City Says Ordinary Citizens Have No Business in Helping Neighbors With Food Insecurity

 The City Took Away the Community Food Table,

Now They're Stopping Even Sidewalk Paint to End

Community Generosity

Children's Hopscotch Courts Will No Longer Be Permitted to Try to Stop Community Food Sharing 

News Analysis
After Emeryville’s City Attorney, John Kennedy issued an order in December to remove a grassroots community free food table, citing an arcane city code against private property on public property, City Hall quickly took away the table and they've been conducting an ongoing campaign to stamp out any and all attempts to facilitate the feeding of hungry fellow community members at the site of the former food table ever since.  By their actions in the face of growing public hunger in the community, the City of Emeryville announces strict adherence to its ‘encroachment’ code is more important than helping food insecure community members.  Most Emeryville residents are Democrats and such a strict and conservatively minded obedience to public policy not related to but impactful of public hunger, is a stance most of Emeryville probably would not condone, seeing it as unnecessarily punitive government action against a noble community impulse.  But Emeryville’s City Council, whom the City Attorney answers to, has long been more conservative than Emeryville's greater community members on the whole and this kind of mean spirited politics, much in vogue in conservative enclaves around the country, has been shown to be ubiquitous in its flowering among the elite, even here in Emeryville.  

After the table was taken by the City,
the Tattler encouraged generous 
spirited community members to
leave food directly on the sidewalk.
The City panicked and sent out workers
to do away with it.

The former food table, located at the corner of Sherwin and Horton streets became very popular during the two months it existed.  Community members were responding in droves; leaving all manner of foodstuffs including expensive and nutritionally dense ready to eat meals at the table.  Hungry neighbors were taking the food at the same pace as it was being replenished.  Community members left food and took food, gathering at the table to commune with one another and fulfilling an official objective of the City of Emeryville to build public infrastructure that encourages such interactions.  The City calls that “enlivening” of our sidewalks creating "vibrancy", a General Plan goal.

  

While the mean spirited politics taken up by Emeryville City Hall may be common throughout modern America, it is noteworthy that Emeryville's neighbors, Oakland and Berkeley have not.  Both those cities have community free food tables that have been allowed to thrive.   Berkeley is even encouraging citizens to give to tables in their neighborhoods.  Local churches have answered the call in some cases. 

City Attorney Kennedy has refused to publicly comment on why adherence to our encroachment code should take preference over community hunger, even with the knowledge that the city attorneys in Oakland and Berkeley have both erred on the side of alleviating hunger despite their own encroachment codes.  

This Public Works employee was directed to 
scrub off the sidewalk paint to stop the community
food sharing.

The progenitor of the Emeryville community food table, the Emeryville Tattler, responded to its removal with sidewalk paint; a sign in orange asking community members to leave food and pick up food directly down on the sidewalk where the table used to be.  Clearly angered by that, Mr Kennedy reacted by ordering the Public Works Department to wash off the Tattler sidewalk paint.  However, when we happened upon the Public Works worker scrubbing off the sign, he beat a hasty retreat, informing us while running away that the City Attorney had ordered the removal of the painted sign.  With the ordered removal job left unfinished, Public Works employees returned later with non-water soluble grey paint and a roller, covering over the Tattler’s free food sign.

All this City of Emeryville work is being done to try to stop community members of means from helping feed fellow community members in need.  

City workers being ordered to remove sidewalk paint begs another question beyond food sharing.  But our questions have gone unanswered.  Neither the City Manager nor the Public Works Director have answered questions about sidewalk paint applied by Emeryville children; hopscotch courts, rainbows and flowers and such.  This kind of juvenile sidewalk decoration has cropped up in the more family friendly sections of Emeryville from time to time and until now, it has always been allowed to stay; left unmolested by the City; no scrubbers or grey paint from Public Works needed.  However with the City's new aggressive zero tolerance push, it appears children's sidewalk art will no longer be allowed.

The City later rolled grey paint over the whole thing,
putting an end to hunger philanthropy in
the community once and for all.

