Community Benefits Agreement Looming for Controversial Onni Project Says RULE

The Emeryville resident advocacy group known as Residents United for a Livable Emeryville has announced it is considering plans to negotiate directly with the developer of the proposed Christie Avenue Onni apartment tower project, skipping the City of Emeryville, by means of a Community Benefits Agreement to deliver a more resident friendly project than is being proposed.  In an August 17th letter to its members, RULE's steering committee indicated they have requested the City host a town hall type meeting to address resident concerns about the controversial 650 unit Onni project to be followed by a RULE facilitated Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with the developer, depending on the outcome of the town hall.

A CBA is a legally binding contract signed by the community and a real estate developer that requires the developer to provide certain amenities or mitigations to the proposed project in exchange for the community’s acceptance of the project.  Often, the community forms a coalition with labor organizations and environmental groups.  CBAs are open processes and the whole community is encouraged to attend meetings and engage.  Usually CBAs accompany the largest development projects.

The Proposed Onni Project
At 700 feet, the Onni tower would be
America's tallest residential building
west of the Mississippi River.

RULE, extant for more than 10 years, is open to all Emeryville residents and even out of town residents (in a non voting capacity).  The only group excluded from RULE meetings have been City Council members although they have been allowed in by invitation.  However a RULE facilitated CBA would likely allow out of town groups to have the same legitimacy as Emeryville residents.

The Vancouver-based Onni developer is entangled in a FBI bribery allegation after officials accused a Los Angeles Councillor of accepting money from Onni in exchange in 2018 for a positive vote on a pending LA Onni project.

In Emeryville, Onni plans an all rental 650 unit 700 foot tall apartment tower joined by a bridge with a 200 foot office tower.  The City Council has been working to help the developer, voting to remove existing ‘tower separation’ regulations from the books in July.   Additionally, the Council will seek to overturn existing family housing regulations at the request of the developer who claims he can’t afford build the towers if he is required to build family housing as other developers in Emeryville are.  These regulation rollbacks were chronicled in a Tattler story exposing City Hall of ‘regulatory capture’ and has contributed to a lack of trust among the residents, helping fuel a push for a CBA.

CBAs have a checkered history in Emeryville.  In 2016, a private group of property owning neighbors formed the Park Avenue Residents Committee (PARC) for the sole purpose of negotiating a CBA with the developer of the Sherwin Williams project, a 500 unit development on Sherwin Street slated to begin construction later this year.  The City assisted PARC with the "CBA" and ultimately the City Council used it to justify approving that project.  However, the Sherwin Williams "CBA" turned out to be out of character for a CBA; the PARC group operated behind closed doors and only invited guests could attend their meetings.  No other community members or labor or environmental groups were permitted to take part in the negotiations.  Regardless that the final document produced by PARC and Sherwin Williams didn't fit the description of a CBA, the City proclaimed it as such.
The RULE/Onni CBA by contrast will be democratic and transparent, says members of the steering committee.

For Shame: Emeryville's Minimum Wage Roll Back Debacle

Dust Has Settled From City Council's Use of Minimum Wage Rollback Bludgeon

Citizens Want to Know Why

They Took Us There

News Analysis/Opinion
Three months ago Emeryville City Hall launched a divisive attack on the working poor in our town; a paroxysm of pro-business ideology in action forwarded by three members on the City Council.  At their May 21st meeting, the Council majority three, working at the behest of certain restaurant owners in town and without consulting any affected workers, voted to rollback Emeryville's hard fought four year old progressive Minimum Wage Ordinance (MWO).  The injudicious action was subsequently beaten back by the people of Emeryville by way of a voter ballot initiative petition brought by a coalition of labor and community groups forcing the Council's hand who voted to retract the wage rollback on July 23rd.
So now that the dust has settled and the minimum wage has been successfully defended, we're right back where we were before this whole thing got started.  The people's befuddlement and acrimony however is lingering over the whole sordid and unnecessary affair. 
Citizens would be right to ask why did all that just happen.

