City Manager & City Attorney Remove Grassroots Community Free Food Table Pantry

 Mean Spirited City:

Food Insecure Community Members Left Out 

in the Cold by City

Popular Free Food Table Taken Down Because of 'Code Violation'

Breaking News

Emeryville's food insecure lost another resource today, as city public works crews removed a table that has been offering free, non-perishable food to the community, on orders of Emeryville City Attorney John Kennedy and City Manager LaTanya Bellow. 

The Tattler Free Food Table on its first day.

According to a written notice signed by Mr Kennedy, the table was in violation of  municipal code section 7-2.02 (a).

The table was set out in November, as a community response both to the federal government 'shutdown' crisis, which threatened SNAP, formerly USDA food stamps, and the extended relocation of E.C.A.P., a critical local food bank distribution point, to West Oakland.

Conceived, constructed and initiated by the Tattler's Editor,  Brian Donahue, the table quickly became a node of community activity. Local neighbors continuously replenished what was made available and those in need could take what they wished with dignity.  

The table was located at the Horton and Sherwin street intersection near the Emeryville Artists' Cooperative driveway.

The Food Table on Monday.

The food table has helped dozens since its inception, with food being delivered and taken daily. Not meant to supply every need, it served as an important supplement or emergency source of sustenance. The local community's generosity and provision of nutritionally dense food was impressive.

It is unclear how disruptive the table's removal will prove to those who have come to rely on it. 

While ECAP recently returned to its longtime home on San Pablo Avenue, long lines and limited hours make it inconvenient to access for some, such as those in low-paid jobs with inflexible hours. 

Renewed assault on programs at the federal level such as SNAP and Medicaid could drive more people into food insecurity.  Some users of the food table expressed to the Tattler their dismay at the prospect of its closing.  

The Tattler will continue following this story and will provide an update as more facts become known.

City Manager LaTanya Bellow has so far declined to respond by press time, to multiple attempts to reach her via telephone and email.

The initial story on the table is HERE.

The Department of Public Works removed the table today at 8:30 AM.
It is unknown what will become of the table or the food that was on it when it was taken.

Non-Profit 'Operation Dignity' Says Emeryville Police Removed a Homeless Man, Police Deny It

 Somebody is Lying:

Police Department Says They Didn't Remove a Homeless Man

Emeryville Non-Profit Contractor Says They Did

Police Sergeant Says She Can't Remember 

Planet Fitness Says They're a Judgement Free Zone*

*Except For Homeless People

News Analysis

Regardless of strongly asserted public denials over the years, the police have been and continue to roust homeless people camped on public property in Emeryville before and after a 2024 US Supreme Court decision legalizing it.  The proof recently came as a result of a Tattler public records request that denied any records about a specific man formerly camped alongside 45th Street near San Pablo Avenue who has since been removed by the police against a countermanding statement about it from the local homeless shelter non-profit organization that contracts with the City of Emeryville.  

Oakland based emergency shelter, Operation Dignity, says Emeryville police, operating at the behest of Planet Fitness Inc, forced the man who had been camped nearby, to leave Emeryville against his will.  The police are denying a public record exists that would document the removal.  It is a crime for a municipality to deny public records requested via the California Public Records Act and a public agency that played a part in a removal of a camped individual would be required to document it.

Inside Emeryville's New Planet Fitness
They call the police on homeless people camped 
nearby on public property: That's a judgement.

 

In an email to the Tattler, Operation Dignity Executive Director Tim Evans says the Emeryville Police Department indicated that the man, who had been camping on public property alongside 45th Street near the Planet Fitness exercise facility location for months, would no longer be allowed there at the insistance of that corporation.  Mr Evans stated that Planet Fitness was readying a grand opening for their new Emeryville facility and that was the reason for their call made to the police.  Operation Dignity did not say whether they were able to provide a bed for the man but shelters across the Bay Area have indicated there are not enough beds on any given night and women with children usually get preference.    

In 2024, the Supreme Court found that municipalities may henceforth remove or arrest people caught sleeping on public property even if no shelter beds are available.  However Emeryville has not changed its municipal code or its stated intension to allow for the police to arrest or remove such people that way.

You belong at Planet Fitness Emeryville!*
*Unless you're homeless
Then we call the police on you.

In an email to the Tattler, Operation Dignity Director Evans, stated their organization had reached out to the man in question several times as a result of EPD requests and “The individual expressed hesitancy about engaging in services and declined ongoing assistance at that time”.  Evans added, “Unfortunately, due to a new business moving into that location, he could not continue camping there.”

A manager at the Planet Fitness has denied anyone from their facility made the call to the police.  

The Tattler began its investigation after EPD Sergeant Michelle Shepard said she had no recollection of a man camped at that location over the last many months.  Because we had direct knowledge of the man in question and we were aware of the Planet Fitness opening, we initiated a public records request for all documents regarding a man camped at the 45th Street location from ‘November 27th to today’ (the time the man would have been forced out).  The City responded with a blanket “no disclosable documents” statement.  The curious lack of memory of Sergeant Shepard also prompted us to inquire about the homeless man from a different police department employee who stated off the record, “Of course we noticed him”.  Observation and situational awareness is a central job description of police work.

After the man was removed from public property, the $9 billion corporate giant hosted their grand opening at the facility located at 45th Street and San Pablo Avenue.

EPD Sergeant Michelle Sheperd
She is paid to be observant but
she didn't notice a man camped in
plain sight for four months on 45th Street.

 

So the story stops at an intriguing impasse: the police department and Planet Fitness representatives both deny they interacted in any way with the man in question but the non-profit homeless advocacy organization Operation Dignity, who are contracted by the City of Emeryville, says both did interact with the man. The Emeryville police have denied rousting homeless people for years regardless of any Supreme Court ruling but the Tattler has found evidence they lied about past rousting and encampment clearances.  People who have noticed that Oakland and Berkeley both have a lot of encampments but Emeryville has had almost zero have been left wondering against loud proclamations from both the police and the City Council saying rousting just doesn’t happen in Emeryville.  The police, if they played a part in rousting this 45th Street man in addition to violating the California Public Records Act, will be revealed to have violated their own stated policies.

