School District Peddles Overly Sunny Depictions of Community Center to Media

This is What a PR 'Puff' Piece Looks Like

In a recent article in a spin-off site of the popular on-line business magazine Fast Company called Co.EXIST, a seasoned reporter got buffaloed by the consultants designing the Emeryville Center of Community Life (ECCL) and reported a number of fawning but out-dated and inaccurate points about the ECCL design.  In the story entitled, "This Is What It Looks Like When a School Becomes A Community Hub" readers are gushingly told that the design will include "a 'faux creek,' space for gardens and bikes, solar panels, rooftop access, and a 24/7 public bikeway." Well, as it turns out, one out of five isn't bad.

Or maybe it is bad...

This is what it looks like when facts aren't checked.

Those paying closer attention to the ECCL project or engaged in what is known as "fact-checking" would know that the "faux creek" called for in our City's General Plan along the 53rd Street Greenway was just too darn expensive to include in the plans submitted to, and shot down by, the Planning Commission on July 25th.

At that Planning Commission meeting we were told that solar panels were under serious discussion, but still not a definite part of the ECCL plan.

Rooftop access is, so far as the Tattler knows, only planned in the 30-year distant "Phase 2" that most Emeryville residents will never live to see.

And that '24/7' public bikeway... well, from your lips to School District Architect Roy Miller's ears. Let's certainly hope so, but the District has been fighting tooth and nail to avoid building the bike/ped path called for in our General Plan for months now.

One also has to love the quotes provided by 'MKThunk', particularly the last praising the "programs" at the ECCL site, programs that have not yet been developed and that the public has asked the School District to prioritize over the mere buildings for some time now.

This is what it looks like when reporters
print what the government wants them to.

Plan to Bulldoze Elementary School Revealed

Pave Anna Yates & Put Up a Parking Lot

A Community Schools Task Force plan, discussed Monday night, to bulldoze Emeryville's Elementary School and replace it with a parking lot has been clandestinely revealed to the Tattler today.  The plan to bulldoze Anna Yates Elementary School is one of three options the Full Service Community Schools Task Force also known as the Six Site Task Force is considering.  Despite the Tattler and any other blogs and local electronic media remaining on a School District black list, with the Community Schools Task Force members under a gag order not to discuss what goes on at their meetings with the corrupting influence of the fourth estate, the Tattler has nonetheless obtained documents distributed at Monday night's task force meeting.  A person who wished to remain anonymous delivered the documents to the Tattler.

Below are the documents obtained from Monday's meeting:

• July 29, 2013 Task Force Agenda
• Meeting Minutes from June meeting
• Anna Yates Site Analyses

The third document listed above is of particular interest.  First, it differs from the document distributed in advance of the meeting as part of the packet. Key documents were omitted from that packet and only distributed at the meeting itself. What was in these last minute documents?  Most interesting are the pages describing three possible scenarios for future uses of the Anna Yates Elementary and the City Recreation Center sites. Scenario #3 is a real eye-catching design, as seen below:

Scenario #3 discussed at the Full Service Community Task Force Meeting on July 29, 2013.
Parking lots, shown in gray, cover current Recreation Center site and most of Anna Yates site.

That's right. In this proposal under discussion at Monday night's meeting is the idea of bulldozing the main Anna Yates building and the Rec Center, paving over them both, including the Anna Yates basketball courts and field, and replacing them with... wait for it... 166 parking spots.

What can you say? The School District and its well-paid consultants have no shortage of brilliant ideas. And to the consultant MKThink, it only cost $7,700 per meeting to generate fascinating recommendations such as these. The Tattler is told that $7700 paid for more than these option ideas at Monday's meeting, apparently pizza and beverages were also served.

Of course, if Task Force members weren't forbidden from talking to bloggers, then perhaps the Tattler could place this document in the fuller context in which it was discussed.  The Tattler might learn that this scenario was not seriously proposed, but merely put forth as one extreme from which members could work.  But with the gag order in effect, we'll never know.  The "guiding principles" of the Task Force don't seek to create an informed citizenry through honest and open dialogue.  Instead, it's barely-disclosed documents at semi-private meetings... that's the authentic community engagement the District's consultants say they provide.