It's been a roller coaster of drama in the people's hall, the actors all playing their parts: posturing, feigning, kibitzing, doubling down, pivoting and then closing with a July 23rd “heartsick” capitulation, to quote Councilman John Bauters, the initiator of the whole spectacle.  Dramatic to be sure, but it was drama the people of Emeryville never asked for.

The May 21st City Council minimum wage incursion, led by Mr Bauters and joined by his colleagues Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue, formed the spare three member majority needed to roll back wages for small restaurant workers in town.  The insurgent majority set up an ambitious timeline for themselves; by July 1st, they would have to finish the required second reading necessary to amend the existing ordinance (effectively creating a new ordinance), in order to make sure the restaurant workers didn’t get their MWO mandated Consumer Price Index pegged raise set to take effect on that date.  A lot of finagling of schedules was necessary owing to California’s Brown Act ‘sunshine law’ notifications and individual Council members’ personal calendars, to make the hard July 1st date.  The 'Council three' made use of a controversial but technically legal provision performed by a family event obliged Councilman Donahue phoning in live from the East Coast to cast the deciding vote.
All their hard work paid off and in the eleventh hour, the City Council three was able to stop the Emeryville restaurant workers from getting their raise, just in time.

Or so they thought.

The problem is they didn't sufficiently calculate the passions of an aroused and aggrieved Bay Area labor contingent.  Because  of the audacity of the Council’s action, the coalition of labor groups and community activists known as East Bay Working Families entered the fray with a bevy of hot off the presses voter petitions.  Weeks of door knocking and 871 Emeryville registered voter signatures later, the Council majority’s whole ambitious anti-worker plot came to its inglorious end.

Emeryville's Restaurant Sector 2013-2018
The Minimum Wage Ordinance took effect in 2015.  
Restaurant owners are claiming the high minimum wage  
costs are driving them out of business or forcing them to flee.  
Notice what happened beginning in 2015 with new start-ups.

That’s the history of the last three months in a nutshell.  Those seeking more detail may want to make use of the Tattler search bar; “minimum wage ordinance".  But still unanswered is why?  Why did this gang of three suddenly make this incongruous turn?
Surprisingly, in retrospect, the three Council members were all endorsed by the progressive citizen activist group Residents for a Livable Emeryville (RULE).  Cutting the wages of the poorest among us is not something one would expect progressives to do.  The official explanation didn’t shed any light. That argument posited that the restaurant owners had assured the three they were all pushed to the edge, business failures and bankruptcies looming if their workers were paid more as relayed and repeated by the Council majority.  But the City Council never checked to see if the bankruptcy claims were true.  They just took the business owners at their word.  And they failed to listen to workers or labor groups at all.  Again- not how one would expect progressives to act.

Trust But Verify
Emeryville, being a small town, has certain advantages when it comes to making decisions such as the Council made based on the word of the restaurant owners.  In this case, the Council could have easily directed the staff to check the veracity of the owner’s claims of looming bankruptcy.  With only as few as 22 restaurants affected by the minimum wage roll back in question, a manageable number, the City could have easily opened the books of these businesses.  A city like Oakland, with hundreds of restaurants, could not enjoy Emeryville’s capacity to actually check before they leaped into such consequential policy change.
Our City Council majority, instead of finding out before they tore asunder the lives of the working poor in our town, instead forged ahead based simply on the assurances of those business owners with a material interest in lying. 