Emeryville has an official 'no clearances' policy as far as homeless encampments go.  The policy has always been to direct campers to shelters if beds are available and if the person is willing to go.  After it became legal for cities to clear out encampments regardless of shelter bed availability as was made clear by the Court's decision in 2024, the City of Emeryville never changed its policy.  Then and now, City Hall has always loudly and proudly taken the humane and compassionate way dealing with encampments.  Any clearances the City has done over the years have been despite the official policy.     

Three of the four claims presented in this story appear to be dubious and a skeptic would note that a police sergeant, who's job it is to be observant, would fail to notice a man camped in plain sight for more than four months in a town as small as Emeryville.  Further, said skeptic would note that a profit seeking corporation has an interest in lying to protect their PR and their shareholders while the police department has an existential interest in lying, to protect their image in the eyes of the public.  An emergency shelter non-profit has no discernible interest in lying about their bailiwick.

The law allowing cities to arrest people for public camping stems from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which ruled that cities can enforce bans on sleeping and camping in public spaces without violating the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, even if no shelter beds are available.

The public has a right to know how the least fortunate in our community are treated by government but unfortunately, governments have been known to lie.  Distressingly, any mistreatment is done in our name.  

The Tattler reached out to former mayor David Mourra, current mayor Sukhdeep Kaur and City Manager La Tanya Bellow about this story but none returned our inquiries.

The STROAD: 40th Street to Become a 'Super Stroad'

The '40th Street Multi Modal Project' Shows Emeryville Continues to Aspire to Be a Place to Travel Through On the Way to Somewhere Else

People Who Want to Travel to a Better Place Than Emeryville Will Be Helped by the $33 Million Infrastructure Project

"A stroad is a thoroughfare that combines the features of streets and roads.  Stroads attempt to be both a high speed traffic connector (a road) and a place for business and people (a street) but fails at both.  They are wide arterials (roads for through traffic) that also provide access to strip malls, drive-throughs, and other automobile-oriented businesses (as shopping streets do).  They are the most dangerous type of urbanized thoroughfare and have come under near universal criticism among city planning professionals.” WIKI

 

News Analysis

A street

Emeryville has cleared the way to make traffic on 40th Street move more efficiently through a proposed $33 million infrastructure project known as the ‘40th Street Multi Modal Project, a project that will exacerbate current problems associated with a lack of habitability and the alienating civic space created by the street.  Effectively, Emeryville is preparing to turn a ‘stroad’ into a super-stroad and any improvements for bus travel or bike travel touted by proponents are threatened to be overtaken by a greatly diminished livable space for Emeryville by the pyrrhic effects of the 'improvements'.

The project, seven years in the planning and slated to begin construction in the new year, will cost $33 million, $5.5 million of that paid by the City of Emeryville and will likely result in higher speed traffic and more people moved per hour; part of the touted efficiency.  But in so doing, it will create a reduced access ‘super-block’ grid out of existing small blocks, cutting neighborhoods off from each other with more traffic noise and more air pollution for people living nearby.  The built out project promises to reduce desirability for neighborhoods close by, as these kinds of high efficiency arterials have been shown to do.  People who don’t live in Emeryville but who travel through or commute to our town or who travel here to go to the auto-centric shopping malls Emeryville has built will benefit however.

A road

City officials insist the 40th Street project will not just help regional shoppers and people cutting through our town headed to other (more desirable) destinations, but it will also help people traveling to the planned $1 billion Sutter Health Hospital planned for Emeryville.

Proponents of the project which includes four out of five City Council members (Priforce dissenting), tell us bikes, bus users and drivers will be helped because of, rather than in spite of, the closing of 40th Street side streets.  The closing of the streets will create several 'super-blocks' of the sort that the late Canadian city planner Jane Jacobs warned us against.  She has shown how this consolidation of small blocks into super-blocks in the street grid devalues the neighborhood.   Discounting the Jacobs inspired city planning ethos (begun as a 1960's scrappy rebellion, now turned into orthodoxy), the proponents of the project have shown how traffic will move more efficiently, including bus traffic and bike traffic, with fewer (side street) conflicts.  Between Adeline Street and Halleck Street, there are currently nine small blocks that intersect 40th Street.  After the $33 million project is complete, that number will be reduced to six large super blocks.

Traffic engineers have long worked to increase flow rate efficiencies without concern for livability downgrades for people living nearby.  The real estate market has long shown how major arterials, including stroads and freeways, reduce value for home prices and there is nothing about the 40th Street Multi Modal Project that would suggest the improvement for traffic efficiencies it will bring will be any different.  Indeed, the market has shown people like their communities to be quiet as far as traffic goes, with the low speeds and volumes that low efficiency streets bring.  

A stroad
40th Street in Emeryville

Emeryville has three existing stroads: Powell Street, San Pablo Avenue and 40th Street.  These corridors exhibit all the negative effects of stroads: induced demand traffic congestion, high volume, high noise and pollution, danger, and other intangibles that equal a high ‘ick’ factor.  Improving the carrying efficiency of 40th Street, a street that already embodies these bad qualities, will only worsen the civic space.  It threatens to turn a stroad into a super-stroad.

Stroads are part of a rationally based modernist vision for cities.  Traffic engineers are taught the rationality of efficiency in graduate schools.  Towns that throw their transportation plans over to traffic engineers as Emeryville has done, tend to get less than desirable places.  Robert Moses, the formerly great urban planning expert knew about moving people with the greatest efficiency; he's the godfather of the top-down urban renewal ethos of the 1950s and '60s that bulldozed entire neighborhoods to build massive freeways cut through all across America.  His star however has been dimmed in recent years by people demanding more democratic control of their cities.  In this milieu, stroads seem to be a part of the last vestiges of this heavy handed vision of how not to create livable urban spaces.  The YIMBY movement too is part of the anti-democratic top-down Robert Moses vision but is not a vestige, rather it is a new iteration of the Moses vision.  YIMBYists' propose stroads to be used to connect their apartment towers to freeways for 'easy in, easy out' commuting to help developers maximize profits.    