With apologies to Joni Mitchell:

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got

'Til it's gone

They paved Anna Yates

And put up a parking lot

Emeryville Planning Director Doubles as Artist

Charlie Bryant, Artist

Interesting but his work is a bit derivative   

Opinion/Art Criticism

Charles Bryant
Emeryville Surrealist
"Ceci n'est pas un arbre"
"This is Not a Tree"  2013

Who could have guessed our own Planning Director, Charlie Bryant, would emerge as an appropriationalist artist of the surrealist genre?
Art lovers at last Thursday night's Planning Commission were treated to a Charlie Bryant premier, an original art work he unveiled from his dais he calls "This is Not a Tree", a semantic flight of fancy homage to the well known 20th century Belgian surrealist, Rene Magritte.  But whereas Magritte's seminal 1929 work, 'This is not a pipe' is oil on canvas, Mr Bryant's 2013 piece is purely conceptual in nature.

"Upright Bushes"

Rene Magritte
Belgian Surrealist
"This is not a pipe" 1929

Charlie unveiled his would be demuirgic conceptual art during his normal day-to-day work of city planning in Emeryville, in this case at the July 25th Planning Commission meeting. As the Emery School District was presenting their application for the contentious Center of 'Community' Life project, one permit dealt with the cutting down of all the existing trees on 47th  Street.  Since Emeryville has an Urban Forestry Ordinance and permission must be sought to cut down trees, Mr Bryant stepped in to reassure any tree loving Commissioners that the decision before them wasn't as dire as it seemed, "They're not really even trees [on 47th Street],  they're more like upright bushes" he told them.

As Michel Foucault, the late French post-structuralist philosopher and social theorist reminds us in his dissertations regarding Magritte; this work is a rhetorical gestalt, a 'sign symbol' that forces the viewer to confront seemingly nihilistic linguistic and semiotic ambiguities.  The appropriated phenomenological asymptotic epistemologies inherent in Mr Bryant's work can be seen as less than seminal in this regard.
His 'tree period' really amounts to nothing more than a cheap rehash of 85 year old ideas.

Perhaps Emeryville residents should see this as it really is: less art (or even city planning) and more deceitful cheapening of the public commons.

This is really not a tree

Planning Commission Throws Back Center of 'Community' Life

Planning Commission: Major Problems 

With School District Plan

Planning Commission shocks School District with numerous criticisms of Center of 'Community' Life.

At Thursday evening's nearly four-and-one-half-hour-long Planning Commission meeting, the Planning Commission did not approve the joint City-School District's Emeryville Center of 'Community' Life (ECCL) application.  Each of the five non-recused Planning Commissioners in attendance expressed various concerns, some reaching existential proportions, about the current design of the ECCL project forcing the applicants to return next month with an improved design.
After the School District's architect Mark Seiberlich told the Commissioners the bike/pedestrian path associated with the project along the western border "never rose to a level of priority", the Commissioners were near unanimous in their disapproval of the District's lack of deference for Emeryville's General Plan.  Specifically and especially, the project's abandonment of both the proposed bike/pedestrian path and the proposed 53rd Street Greenway along the northern border were pilloried by the majority of Commissioners. The inadequate 'community commons' part of the project was also singled out for scorn.

City Staff, confident that Thursday night would be a rubber-stamp approval,  had only prepared a resolution approving the project and so at one point in the meeting when a majority of the Commissioners seemed willing to simply deny the application, they were unable to do so as no resolution rejecting the application had even been prepared.


There were two major actions before the Planning Commission regarding the ECCL Thursday evening. First, as the City Staff Report explained, as a Responsible Agency under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the Planning Commission was to reach its own conclusions regarding the project's compliance with CEQA based on their own independent judgment and analysis.

