New Partisanship Means Council Members May Not Vote Their Conscience Safely

 Partisan Politics at Council Means Members May No Longer Dissent Without Fear of Censure and Sanction

Priforce Punished for His Vote

News Analysis

The City Council majority broke precedent when they censured and sanctioned their colleague Council member Kalimah Priforce on December 3rd for how he voted; a thing that’s never happened in modern Emeryville history.   The sanctioning punishment, for his vote on the new Code of Ethics, is a Council action that will negatively effect governance in Emeryville far into the future.

At issue is Councilman Priforce’s refusal to promise to obey (by refusing to sign) the new ethics law after he stated the law as written is not meant to hold all Council members to account equally.  While true, Mr Priforce’s refusal to sign his name in support of the new law was a legitimate protest against it.  The refusal to sign was not illegal, nor was it unethical or immoral.  The refusal was a vote to abstain on the matter of the Code of Ethics law, a law that would constrain all Council members equally were it not for the fact that the Council majority refused to agree to an independent ethics commission overseer, a fact described by Mr Priforce at the onset as a deal breaker.  

The City Council majority 
decided to spend $7570 to send a
letter of their anti-Priforce resolution
to every Emeryville household. 
The Council majority spent the money in
spite of the recently revealed $12 million
budget deficit, the largest in
Emeryville history.

The Council’s didactic and fractious sanctioning action was unethical because it took away Mr Priforce’s right to vote his conscious, something that every voter, Council member or otherwise, always retains the right to do in a democracy.  In addition, the sanctions have had the unintended consequence of lowering public safety because Council member Priforce has been stripped of his committee liaison positions, one being the Public Safety Committee.  That committee, formerly met on a monthly basis with Council member Priforce as liaison will now meet bi-monthly without Priforce, a lessening of safety services offered to the people of Emeryville. 

It was not only Council member Priforce that warned us that a Code of Ethics without an independent ethics commission overseeing body would be weaponized against dissenting Council members (himself being the sole example), the City Attorney, John Kennedy and none other than former Council member John Bauters likewise warned the Council majority against it.

In the Council’s estimation, by his refusal to sign his name to a law he didn’t like, Mr Priforce did an unethical act as called out in their resolution.  The Council included a ‘whereas’ that states he is censured and sanctioned because, “Despite his many public statements calling for a Code of Ethics, Council member Priforce is the only Member who has not signed the attestation that he will abide by the Code of Ethics, despite voting in favor or the Code’s adoption.”  

For his part, Council member Priforce says he decided not to sign the Code of Ethics legal document put before him a month after the Council voted unanimously in favor of implementing it because his colleagues had refused to implement an accompanying independent ethics commission, something he says is necessary and what they had said they would do at the December 3rd Council meeting a month earlier.  Council member Priforce stated a Code of Ethics would be weaponized against unpopular Council members by the majority without an ethics commission stopping them.  Recent events have shown Mr Priforce’s prediction on a weaponized law has come to pass.

By refusing to implement a independent ethics commission, the Council majority placed Council member Priforce in a position where his conscience dictated he refuse to sign his name to the new law and then they used that to punish him: a ‘bait and switch’ example of unethical behavior by these Council members.  Council member Priforce, who won his 2022 election over Mayor David Mourra, is paid to vote his conscience.  That means his every vote can be a YES, NO or ABSTAIN, legally and ethically.  Ironically, irrational behavior based on the City Council members’ base emotions, in this case the hatred of a colleague, is untoward and unethical. 

The Council vote to condemn a member over their vote is done: that's a bell that cannot be unrung.  That is our history now. 

The City Council majority has gotten so partisan, the vote against Mr Priforce for voting against the Code of Ethics was not enough.  They they also chose to spend $7570.96 of the taxpayer’s money to send a US Mail letter to every Emeryville home to gloat about it.  This, during the current $12 million City Hall budget deficit, the largest in Emeryville history.  The sanctimonious letter to every Emeryville resident has a cover letter from Council member Courtney Welch, a political foe of Mr Priforce, stating the vote to sanction was not taken lightly but rather through great deliberation as if the Council, in so doing, was interested in doing the people's business instead of personal partisan recrimination. 