The 40th Street Multi Modal Project calls into question what Emeryville is for.  Is it a place for people to come to, get stuff and leave?  Is it a place for people to travel through on their way to someplace else (more desirable)?  Is it a place where the politics have tried (and failed) to create a nice place to live or to be?  Stroads are built by municipalities that have no pride.  They are built by towns that pay deference to corporations seeking to make a profit.  After a couple of decades of Emeryville granting developers approvals to build auto centric sprawling shopping malls with big box retail surrounded by acres of parking lots, after another couple of decades building massive auto centric all-rental housing projects that are linked to the shopping malls and the freeway by stroads, after making Emeryville a place to get through in order to get to a place people desire to be, perhaps we should be turning stroads into streets as opposed to super-stroads.  

After spending $33 million on this project, it would seem Emeryville's future is already decided for the next 40 years, the useful life of this expensive infrastructure.  Desirability is out and moving people more efficiently by use of rational traffic management is in.  Regardless, people don't like being near stroads, living or lingering and Emeryville residents will be able to use the 40th Street Multi Modal Project for decades to come to travel from the place they live to places they want to be....places not run by developers and traffic engineers.

The 40th Street Multi Modal Project is HERE.

Robert Moses is HERE.

YIMBY is HERE.

Jane Jacobs is HERE.

Councilman Priforce Returns to Duties: YIMBY, Haters Upset

 

Priforce on the Mend But Haters & His Detractors at YIMBY Still Hurting

Kalimah Priforce returned to his City Council duties Tuesday after being struck by a car and injured last week while riding his bike.  The accident occurred on San Pablo Avenue in front of Emeryville Citizens Action Program (ECAP) in Oakland where Mr Priforce was volunteering his time to hand out food to needy community members in the wake of the federal government’s partial suspension of SNAP food benefits.  

Even though Council member Priforce broke his shoulder in two places and may require up to a year to recover full use of his left arm, he attended Tuesday’s Council meeting, his arm in a sling and helped distribute food to needy families enrolled at Emery schools at the Center of Community Life on Monday.  Said Mr Priforce about the quick bounce back, “Volunteering with families, being present in council chambers, staying connected to the work is what gives me strength.”

Family Food Donation Drive at ECCL
Council member Priforce (on left)
helped give out food Monday with his
right hand.

Despite being in considerable pain, the Councilman put on a happy face, “Healing has been slow, painful, and humbling, but the people of Emeryville keep me moving. Even with limited mobility, even on the days when it takes twice as long just to get dressed or make it across town without my bike, I show up because our community shows up for each other” he told the Tattler.

Unsurprisingly in today’s Emeryville where it seems much is made to service a procrustean binary narrative, YIMBY and YIMBY adjacent members of the community have used the progressive Councilman’s injury to forward a political aim.  On Emeryville specific social media, anonymous sources have impugned Mr Priforce’s injury stating he is faking it (presumably to take away community sympathy from the sole progressive on the Council) or to malign the Councilman’s ideas about the 40th Street Multi-Modal Project, a project idea promoted by YIMBY.  Mr Priforce, for the record, has expressed concerns that the 40th Street proposed project does not increase bike safety as much as it takes away from resident livability and small businesses ability to continue doing business.  Others have also called out the lack of resident desirability of the fast tracked public works project (see future Tattler story) but the YIMBY organization has sought to question the legitimacy of views that don’t exactly meet their desires for the project. 

Mr Priforce remains undaunted in the face of his injury or the subsequent anonymous internet attacks, “Public service doesn’t pause when life gets hard” he said as he handed out food to hungry neighbors.

The 40th Street Multi-Modal Project is a proposal to eliminate side streets, making large ‘super blocks’ to facilitate more and higher speed traffic for 40th Street.  YIMBY California is a corporate backed Sacramento lobbying firm, active in Emeryville, that seeks to increase the profits of Real Estate Investment Trust Corporations by taking away local democratic control of public housing policy.

The Councilman was injured but let me take this opportunity to trash him for disagreeing with YIMBY.

What I mean to say is the lone progressive on the Emeryville City Council faked this bike accident.

Priforce 'Severe' Shoulder Breaks, Released From Hospital

 Council Member Priforce Hit By Car: Recovering at Home, Shoulder broken in two places

Emeryville City Council member Kalimah Priforce was released from Highland Hospital Wednesday after having spent the night in the emergency department as a result of being struck by a car Tuesday.  The Councilman sustained a broken shoulder in two locations and other minor injuries after the car struck him while he was riding his bike to volunteer at ECAP to help distribute food to needy community members.

The shoulder injury is very painful the Councilman reports and he may still have to undergo surgery according to his surgeon.  The shoulder break is severe and he may take up to a year for a full recovery he indicated.  

It is unknown at this time if Mr Priforce will miss the next Council meeting scheduled for November 18th.  He is currently on pain medication and waiting for a call to return to the hospital for further treatment.  

Breaking: Council Member Priforce Hospitalized, Struck By a Car

 Council Member Priforce, On Bike, Hit By Car

Breaking News

Emeryville City Council member Kalimah Priforce was struck by an automobile and injured at the site of the Emeryville Citizens Assistance Program (ECAP) at 2628 San Pablo Avenue in Oakland this afternoon.  The extent of Mr Priforce’s injuries are unknown but are not life threatening it is being reported.  

Reportedly, Council member Priforce was traveling to ECAP to help with the volunteer food drive initiated last week as a result of the curtailment of the federal food assistance SNAP program.  It is reported the driver did not attempt to flee the scene.   Mr Priforce is currently being attended to at Highland Hospital’s emergency department.

The Tattler will report when more info is obtained.

