The End of Collegiality at the Emeryville City Council? Yes, But Why?

 Petulant Name Calling, Ugly Xenophobia and Racism 

Emeryville's Famous City Council Collegiality Evaporates

News Analysis/Opinion

The ugly specter of xenophobia was raised at the December 12th City Council meeting along with petulant name calling and something else by one Council member against another when Councilwoman Ally Medina, reversing the long storied Emeryville City Council culture of collegiality, attacked her new colleague, the incoming Kalimah Priforce.  Eight days after the outburst, at another meeting, Ms Medina announced her resignation from the City Council,  citing personal reasons of a financial nature.  

The disobliging attitude against Council member Priforce, who had been sworn in only moments before the attack, came after he had respectfully expressed his discomfort in Council member John Bauters being selected by the Council majority to serve a second back-to-back term as mayor.   Ms Medina defended the selection and accused Mr Priforce of sexism with his stated discomfort, calling out his male privilege and disparaging him as a "man" who will not be listened to.

Former Council member Dianne Martinez
and current member Ally Medina. 
They're panicked.

After a San Francisco friend of Mr Priforce phoned in during the public comment period, defending him against the attack, Council member Medina denounced the commenter as having come from outside Emeryville and therefore illegitimate.  “Be well aware that with a simple public records act request we can look at all of your text messages and confirm who is and who is not from Emeryville”, she warned Mr Priforce with xenophobic and autocratic flair.  Left unmentioned by Ms Medina is the red carpet treatment given to every out-of-town developer who comes to Emeryville with an apartment tower proposal she (and the rest of them) always lavish praise on.  Didactically lecturing Council member Priforce and acting as if Emeryville were not a regional player in power politics, ugly xenophobia is only to be aimed at Mr Priforce it would seem, others are to get a pass.

Noteworthy was the fact that the rest of the Council sat in stoney silence during Ms Medina’s tirade against our new Councilman, letting her comments stand unchallenged.

Council member Kalimah Priforce
....the reason the City Council
is so distraught.

Also of note in the evening filled with Council chicanery was the stern publicly given harangue directed at Mr Priforce by retiring City Councilwoman Dianne Martinez.  The outgoing Martinez wanted the incoming Priforce to know collegiality is the coin of the realm in the Emeryville Council chamber and that he is on notice to oblige.  The irony that Ms Martinez’s friend on the Council, Ms Medina, attacked the newly instated Councilman moments later, was lost on Dianne Martinez.

The first-two meetings ordeal faced by our new Council member Kalimah Priforce was shocking to be sure.  It leaves us wondering why.  Mr Priforce made statements on the campaign trail that would indicate he might be an independent voice on the Council, it is true.  He was heard questioning Emeryville’s new pro-marketplace housing policies for instance.   But the force aligned against him was strangely disproportional.  Is this to be a new era of Council infighting we’re entering?  If Mr Priforce, who is Black, actually is an independent voice, that will likely be the case.  But the disrespect shown by the Council majority and the asymmetrical force of the attack makes us think there’s more at play here.  Name calling and lecturing the incoming City Councilman?  We think the Council is unduly afraid of Mr Priforce.  We think this is mostly racism.

Breaking: Ally Medina Resigns

 Breaking:

Councilwoman Ally Medina Resigns

Tonight, Emeryville City Council member Ally Medina resigned from office effective immediately.  Citing financial reasons and her desire to move out of town, Ms Medina made the announcement at the council comment section of tonight's regularly scheduled meeting.  Her colleagues expressed surprise at the announcement but an agendidized item on council travel authorization tonight notably left her name out, which would indicate she had notified the City Clerk of her impending departure at least three days ago. 

Ms Medina made news at a special City Council meeting the Monday night before last when she attacked her new colleague Kalimah Priforce, overturning a general culture of collegiality that has marked the City Council for years.

 

It was not revealed how a replacement would be selected but it is presumed a taxpayer funded special election would need to be done or an appointment directed by the Mayor and decided by the City Council majority.  

Breaking: Councilman Bauters to Be Mayor a Second Term

 BREAKING Back to Back Mayor Term:

Two New Council Members Sworn In, Mayor John Bauters is Forwarded to Be Mayor For a Second Term

Tonight mayor John Bauters was elected mayor by his colleagues, skipping Ally Medina who had been Vice Mayor and in line to become mayor.  The action makes Mr Bauters mayor two years running, an unprecedented thing in Emeryville history.  The Council elected Cortney Welch as Vice Mayor. 

The move was not without drama, Vice Mayor Medina invoked newly elected Council member Kalimah Priforce’s privilege as a “man” after he raised objections to the prospect of re-upping of Mr Bauters for a second term.  Ms Medina called Mr Priforce “offensive” as he raised his objection, saying it didn’t “feel right” having the mayor go for a second round.

The name-calling came moments after departing Council member Dianne Martinez stated the most important thing the new Council needs to do moving forward is to maintain collegiality. 