 Commissioner John Scheuerman
The lack of space at the
ECCL project is "troubling"

Second, the Commission was to consider granting various permits needed for the project to move forward, such as a tree removal permit, a permit allowing the building heights to exceed 30 feet, a permit allowing fewer on-site parking spaces than the minimum normally required, and a general use permit and design review. Commissioner Kairee Tann mentioned at the outset that the residence she owns is within 500 feet of the project site and so she was recusing herself.

At a previous study session held by the Planning Commission, several Commissioners had expressed concerns that the San Pablo Avenue site was too small to accommodate the proposed wide range of uses by so many students and community members. Planning Director, Charlie Bryant, started the evening off by trying to rein in these sorts of comments by admonishing the Commissioners regarding precisely what was before them, stating that any concern that there "is too much stuff crammed onto the site" is not within the Commission's purview, but then he had to admit that to the extent that any such concerns did affect any of the discretionary permits that were before the Commission, that then such issues were fair game.  The warnings from Mr Bryant didn't stop Commissioner Gail Donaldson from piping up, "This project has undersized facilities...minimal community spaces. Everything is squished together."  Collegue John Scheuerman joined in, "It's troubling" that there's not enough space to follow the General Plan he said.

ECCL Architect Mark Seiberlich:
"The bike/pedestrian path was never ignored
[during the design phase] but
it never rose to a level of priority".

Commission Unimpressed With District's Environmental Analysis
When it came time to discuss whether the District's environmental study for the contentious project, called the Initial Study Mitigated Negative Declaration (IS /MND) adequately identified environmental impacts and whether its analysis was adequate, Commissioner Gail Donaldson expressed concerns that 53rd Street had numerous traffic safety issues, calling it "a nightmare of conflicts between bicycles, pedestrians, turning cars, and people that are impatient, angry, and backed-up and stacked beyond what the capacity of that intersection is."  Commissioner John Schuermann responded that, "I definitely share that concern... I'm really uncomfortable that it hasn't been addressed and I do see a lot of conflicts." Chair Vanessa Kuemmerle then added, "I also see conflicts.  Especially with the queuing and also left turn lanes... I don't feel like the traffic was adequately addressed in the initial study.  And there are definite bike-pedesrian-vehicle conflicts."

Then one of the District's consultants, paid to produce the Initial Study, rose to respond that, "With regards to the turnaround, just keep in mind, in the mornings with drop-off, folks when they drop their kids off aren't lingering, there'd would be a lot of movement at that point. You let your kid out.  They shut the door.  You move on... This layout would work in addressing drop-off."

This provoked such guffaws from the parents in attendance that Chair Kuemmerle had to ask the

audience to quiet down and only whisper to themselves.  As parents know, drop-off at the existing Anna Yates Elementary School on 41st Street, especially for the youngest children, is rarely as quick and simple as consultants might like to imagine.  Kindergarten parents almost universally go with their children onto the campus, especially during the first months of school, and may stay with their child on campus until the bell rings at 8:27.  Currently the end of Salem Street closest to Anna Yates' 43rd Street entrance fills up with the cars of parents who are walking onto campus with their children.  The 41st Street entrance also sees its parking spots in wide use during drop-off and pick-up.  Yet somehow consultants who seem to know nothing about what the parents in our District actually do assure us that parents dropping off at the ECCL will barely slow down to a complete stop as they shove their children out the doors and speed away.

City Staff Fight Hard for The Project
Chair Kuemmerle also raised the issue of the failure of the proposal to be consistent with the General Plan's call for a bike/ped path along the western edge of the property, since part of the CEQA checklist asks whether  the project would conflict with any applicable land use plan, including the general plan, adopted for the purpose of avoiding or mitigating an environmental effect.

Planning Director, Charlie Bryant, spoke up on behalf of the applicants again, arguing for the view that being inconsistent with the General Plan in this respect does not create an environmental impact, simply because if there is no path there now, then not having one in the future could not negatively impact the environment.  Somehow Mr. Bryant could not fathom that one good reason for including the path in the General Plan, at the site of a Community Center that, if successful, would dramatically increase the number of community members traveling to and from the site, was because failure to do so would have the detrimental environmental impacts created by all those additional car trips to the site, and the greenhouse gases and other harms they would cause.