Other Cities Allow Community Food Tables

The Tattler reached out to the owner of a community free food table on a public sidewalk in West Berkeley, a man who goes by ‘Barry’, who has used his table set up in front of his house to feed food insecure community members in his neighborhood for more than ten years.  Barry’s table is well used by the community although most of the food provided now comes from local churches, not as much from Barry himself or other neighbors anymore.  Barry told the Tattler he saw hunger in his community and just put up the table without getting permission from the City of Berkeley.  When the city heard about it, they let the table stay even though it represented (and still represents) a violation of that city’s encroachment code.  Over the years, the table has become very popular with the elderly on a fixed income and other people of limited means so common in the Bay Area.  Neighbors point with pride to Barry’s community free food table and many have made new friends around the table we were told.   

This private community free food table in West
Berkeley is on a public sidewalk and it has 
been there for more than 10 years.  The City of 
Berkeley says it violates their encroachment 
code but they see greater value in feeding
hungry community members.

 

There are other community free food tables around Berkeley as well as in Oakland that are not being harassed or shut down by their respective city halls.  

Advocates for the unhoused have praised the Berkeley  model of direct community help.  City halls outside Emeryville around the East Bay have been listening to hungry people and many are responding favorably to this grassroots food table idea.  Emeryville’s draconian response to direct citizen engagement in helping fellow citizens on the other hand, takes the form of a punitive top down model.  

With the closing down of the Tattler community grassroots hunger citizen activism, the City of Emeryville's ECAP program will be the only feeding source for hungry neighbors they say, despite the long walk many have to the City sponsored ECAP food hand out events and the infrequent schedule the City gives for the handouts.  Many food insecure people complain about the long lines at the ECAP food give aways and the dehumanizing waiting to receive help.  Some people have told the Tattler they feel embarrassed to be so visible as they wait to receive government assistance. 

We reached out to Emeryville’s Mayor Sukhdeep Kaur for this story but she refused our request for comment as did Emeryville’s City Manager, Latonya Bellow.

The Berkeley Free Food Table is Very Popular With Food Insecure
Community Members. 
It's technically illegal but local churches donate to the table and the
City of Berkeley does not try to remove it.  In fact, the city points to this
grassroots direct action by a private citizen as a
good and proper use of public space.

Children doing this has been ruled by the City Attorney in
Emeryville to be illegal and the City will dispatch a
phalanx of Public Works trucks out to stop it. 
It's OK in neighboring cities.

500 Drawn to ICE protest at Huchiun Park, Target & Home Depot

Breaking News

Despite a drenching rainstorm, almost 500 people gathered in Emeryville’s Huchiun Park and marched to Emeryville’s Target store and Home Depot to protest corporate connection to ICE and Donald Trump tonight.  The event lasted about three hours and was peaceful.  

The City of Emeryville received two days warning about the event hosted by EBASE and other local social justice organizations and they were told more than 100 people would likely be in the park but the City refused to provide toilet paper for the park bathroom which stays open until 8:00 PM.  The police were called when the crowd swelled and people started getting desperate, could an officer bring some toilet paper?  But EPD said NO and they added that is the job of the Public Works Department. 

Several shoppers at the stores put down their merchandise and joined the protest.  The crowd loudly marched through the Target store and the Home Depot and dispersed peacefully by about 9:00 PM.

Boulders: Emeryville Hits on New Way to Clear Out Homeless People

Police Rousts Homeless Camp

$13,000 Spent on Boulder Field

City Hall Refuses to Explain

Accountability and Transparency Vacates Emeryville With the Homeless People

Humane Policies Out, Boulders and Secrecy In

News Analysis

Late in April, Emeryville's police quietly rousted a small group of homeless people camped on a City owned piece of land on 40th Street behind City Hall so it could place $13,000 worth of boulders there.  The uprooted homeless people have not returned, probably because the taxpayer funded boulders are so tightly spaced that a human body cannot recline between them.  We say ‘probably’ because all we've been able to get by way of an explanation from officials at City Hall about this lavishly funded public work is a 'no comment'.  Are the boulders just dumped there, waiting to be assembled in some way?  They're not saying.  Is this field of boulders indicative of a new policy about how the City deals with homeless people?  Again, they're not saying.

Even though the City refuses to say anything about it, the barren, seemingly inconsequential triangular shaped plot of public land along 40th Street at Hollis Street has become emblematic and revelatory of Emeryville’s real policy about homeless people.  The City has long downplayed implications about the lack of homeless encampments within its borders, especially when compared with neighboring cities and they've even gone as far as to claim the lack of encampments here proves the efficacy and humaneness of its homeless policy.  However the April homeless clearance on 40th Street and the accompanying $13,000 boulder field raises questions not easily dismissed by a button lipped City Hall.  