Emeryville City Hall Finally Recognizes the Fourth Amendment

 Emeryville Will Now Allow You to Do Business With City Hall Anonymously As The Law Guarantees

After 22 years violating the people’s Fourth Amendment rights at City Hall, the City of Emeryville has recently joined with other Bay Area municipalities (and beyond) who honor the United States Constitution.  Formerly, people in Emeryville who wished to do business with their government were required to surrender their identification, a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment and the Brown Act.  With a little bit of help from the Tattler and some tape, we happily report that after about a week tearing off our corrective signs, City Hall has finally given up and joined Team Constitution.  Way to go Emeryville!  

The sign has been removed from the lobby after the City was threatened with a lawsuit.  The City Manager probably realized the City standing its ground in its violating the Constitution would not be looked upon favorably by any judge.  The illegal sign is gone.  This is how progress is made in our town….a lot of activism and then baby steps. 

This sign remained in the lobby at City Hall since the building was
constructed in 2000.  Some people over the years, not knowing their rights,
probably gave in and allowed the government to intimidate them.

The Tattler had a correction to the violation. We 
returned many times over a week to replace our
paper sign.  The police were summoned but 
EPD allowed the paper sign to stay put.  No arrests
were made even though a charge of 'vandalism' was bandied.

Failed Family Friendly Housing Policies: Housing YES But Family Housing? NO

Emeryville: Worst City For Families in the East Bay

City Spending Money on New No Account Housing Plan 

To Follow the Last No Account Housing Plan 

Lots of Talk But Where Are The Families?

News Analysis

The City of Emeryville has failed in its pledge to bring families to Emeryville that it promised when it passed its 2014 housing plan, now in the process of being updated.  The 'Housing Element' plan, is part of the General Plan and it places "family friendly" housing as one of its core goals.  Regardless of the officially stated goal of increasing families in town, Emeryville’s average household size remains stuck at 1.8 people per housing unit, the same as it was when the last  Housing Element was written.  And it continues to be the lowest, by far, of all cities in the East Bay.   

The objective data highlight failed public housing policy for Emeryville, even as all the familiar talking heads try to tell us otherwise.  Despite family friendly housing being identified as a primary goal by the Housing Element and despite the Planning Commission and the City Council both having repeatedly assured us they are taking the goal seriously, Emeryville has not moved the needle forward on that metric one iota according to data from the US Census Bureau.  Emeryville is as family un-friendly now as it has been since before 2010.

Listening to all the over heated talk from City Hall and the City Council on this subject, people could be forgiven for thinking Emeryville is doing very well bringing families to our town.  It’s the kind of talk voters like to hear.  At election time, every City Council candidate says they’re going to deliver more families to Emeryville, sometimes ad nauseam.  The developers with construction proposals all say their residential developments will attract lots of families.  But at 1.8 average household size for more than ten years running, Emeryville is on the bottom among East Bay cities, right where it's been for decades.  Berkeley is the second least family friendly at 2.2 people per housing unit, followed by El Cerrito that has 2.3 people per unit.  Many cities east of the hills in the Tri-Valley area average three or even more than four people per unit.

Like it did in 2014 when it was writing the Housing Element it is currently replacing, the City has been conducting polls to see what housing goals the people want.  Then as now, the people are stating family friendly housing is essential.  In 2014, the goals ensconced in the Housing Element included “larger households” and to “improve the housing tenure” for families as well as “more for-sale units and less rental units” and to “increase owner occupancy”.  Emeryville has failed on all counts. 

The new goals, same as the old goals, will almost certainly be unmet when the newest Housing Element itself sunsets (in 2033) owing to the City Council’s recent pledge to build more housing at the cost of building parks.  The General Plan delineates providing at least 50 acres of park by the time that document sunsets in 2030.  However Emeryville’s mayor, John Bauters recently announced no new parks would be build in Emeryville until enough housing is built, an unquantified statement that will not likely happen before 2030, if ever.  If building parks means building less housing, then also requiring developers to build family friendly houses that actually attract families will also come at the cost of greater numbers of general housing units. 

If Emeryville would build the parks it has promised, they would likely find themselves in a virtuous circle; parks bringing families, families bringing more parks.  But with a City Council hostile to parks, this will not be tested.  Instead, Emeryville seems to be caught in a viscous circle; a lack of parks keeping families away and a lack of families demanding more parks translating into no parks being built.

To the extent that the City Council brags about building more family friendly housing units, a reality check is in order.  Because even if Emeryville is building more "family friendly" housing units than before, that fact has failed to bring more families the Census data shows us.   That being the case, clearly Emeryville needs to re-define what family friendly housing is.   Any proper definition needs to include a metric that relies on actual families moving into town.

