

However, the Council is proposing developers can still get their bonus points without building the affordable units on-site by cutting an in lieu check to City Hall who will later build the required number of affordable units off-site in Emeryville.  The idea of off-site affordable units it should be noted, tends to turn its head away from contemporary ideas about mixed income residences peppered throughout the city and embraces the old Robert Moses model of geographically cordoning off housing projects for poor people.

Council Second Guesses Its Own Study
Much of the talk at the Council chambers Tuesday centered around the in lieu off-site idea.  The question before the Council was the amount of money the developers should pay in lieu of building the required affordable rental units on-site.  Implicit in that argument is the idea that the money paid should equal what it would take to build the required off-site units.  An Emeryville funded nexus study on this (the Keyser Marston Study) that showed the market in our region will bear some $35,000 in lieu fee per required affordable unit but the City Council regardless settled on a $28,000 per unit fee, the same as what the City of Berkeley currently charges.  However the City of Berkeley conducted a nexus study of their own recently and strangely, that study showed an $85,000 market rate for replacement off-site affordable housing.  Presumably the newly revealed higher replacement costs revealed by the new study will drive Berkeley to increase their developer fees accordingly.

All of this drives the question of what does it really cost to build affordable housing?  Is the City Council hamstringing us by not charging developers what it actually costs to build off-site?  Will taxpayers be left holding the bag?  Or will we simply fall behind and drive down our affordability?  For years Emeryville built affordable housing using the Redevelopment Agency.  Presumably, the cost per unit the Redevelopment Agency paid is known.  These are the numbers the City Council should be guided by.  Barring that, Emeryville's affordability will go up or down over time, showing everyone if this Council's stated desire to increase affordability for our town is genuine.  The actual numbers will reveal all.

The City Council will engage in a second and final reading of the ordinance containing the new bonus point system at the November 3rd Council meeting.

Council Majority Refuses to Implement the Horton Street Bike Boulevard

Emeryville's Progressive Council Majority:

Not Progressive on Bike Access

City Needs to Return Bike Plan Award
Received Under False Pretenses

Opinion
For more than 15 years, Emeryville's Bike Committee has been clamoring for traffic calming for Horton Street, Emeryville's premier north/south bike commuting corridor.  Using what leverage they had, the Committee forced the previous City Council majority's hand and a new document, the Bike Plan was commissioned and certified to the tune of $200,000 in 2012 after two years of study.  The Plan, officially part of Emeryville's General Plan, also called for traffic calming just as the Committee had been.  We're sorry to say that's where this story ends....with a plan...on a shelf.

Regular Tattler readers will attest the story of the problems this city has had bringing traffic calming to Horton Street are legendary.  The problem historically was a disingenuous City Council.  They would campaign for bikes at re-election time but they had no interest in following through with traffic calming for Horton Street.  We thought that once the old order was broken up and a new seemingly pro-bike progressive City Council majority was elected last November, the taxpayer funded $200,000 Bike Plan would finally be taken seriously and traffic calming would finally come to Horton Street.  We're sad to say we were wrong.

Almost a year after the new City Council ordered the Plan be implemented, Horton Street is now no closer to getting traffic calming; not even a little. There has been no action whatsoever on this and there is no sign of any action anytime in the future.  Meanwhile, bicyclists are continuing on, dangerously trying to share a street with more than 3000 vehicles per day as they have done for more than 10 years.  The Progressive Council majority has not made any move to rectify the situation and they seem happy with their empty vote to implement the Plan last year.

The problem now, if it even matters identifying it, is the head of the Public Works Department Maurice Kaufman.  Mr Kaufman, a traffic engineer, has long said his job is to make cars move more efficiently, the antithesis of a bike boulevard with its traffic calming meant to discourage efficient vehicle use.  The distance Mr Kaufman is willing to go to continue to stall Bike Plan traffic calming was revealed by the Tattler last August when we uncovered an internal document wherein Mr Kaufman lied to our new City Manager about it.
As Tattler readers know, temporary bollards, glued to the street, are what's called for in the Bike Plan so the effects can be studied on reducing the traffic below 3000 per day.  The Public Works Department routinely does this gluing down of bollards whenever there is a construction project and a developer needs to temporarily take a portion of a street.  The problem is Mr Kaufman says he can't do that now on Horton Street for bikes as the Bike Plan directs because he maintains (without evidence) that a whole new expensive study needs to be completed.  The Tattler has referred to this new study as the "study of the study"; a bogus and unnecessary time stalling tactic.  So this is where we are now...waiting on the study of the study to be commissioned by the Council.  We're no closer to implementing the bogus study of the study than we've ever been and there has been no action on even securing an author for it.

So here we are, no closer to implementing our long overdue Bike Plan than we were with the old City Council.  This new Council majority may be progressive when it comes to other things in Emeryville but as far as bike access goes, they're no better than the old right wing Council majority.

We call on this majority to make your decision now: implement or rescind so we can return Horton Street back to what it was, a regular high volume busy street without the dangerous purple bike boulevard signs and stencils on the asphalt giving bicyclists a false sense of security.
Council be warned however, if you move to rescind the Plan or if you stall for more time, we say Emeryville residents and regional bike commuters have waited long enough; the City of Emeryville must return the award it received for its Bike Plan in 2013 from the American Planning Association.  A letter should accompany the returned award saying this town doesn't like the idea of bikes on our streets.  We don't have the stomach to make a place for bikes here in Emeryville.

Emeryville's Award Winning Bike Plan
It was received under false pretenses:
Emeryville appears never to have had any intention to implement the Plan.
Time to return this to the American Planning Association.

East Bay Express on Emeryville Development & the New Progressive Council Majority

From the East Bay Express:

Emeryville Is Finally Rethinking Development 

The East Bay's tiny development powerhouse is rethinking how it grows, with an eye toward building more affordable and family-friendly housing and funding public services.

By Darwin BondGraham @Darwinbondgraha

Email

Print

click to enlarge

• BERT JOHNSON
• Dianne Martinez is one of three progressives that now hold a council majority in Emeryville.

During the heyday of redevelopment, Emeryville was practically rolling in cash. An A-list of real estate developers lined up to build thousands of housing units and massive shopping malls. The compact East Bay burg, much of it a blighted and toxic landscape of hollowed-out factories, quickly morphed into a sparkling model of new urbanism. From 2000 to 2010, Emeryville's population expanded by 46 percent, but the city, a veritable growth machine, added housing faster than people, growing its stock by 56 percent. Emeryville's leaders took advantage of nearby Berkeley's aversion to big-box stores, adding retailers who generate millions in sales taxes.

But growth under this regime created problems — problems that have mushroomed in recent years, threatening the social fabric of the city. Emeryville's redevelopment-era regime raised money based on the expected future tax revenues that new retail and housing would generate, and channeled these funds into building even more housing, retail, and office buildings through the city's redevelopment agency. But under the rules of redevelopment, new property tax revenues raised in the city's redevelopment zones — which covered a full 95 percent of Emeryville — couldn't be used by the school district, transit agencies, and other public agencies responsible for essential services.

"Revenues just went back into more development," explained Emeryville Councilmember Jac Asher. "If you're building for a population that doesn't need or want schools, public transit, or more money for parks, that kind of financing makes sense, but what you end up doing is building housing and neglecting all those other things people need for a community."

The rest of the story is HERE.