Unlike the City Council, the people of Emeryville, historically, have shown they don't trust the business community to tell the truth when profits are on the line.  In 1997, the City Council looking to increase revenue, began discussions about whether to raise the taxes on the Oaks Club card room up to the Bay Area card room average.  At the time, the Oaks enjoyed an Emeryville tax rate at about 25% of the Bay Area average.  The Council majority believed the owner of the Oaks Club when he said the increase would drive his business into bankruptcy and they dropped the issue.  The people picked it up with a ballot initiative petition and ultimately Emeryville voters approved the tax increase on the Oaks.  Sharp eyed readers will note the Oaks club is still operating at their San Pablo Avenue address - the owner, John Tibbetts having been revealed to have lied about going bankrupt. 
Again in 2005, the people brought a ballot initiative concerning raising wages for hotel workers in Emeryville up to the Bay Area average after the City Council majority believed the hype coming from the hospitality industry warning about wholesale business failures with hotels fleeing Emeryville or being driven into bankruptcy.   An alarmed Council majority alerted the voters not to be "dupes" to organized labor and to vote NO to the 'Hotel Workers Living Wage Ordinance' proposal.  Emeryville voters didn't listen to the City Council who was listening to the warnings of the Hotel owners and they passed the 2005 Measure C easily.  Again, the hotel owners were lying about the effect increased costs would have on their businesses and the only people duped were the Emeryville City Council majority.  Emeryville at the time had four hotels, now we have five, making it hard to make the case for "wholesale business failures".

By 2014 however, the City Council finally learned that businesses will lie to protect their profits.  That year, a new more progressive Council majority didn't believe the dire warnings about wholesale business failure and bankruptcies from the California Association of Realtors and the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce if Emeryville were to raise real estate transfer taxes up to the Bay Area average.  Again, the voters approved Measures U&V that allowed for the increase in taxes and again, the business failure boogyman turned out to be nothing more than the business community not wanting to pay more money to conduct business in our town.

Moving ahead to 2019, it would appear it's back to the future for us.  The City Council majority seems to have unlearned what they knew in 2014 and it's back to the old familiar saw about wholesale business failures if the business community is forced to pay more money.  We'll have to wait and see if this time the warnings were prescient but something tells us it's gunna be more of the same.

So why did these three Council members take us down this path again?  Especially when their own staff told them the 2018 Emeryville Mills College Business Study that reported that restaurant business stress, while extant, was not sufficient to propose public policy changes, "A piece of trash that we never should have paid for" Mayor Ally Medina said of the Mills document.  The staff conducted their own research that showed little or no stress for Emeryville's restaurant sector from added labor costs.  High rent costs were shown to be the primary source of business stress according to the staff report that accompanied a May 7th Council meeting on the MWO and the commissioned Mills Study.

The question of why this Council majority listened to the business community instead of the people of Emeryville or the low wage workers who toil here will likely remain unanswered for the time being.  Following the political careers of John Bauters and Dianne Martinez however might help Emeryville citizens find the answer.

http://emeryville.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=5&clip_id=1686&meta_id=165991

Portrait of a Growing Emeryville Restaurant Sector
From the May 7th staff report to the Council.
Sales are beating the Consumer Price Index.  The Council had this info before 
they voted to rollback wages of restaurant workers despite the claims of looming 
bankruptcies from restaurant owners.
A 3.56% per year rise in restaurant sales average from the first year of the MWO
to 2017.  California CPI 2015 .01%, 2016 1.3% 2017 2.1% source: FRB 9th District

Breaking News: City Council Fully Rescinds Minimum Wage Roll Back

CITY HALL   ---- Breaking
Tonight the City Council voted (5-0) to rescind their earlier vote to roll back wages of small restaurant workers in town, a vote Councilman Scott Donahue characterized as  doing "the least harm".  The vote represents the end of the drive initiated by Council members John Bauters, Dianne Martinez and Mr Donahue beginning May 7th to make a carve out in Emeryville's Minimum Wage Ordinance.  The bid to carve out a lower pay scale for an identified restaurant worker class was stopped after a coalition of labor and community groups known as East Bay Working Families gathered 871 signatures in a petition drive of Emeryville voters.  The Council could have pushed the issue into 2020 after the drubbing the three Council members suffered as a result of the petition drive,  by putting it to a vote of the people but they chose instead to end it here tonight.
 
A buoyant contingent of East Bay Working Families was on hand to witness the final putting to rest the whole affair.  Afterward, Liz Ortega of the East Bay Working Families told the Tattler the victory belongs with those struggling in the lowest paid jobs, "Workers in Emeryville won tonight" she said, smiling.
And with that, the issue of lowering Emeryville's MWO is ended two and a half months after it started.  Every minimum wage worker in Emeryville will now be paid the same amount.  Issue over.