However, bringing in families may not even be a real goal for Emeryville's elite.  Developers want to maximize their profits and to do that they need to build more market rate rental housing.  The City Council is helping the developers by ignoring the jobs/housing balance we traditionally have followed delineated in the objective data complied by the Association of Bay Area Governments and its Regional Housing Needs Assessment.   The City of Emeryville is a dues paying member of ABAG but has been de-coupling itself from that organization in recent years in favor of a different organization; YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), a developer backed national housing lobbying conglomerate.  The group calls for de-regulation in housing and is funded by right wing scions including the Koch brothers.

During the formulation of the 2014 Housing Element, there was a high level of popular support for bringing families to Emeryville.  The power elite in our town, the corporations, the School Board, the City staff and the City Council however have not supported this.  The Census data proves that.  The powers that be in Emeryville have not delivered on this goal despite a near constant whinging on about how they support it.  

Decade after decade, Emeryville is the most un-friendly city for families in the East Bay.

  All the talk has net ZERO for average household size.  At what point do we conclude they're not serious about bringing families to Emeryville?

                                                                               Data from the US Census Bureau

                                                                                                 

Parks Get in the Way of Housing Says Emeryville Mayor

Mayor Announces Parks Are No Longer a Priority for Emeryville

It's Only Housing, Housing and More Housing For Emeryville

General Plan Parks Policy Overturned With Mayor's Proclamation

News Analysis

Emeryville’s mayor Tuesday night, finally put to words why Emeryville has stopped building new parks; “Because people don’t need to sleep in a park, they need to sleep with a roof over their head” he said, adding that “the region is suffering from a lack of housing”.  

The surprising announcement came as a response to questions from the Tattler at the City Council meeting, when Mayor John Bauters presented a major reversal of settled public park policy for Emeryville.  He said the City of Emeryville will no longer prioritize building parks, focusing instead on building as much housing as fast as can be built.  “Our housing jobs balance is off” he offered as a rationale. 

While his City Council colleagues looked on silently, the Mayor did not equivocate, “Every person on the City Council agrees we wish to expand parks and find opportunities to do that but not at the cost of housing” he said.

Mayor John Bauters
He says Emeryville needs housing
instead of parks.  He presents a false equivalency
between the two: it's going to be
parks or housing and he choses housing.

The issue of parks was discussed Tuesday night as a result of developers who had responded to a request for proposals from the City of Emeryville to build a large, new all rental residential tower on land south of Christie Avenue park.  The developers told the Council they were prepared to expand the existing park by as much as 10,000 square feet if they are given permission to build their proposed project.  But 10,000 square feet of park expansion is anemic, short by about 120,000 square feet if we are to keep pace with what the General Plan says should be built to offset the proposed tower.

The false equivalency of parks or housing put forth by Mr Bauters mimics draconian language from the national housing advocacy organization YIMBY, a group with tendrils extending into the Emeryville City Council.  YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), a lobbying organization funded by developers and right wing entities such as the Koch brothers, was formulated as a pro-development foil to the discredited and disorganized NIMBY phenomenon that local residents sometimes engage in to fight undesirable development.  Other cities in the Bay Area have also recently taken up the YIMBY cause, some council members taking money from them and approving formerly controversial development projects as the organization grows in political power.  Several Emeryville City Council members are associated with YIMBY and at least two have taken money from them, either directly or indirectly.  

It's important to note while NIMBY represents opinions and behavior from individual citizens and as such is not an organization in any meaningful sense of the word, YIMBY is a powerful lobbying organization funded by interested parties, often with corporate dark money.

Emeryville City Councilwoman Courtney Welch (in red)
She agrees, Emeryville needs much more market rate housing.
Posing with YIMBY luminaries at the
YIMBY Prom Gala: "2022's biggest YIMBY party".  
City Council candidate Welch quietly took a campaign
donation of $1000 from the 'YIMBY Victory Fund' .

What Mayor Bauters failed to note as he announced Emeryville’s new park policy is that our guiding document, the General Plan, says Emeryville DOES need to build more parks.  A lot more.  In fact, more than 50 acres of parks are delineated by the sunset of the General Plan in 2030.  As of 2020, Emeryville had (and still has) only 22.4 park acres.  We should have had 41.6 acres by 2020 if we were following the General Plan.

Mr Bauters’ unquantified announcement that the City will not build parks until some future day when there is enough housing, was really more of an imprimatur, finalizing what has been a 'no park' trajectory by the City since the General Plan was written more than ten years ago.  The City has not been building parks nearly fast enough to offset all the new housing being built and Emeryville has been falling further behind our designated park needs every year.  The mayor’s announcement simply puts to words what has been the City's default policy of not building enough parks.  

The ‘parks or housing’ false choice proffered by Mr Bauters belies Emeryville’s massive market rate housing boom of recent years.  The City has been building housing at a prodigious rate.   The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that Emeryville wants to exceed housing requirements from the Association of Bay Area Governments by 50 percent even while neighboring cities are failing to meet the ABAG housing minimums.  The Chron reported as such, "One Bay Area town, the small city of Emeryville, is shooting to not only meet the target but exceed it by a mile".  Councilman Bauters admitted as late as 2019 the City was doing its share building housing, “Developers line up to build in the City”, giving Emeryville a “pro-housing” designation, he told the Real Deal, a local real estate magazine. 

