Government Favoritism (in Neon) in Renaming of Emeryville Train Station

Doubt Emeryville's Pro-Developer Culture?

It's in Blue Neon at 5885 Horton Street

News Analysis

This last week, Rich Robbins, the CEO of the San Rafael based Wareham Development Corporation, repaid former Emeryville City Councilwoman Nora Davis posthumously, for all the tax breaks and outright gifts of cash from the public coffers she extended to the development giant over the years with the erection of a sign proclaiming Emeryville’s popular train station henceforth be called the Nora Davis Emeryville Transit Center Station.  The renaming will ripple through vacationer’s and commuter’s macrocosm as they become accustomed to the change appearing on new brochures and passenger train websites. The legendary Amtrak Zephyr will now be listed as the route from the historic Chicago Union Station to the Nora Davis Emeryville Station.  Travelers on California’s iconic Capital Corridor train will board at Sacramento Valley Station and disembark at Emeryville's Nora Davis Station.

Seemingly public infrastructure, the train riding public would be surprised to know the Emeryville station is actually private property.  Mr Robbins himself owns our local train station.  He built it and he owns it but with a proviso that the public be allowed to use it as if it were part of the public commons.  But that’s also why he gets to name the station after his favorite City Council member who ruled our town from the Council dais for 29 years before she passed away in 2020.

Councilwoman Davis was famous for her pro-developer philosophy and of all the developers she showered government largess upon, and there were many, none were sanctioned at the level of her favorite, Rich Robbins of Wareham.  

The renaming of the train station by Mr Robbins comes after a push by many in the Emeryville business community to name all manner of public infrastructure after the deceased City Councilwoman for all she did for them as well.  Proposals included renaming Doyle/Hollis Park as Nora Davis Park and the new bike/pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks at the Bay Street Mall as Nora Davis Bridge.  Either out of ignorance or a sense of taunting (owning the libs?), the business community has never acknowledged the fact that when she was on our Council, Ms Davis actually fought against these two public infrastructure projects.  The existing City Council knows Ms Davis’ record and they rebuffed the business community’s proposals.  Indeed, Council member Davis made the city the current City Council is struggling to remake.  Ms Davis saw Emeryville as developers at the time saw it: a low slung, low density suburban style town with lots of strip malls with baking asphalt in front, serviced by anti-bike anti-pedestrian ‘stroads’ choked with auto traffic inching towards the copious at-grade free parking.  That is Nora Davis’ actual legacy.

But all that is forgotten now by Rich Robbins of Wareham who returns favors and doesn’t forget a generous friend, even in death.  For us, the Nora Davis Emeryville Transit Center Station will always be there as a reminder about who the levers of power in government are supposed to be for.

The two most powerful people
in Emeryville:
Wareham CEO Rich Robbins
and his friend the late
Councilwoman Nora Davis

Story earns one Nora smile...

Videographer Enters City Hall Setting Off A Panic

Anonymous Videographer Challenges City Hall's Insistance the Public Identify Themselves

An Emeryville City Hall 'epic fail' was featured in a video that has gone viral this week.  The video (below), recorded a couple of weeks ago by a YouTuber with 190 thousand subscribers who runs a channel called Bay Area Transparency, shows panicked City Hall employees who called the police on the man because he was video recording the publicly accessible parts of the building.  The police arrived but because the videographer was not breaking any laws, they allowed him to continue on, to the dismay of the City Manager, the City Attorney, the City Clerk and lots of lower level staffers with their hair on fire.  The embarrassing video has been seen by 145 thousand people as of the posting of this story.

At issue, besides the scary camera, was the young man's refusal to sign in at the front desk, a long standing policy at Emeryville City Hall, a policy without the force of law.  The cameraman tries to calm down the public servants by explaining, correctly, that people don't have to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights to access publicly accessible government buildings.  Any areas of City Hall that are not specifically for authorized personal only, and properly signed to indicate that, are open to the public.

Bay Area Transparency has been active since 2019 and has 142 videos with 44 million views with an average of 290 thousand views per day.  It is part of a whole genre of YouTube channels conducting 'First Amendment audits' by video recording in public forums to document government employees and their acceptance or lack of acceptance of people's First Amendment rights.  These videos have shown many police departments in the Bay Area and beyond, authoritarian and prone to falsely arrest members of the public who record police activities.  The Emeryville police featured in the video show a reasonable level of professionalism, unlike the City Hall staff.

To the Emeryville City Hall staff: You can ask us to sign in at the front desk (without coercion) when we come to our city hall but we don't have to do it if we don't want to.  We can chose to access our government anonymously.  Don't call the police on people not breaking the law in their own building.  And calm down for christ's sake.  It's a public building and the public is invited in to partake in their government, even those who have scary cameras and who know their rights.

Rare Open City Council Seat in November: Councilman Scott Donahue to Step Down

 Council Member Donahue Will Not Seek Re-Election in November 

The bi-annual Emeryville City Council election season begins with a surprise announcement of a rare open seat for this November’s election by Council member Scott Donahue.  Mr Donahue, in a terse statement to the public, announced he will not seek a 3rd four year term on the Council. 
 