It was clear that a majority of the Commission wanted to reject the IS/MND as inadequate, so Planning Director, Charlie Bryant, then rallied to the project's rescue, and read from the state CEQA guidelines to say that the Planning Commission's only options were to 1) Take the School District to court 2) be deemed to have waived any objections 3) prepare a subsequent Environmental Impact Report (EIR) if permissible, under another section or 4) Assume the Lead Agency role. Bryant then said he did not know whether the last two options were applicable and said that the Commision's choices were basically either to approve the IS/MND or sue the School District.  The Tattler was unable to determine whether Mr. Bryant was wearing an "S" on his chest and had donned a cape for this performance.

Commission Chair Vanessa Kuemmerle
The 'community commons' area is dark &
foreboding. "It could be called the 
'community canyon'."  Also, "It looks 
like a hamster cage"

Assistant City Attorney, Michael Guina, then jumped in to state that essentially the Commission had to either approve the IS/MND or sue the School District, adding a halo of gravitas to the claim.  It was particularly bewildering for onlookers to watch as the attorney for the City, which was the applicant with the School District for this project, gave legal advice to the Planning Commission who had just made it clear that a majority of them were inclined to adopt an adverse position to the applicants. This conflict of interest never seemed to trouble City Staff and the pressure they applied had its desired result.  Faced with the unappetizing option of having to figure out how a group of volunteer citizens serving on the Planning Commission could sue the School District, the Commission backed down and voted 4-1 to approve the IS/MND.  As the Commissioners voted, one could almost feel the weight of the City's thumb pressing down on them.

Community members had previously provided critical comments on this IS/MND, also found it inadequate.  While it was likely nice for these commenters to learn that a majority of the Planning Commission shared many of their concerns, it was equally distressing to see the will of the Commission thwarted by City Staff.

Commissioners Hold Their Noses During ECCL Design Review
In what followed, the Commissioners explained the remainder of their concerns about the ECCL project, centered around its lack of the Bike/Ped Path on the western edge of the property, the traffic problems on 53rd Street which they felt should have more of the features of the Greenway described in the General Plan, and the "Community Commons" which was intended to serve as the K-5 play area as well as an after-school community space, but which Commissioners felt was, as currently designed, achieving neither function well.

Thwarted by City Staff once more, since Staff had not prepared a resolution denying the permits, and since Staff seemed incapable of drafting a resolution reading "Application denied." on the spot, the Commissioners instead took a two-fold approach.  First, they worked on a list of conditions of approval they would want added to the project, if it were to be approved, and second they decided to continue the discussion at next month's meeting, giving the applicants time to improve the design in the areas mentioned.

The Tattler expects to provide follow-up stories with more details on this remarkable chapter in the apparently unstoppable march of the ECCL project.  Watch where you step.

Grocery Outlet to Move to Hollis Street

From the San Jose Mercury News:

Grocery Outlet plans move to Emeryville

By Heather Somerville

hsomerville@bayareanewsgroup.com

POSTED:   07/03/2013 01:29:26 PM PDT | UPDATED:   23 DAYS AGO

BERKELEY -- Grocery Outlet will move its longtime Berkeley headquarters to Emeryville, the latest sign of the discount grocery chain's rapid expansion.

The retailer plans to move its headquarters from Fifth Street in Berkeley, which has been home for about two decades, to an office building at 5650 Hollis St. in Emeryville, which currently houses pharmaceutical company Bayer, said Marc Drasin, vice president of real estate for Grocery Outlet. More than 125 employees will move to the new office by early spring 2014, and within four years, the company will occupy the entire 54,000-square-foot building, Drasin said.

Grocery Outlet, a full-service grocer that sells band-name groceries for as much as 50 percent less than conventional supermarkets, is in the midst of a growth spurt, adding dozens of new stores every year. Last month, Grocery Outlet opened a store in Richmond, bringing the third full-service grocery store to the city. Founded in San Francisco in 1946, the retailer now has almost 200 stores.

Residents vs School District: Pivotal Planning Commission Meeting Thursday

Meeting Thursday 6:30 

Are We to Have a General Plan?