YIMBY Prom Court
Ms Martinez, a vocal
antagonist against planning and
a long time critic of ABAG's 
housing needs assessment,
was also a 'VIP' guest at the
October YIMBY prom gala.

So while Emeryville has built housing more than what the jobs/housing balance actually requires as tabulated by ABAG and in spite of Mayor Bauters’ proclamations,  Mr Bauters now says the City needs to step up even more in its zeal to build housing.  Taken at his word, the parks-at-the-expense-of housing equivalency presented by Mr Bauters hints that whereas before Emeryville could presumably build parks, now we can’t, regardless of what our General Plan says.  Parks are a luxury Emeryville can no longer afford Mayor Bauters implies.  

The new no parks policy has come at a bad time for our town.  Emeryville has been the worst city in the East Bay area for parks for decades.  Our residents per acre of park in 2020 was at 549.  That number has gone higher since 2020.  We need to be much lower; three acres for every 1000 residents or 333 residents per acre. As we build more housing and don’t build enough parks to offset the increase in population, every year Emeryville gets worse.  And with Mr Bauters’ new no parks policy, delivered by executive fiat, that will likely be our fate.  Against all this pressure from an outside organization and barring a democratic pushback, Emeryville is now on track to remain the worst city in the East Bay area for parks into the foreseeable future.

Mayor Bauters refused to comment for this story but he said his comments made at the City Council meeting can be quoted as accurately portraying his policy ideas.

School Board Election Autopsy

 To the Tattler Readership-

Our copy editor today accidentally deleted and erased this story (we're going to have to dock his pay!).  We will re-build the story from our contemporaneous notes over the next day or two so please check back in later.  The story might be slightly changed but we will strive for an accurate re-post.  The comments will be loaded after the story is re-done.  All the comments were saved luckily.   Our new Councilman made a couple of news breaking comments so it is imperative we re-load the comments. 

This is the first time in our almost 13 year history this has happened but I'm going to have a word with Mr X about being more careful when he mucks about in the posting area.   Sorry for the inconvenience and please bear with us.

The Editor

What are we to make of the just passed November 6th elections in Emeryville?   

The City Council election was normal; candidates all said the same things they always say.  We need more parks, less traffic, safer bicycling opportunities they said….everything you would expect to say and what candidates do say every election season.  But what about the School Board election?  That was most unusual.  In fact it was bizarre. 

To start with, it was very unusual that we even had an election for School Board at all.  Normally at Emery Unified School District, there are no contenders for School Board races every two years and as a result, the incumbents are able to walk right back in without an election.  In fact, the only reason Emeryville voters got a chance to vote at all this time is because I ran against the three incumbents.  If I hadn’t run for election, there would have been no election at all and the people of Emeryville, those who pay for the schools, would have not have had a say in how their money gets spent. 

The ‘incumbent advantage’ is very powerful in Emeryville, be it at the School Board or at the City Council.  The elected officials know this of course and Emery School Board members usually quit before their terms are complete to allow their Board colleges to appoint a replacement, usually one of their friends.  Then the appointment is an incumbent and able to leverage Emeryville legendary incumbent advantage at the next election.  Most Emery School Board members start out as appointees and some never even have to face the voters.  Right now, four out of the five sitting School Board members started out as appointees.

It’s been like this for decades.  The culture of ‘quitting early to allow for appointed replacements’ is why Emery Unified School District never changes in any substantial way.  New voices are shut out in this way.  ‘Group think’ sets into an ossified system like this.  And as far as academics and pedagogical performance is concerned, it shows at Emery.

As I showed during my campaign for School Board, Emery’s performance is not commensurate with the amount of money the people of Emeryville throw at the district.  And the children suffer for it.  

Emery is by far the richest school district in the entire East Bay.  We fund our schools at over $27,000 per student per year (and this doesn’t include the $400 million new ECCL campus we paid for).  The next highest paid district is Berkeley Unified School District where they fund at a rate of about $18,000 per student per year.  But Berkeley also gets extremely high academic performance for its children compared with Emery.  Emery, for all the money we spend gets terrible academic results.  In fact Emery is on the bottom among all the school districts in Alameda County.

These facts prompted consternation on the campaign trail and Emeryville voters were witness to a spectacle about the District’s low academic performance during the campaign season.  The three incumbents were desperate to NOT talk about their record.  But I kept talking about it.  So they mostly ignored and prevaricated when they couldn’t ignore.   One incumbent, Board president Susan Donaldson took issue with Emery’s last place academic record.  She cherry picked data to make it look like Emery isn’t the worst but only the third from worst.  ‘Take heart Emeryville voters’, Susan said, ‘Brian is wrong; Emery is only third from last place despite all the money we spend’.   It was a specious argument people with an expectation of excellence wouldn’t normally make.  But Emery actually is in last place among all 18 Alameda County school districts, all the sanctimonious hyperbole from the incumbents notwithstanding.