City Councilman
Scott Donahue
2014-2022

Council watchers have had to speculate as to why, after he did not offer a reason publicly at the surprise City Council announcement.  However, he privately told the Tattler only that he wished to concentrate more fully on his life-long vocation as a sculptor, leaving aside open speculation about disrespect shown to him by his Council colleagues.  As reported by the Tattler in December 2021, then Vice Mayor Donahue was skipped over for mayor in favor of current Mayor John Bauters after his colleagues refused to nominate him.  Leading the drive to overturn a normally mundane mayor selection procedure, Council member Ally Medina urged the rest of the Council to vote to skip Donahue, citing his lack of experience with budgetary issues. 
 

Council member Donahue, who first became a Council member in 2014 after receiving an endorsement by the premier community activist group Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE), did not offer any comment on the snubbing by his colleagues as a factor in his decision to not seek re-election.  Mr Donahue's running mate in the last two elections, Council member Dianne Martinez did not comment on the surprise announcement. 

Council member Donahue will step down in December as his replacement is sworn in at a regular City Council meeting

Emergency Diarrhea? Tough luck. No Public Bathroom at Emeryville Police Station

 No Public Toilet at the Public Building?

No Shit.

Elderly People, People in Wheelchairs, People With Intestinal Diseases Are All S.O.L.

Have you ever had emergency diarrhea out in public when you’re nowhere near a bathroom?  Yeah, it’s not a nice feeling.  How would it make you feel if you knew there was a public bathroom mere steps away but the police said NO, you may not use it, go find a bathroom elsewhere, you’re on your own.  Good luck with that.  Absurd and cruel though it may be, that’s what people get who go to the Emeryville police station.  The station, built in the 1970s has two public bathrooms, just like every other Bay Area police station, but the police here have closed off the public bathrooms to the public, leaving the public...well, shit outta luck.

That’s right.  Emeryville spent $3.7 million dollars on a remodel of the police station in 2012 but they failed to include even a single bathroom the public can use.  Some remodel.  If you need to use your police station you paid for and you drank too much coffee or you have sudden diarrhea, you will not be allowed to use either one of the original two bathrooms just off the public lobby behind a pair of locked doors.  The police say NO.  Even in an emergency.  NO even with with a requested police escort.  The public was not accounted for when $3.7 million of public money was spent to ‘improve’ the Emeryville police station.

 

Elderly people, people in wheelchairs or with emergency diarrhea are directed to travel three quarters of a mile west on Powell Street to the public bathrooms at the Emeryville Marina.  Again, good luck with that.

We’re making light of it here but it’s not funny actually.  Healthy and robust young people aren’t very inconvenienced by having to hold it while they make a police report or any other police services they’re getting but whole classes of people are not free to use their police station at all because of this.  People like the elderly, wheelchair people or those with any number of conditions or diseases that necessitate them being close by a bathroom.  Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) like colitis or Crohn’s disease alone affect 1.6 million Americans.  2.7 million Americans are in wheelchairs.  Our police station is not available for them unless they’re willing to take a big chance with a terrible outcome. 

People with Inflammatory Bowel Disease
alone make up 1.3% of the population.
That means 180 people just within Emeryville.
They can't wait to go another 3/4 mile
to the next public bathroom.  Government
buildings open to the public should have
publicly accessible bathrooms according to
the government's own regulations. 

 

The State of California stipulates that all public and privately owned buildings where the public gathers be equipped with enough restrooms to meet the needs of the public.  Except in Emeryville apparently.  The no bathroom thing is another a case of a special lack of minimum accommodation to the public the police here are claiming.   Add this to the lack of a fire escape in the public lobby at the police station revealed by the Tattler in 2018.  In that case, after much City Council and staff deliberation, the police, against the advice of the Alameda County Fire Marshall, just said NO to adding a fire escape, the public will have to take a risk of death when they use the Emeryville police station.  So an existing fire escape was taken away from the public at the police station building in the 2012 remodel.

Of course the lack of a public bathroom at a standalone public building isn’t as dangerous as no fire escape but it is a hallmark of a city that is not sensitive to the needs of all.  In a check to see how bad the police here are, we inquired at several Bay Area police stations and we found Emeryville's police stand alone.  Not one other municipal police department in the East Bay (or likely beyond) fails to provide a public bathroom.  Police personnel in the cities we talked with were shocked that the Emeryville police are so mean.

Private businesses where the public congregates like restaurants, movie theaters, churches and shopping malls are required by law to provide public bathrooms.  The government is the agency that polices this regulation.  Like with fire escape law, businesses must comply with the public bathroom law but not the government itself says Emeryville.  Meanwhile, prudence and good will suggests at least a sign warning about there being no bathroom available to the public be placed conspicuously on the front of the building.

Emeryville Police Station Public Lobby
There are two formerly public bathrooms located just behind the locked doors
on the left.  The doors keeping the public away from the bathrooms were
part of the $3.7 million remodel of the police building.  Also locked behind the doors
are the emergency fire escape stairs.