Onni Project Threatens City Hall With Regulatory Capture

City Hall, Enthralled  
Captured by Onni

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking News: Council Continues Minimum Wage Vote

Tonight the Emeryville City Council took comments from the public about their plan to roll back the minimum wage for certain restaurant workers in town and then they voted to not vote.  At least not tonight.
After certifying the Alameda County Registrar of Voters’ certification that the voter petition drive to stop the roll back has passed, the Council had three options before them; to repeal the roll back they voted on May 29th, throw the issue over to the voters of Emeryville in a future plebiscite. or  continue the whole thing to another meeting.  It was the first two choices the Council said they didn’t want to make tonight and they directed the City Manager to bring the issue back to them in a future meeting, probably in July.
However, the stalling action tonight means the restaurant workers will receive their raises that were mandated by the original Minimum Wage Ordinance, so it will effectively be as if the Council had voted to repeal their roll back vote.  However, the workers could still see their wages rolled back at a future date, but that decision would have to come from Emeryville voters.  If the Council ultimately says NO to repealing their May 29th roll back, the question before the voters will be, ‘should Emeryville restaurant workers have their pay cut?’.
The Tattler will closely follow this issue as it progresses....watch this space.

Existing 'Tower Separation' Rules to be Overturned to Help Onni Tower Developer

Onni Developer Wants Tower Separation Regulations Repealed

City Council Prepared to Acquiesce 

No Reasons Offered Why Existing Public Policy

is Unacceptable 

News Analysis
What was considered fantastic in Emeryville only a short while ago, now inexplicably and with no new information, is totally unacceptable.  
Apropos to that, the City Council votes Tuesday to, without findings, remove protections against overcrowding of architectural towers in town, a condition of 'Manhattanization' recognized by the City's own General Plan, at the behest of a specific developer who stands to materially benefit from the repeal.  The developer of the Onni project proposal, a Christie Avenue 700 foot apartment tower together with a 200 foot office tower on the same lot is constrained, like every other developer,  by Emeryville's 'tower separation' regulations but he says Emeryville's rules make it so his project "won't pencil out".  The City Council in response, is considering removing the pesky UD-P 35 tower separation regulations from the books altogether, making sure this or any other developers' towers will never again be so constrained in Emeryville.

Emeryville, long known for bending over backwards to accommodate developers, on Tuesday is moving into new territory to assuage the desires of a developer.  Normally, when city regulations are considered for amendment or repeal, new findings of fact are presented that change or negate the original findings.  The Council, if it goes along with the staff's recommendation on Tuesday however, vacates UD-P 35 (and addendums) and all its original findings with no new findings whatsoever leaving open questions about the truthfulness of the original findings; as in were they false?  Did the City of Emeryville make bogus findings of facts about tower proximity for the General Plan ten years ago?  Or is the problem occurring now?  Should the City, for transparency's sake, let us know why the regulations need to be overturned?  Or is it rather that City Hall doesn't even care about policy optics anymore and has entered a new phase of naked (anti-public) policy?

The current City Council members, not seated ten years ago when the General Plan was written, do not owe allegiance to the sentiments that brought us the UD-P 35 tower separation regulations.  But any reading of democratic governance tells us they need to reveal why they disagree and not just rely on facile procedural claims to their authority to reverse the regulations.  Their authority or even the legality to do that is not what's in question.

It's noteworthy that the staff report accompanying Tuesday's City Council decision goes into some detail highlighting the legitimate authority of the Council to overturn the tower separation regulations but nothing as to why they should do so. The report highlights how the Planning Commission had agreed with the Council that tall steel constructed buildings should not have to abide by the City's family unit mix regulations (also a gift to the Onni developer) and then by extension somehow that the Council should now overturn the tower separation regulations as well.  From Tuesday's staff report sent to the Council:

 "At the City Council meeting on October 16, 2018, the Council directed that the Planning Commission reconsider the Planning Regulations unit mix requirements for residential buildings that are taller than the California Building Code allows for wood-frame construction. In this context, staff also identified an additional regulation to be examined, namely the minimum separation of buildings over 100 feet tall, or 'tower separation'."