Introducing the Tattler Free Food (and book) Table

Food Insecurity in the Community Is Growing

Can You Pitch in a Little?

The Tattler Asks Our More Fortunate Neighbors To Help Out

The Tattler has installed a free food table at the corner of Horton Street and Sherwin Street and we invite anyone who is struggling to feed themselves to stop by and take what you need for you and your family whenever you need it.  Conversely, to our neighbors who may be more fortunate, you are invited to leave food at the table whenever you are able.  Even small donations are helpful. The table will not be staffed.    It is just designed for unrewarded and unrecognized human kindness to push back against this toxic government in Washington (and to help a hungry neighbor eat). 

It is a trifling thing for neighbors to pitch in when they’re walking their dog and such. Non-perishables are best but if the table starts to become a high turn over thing, fruits and vegetables will be able to be left.  We ask that donations start out with non-perishables, please.  The Tattler will report on the goings on at the food table from time to time.

The Bay Area, including Emeryville and the environs, have long been a locus of food insecurity for the working poor owing to inherent problems with American style capitalism with its high rents in places where relatively high paying jobs are located.  This has been made even more manifest with the rise of Trump 2.0 of course and we feel we must act now to ameliorate some of the suffering of our less fortunate neighbors.  There’s quite a lot of disposable income among our neighbors in the Park Avenue neighborhood and all around us is suffering.  We hope our Emeryville neighbors agree and give what and when they can.

Please keep in mind donating, even just one can of food, is an act of kindness of course, but it is also a highly radical act of resistance against the forces of darkness that seem to be closing in all around us.  Take a can of food with you on your nightly dog walk and include a stop at the Tattler Free Food Table and you can help your dog as well as help your own connection to the community. 

Books will also be left on the table.  To start, are titles by JG Ballard, Carl Jung, Gore Vidal, Al Franken, John Powers and Glen Greenwald.  If it is going to rain, we ask the books be left in sealable plastic bags.

The first food offerings for the table include mostly nutrition dense foods such as packaged granola, pickled lupini beans, almonds, trail mix and honey packets. 

 

Emeryville City Hall Celebrates 'Peace in the Park' While Supporting the War in Gaza

 'Peace in the Park' : Government Propaganda

City Council Likes War Depending on Who is Being Killed

“Government propaganda is the systematic dissemination of information and ideas by a government to influence public opinion and behavior in order to promote a particular agenda. It often uses emotional appeals, selective facts, or misleading information to shape how people perceive political realities.“ -Wiki

Despite the City Council’s refusal to support a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza, the City of Emeryville held a city wide celebration of world peace in October, seemingly oblivious to that two year war that has killed some 70,000 Palestinians including 20,000 children.  The City is instead focused on celebrating world peace by hosting an event in Christie Avenue Park filled with fun and frivolity, 7500 miles away from the war.  To people not paying close attention, the message received would be that Emeryville likes peace.  That was probably the idea.

Emeryville’s counter factual anti-war propaganda campaign has recently taken the form of the City sanctioned event October 18th called “Peace in the Park”, an event that represents the antithesis of an earlier Council majority vote to not allow council discussion of peace in Gaza.  This Council majority is so pro-war, they will not even allow discussion amongst themselves of a proposal to resolve they are against the killing of Palestinian children.  The five Council members made it be known they are against  Ukrainian children being killed however.

The City Council voted to not allow any discussion of a resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza (4-1 Priforce dissenting),  December 5th 2023, after they earlier voted unanimously for a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine.  Responding to Tattler questions about that double standard, Mayor David Mourra said the City of Emeryville “should not get involved in international politics, including foreign wars” despite the fact that he himself voted for the ceasefire in Ukraine on the Council.  Follow up questions about the Council double standard went unanswered by Mr Mourra and by the rest of the Ukraine supporting Council majority.

The sparsely attended Peace in the Park event at Christie Avenue Park featured booths and tents calling for world peace with some not for profit organizations, church groups and private companies taking part as well as tents for the Emeryville Police Department and Emery Unified School District. 
 

On a side note, the editor of the Tattler distributed flyers at the event, alerting celebrants of the City’s double standard for resolutions concerning foreign wars.  Taking umbrage with the open leaflet distributing, an Emeryville police officer physically battered the Tattler editor.  An investigation of the incident is currently underway by the police department's internal affairs division. 

Emeryville's 'Peace in the Park' celebration was
sparsely attended despite the City's wall to wall
advertising for the event.

Because no one at City Hall would speak about the Council majority’s support for a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Russia’s war against Ukraine while refusing a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Palestinians in Gaza, it is taken as a self-evident fact that this Council majority dislikes some wars but they like some other wars.  Some would question: is it a matter of the ethnicity of the people that are being killed in the war that determines the Council's support or rejection? Are Palestinian children more expendable than Ukrainian children?   None on the City Council majority that voted against the ceasefire in Gaza would answer that question.  But the whole City Council and City Hall want us to know they are in favor of world peace (at least in the park).

Here's how the votes on the two proposed war resolutions went:

Russia/Ukraine War Resolution (is Emeryville against the war?)

(former) Mayor John Bauters:           YES

Council member David Mourra:        YES

Council member Sukhdeep Kaur:    YES

Council member Courtney Welch:    YES

Council member Kalimah Priforce:    YES

Israel/Gaza War Resolution (is Emeryville against the war?)

(former) Mayor John Bauters:        NO

Council member David Mourra:    NO

Council member Sukdeep Kaur:     NO

Council member Courtney Welch:    NO

Council Member Kalimah Priforce:     YES

Democratic Citizen Accountability Program Suspended at City Hall: No Explanation Given

Once Popular 'Coffee With the City Manager' Program Suspended 

Emeryville Citizens Used to Be Able to Speak Directly With Their City Manager Under the Program

No Longer

Emeryville’s new City Manager, La Tanya Bellow announced she would not be re-starting the former citizen engaging ‘Coffee With the City Manager’ program after having pondering over it during the first 100 days of her job as city manager.  The democratically minded program was discontinued in 2020 because of Covid but before that, the popular program enabled normal citizens to engage face to face with the most powerful government official at their City Hall.  Ms Bellow told the Tattler that while she has shuttered the Coffee Program indefinitely, she is not necessarily averse to someday re-starting it.  She did not say why she would not meet with citizens through the program.