The worst academic record with the most money spent.  That’s the three incumbent’s record and that’s not something people would vote for.  So why did Emeryville voters vote for it? 

My campaign focused on teacher pay.  Right now Emery pays about average for the Bay Area.  I said we need to pay teachers more.  Because we’re the wealthiest school district in the East Bay, we can and should pay our teachers more because that’s how to build an equitable city and how to build a better school district with better academic results for the children.  At the League of Woman Voters Candidate’s Forum, the three incumbents had a ready response to my challenge: NO they said, we can’t afford to pay our teachers more they insisted.

As I went door to door during the campaign, every single person I talked with and I talked with hundreds, every one agreed: paying teachers more should be a priority at Emery. 

But what about the incumbents?  Did the voters they talked with tell them paying teachers more should be a priority?  No.  Because the incumbents didn’t give them a chance.  Because they don’t want to pay our teachers more.  So the incumbents don’t want to hear that.

But why should it be that the likely majority of voters, who think we should be paying teachers more, shouldn’t get their way at the ballot box?  Why didn’t the only candidate running that clearly said teacher pay should be raised, why didn’t that candidate win the election?  The only reason that seems plausible is the lack of information.  I raised and spent only about a thousand dollars.  The incubates raised much more.  The used their massive campaign dollars to tell voters Emery is doing great with them in command.  They didn’t talk about test scores, academic achievement, dollars per student spent or teacher pay.  They talked about nebulous things like racial and gender diversity of the school board, stability (status quo)  and keeping Emery “on track”.  

Emeryville has no newspaper.  That simple fact allows elected officials to demagog issues and get away with it.

Breaking News: Election Results

 With two of two precincts reporting, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters released results from the City Council election and the Emery School Board election.  Kalimah Priforce and David Mourra will be elected to the City Council and the three incumbents, Regina Chagolla, Susan Donaldson and Brynnda Collins won re-election to the School Board.

Kalimah Priforce	503	25.09%
David Mourra	419	20.90%
Sukhdeep Kaur	402	20.05%
Brooke Westling	379	18.90%
Eugene Tssui	302	15.06%

Regina Chagolla	769	31.34%
Susan Donaldson	659	26.85%
Brynnda R. Collins	624	25.43%
Brian Donahue	402	16.38%

Letter to the Tattler: Brooke Westling

The following letter was received from Brooke Westling, a candidate for Emeryville City Council.  During the campaign season, Ms Westling has not sought to win her seat or at least she has chosen to not engage with Emeryville voters about her ideas for our town.  Early in the season, she declined to answer the Tattler City Council candidates questionnaire; a losing strategy for the only two former candidates that dared to ignore it (anybody remember Frank Flores or Jason Crouch?).  Nonetheless, because Ms Westling is a candidate for Emeryville City Council, we extend the courtesy of posting her letter to the Tattler.

Here then is the letter from Brooke Westling:

To the Emeryville Tattler-

Since joining the race for Emeryville City council, I’ve had the unique opportunity to connect with our city, our community, and learned of the many ways our city leadership has led us in the right direction and the times they have not.

Learning that the vacated seats, early on, were not being filled, I submitted my entry into the contest in the hopes that city hall and the people of Emeryville would benefit from a more independently minded candidate to choose from. However, every indication I received confirmed that residents do want transparent, bold representation on city council, but that the race was being skewed into preferences intentionally shaped by powerful interest groups and their historical influence on elected officials..

On the morning of October 20th, I participated in a candidate forum hosted by the students of Emery High School along with Eugene Tssui and Kalimah Priforce. We were the only candidates that accepted their invitation after weeks of preparation by the teachers and staff and it turned out to be a wonderful exchange between us as candidates and the students.

After this experience which includes the camaraderie and kindness Kalimah and Eugene extended towards me, I found them to be the kind of leaders that the city needs for this election. They both reflect the independent open-mindedness I’ve come to admire about them and they are both willing to place a significant amount of resources towards changing the dynamic of the city council in ways that, at this moment, I would rather utilize towards supporting their bids.

Come November 8th, 2022, I will be voting for Eugene Tssui and Kalimah Priforce for the two at-large seats for Emeryville City Council. They have my endorsement and friendship moving forward and I encourage my supporters to do the same. I will continue to lend a voice and play a role in helping to steer the city in the right direction, and I am confident that Kalimah and Eugene’s tenure will be inclusive of people like me and all those whose voices have felt excluded from city hall.