Mohamed Alaoui
Emeryville's Public Works Director
"No comment" he says about the boulder field.
The people don't have a right to know.

Through a State of California enforced public records request, the Tattler was able to find that the police department cleared out the homeless camp on the orders of City Hall.  The clearing out of the undesirable people was the City’s part of a contract with Rubicon Landscaping of Richmond, a company the City regularly uses for its landscaping needs.  For this project, Rubicon billed Emeryville $12,976 for the placement of 21 tons of gravel and 14 pallets of ‘double head’ boulders, the public records request revealed.  Anything beyond that, the City of Emeryville has refused to account for.  The lack of a chain of command paper trail hints the City Council was not likely a direct part in this decision.  Rather, it was probably made administratively by the city manager or the director of the Public Works Department. 

Still, the people have a right to know, especially because they paid for this.  Why are these boulders needed?  Who decided this?  How long will the boulders be on the people's property?  Was any consideration made to how the boulders look?  What happened to the homeless people formerly camped there the public paid to roust?  The City of Emeryville refuses to answer these or any questions about this other than the firm 'no comment' from Public Works Director Mohamed Alaoui. 
 

Welcome to Emeryville: All are Welcome Here
*except homeless people

The stark difference between Oakland and Berkeley versus Emeryville has for years been expressed in the large number of homeless camps just outside the city's boundaries compared with the total lack of camps within Emeryville. Council members and staff until now, have been quick to explain the difference is that Emeryville’s homeless policies are good and effective at gently steering homeless people to government recourses including bed facilities.  The police department here has always denied that homeless people are rousted.  To those who have asked about it, the answer up until now has always been that Emeryville is good and humane, leaving that Berkeley and Oakland, with their homeless encampments, must be bad and inhumane.  However, the April call to roust the homeless people at the 40th Street site and the new field of boulders placed there calls this longstanding explanation into question.

The questions persist.  Why won’t the City be forthcoming about this?  Is this reflective of a new anti-homeless policy or is it the City just got caught this time?  Rubicon Landscaping charged Emeryville a lot of money for this.  Were there other bids to supply the boulders?  Did Rubicon get a sweetheart backroom deal?  Is the City hiding something here?  Where did the money to pay for this come from?  Were federal Covid-19 funds or other such inappropriate funds used to purchase these boulders?  How are these boulders placed on our land representative of Emeryville values?  The answers to these questions about the people's business will not be answered by those doing the people’s business at City Hall.  But the Tattler will keep trying to shed light into this and forcing them to account.

This is how you spent your $13,000.
Just keep paying your taxes and stop asking questions.

'No comment' from
Emeryville City
government earns one
smiling Nora Davis

Bike Plan Reinterpreted: 45th & 53rd Street Bike Blvds Languish

Bike Plan Unilaterally Reinterpreted

City Hall’s New Vision Means Traffic Calming Must Wait for Bike Boulevards

1,143 Cars Per Day Over the Allowable Limit

City Council Refuses to Protect Bicyclists

Level Four Goalposts Moved 

The City of Emeryville Public Works Department has announced it is unilaterally reinterpreting its Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan, adding additional procedures and making it more difficult to protect designated bike boulevards from excess vehicle traffic.  Elucidated in a recent letter to the Tattler, the City Hall staff generated reinterpretation changes the traffic calming ‘level’ system in the Bike Plan, adding many more steps to each level before a designated bike boulevard can move forward to the next level of traffic calming.

The new policy, revealed by the Public Works Department, states that “multiple iterations”, of a particular traffic calming level should now be conducted before the Council would be advised to consider raising the street to the more rigorous next level, theoretically adding decades before a bike boulevard would reach the highest level of protection (Level Five).

At stake is bicycle safety on our Bike Boulevards as the new interpretation hamstrings the City in effectively dealing with an unsafe amount of vehicle traffic sharing the road with bicyclists that the Bike Plan was formulated to protect against.  By adding new steps for each level of traffic calming, the staff presumes to speak for the Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) and the City Council that certified the Plan (without the stringent new metrics) in 2009.  It is informative that before the new staff interpretation, bike boulevards were moved up in level without these extra steps for each level. 