Emeryville City Manager
La Tanya Bellow
Not a fan of transparency or 
citizen engagement. 

The government in Emeryville has long made proclamations regarding the inclusionary and democratic existential nature of City Hall and they proved it in 2014 when the popular program was initiated under former City Manager Sabrina Landreth.  Under the program, citizens could just drop by without making an appointment and speak freely with the city manager in the city manager’s office during the three hour period once a month.  

Despite ending the once a month citizen engagement, Ms Bellow, who makes $315,0000 per year, has made statements touting her approachability for regular people.  Before her hiring in January, she told the City Council she was a “committed public servant” who could be counted on to lead Emeryville’s government “with transparency, with integrity and with collaboration…with the members of this community”.  That may have been what she was thinking at the time but after settling in at her Park Avenue corner office, apparently she seems to have had a re-think.




Lack of accountability has a long tradition at Emeryville City Hall.  Before the democratically minded City Manager Landreth, Emeryville’s City Manager John Flores, for years, regularly scheduled closed-to-the-public meetings in the city manager's office with the Chamber of Commerce board president, every Monday morning at 9:00 to discuss anything that the Chamber, a private corporation, wanted to discuss.  The Chamber of Commerce, who received large amounts of money and favors from City Hall, likely discussed that and more at these regularly scheduled private meetings in the City Manager’s office.   

Former City Manager 
Sabrina Landreth
She had a democratic view
of government.  She liked to 
hear from regular citizens.

Uncomfortable with the lack of accountability and transparency, the Tattler suggested that perhaps regular people should also have a regularly scheduled time to interface one-on-one with their government.  The idea was forwarded that every month, regular citizens could freely express their ideas, suggestions or complaints directly to the city manager at their seat of government.

Although the secretive John Flores was not fond of that idea and he refused it, the democratically inclined Sabrina Landreth agreed with the Tattler and she began the program that ultimately became very popular with Emeryville citizens.  Notably, the Emeryville Police Department initiated its own "Coffee With a Cop' program patterned after the success of the city manager program, building it into their 'community policing' policy.  EPD still continues on the popular program.


The Coffee With the City Manager Program continued until Covid and the manager at the time, the former Paul Buddenhagen, did not restart it after Covid had passed, regardless of citizen requests.  Ms Bellow continues on with the refusal, despite all her highfalutin citizen engagement rhetoric.  

After she was hired, the Tattler inquired about Coffee With the City Manager and Ms Bellow indicated she would decide and make an announcement about it in the “first 100 days” of her administration. Announcing her refusal to re-start the program, she assured the Tattler she is “focused on meeting the community where they are to foster a more inclusive and responsive dialogue” after noting that her contact with the Tattler was a violation of the City Attorney’s order that no government officials may communicate with the Tattler in any way.  “I am making this one time exception” she said. 

Council Decision: Committee Selection at City Hall Will No Longer be Subject to Public Scrutiny

“Efficiency” Touted as Reason Why What Formerly Was Public Must Now Be Behind Closed Doors

“That is Not Democracy, That is a Closed Loop”

City Council member Kalimah Priforce reports how public accountability is being taken away by a recent Council majority decision to cut citizens out of longstanding City Hall committee selection process.  At the September 9th City Council meeting, the Council changed the status of Emeryville committees from 'standing' to 'ad hoc' in order to get around California law meant to keep processes publicly accessible.

 

By Kalimah Priforce

What this Council was asked to do on September 9th is not just a matter of “efficiency.”  Let’s call it what it is: a quiet consolidation of power.


We are being told that committee appointments will now be screened in small rooms, by just a couple of Council members, and then slipped onto the consent calendar for approval.  No debate.  No discussion.  No public scrutiny.


That is not democracy.  That is a closed loop.  And Emeryville knows this story - we lived through it in the John Bauters era.  The back-channeling, the rubber-stamping, the chilling of dissent.  We paid the price for it.


Now we are told this is about “streamlining.”  Well, let me tell you: corruption is always streamlined.  Inequity is always streamlined.  When you cut out public process, when you silence debate, when you bury decisions in the consent calendar - you are greasing the wheels for insider politics and shutting the public out.

The Brown Act is crystal clear.  Ad hoc committees are supposed to be temporary, narrow, and dissolved when the job is done.  If they meet every year, if they take on standing jurisdiction, they must be open to the public.  Period.  Pretending otherwise is playing with fire.

Look at Anaheim.  Look at Bell.  Both cities thought they could cut corners, centralize decisions, and keep the public in the dark.  And what did it lead to?  Scandal.  FBI raids.  Corruption.  Broken trust that took years to rebuild.


And now Emeryville is flirting with the same mistake.


Enough is enough.  If we care about equity, if we care about diversity, if we care about trust in this city, then we cannot funnel power into fewer hands.  Keep appointments at the full Council.  Let the public see who we choose and why.  That’s how you build faith in government.  That’s how you expand democracy.


 

Anything less is a Trojan horse. Anything less is a step backward.

Kalimah Priforce is an Emeryville City Council member.  He was elected to office in 2022.

Emeryville Launched Novel Legal Effort to Silence the Tattler

City's Tattler "Communication Plan" Is Really A Non-Communication Plan 

By Mr X

Emeryville’s administration is attempting to muzzle the city’s independent news service, erecting roadblocks to news-gathering and threatening the publication’s editor with prosecution. 

Oddly echoing events playing out in Washington DC, local leaders have enacted an executive order barring the Tattler’s editor from any vocal or written interaction with any city employee. 

According to a 'communication plan' drafted by City Attorney John Kennedy, Tattler editor Brian Donahue may only communicate with city elected leaders, officials or employees during the ‘public comment’ period of city council meetings. Under state regulations, city officials, elected leaders and employees are all barred from addressing concerns raised during public comment. 