Opinion/Announcment
In most cities, the desires of the local school district are the same or close to the same as those of the citizens.  Here in Emeryville however we've got a school district that's so single minded, so dogged in its pursuit of its ill conceived vision of the Center of 'Community' Life, the concerns of the residents have taken a back seat.  From the shutting down of citizens interested in saving Anna Yates Elementary School to the sneaky and budget busting Capital Appreciation Bond construction financing, this district has sought to end run around the interests of Emeryville residents.

Now comes the final push.  The School District is trying to squeeze fit the Center of 'Community' Life, a project too big for the cramped San Pablo Avenue site...it's busting at the seams and its violating our General Plan.  The whole project is spilling out along its perimeter, ruining General Plan identified quality-of-life amenities.  On the north side of the project for instance, the proposed 53rd Street Greenway is being compromised by a major shrinking down of the proposed wide sidewalk, destroying its capacity for benches, planters and other planned amenities.  The 53rd Street Greenway is proposed to be as pedestrian friendly as the popular 'Emeryville Greenway' on the north side of town.
The Center of 'Community' Life is also ruining the proposed 47th Street 'green street', again a pedestrian and bike friendly thoroughfare on the south side of the project and the proposed bike/pedestrian path along the west border is to be simply removed.  All these resident amenities are prescribed by our award winning General Plan but they all going to be dramatically shortchanged  by the Center of 'Community' Life because there's not enough space on the site and because the School District thought it could get away with acting the bully.

The General Plan is our plan and it's being wholesale abandoned.  The General Plan is a good plan and we should ask the Planning Commission to simply recognize this.  The Center of 'Community' Life can be built in harmony with our General Plan and that's what we should tell the Planning Commission.

The Planning Commission needs to hear from us.  Please attend the fateful meeting today at 6:30 at City Hall.  Please speak up and add your voice to those who want a beautiful and pedestrian and bicycle friendly Emeryville.

Thursday July 25 6:30 at City Hall

the Planning Commission wants to hear from you

The existing 'Emeryville Greenway' 
the 53rd Street Greenway is supposed to be as nice

 

Councilmember Asks Planning Commission to Scrutinize ECCL Application

Councilwoman Urges Planning Commission to Defend General Plan

Councilmember Jac Asher has waded into the swamp that is the Emeryville Center of 'Community' Life (ECCL) project in a pointed 15 page letter to the Planning Commission today.  The Commission is ready to consider the merits of the contentious project this Thursday at 6:30 pm at City Hall.   Ms. Asher is opening the letter for public review in a new blog site she has set up today at jacasher.com.

Among a long list of concerns enumerated in the letter, the Councilwoman's chief concern appears to be that the ECCL site is too small.  The School District is heavily relying on "space sharing" between the City and the District and she worries the District is using the sharing idea to cover up a lack of space at the site. The Councilwoman states she doesn't wish to see kids forced to be "more efficient and take up less space in our community."

Vice Mayor Jac Asher
"Space sharing between the City and the
School District should not absolve the ECCL
project from the standards & goals
of the General Plan."

She goes on to excoriate the School District for their less than transparent agenda regarding 'Phase II' of the project, calling it a "fiction".  Tattler readers may remember the School Board has promised to build a General Plan required bike/pedestrian path (ECCL Path) during Phase II but Ms Asher reveals, "because of bonds the District has already issued, the reality of that repayment schedule means that the earliest Phase II could be constructed would be more than 32 years from now, after 2045" and therefore should not factor into the decisions made by the Planning Commission Thursday night.

The School District, Ms. Asher informs us in her letter, is taking great pains to tell the Planning Commission that the ECCL project is following the "intent" of the General Plan while downplaying the obvious violations.  But intent should not require "mental gymnastics" to understand she says as she notes the constant use of the word intent really is no different from simply ignoring the Plan. She says accepting the ECCL project as proposed renders the General Plan "a document without any meaning."