 -Brooke Westling

Should School Board Members Run For Re-Election? They Should Resign in Shame

 The Worst Academic Record in the East Bay: 

The Emery School Board Members Should Not Be Running For Re-Election

Instead, They Should Do What Failed Leaders Do In Japan: 

恥ずかしながら辞職 

Opinion

Perennial Emery School Board member Brynnda Collins spoke for the whole board at the recent League of Woman Voters candidate’s forum when, on camera, she told the attendees that Emery school district must "stay on track".  That’s a cliché line commonly used when a politician wants to run on their record.  But Ms Collins and her slate mates, Susan Donaldson and Regina Chagolla, the three Emery school board members who are running for re-election, really don't want to run on their records – so Ms Collins’ line was only meant to obscure.  In truth, they don’t want us to know their record.  Because the more Emeryville voters find out about the record of the existing school board, the more they want Emery to get off that track.

On their watch, Emery Unified School District hasn’t budged from last place academically among Alameda County school districts.  The current culture of failure began six years ago when Emery slid to the bottom.  And there it has remained ever since.  But it’s not for a lack of spending.  Emeryville taxpayers fund their school district at the highest rate of any school district in the entire East Bay.  We pay more than $27,000 per student per year for them to run our school district.  The next highest spending comes from Berkeley Unified where they spend about $18,000 per student (California average is about $14,000).  But Berkeley gets excellent academic results for the money they pay.  We spend the most and get the worst results.  Our students score 23% proficiency in math and 37% in English, the worst scores in Alameda County.  And so these three incumbent school board members are out talking to voters about anything other than their record.

Where does all the money go at Emery?  How could they spend so much and get such bad results?  The answer is administrators and consultants.  Emery has the highest ratio of administrators to students in Alameda County.  But more distressing is the squandering of public funds going to educational consultants over the last six years on the school board's watch. 

Emery spends millions of dollars on educational consultants. The numbers tell the tale: whereas California school districts spend on average 52% of their budget on instruction, Emery spends only 19%.  Other school districts spend on average 12% of their budget on 'other spending' which includes educational consultants where Emery spends 67%.  That’s an awfully high percentage of the budget to be spent on something that's clearly not helping.

Meanwhile, teachers at Emery are paid so poorly they can’t afford to live here.  Paying teachers more could help Emery attract the best and the brightest to our little district.  If we stopped spending so much on consultants (and administration) we could pay the teachers more.  Teachers know how to educate children in the real world, educational consultants don't.  Teachers are the ones in the trenches, doing the real work. To empower teachers is to upset the dysfunctional 'top down' culture at Emery.

Now these three incumbents at Emery school board want us to vote for their re-election.  They're asking us to vote for dysfunction.  They're asking us to vote to keep Emeryville schools on the bottom, the worst in Alameda County.

The Japanese have an expression commonly used by CEOs of large corporations when they fail to manage the corporation and bring shame upon themselves, it’s called Hazukashinagara jishoku or 恥ずかしながら辞職 , meaning to shamefully resign.  That’s what should be happening at Emery instead of them running for re-election.  

Alas, this is part of the current trend in America; failed leaders doubling down and gaslighting the public.  In Japan, a place where public shame still exists, failed leaders announce for the good of the organization they will 恥ずかしながら辞職 as they step down in humility.  Here, they tell us to keep them on track.

A valuable site to verify how Emery is failing the children may be viewed HERE.  Make sure to scroll all the way down to 'Academic Summary' and 'District Finances'.

This is how they do it in Japan
Executives at a Dentsu Corporation press conference resign in shame
over a worker 'karoshi' scandal or death from over work.
In America, failed leaders double down.

City Council Candidates Questionnaire Part lll

 City Council Candidates Q&A: Final Answers

November 8th, Emeryville voters will decide on two new four year City Council members who will replace Scott Donahue and Dianne Martinez, both of whom decided to not run for a third term.  This election, voters will select between Sukhdeep Kaur, David Mourra, Kalimah Priforce, Eugene Tssui, and Brooke Westling.

The Tattler has come up with 10 questions we think the people of Emeryville would like to ask their prospective new council members and all but Brooke Westling responded to our questionnaire.   We released the first three questions from all four candidates October 16th and we now follow with questions four through seven.   The first three questions may be seen HERE and the second set of four questions can be seen HERE. 

The order of presentation is random.

Here then are the last three questions:

First up is David Mourra.  The candidate's website is HERE. 

8)  Emeryville has the East Bay’s lowest number of people per housing unit at 1.7.  This number shows we have the fewest families per capita of any city in the East Bay.  Presuming you don’t like this, what should be done that hasn’t been done to make Emeryville more family friendly?

 

David Mourra:  I agree that new developments should better accommodate families. This means more 2 and 3 bedroom units. Developers respond to economic incentives. We should look closer at how the city allocates development bonus points and look at potentially more favorable weighting of family friendly units.

 

9)  Some 25 years ago, Emeryville was a city of majority homeowners.  Now we’re a city of majority renters (71%).  Is this a good trend?  If not, what would you do differently that the current City Council hasn’t done to solve this?  