Kennedy, in a memo sent to the Tattler in October, describes the Editor’s news-gathering and reporting as "harassment," “aggression,” “threatening,” “intimidating,” and “hostile,” attempting to conjure a linguistic context for his actions. Exactly the types of terms the Administration in Washington has leveled at news outlets not offering fawning, supplicating coverage. 

A bizarre attempt by Kennedy to add gravitas by citing case law, undermines his own memo, and the constitutionality of his actions potentially resulting in financial liability for the City of Emeryville. One case, Minn. Bd. Commun. for Colleges v. Knight, 465 U.S. 271 (1984) concerns unrepresented groups attending meetings for unionized employees during contract negotiations, the other, L. F. v. Lake Wash. Sch. Dist. concerned an aggrieved parent and communications with the teachers of that parent’s children and school and district officials—not an entire city. Regardless, on-going bi-weekly meetings between the parent and school officials were established. 

While this effort to restrict and eventually destroy an independent voice in Emeryville plays out in court, perhaps the most troubling aspect is how closely local officials are adhering to and advancing President Trump’s effort to silence inconvenient voices. The Emeryville Tattler must be fairly effective.

Mr X, besides working for the Tattler, was a reporter for the Oakland Tribune and several other print
publications, two NPR affiliates in Northern California and received an Edward R Murrow award for his work covering wildfires in Northern California. 

Silencing journalism increases group think, stifles public participation and decreases critical thinking.

John Bauters' Future Is Guided By His Conspicuous Association With Plutocrats

Is John Bauters a Snake?

Well Sure, But Emeryville Residents Don't Need a National Reality TV Show to See It.

News Analysis

The regional Bay Area press corps over the last year has spilled a lot of ink on the public foibles and discernible antics of former Emeryville mayor John Bauters; from his whiplashing but losing bid for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to his dramatic appearance on a nationally syndicated reality TV show where he shocked many when he quipped about himself as a politician who’s good at lying and manipulating people.  Many of these Bauters’ watchers have settled on the TV show as an ‘aha’ moment that reveals his real nefarious motives in the world of politics.  But for all his impolitic and outlandish statements on the TV show, the real revelations about John’s political proclivities come from the job he took as executive director of a billionaire funded right wing political action committee before the TV show even went to air. 

He told Alameda County voters he was a progressive:
and it's true he's gay and he rides a bike.
Plutocrats and Emeryville residents however knew
otherwise.   Others found out about John from the TV show.

 

Regardless of the lavishly funded campaign highlighting his progressive bonafides for the Supervisor’s race last fall, an effort that attempted to conceal his corporate connections and his true heart’s desire, Bauters’ move to bail from politics and accept a job as executive director at the billionaire funded astroturf organization Revitalize East Bay (and Abundant Oakland ©) immediately after he lost his bid for Supervisor, is what informs, not the TV show.  That post election move, directly into the billionaires’ warm embrace, was a shock to many of his political supporters outside of Emeryville that had seen John as a true blue progressive.  For Emeryville residents who know him however, John’s ‘transformation’ from grassroots to astroturf was no transformation at all, it was always just astroturf.

Settling in at Revitalize East Bay, Bauters went to work right away for the investor owned utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric, a major contributor.  Progressive Oakland City Council member Carroll Fife had brought California Senate Bill 332, the Investor-Owned Utilities Accountability Act to a council approval resolution and through the graces of Revitalize East Bay, PG&E used Bauters’ political skills to try to talk Fife down.  He told the Councilwoman PG&E being held accountable as per AB 332s provisions, would drive the utility to pull charitable contributions to Oakland non-profit groups and it would send an anti-business message to Oakland businesses and start ups looking to locate in Oakland.  Bauters told Oaklandside he spoke with Fife to convince her to meet with PG&E and take out of the bill anything offensive to them.  Council member Fife refused and Bauters helped the Oakland resolution go down to defeat per PG&E’s wishes.  Interestingly, the Emeryville City Council voted on a resolution to support AB 332 earlier when the political climate in tiny, inconsequential Emeryville was able to fly under the PG&E radar.  Mr Bauters was still on the Emeryville Council and receiving Revitalize East Bay campaign funding but not directly working for them as he is now.  

What Mr Bauters and his employer finds objectionable about SB 332 is that it would immediately curb PG&E’s corporate abuses that have impaired service reliability, inflated customer rates (now the second highest in the nation), and criminally endangered public safety.  But more importantly, SB 332 lays the groundwork for democratically replacing PG&E and other Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs) with a “not-for-profit” public utility, historically a hair-on-fire no go for the utility giant (as we saw in the 2010 Prop 16 fight).

While many are now opining about John Bauters’ future and the surprise so many East Bay progressives have displayed following the reality TV show, it is unclear what actually lies in the future.  Many of these prognosticators were  Bauters voters in the Alameda County Supervisors race, followers who now likely feel hoodwinked after what he said to the national TV audience.  Some are predicting he will return to politics and like the defeated 1960 presidential hopeful Richard Nixon’s appearance on the Jack Par show in 1961 was transformational to a come back, Bauters will be able to leverage his TV fame and return to rise like a phoenix.  But the trouble for Bauters is his right wing connections that have been made clear through his Revitalize East Bay hiring.  His association with this plutocratic PAC will not be possible to conceal to Bay Area voters.  Revitalize East Bay reveals his true allegiances and it is likely any Bay Area political run is now out of reach for him for the foreseeable future.  What has been revealed is the only reason Mr Bauters was able to get within striking distance of political power in left wing Alameda County last November was his deftness at concealing his right wing nature (despite the tiny Tattler’s reporting before the election).

All this doesn’t preclude a Bauters run at electoral politics in a conservative district outside the left wing Bay Area of course.

The Tattler reached out to John Bauters for this story but inquiries were not returned.