In addition to the litany of identified problems with the ECCL project, Council member Asher encourages the Planning Commission to impose the following conditions:

1. Crossing guards at 47th and 53rd street during drop-off and pick-up.
2. A traffic monitor at the pick-up drop-off curb on the Elementary School side.
3. The District should create and publish a parking and drop-off/pick-up guideline (complete with maps and illustrations). This should be distributed to families at least two times a year and should be readily available on the District’s website.
4. Drop-off and pick-up should not be allowed on San Pablo.

Read her full letter at her blog and come to the Planning Commission meeting this Thursday at 6:30.

Center of 'Community' Life: Citizens See Neighborhood Impacts, City Sees Nothing

Why Won't the City Look After Our Interests?

General Plan Deep Sixed

Where Was Charlie Bryant?

Opinion
What are our expectations of our City Hall?
If nothing else, we expect them to fight for our interests.  Specifically, when we put $21 million of our money down for a project, we expect that City Hall will make sure our money goes to support our interests, not the School District's interests.
So why when the School District took our $21 million and proposed how our part, the City's part of the Center of "Community" Life (ECCL) would be built, City Hall had nothing to say?  They were given a forum to speak up at the Mitigated Negative Declaration Special School Board meeting on Monday.  They were expected to make sure the citizen's interests would be forwarded, but the City said nothing.

It's not as if there were no improvements to be made for the residents with the contentious project.  In fact an ad hoc group of unpaid independent citizens did just that.  They saw what the School District was proposing to do with our money and they made 18 pages of recommendations to better improve the project for residents while the City sat on its hands.

Charlie Bryant, 'I See Nothing'

City of Emeryville's Planning Director
Charlie Bryant
MIA: I see nothing... nothing!

The City of Emeryville actually did raise one concern.  In a letter to the School District,  Charlie Bryant, the head of the Planning Department, representing the citizens, asked the District to clarify that while the School District was telling neighbors that they would have approximately one athletic event per week at the Center of 'Community' Life and would turn off the outdoor lights by 9pm, the City, in its letter wanted to make clear that it might have City-sponsored events there and plans to keep the lights on until 10pm.  Since our $21 million is paying for the field and the lights after all.

That’s it as far as any resident's concerns are concerned from Charlie Bryant and the City as they as they hand over our $21 million to the School District.

Residents, by themselves, raised all 18 pages of concerns. In particular they explained the numerous inconsistencies that the Center of 'Community' Life  proposal has with the City’s General Plan. The residents were right to speak out for nearly every side of this project as it turns out, is inconsistent with Emeryville's General Plan or specific plans such as the Bike/Ped plan. 

General Plan Ignored By City
The General Plan calls for an east-west greenway on 53^rd street with various pedestrian and bicycle-friendly features, the General Plan would require a "connected city" that breaks up super blocks and that would have a bicycle-pedestrian path on the western edge of the property, and the General Plan calls for 47^th Street to be a key 'Green Street'.

The ECCL plans are inconsistent with all of these and don’t even show the bike/ped path in 'Phase 2' of the project. 

In addition to Charlie Bryant, we have an entire Building and Planning staff here at City Hall that ought to be experts on our City’s General Plan and that ought to be speaking up for residents in an effort to see that the General Plan is followed.  Instead, this job was left to residents alone, while the City of Emeryville acted as the School District’s accomplice in furthering the fiction that the ECCL project could not possibly be improved by more thoughtful comments.

Who's minding the store here?  Mr Bryant and company are paid after all to look out after our interests.

So where residents themselves see 18 pages of improvements they expect to get for their $21 million, Charlie Bryant and City Hall, who represent us, sees nothing.

                                       

RULE Meeting

From RULE:
Residents United For A Livable Emeryville

The votes are in, and we have approved the sponsorship of....

Emeryville Public Notice and Accountability Initiative  come to our next meeting and plan for the signature drive.  We need many bodies to make it work.

 
Next regular meeting:  Saturday, July 20
10:00 - 12:00 
5514 Doyle St., Community Room, 1st floor

Facilitator:  Bill Reuter
Agenda:  
RULE's sponsorship of the Public Notice and Accountability Initiative (planning our signature drive)  If you want to do something to make our city government more responsive to the residents and more transparent, here is an opportunity
Other agenda items may be added.
 Congrats to RULE member Brad Gunkel, one of the newest members of the Planning Commission (along with Steven Keller)!!!