It's neither cogent nor rational.  The conflating of the two regulations is not warranted beyond a naked and undemocratic greasing of the skids for a specific development proposal and a specific developer, unless the current Council wishes to announce a new pro-development, anti-regulatory regime that's being assembled.  That seems unlikely though, owing to the fact that the new City Council, RULE endorsed with progressive bonafides touted to the rooftops, has always sought to distance themselves from this sort of reputation-proceeding Emeryville city planning ethos from a earlier era.
If for nothing more than transparency's sake, it is hoped Emeryville citizens will get a stated reason from their representatives Tuesday night as to why their laws from a few years ago, considered to be a good thing by all involved, are now suddenly not up to snuff and must be utterly vanquished.

Minimum Wage Petition Drive is Successful: Council Cannot Lower Wage by Fiat

Council Majority Loses Bid to Lower Minimum Wage

Bauters, Martinez, Donahue Constrained 

by Labor/Community Group's Petition Drive

After a dramatic push by the Emeryville City Council to lower the City's minimum wage by decree last month, a coalition of labor and community members has successfully beaten back the edict following a city-wide petition drive, the City Clerk announced today.  The petition, signed by 871 Emeryville voters will now force the Council's hand who on Tuesday must decide whether to reverse their decree or allow the people of Emeryville to decide about the issue in the form of a ballot initiative, probably in November of 2020.

The City Council majority, made up of John Bauters, Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue voted May 29th to amend Emeryville's Minimum Wage Ordinance to lower the wage for restaurant workers.  That action brought a coalition of labor and community members called the East Bay Working Families (EBWF) to begin a petition drive to fight off the Council led attack on the lowest paid Emeryville workers.  Before the State mandated 30 day cut off period, the group had collected the signatures of 871 Emeryville voters, far more than the minimum required 666 (10% of the registered voters in town).  The Alameda County Registrar of Voters certified the count saying earlier today,  “The petition is found to be sufficient to require the City Council of the City of Emeryville to take the appropriate action specified in the California Elections Code.”

The City Council meets Tuesday to decide whether to give up on their bid to cut the minimum wage or let the people of Emeryville decide at a later date.  However, the petition drive is a victory for Emeryville minimum wage workers who would have seen their pay cut starting July 1st.  They will instead now receive their full pay until the people of Emeryville decide to cut their pay in a future election unless the City Council decides to restore the Minimum Wage Ordinance on Tuesday.

The Emeryville City Council Appearing United for the Photo 
The Mayor and the Vice Mayor stand up for the minimum wage.
Their three colleagues now face the wrath of Emeryville voters.

Discord Returns to School District: Emery School Board President Calls It Quits

Emery Board "Not Invested in Much Needed Change" Says Departing President

Citing an intractable culture resistant to change, Barbara Inch, formerly of the Emery School Board,  announced Friday in a letter to the Superintendent of the Schools, she has resigned from her position as Board Trustee, effective immediately.  The resignation comes after a difficult three year tenure for Ms Inch who has served as President of the Board over the last seven months.
The dramatic departure represents the culmination of a progressive drive for transformation at the beleaguered little school district and heralds a return to Emery politics as usual before Ms Inch led a would be progressive majority in a Board takeover in 2018.

Former School Board member Inch, who was elected in a 2016 landslide election having garnered more votes than any elected official in Emeryville history, later helped shepherd the progressive majority into office with the subsequent election of Susan Donaldson, Sarah Nguyen and Brynnda Collins to the Board in 2018.  Ms Inch soon ran into trouble however after Brynnda Collins and Sarah Nguyen dropped out of the coalition, showing by their accumulated votes they are not the progressives they claimed to be.  As such, those defections seem to have been the death knell for the progressive agenda at Emery Unified, the ensuing resignation of Ms Inch only serving to solidify that prognosis. 