Indeed, several streets in our town have moved up from Level One to Level Three traffic calming over the years, where they now appear to be stuck, as is the case with the 45th Street and 53rd Street Boulevards. The new tougher policy now effecting these two streets will require more iterations of Level Three traffic calming elements be installed before they can move up to Level Four. 

If the City Council really wanted to implement
the Bike Plan, they could do it.  It's the
'stick to it' step they can't seem to accomplish.
It's either Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or 
Developer Surplus Disorder (DSD) indicated.
Symtoms are the same.
Remedies would be Ritalin or 
Electorate Reckoning respectively.

A recently conducted traffic count reveals those two streets are shown to have 1,143 (45th St) and 638 (53rd St) too many cars in Average Daily Trips (ADT) to be considered bike boulevards by the Plan.  But regardless of the excess traffic on these specific streets, the staff has ruled neither street is ready for a level ‘upgrade’ because of the new metric of “[up to] five elements” of Level Three traffic calming measures have not yet been installed.  
For a complete description of each traffic calming level, please see the chart below. 

The 45th and 53rd Boulevards join the former Horton Street Bike Boulevard in languishing; all three hitting a wall at Level Three traffic calming regardless of their excess vehicle traffic.  Notably, the previous head of the Public Works Department Maurice Kaufman and the previous City Council member Nora Davis both declared Level Four calming for any Emeryville street a ‘no go zone’; being too onerous for vehicles as described by developers wishing to build auto-centric projects near the Boulevards.  Accordingly, an earlier traffic count conducted by the developers of the Sherwin Williams project that also showed too much existing traffic on all three streets, was ignored by Ms Davis and the rest of the City Council.  Later, Mayor Dianne Martinez steadfastly and unilaterally refused to move the two streets, 45th & 53rd, to Level Four as the Tattler reported in 2016.

On Horton Street,  the City Council refused to institute Level Four traffic calming elements and instead issued a ‘Statement of Overriding Considerations’, stating the Sherwin Williams project is more important than the Horton Street Bike Boulevard and that the City would ignore the Bike Plan remedy for excess vehicle traffic.  The Statement of Overriding Considerations signaled to the community that the City Council has no intention of supporting bike boulevard status for Horton Street.  Regardless, before they were elected, both Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue promised Level Four traffic calming for Horton Street.

The 45th and 53rd Street Bike Boulevards have not been subjected to a statement of overriding considerations but the City Council is continuing to let them languish, unrealized as bike boulevards.

The Bike Plan calls for traffic counts to be conducted every two years, a fact the Public Works Department now acknowledges even though the Department was caught lying to the City Manager about that in 2014.  The Tattler uncovered an internal document by use of a Public Records Request that showed how the Department was going to extraordinary lengths to prevent a street moving to traffic calming Level Four by attempting to get the newly hired City Manager Carolyn Lehr to ignore the Bike Plan.  In the memo, the Public Works staff told the new City Manager the Bike Plan says traffic counts are not to be conducted every two years, but rather only if a substantial construction project happens on the street in question or if a large number of citizen complaints are registered; an outright falsehood.  The Bike Plan is very clear that traffic counts must be conducted every two years without conditions.

The new interpretation of up to five required applications of Level Three elements (up from one) being ‘required’ may be the latest attempt by the City to stall implementation of Emeryville’s Bike Plan.  The City has felt no compunction against moving any Bike Boulevard speedily forward through Levels One to Three but they haven't thus far been able to make the breakthrough to Level Four, forwarding different reasons that change over time as to why it can't be done.  The latest prohibition against Level Four in the form of the unilateral Public Works reinterpretation seems to be just the latest blockage offered up by an ignominious City Hall.  It would seem the admonitions against Level Four traffic calming by the assailing Maurice Kaufman and Nora Davis made years ago are still the modus operating principles at City Hall.  

Bike boulevards are supposed to be "cars allowed but bikes preferred" streets meant to maintain bicycling as a safe and convenient form of transportation by discouraging motor vehicle use.  Developers and the business community have long tried to dissuade the City Council from enacting effective traffic calming on Emeryville's Bike Boulevards.