 

David Mourra:  This problem is not unique to Emeryville. California has seen an increase in rental units vs units for purchase. The economics of housing has favored rental construction in recent years. There are different explanations for this including the favorable economics of rentals due to the difficulty of affording a down payment amid record high home prices. Increasing the overall stock of housing, rental or otherwise, will reduce housing costs across the board and bring balance to housing options. After decades of underbuilding housing in California, we are finally starting to address the housing crisis in a meaningful way– by building more housing. 

 

10)  Emeryville is one of the last cities in the East Bay to still have all public meetings conducted by Zoom.  All other cities (except Oakland) are now doing ‘hybridized’ meetings, meaning open to the public as well as available by Zoom.  When should Emeryville allow public meetings again (including hybridized)?

 

David Mourra:  The ability to participate in public meetings via teleconference tools like Zoom has greatly expanded access and given voice to people who otherwise would not have been able to participate due to demands from work or family obligations. A hybrid approach seems sensible in the future. However, the question of how to structure a hybrid approach and the costs and logistics associated with this needs to be assessed.

=======================================================

Next up is Eugene Tssui.  The candidate's website  is HERE.

8) Emeryville has the East Bay’s lowest number of people per housing unit at 1.7.  This number shows we have the fewest families per capita of any city in the East Bay.  Presuming you don’t like this, what should be done that hasn’t been done to make Emeryville more family-friendly?

Eugene Tssui:  We need to recognize that Emeryville is a starter community for many working in the local businesses. What will encourage these Millennials to stay in Emeryville and start businesses and families? How do we involve singles in our school community? We will work with intergenerational individuals, to develop the skills needed to enter the career of their choosing or to upgrade the profession they are already in.

However, to make our urban landscape attractive, we need  to hire the best-paid teachers in education in our schools!  Better education programs that create jobs! Families congregate and are attracted to cities with the best schools, and parents look for schools with the best ranking and reputation. Emeryville schools and government need to pay attention to this and do what it takes to reach for excellence and exceed the ranking mentality of the State and nation and

 excel beyond the expectations of the status quo!   We must encourage experimentation! 

We must welcome and nurture the likes of the great modern revolutionaries of education, such as A.S. Neill, Marva Collins, Jaime Escalante, and Friedrich Froebel, among others.

 But we must also embrace the post-COVID education technologies that allow our students the best project-based skills and opportunities.

If Emeryville, home to Disney/Pixar, had these facilities available to all of our families, many would stay, and many would join us!   If these high-tech and innovative companies worked together with the City the schools could dramatically improve.   It is a three-way dialogue unifying schools, businesses, and the local government as a team that works together to create the compassionate and imaginative residents of the future.

9) Some 25 years ago, Emeryville was a city of majority homeowners.  Now we’re a city of majority renters (71%).  Is this a good trend?  If not, what would you do differently that the current City Council hasn’t done to solve this?

  

Eugene Tssui:   EDUCATION! QUALITY EDUCATION! QUALITY RECREATION AND SOCIAL PLACES OF CONGREGATION!

I have been a resident of Emeryville since 1989. Thirty-three years I bought into Emeryville as a small business owner to develop my architecture profession and rented an apartment at Watergate.   I stayed in Emeryville because of the location and convenience to all parts of the Bay Area. As a small, malleable city of artists, entrepreneurs, and small businesses, the most significant business was the Oaks Card Club! 

Emeryville was a community of people that could easily reach out to one another, traffic was generally sparse, and walking and biking were safe and efficient. Emeryville High School had a range of programs and vocational services such as automotive repair facilities and a strong drafting program for industrial jobs.

The city has become mostly renters because very few people want or can afford to stay in Emeryville. The young come into Emeryville as a temporary stopping point to somewhere else. At best, the young start a family here, biding their time to move to the suburbs to raise a family in better schools with extensive sports and academic programs, where they can have a rambling home of their own with their own expansive yard.

If we are to solve the majority renter phenomenon, we must radically change the quality of our schools, our support for local and start-up businesses, and our recreation facilities, and upgrade our social resources for homeownership. And that means we must fill the city with excitement, anticipation, daring, and the spirit of reaching for the impossible!    Together, we must demand a new vision!

10) Emeryville is one of the last cities in the East Bay to still have all public meetings conducted by Zoom.  All other cities (except Oakland) are now doing ‘hybridized’ meetings, meaning open to the public as well as available by Zoom.  When should Emeryville allow public meetings again (including hybridized)?

Eugene Tssui:   Emeryville is also one of the last cities to have a Code of Ethics! And perhaps this is a telling aspect of Emeryville’s lagging sense of propriety and accountability and  there are aspects of the Zoom meeting mentality that play into this.

Zoom meetings could be seen as a tool of distancing.  In a Zoom meeting, you can prevent the audience from responding, and you can control the interaction. As a City Council member, you have a government-controlled position that can limit the interaction of the public. I myself have experienced this, and I am sure that many of us who have attempted to communicate with staff and administration via Zoom have experienced this helplessness in direct and immediate response time. Zoom allows the City Council to control the time, topic, and mode of interaction with the public.