Bring breakfast snacks
Coffee and tea provided.  Come and meet your progressive neighbors and help make your city grow in a good way!
For more information contact Judy Timmel, 510-601-6521 or reply to this email 

Emeryville Summer Concert Series

From the Emeryville Community Services Department:

Emeryville National Night Out

From the City of Emeryville:

NATIONAL NIGHT OUT

“America’s Night Out Against Crime”

POT LUCK ON THE PLAZA IN EMERYVILLE

Tuesday, August 6 from 5:30pm – 8:00pm

On the Park Avenue Plaza

Please bring a dish to share and a favorite board game or 
deck of cards and join 
the City of Emeryville, Police Department and 
your Park Avenue Community for a Pot Luck on the Plaza

Tables and chairs, plates, cups, plastic cutlery will be provided Courtesy of 
Carrie Dove Catering and TARGET.

For more information about National Night Out visit: www.natw.org

For more information about Pot Luck on the Plaza Contact: Ann Weber at annweber2003@yahoo.com

One Citizen Takes On School Board Juggernaut

"Build It and They Will Stay Away"

Emeryville's General Plan took a hit at Monday evening's School Board Special Meeting when the Board members voted in executive session, behind closed doors to disregard 27 Citizen Commenters 18 pages and move forward with the ill conceived Emeryville Center of "Community" Life.  It was a bad day for citizens interested in government transparency, democracy, sustainable and green city planning and bike and pedestrian transportation.  It was a good day for those interested in seeing what real citizen engagement looks like however.  Five residents gave witness to an alternate vision of the contentious Center in the face of the School Board Center of "Community" Life juggernaut.  The Tattler presents the comments made by one of the commenters; Emeryville resident Brian Carver, arguably the high point of the night.
Posted by permission from Brian Carver:

"Good evening President Dice and members of the Board. My name is Brian Carver, I am a parent of a student enrolled in the District. I was a signatory of the Community Comments submitted last Thursday.

I urge you to conduct a full environmental impact report and consider feasible alternatives to the current plans. We only get once chance to do a big project like this.  Let’s make it better. In the past I’ve worried that the District was getting inadequate legal advice.  Please have your legal counsel explain to you the standards for evaluating comments on a MND: in particular the “any fair argument” standard.  I don’t see how any reasonable person could conclude that there’s not a single fair argument made by the Community Commenters in those 18 pages.  There obviously are. I believe several of them are not adequately addressed by this last minute revision that we received minutes ago and that we have not had adequate time to review.

To the details, what this document and its technical appendices say about traffic varies between being utterly incomprehensible to completely unbelievable.  Page 60 says, “the project is expected to generate a maximum of 450 peak hour trips.” I made it to page 2 of the 13 pages of responses we received moments ago and that number has been changed to 686. (It should be noted that contradictory estimates appear on page 135 where we’re told that at AM peak hour the project will ADD 530 trips over current levels, making the max of 450 or 686 even more incomprehensible).

How could anyone familiar with this project find that number, whether it’s 450 or 686 peak hour trips, credible?  The project calls for 900 students and 90 teachers and staff. Instead of just having a high school on this site as we did previously, you’re adding all the K-8 students, the community members that might want to take advantage of the community gym, library, recreation center, senior lounge, or kinder buddies facilities.  Lots of services that used to be elsewhere are all being crammed onto this one site and somehow there’s a maximum of 450 or 686 peak hour trips?  That’s just not consistent with common sense.

The only way to believe that is to say what this report says on page 117, “The increased daytime population on the project site during operation hours that would result from the project is not expected to result in substantially increased usage of these new facilities.” That is, you have to expect to build a bunch of community facilities and resources and expect no one to show up. Unlike in the film Field of Dreams, the EUSD’s motto appears to be, “Build it and they will stay away.”  It’s just not a realistic assumption and so it hides significant impacts of the project.