Councilman Solomon Proposes National Bike Safety Organization Expunged From Emeryville's Bike Plan

 Nation's Premier Bike Safety Organization No Longer Good Enough for Emeryville, Says Solomon

Nationally Recognized Expert Policy Best Practices Should Be Cut in Favor of Emeryville City Hall Staff Opinions 

City Council member Matthew Solomon recently announced a surprising new proposal that would elevate the Emeryville city staff’s opinions as the highest authority on bike safety for our town, overturning the City’s decades long existing deference to the experts at NACTO, the nation-wide transportation authority and their use of rationally based industry best practices.  The radical policy shift proposal would represent a retrenchment on bike safety according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), the organization the City currently uses to set bike and pedestrian safety protocols.  

Matthew Solomon Emeryville City Councilman
Ironically, he ran for Council on a pro-bike platform.

Every neighboring city as well as most of the rest of the nation uses NACTO protocols and guidelines in designing their bike and pedestrian infrastructure. 

Solomon's proposal, if enacted, would turn Emeryville away from NACTO safety guideline expertise in favor of opinions from city staff non-experts and would likely result in compromised bike safety.  It would also place Emeryville in higher litigation jeopardy should a bicyclist get injured in Emeryville it should be noted. 

In a telephone interview with Matthew Solomon, the Councilman specifically said he would not vote for and he would encourage his colleagues to not support NACTO protocols for counting the number of vehicles using Emeryville’s bike boulevards, a practice the City conducted every two years for a decade before 2019.  Further, he said does not agree with NACTO's delineated traffic volume allowable for bike boulevards (maximum number of vehicle trips per day).  NACTO (and the City of Emeryville) recognizes that bike boulevards are streets that vehicles and bikes share and that the number of vehicles using the street must therefore be limited for bike safety.  The way any city knows it is following the NACTO rules is by occasionally counting the vehicle traffic and then working to limit the number of vehicles as per their guidelines, keeping it below the upper safety limit.  

The City of Emeryville used to conduct bi-annual traffic counts as NACTO dictates until business representatives complained in 2019 when the practice was abandoned.  At the time, all five bike boulevards in town had more traffic than NACTO and Emeryville's General Plan allows.  The amount of vehicle traffic in Emeryville has risen substantially since 2019, putting more vehicles on the bike boulevards and bikers in even graver danger, a fact Council member Solomon was unimpressed with in our telephone interview.

After telling the Tattler NACTO’s influence should be removed from Emeryville’s bike plan (known as the Active Transportation Plan (ATP), the Councilman said he would be amenable to amending the ATP at the Council level to achieve that goal.  Currently, the ATP defers to NACTO best practices for bike boulevards and other bike corridors in town as well as pedestrian infrastructure.

Lifted directly from Emeryville's 
Active Transportation Plan (page 39): the law
of the land in bike policy.

Councilman Solomon told the Tattler Emeryville’s city staff knows how to design, plan and build bike boulevards and that they are the ones the City Council should listen to, not a nation-wide member organization committed to bike and pedestrian safety best practices promotion.

The City Council has always had the right to amend the ATP by fiat and if Mr Solomon is successful in convincing a majority on the Council to remove NACTO and the bike boulevard vehicle traffic limits from the ATP, it would be legal but unprecedented.  It would represent the first time in Emeryville history the Council voted to amend the bike plan instead of ignoring it (as they done on our bike boulevards up to now).

Before 2019, the City conducted bi-annual traffic counts on the bike boulevards but then, despite the requirement to do so as spelled out in the General Plan, the counting stopped at former Mayor John Bauters’ insistence.  The City never achieved the bike boulevard traffic volume goals stated by the City’s Bike Plan (and NACTO) it should be noted.  

Several business owners in town, including Wareham Development’s CEO Rich Robbins, have long complained about how bikes hamper tenants getting to and from their buildings.  Businesses have quietly lobbied sympathetic Council members to remove or at least ignore the boulevards, pleas Mr Bauters seem to have listened to as he hamstrung Horton Street bikers by quitting the vehicle counts and ignoring the duty to reduce vehicle traffic.  Mr Robbins publicly supported a plan to remove the Horton Street Bike Boulevard and instead route bikers alongside the railroad tracks behind his buildings.  In the intervening years, the City extended the Emeryville Greenway ped/bike path behind the buildings as Mr Robbins insisted they do but the bike boulevard still remains on Horton Street (albeit with too much vehicle traffic).

Mr Solomon is self described as a pro-bike Council member, having served on the Bike Committee for years.  Supporters claim he is the biggest advocate for bicycling on the Council however Council member Kalimah Priforce, also a bike advocate who uses his bike or public transportation exclusively, doesn’t own a car and he has never even had a driver’s license.  Mr Priforce, for the record, has stated he is in favor of limiting the number of vehicles on the bike boulevards as the ATP (and NACTO) says.  

The Tattler invites Councilman Solomon to explain, in his own words, the dichotomy between his incongruent statements made to the Tattler and his claims of bike advocacy by use of the Tattler’s unedited ‘My Turn’ feature.

2024 (a million years ago):
On the campaign trail, candidate for Council Solomon was
unabashed in his support for bikes and the ATP.  He was
not past going a little puerile and high-handed in his zeal.

Is Planning Commissioner Sam Gould the Seneca Scott of Emeryville?

 Sam Gould / Seneca Scott: Pugilists for Conservative Causes

Both Attack Progressives in Their Respective Communities, 

Both Win Free Speech Law Suits Over Their Respective Tormentors

News Analysis

Emeryville Planning Commissioner, Sam Gould, has won a court decision from litigation initiated by Councilman Kalimah Priforce for ‘targeted harassment, intimidation, and racially charged retaliation’ against the council member.  The judge’s decision, delivered following the civil harassment hearing in Alameda County Superior Court, found that Mr Gould’s assailing actions and speech directed against Mr Priforce that prompted the litigation did not rise to a level that would justify a nullification of the citizen Planning Commissioner’s free speech rights.