This attitude of control, extends into a larger picture which  touches upon the issue of the city’s lack of a Code of Ethics.   A  Code of Ethics sets out our city government’s guidelines to  practice honesty, integrity, professionalism, and  accountability, and violating this code can result in termination.

I think we should do test trials and have in-person City Council meetings to see what the results might be.

It is proven that communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only.   In Zoom events, the 55% nonverbal communication is reduced to a very small percentage creating a very disabled experience with which to communicate and take questions from those you are communicating with. Nothing can replace one-on-one communication.

Finally, I want to emphasize that my running for City Council is to help create a stellar City Council team that works together to address the substantive topics that directly affect the residents of our city.

Each City Council team member has experiences and interests they are passionate about. We must all work together to find the best solutions to the ongoing problems we all face in these troubled and challenging times.   We have all created a legacy on this planet, and we must think and act in optimal ways to create solutions to the issues we face. I intend to be a substantive voice to face these issues as a member of a unified team and to raise the level of meaning, purpose, self-reflection, and excellence in the residents of our City of Emeryville.

========================================================

Next up is Kalimah Priforce.  The candidate's website is HERE. 

8)  Emeryville has the East Bay’s lowest number of people per housing unit at 1.7.  This number shows we have the fewest families per capita of any city in the East Bay.  Presuming you don’t like this, what should be done that hasn’t been done to make Emeryville more family friendly?

 

Kalimah Proiforce:  When I moved to Emeryville, I was told that Emeryville isn’t where growing a family, particularly a family of color, is feasible. I believe that is partly true.

 

There isn’t enough that the city does to keep families here, especially BMR residents, people of color, and those that I consider society’s underdogs. But it isn’t just race and income. Emerging entrepreneurs and non-profit leaders should be able to find a home in Emeryville and be incentivized to stay here.

 

Emeryville should be more than a commuter town or be attractive to newcomers because of its proximity to other cities. Emeryville should be a shining city that attracts the best and brightest but we have to earn the respect of their livelihoods to keep them here.

 

9)  Some 25 years ago, Emeryville was a city of majority homeowners.  Now we’re a city of majority renters (71%).  Is this a good trend?  If not, what would you do differently that the current City Council hasn’t done to solve this? 

 

Kalimah Priforce:  I’m not sure if it’s a good trend or bad but I would like to see Emeryville renters eventually become homeowners.

 

10)  Emeryville is one of the last cities in the East Bay to still have all public meetings conducted by Zoom.  All other cities (except Oakland) are now doing ‘hybridized’ meetings, meaning open to the public as well as available by Zoom.  When should Emeryville allow public meetings again (including hybridized)?

 

Kalimah Priforce:  Public meetings should be reinstated, but it may also depend on the meeting. Shorter meetings can be delegated to video conferencing, but important decision based ones should be in person.

=============================================================

Next up is Sukhdeep Kaur.  The candidate's website is HERE. 

8)  Emeryville has the East Bay’s lowest number of people per housing unit at 1.7.  This number shows we have the fewest families per capita of any city in the East Bay.  Presuming you don’t like this, what should be done that hasn’t been done to make Emeryville more family friendly?

Sukhdeep Kaur:  Families usually prefer bigger more affordable spaces.  Most of the people who work in Emeryville commute here and are raising their families in Sacramento or Folsom or Dixon as they can afford a bigger house for the same price.  It is hard to raise a family of 2 or 3 children and pet/s in a one bedroom studio or apartment or even a two bedroom apartment.

Many neighbors are annoyed if they hear the baby crying all night or even during the day or the dog barking.  Many apartments don’t have the best soundproofing.  The current housing stock is not very family friendly in terms of traditional families that include young and growing children and pets.  I would like to balance the equation and see more family friendly housing in the area.  Families raising children naturally gravitate to more spacious housing, good schools and secure and safer streets.  If that can be made affordable to families, it is a possibility that Emeryville could attract families. 

9)  Some 25 years ago, Emeryville was a city of majority homeowners.  Now we’re a city of majority renters (71%).  Is this a good trend?  If not, what would you do differently that the current City Council hasn’t done to solve this? 

 

Sukhdeep Kaur:  I would like to incentivize homeownership in Emeryville and explore ways and programs that could do that like the artists co-op which is good example of affordable, sustainable, ownership housing.  Home ownership is a better trend as it makes for a more engaged and involved community.

10) Emeryville is one of the last cities in the East Bay to still have all public meetings conducted by Zoom.  All other cities (except Oakland) are now doing ‘hybridized’ meetings, meaning open to the public as well as available by Zoom.  When should Emeryville allow public meetings again (including hybridized)?

Sukhdeep Kaur:  I prefer Zoom meetings as they are much more accessible, easier to record and access later,  they cut out the commute time, reduce the carbon footprint,  and one can almost always make Zoom meetings even if one is in another town or country.  Above all, they are a healthier, safer option without masks as Covid is still here and lingering.