From the Emeryville Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan
Level Four=street narrowings, Level Five= full and partial closures
Level Four (and Level Five) have been determined to be too effective 
so the City has resisted implementing them on any street.  The City Council however has not 
seen fit to amend the Plan to remove these two highest levels they don't like, probably because 
they don't want to be perceived by the public as anti-bike.

From the Bike Plan
53rd Street is at the top of the photo, 45th on the bottom with Horton Street to the left.
North is up, east right, south down and west is left.
The Average Daily Trip (ADT) is supposed to be no more than 1500 for the eastern sections of
45th and 53rd Streets.

53rd Street From the Latest Traffic Count
The eastern section of 53rd Street has 2138 Average Daily Trips or
638 over the maximum allowable amount.  Since the street is now at Level Three, 
that should mean 53rd Street is a candidate for Level Four traffic calming elements.
The Public Works Department says NO however.

45th Street From the Latest Traffic Count
The eastern section of 45th Street has 2,643 Average Daily Trips
or 1,143 over the maximum allowable amount.  A City Council
that cared about bicycling would impliment
Level Four traffic calming elements for the street.

A traffic count from years ago east of San Pablo Avenue

showed 45th Street with more than 3000 cars per day.
Note the vehicle speeds are too high also.

Earns Two Smiling Nora Davis's
Nora Davis smiles down on
the Public Works Department 
and the City Council!

'Safe Routes to School'? Maybe, But Not After the 'Flashing Beacon' Lightbulbs Burn Out

Q: How Many Public Works Employees Does it Take to Screw In a Light Bulb?

A: More Than 13

Opinion
Emeryville City Hall tells us they care about children.  But how much do they really care?  They care enough to apply for a $500,000 grant to install crosswalk flashing warning lights as part of a "Safe Routes to School" federal program.  Unfortunately, they don't care enough to change the lightbulbs when they burn out.  Changing lightbulbs is not a task the 13 employees at Emeryville's Public Works Department is adroit enough to handle.

Safe Routes to Schools?
43rd Street at San Pablo Avenue-
The existing in-pavement flashers are
being removed but the flashing sign
beacons will remain.
Safe....until the light bulbs
burn out.

After securing the grant money, the City is directing the work now starting on three intersections along San Pablo Avenue at 43rd, 45th and 47th Streets in anticipation of the eventual completion of the Center of 'Community' Life at 47th and San Pablo.  These are the crossings children will be using to get to school and button activated flashing beacon signs are the central part of the scope of work.

The problem is we've seen this story before and it doesn't end well...
Simple maintenance and follow through is not big at the Public Works Department.  Consider the crosswalk at 43rd Street and San Pablo.  Ten years ago, anguished parents appealed to the City to help children safely cross that busy street near Anna Yates Elementary School.  The City responded with a $20,000 program to install button activated flashing beacons on signs and in asphalt pavement embedded lights at that intersection; a vast improvement.
(On a side note, now, only the flashing beacon signs will remain at the 43rd Street crossing; the pavement embedded beacons are being removed as part of the new Safe Routes to Schools program, leaving the claims of improved safety in question, at least for that intersection.)
The last flashing beacon light bulb finally burned out a couple of years ago at the San Pablo Avenue/43rd Street crosswalk leaving parents and citizens attempting the traverse at the mercy of busy California State Route 123 (aka San Pablo Avenue) drivers.  Complaints to the Public Works Department over the years about burned out lightbulbs have fallen on deaf ears, all the hyperbolic talk of child welfare and safe routes to schools notwithstanding.

We're not sure why the Emery Unified School District was so insistent to place our new elementary school directly on the busiest street in Emeryville; San Pablo Avenue with its 1600 vehicles per hour speeding through these intersections, but now we're stuck with it.  Presumably, with the new flashing beacons provided by the federal government, children will be able to safely cross (so says the School District)....safe until the light bulbs start burning out.
Unfortunately again, the safety of our children is placed in the hands of the can't-be-bothered-to-change-lightbulbs Public Works Department and its Director Maurice Kaufman.  Too bad we can't get the feds to commit to changing the bulbs...then maybe we really would have safe routes to schools.  All these new lightbulbs being installed is going to be too much for Maurice Kaufman to handle.

How many Public Works employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?  We wish it were merely a bad joke.  The actual truthful answer to that question; more than 13, isn't funny.

Vexing for the likes of Emeryville
Now what do we do?