But the biggest flaw in this document and the current project design is its inconsistency with the guiding principles and policies of this City’s General Plan that were designed to reduce negative environmental effects, particularly those from greenhouse gases.  The General Plan calls for an east-west greenway along 53rd street and the current project proposal does not comport with the requirements for that greenway.  The General Plan calls for this greenway precisely because the enhanced bicycle and pedestrian flow that such a greenway would enable reduces negative environmental effects, particularly greenhouse gases from cars, but other related negative environmental impacts as well. To give just one example, the six foot wide sidewalk proposed is not consistent with the General Plan’s greenway.

The General Plan also calls for a bike/ped path on the western border of the property and the current project proposal does not even put that on the drawings for Phase 2.  The General Plan designates 47th Street as a key green street and the current project proposal does not follow those requirements either.

The General Plan is our City’s constitution.  A lot of effort and planning went into that document and your architects had it available to them during your design process, but it appears they just willfully ignored the General Plan, and thereby the environmental impacts that numerous General Plan and specific policies were intended to reduce.  This is also where the cumulative effect occurs. When the General Plan and specific policies, such as the award-winning bike/ped plan adopted for environmental reasons are ignored in so many instances it has a cumulative environmental impact.

Particularly for a joint City-District project, flouting the General Plan in this way is just not permissible.  This project needs to be the embodiment of our City’s General Plan, not a partially compliant work-around."

Mr Carver is an Emeryville parent with a child enrolled at Anna Yates Elementary School and another ready to enroll in the fall.  He is an occasional contributor to the Tattler.

School Board Rams Through Approval of Environmental Report

School District Adopts Mitigated Negative Declaration  

Environmental Impact Report Will Not Be Prepared for ECCL

Commenters Rebuffed

At a hastily called special meeting of the Emery School Board Monday evening, members of the public were handed 13 pages of responses to the Community Comments submitted last Thursday as part of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process required of the Emeryville Center of Community Life (ECCL) project.  Normally packet materials for a meeting, even a special meeting, would be provided to the public hours or even days before the meeting starts.  But in a move that could be interpreted as strategic, the District apparently wanting to to maintain the upper hand and preclude public comments, released the documents for public scrutiny only minutes before the start of Monday's meeting.

The District rebuffed chief concerns of the commenters, in particular indicating that they did not view the ECCL's inconsistencies with the City's General Plan as a problem.  Instead, they were only concerned about those policies that were adopted for environmental reasons and that had physical impacts on the environment.  At least one commenter went to great lengths to try to explain that the City's General Plan contains such a great emphasis on bicycle and pedestrian improvements precisely because of environmental concerns, such as concerns about greenhouse gases caused by an over-reliance on cars, and so failing to comply with the General Plan and the Bike/Ped Plan's policies does have a physical environmental impact.  District Board member Josh Simon responded in part that the General Plan is merely a "plan" and not a "design" document.

School Board member Josh Simon
Emeryville's General Plan needn't be taken
so seriously

However the District's responses revealed one major victory for the Community Commenters, who had complained repeatedly that the language in the District's Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) was wishy-washy when speaking of the mitigation measures the District was proposing to undertake to minimize the environmental impacts of the project.  As a consequence, the District agreed to change many instances of "should" "would" and "may" to "shall" or "will" making it clear that the District is in fact committed to performing many of the mitigation measures described in the MND.  A few other minor victories were had when the District conceded that merely doing various geological reports were not adequate mitigation measures by themselves and that any recommendations that might appear in such reports would also be implemented by the District.

Verbal testimony given Monday as well as a number of other comments by the Community Commenters were brushed aside without an adequate response and the Tattler is still trying to digest the 13 pages of responses thrust on the public at the last minute.

Five community members rose to speak about specific concerns in the MND and the District's responses to the Community Commenters.

School District officials have noted there is no time for delay with construction of the Center of Community Life, they are up against "hard deadlines" they say and next stop for the contentious project is the Emeryville Planning Commission on July 25th.  The District likely has concerns that the Planning Commission takes compliance with the General Plan more seriously than they do.