Emeryville's Progressive Black Councilman
Kalimah Priforce
The object of scorn from Planning Commissioner
Sam Gould.

Mr Gould, appointed to the Planning Commission by a City Council majority vote in March, has long directed a steady stream of social media invective against Mr Priforce, the lone progressive on the city council for his minority views.  A long time former member of Emeryville’s Bike Committee, Mr Gould’s vituperative attacks on Mr Priforce over the years violated Emeryville’s Code of Ethics for employees and committee members but neither the City Manager nor the City Council acted to enforce the code in support of Council member Priforce.  Since Mr Gould has been elevated to the position of Planning Commission, the public abuse from Mr Gould seems to have stopped Mr Priforce said.  “He [Gould] stopped on the day before he got on the Planning Commission”, Priforce told the Tattler.  Perhaps Mr Gould thought such partisan attacks against a sitting Council member by a sitting Planning Commissioner would appear unseemly enough that the Council majority would be forced invoke the punishments prescribed in Emeryville's Code of Ethics.
   

Commissioner Gould has not revealed why he seems to have stopped the public haranguing of the Council member however by March, the damage had already been done, prompting the Councilman to bypass the feckless and politicized Code of Ethics to make a case against Gould in Alameda County Superior Court.

Emeryville Planning Commissioner Sam Gould (on right)
Not a fan of Black progressives in Emeryville.
He ran for City Council (and lost). 
Pictured also is Council member Sukhdeep Kaur
and establishment Dem Igor Tregub, Chair of the
Alameda County Democratic Central Committee.

The charged public spectacle of the bellicose Sam Gould’s near constant haranguing of the Councilman has drawn comparisons with the infamous and truculent Oakland conservative activist Seneca Scott who for years has engaged in a scorched earth campaign against all progressive comers across Alameda County, especially former Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price.   Mr Scott, has served as a ‘hit man’ for conservative pols who have sought to appear above the fray.  Mr Gould has taken on that same role, essentially offering his services to the conservative majority on the Council who have desired to attack their colleague Priforce but who have thus far not been entirely comfortable appearing unseemly or partisan.

Interestingly,  Mr Scott also just beat an attempt to restrain him by use of the Alameda County court exactly like Mr Gould (they both had the same judge).  Mr Scott, a central organizer behind the recall of former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao drew the ire of Brandon Harami, a former Thao aide who sought the restraining order in April, accusing Mr Scott of harassing him online.  The judge in that case also ruled in favor of ‘free speech’ rights, for private citizens over elected officials.  Mr Scott, the darling of the East Bay corporate elite, has amassed a war chest to defend himself against many legal actions taken against him by many pols and private citizens who have come under his assailing taunts.

Both Sam Gould and Seneca Scott lost elections, Gould for Emeryville City Council and Scott for Oakland City Council and both then turned to attacking former opponents—Scott on a citywide activist stage, Gould locally targeting Mia Esperanza Brown and Calvin Dillahunty, two progressive Black council candidates associated with Mr Priforce.  Both Gould and Scott focus criticism on local (Black) progressive leadership: Scott broadly but mostly laser-focused on Oakland Council member Carol Fifie; Gould specifically on the progressive Council member Kalimah Priforce.  Scott and Gould endorsed and participated in and continue to participate in the astroturf network of establishment, centrist Democrats and right wingers.

Hired Gun Right Wing Oakland Community Activist
Seneca Scott
He ran for City Council and lost.  Now he works 
for deep pocket right wing pols in Oakland.

One of the main points of attack by Mr Gould against Council member Priforce has been his complaints he filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) alleging a failure to disclose funds donated to Priforce by businesses along 40th Street who feel the planned Emeryville 40th Street Multi-model Project will drive away customers.  Mr Priforce says changes he has championed for the 40th Street plan reflect community input and concerns over eminent domain takings by the City.  Mr Gould sees only corruption and he has been using social media to charge Mr Priforce, action the judge sees as an example of a citizen’s free speech right.  

However Mr Gould’s inconsistency, his laser‑focus on one official while ignoring others who benefited from the same project—raises questions about motives and selective concern.  He did not raise equal scrutiny toward Vice Mayor Sukdeep Kaur, who accepted monetary contributions from business leaders who are negatively affected by street closures associated with the project.  Mr Priforce voluntarily recused himself on all 40th Street Council decisions as the law mandates while Ms Kaur continued to vote on the project despite her campaign donations from the business owners.  Ms Kaur’s transgressions are known by Mr Gould Priforce says and the selective outrage by Mr Gould gives away a partisan bias rather than a concern over proper procedural policy making.
  

Mr Priforce is a progressive, the lone progressive on the Emeryville City Council and that’s at the center of the attacks by Planning Commissioner Gould who is a conservative.   The same conservative-calling-out-a-progressive motives apply to Seneca Scott, the East Bay conservative attack dog.

We reached out to both Commissioner Gould and Council member Priforce who supplied quotes for this story that are posted verbatim here:

Commissioner Gould recounted the court hearing: "While it was frustrating to have to go to court to defend myself over unfounded claims, I did not end up having to say more than a sentence or two.  The judge mostly focused the forty-five minute discussion on the fact Mr. Priforce brought this complaint forward with no real evidence supporting it.  While he may make up whatever he wants about me online, in a courtroom you must support your claims with evidence and he was unable to do so.” 

Council member Priforce said: “The judge acknowledged that a civil harassment order wasn’t the appropriate legal remedy - not because the harm didn’t happen, but because pursuing a civil suit would better address my needs - which remains on the table.  In the meantime, I’ve established a legal defense fund to fight back against the escalating attacks and politically motivated FPPC complaints - many of them anonymous, but all of them familiar...which he [Gould] admitted to.  During the hearing, Sam Gould made it plain: he wants my city council seat.  What he fails to understand is that I was elected to serve the people of Emeryville, not to satisfy the ambitions of astroturfing bullies.  This is the people’s seat - not his, not mine - and the people are prepared to defend it.”