Former Emery School Board President Barbara Inch
She was elected by more voters than
any elected official in Emeryville history.
But seeking the change for Emery she promised voters,
she couldn't get cooperation from her colleagues.

Notably, the Friday resignation letter sent to the Superintendent came on the heels of a Wednesday night Board rejection of an issue forwarded by Ms Inch; the naming of Emery’s gymnasium.  Ms Inch and community supporters called for naming the gym after former Emery PE coach Steve Dain who was fired in 1977 for transitioning from a woman to a man.  By attempting to name the gym in honor of Mr Dain, who was once voted Emery Teacher of the Year and is now deceased, Ms Inch had been using the bully pulpit as Board President to correct Emery’s 1970’s error and help serve as an inspirational signal that the District has changed and is a tolerant place welcoming to everyone.  The conservative Board majority rallied in reaction however and immediately began searching for a different person to name the gym after, eventually settling on a different past coach who was not a Transgender person and consequently not fired for being a Transgender person.
The Steve Dain issue seems to have served as a final straw for Ms Inch, “After Wednesday, it became clear to me that the majority of the Board was not invested in the much needed change this district so desperately needs.” the former Board member told the Tattler.

The four remaining Board members will appoint a replacement of their choice to take Barbara Inch’s seat until the next election in 2020.

John Bauters Wags the Dog (Literally)

John Bauters 

is cutting the minimum wage and he 

Saved a Puppy

To 'wag the dog' means to purposely divert attention from what would otherwise be of greater importance, to something else of lesser significance.  By doing so, the lesser-significant event is catapulted into the limelight, drowning proper attention to what was originally the more important issue.  The expression comes from the saying that 'a dog is smarter than its tail', but if the tail were smarter, then the tail would 'wag the dog'.

Opinion
Poor Emeryville City Council member John Bauters.  He touched the third rail in Bay Area politics.  After kicking over a hornets nest, a couple of weeks of very public self inflicted wounds with his plan to cut Emeryville's minimum wage, he's now facing an accountability moment.  He's not taking all the resultant insults lying down however.  Councilman Bauters brought a cute puppy to the fight.

It all started when, taking a leadership role among his colleagues, he tried to cut the Emeryville minimum wage by Council fiat without warning and done so quickly that the Bay Area labor community would be caught unawares.  The issue has instead blown up in his face.  The labor community rapidly formed a coalition with residents to push back against the plan, starting with a city-wide mailer sent to every voting Emeryville household warning them about the planned wage roll back.  Now, Mr Bauters is facing another PR nightmare; his minimum wage cutting scheme has been petitioned for recall by over 850 Emeryville residents.  The successful petition drive means he's going to have to make a new decision; to give up on his plan to roll back the minimum wage or give the decision to Emeryville voters, probably next March.

Most politicians, facing such an onslaught of push back from a constituency he publicly claims allegiance with would attempt to get out in front of the mounting controversy.  Mr Bauters instead is telling us all he recently saved a puppy.

Did you know that?  You could barely miss it.  He's been telling everyone all about it on his most recent blog entry made after the labor/community pushback kicked into high gear.  He rescued the pup from a hot car.  He's got pictures of the dog wagging its tail after it was saved.  Or is it instead the tail wagging the dog?
In the midst of a boatload of self inflicted embarrassing news, his hand now forced by a legally binding petition drive of outraged residents, Mr Bauters is silent on all that.  He's using his City Council blog instead to make everybody know what a hero he is because he saved a puppy.

John Bauters is a really smart guy.  But his response to the blowback, what anybody could have guessed would come as a result of such a public blunder, leaves us baffled.   It's so overt, you have to wonder if he's totally guileless and he screwed up or is he totally calculating and shameless and this is all part of some grand scheme.  What's really wagging here?

Awwww!
Minimum wage cut?  What minimum wage cut?
Look at this instead!