Politics has skewed Emeryville City Council so severely in the current age, they see scoring points against their enemy on Council as more important than doing the people’s business guarding against making worse the worst budget crisis in modern Emeryville history.  

Because dissent is necessary and even a barometer in a democratic deliberative body, from this day forward the people will know their interests are being looked after by the Emeryville City Council to the extent there are accompanying votes of censure/sanction.   If they're not censuring and sanctioning, they're not likely doing our business. In other towns the majority gets their way and then they move on.  In Emeryville, the majority gets their way and then they censure and sanction those in the minority who vote differently....and then they spend $7570 to gloat about it and then they move on.

City of Emeryville is Failing to Reveal John Bauters' Election Campaign Documents

 City’s Website in Violation of California Campaign Law

Failure to Post All Bauters Campaign Documents

Election campaign forms for Emeryville City Council candidates are supposed to be kept on file for public viewing but campaign documents regarding former Council candidate John Bauters are entirely missing from the City’s website, a violation of state law.  The City is required to make all of these documents available to the public on its website but Emeryville is in violation because at least two are not viewable at all the Tattler has learned.

The FPPC Forms 460s, filed with the state of California as well as the City, detail how much money a candidate has received and from whom.  As it stands now, Mr Bauters’ campaign for re-election for City Council, abandoned by him last summer, is missing half of his required documents.  An attempt to download the missing documents at the City’s website is stopped and the site brings up a notice that the connection is not secure when an attempt is made.  Other documents are working, just not two of the Forms 460s.

From the City of Emeryville's website:
Half of Bauter's Forms 460 are not viewable on the site: a violation of state law.

The Tattler alerted the City of the problem via email but the City Clerk, April Richardson, said she never received the email.  A check of her email address revealed it was correct.  After giving up getting the documents from the City’s website or through email, ultimately, the Tattler conducted an official Public Records Request for the missing public documents, a request the state grants a municipality ten days for compliance.  

Hearing about the document disclosure problem in person, Ms Richardson volunteered that the Tattler should not try to get any information from the City of Emeryville via email in the future, an interesting if unusual request.  After 15 years of information gathering from City Hall, this is the first time a department head has told the Tattler to not use email.

Mr Bauters abandoned his run for Council in favor of a run for Alameda County D5 Supervisor, a race he lost last November.  Bauters is currently not in elective public office.

The City Council majority has stated that it is very important that the public be able to view every candidate for Council’s Forms 460s so it is assumed this problem will be fixed soon.

The Tattler will report on how this violation gets fixed.  Stay tuned.

A click on Mr Bauters' Forms 460 is disallowed and this warning comes up.

UPDATE: The City of Emeryville corrected this as of January 16.

Emeryville's Website Asks Citizens a Very Personal Question

 The City of Emeryville Gives Us Six Sexual Positions to Choose From

We're Supposed to Select Our Favorite

This Kind Of Thing Used to be Considered Private Info

Which sexual position do you prefer?  The City of Emeryville wants to know and they have given us a total of six to choose from.  The City's website says you can go to the Emeryville Center of Community Life (ECCL) website at emeryvillecenter.org to take the quiz about your particular sexual proclivities.  The six City of Emeryville approved positions are graphically presented for those with dull imaginations.  

Not generally known for its prudishness, the Tattler has nonetheless provided an expurgated version of two of the positions on offer at the City website (see photo at bottom).  To those not wanting to view straight up pornography should be warned however; although the Tattler added the black bars in the photo for this story, the lurid photos are graphically displayed without bars for all to see, including children, at the website. 

A search revealed the City's website seems to have been taken over sometime in 2024 by someone using 'Porkbun', an ironically named internet domain name registrar.  As it stands now, this site, being connected with the School District, certainly has lured children to it.  Specifically, anyone looking for public art at the City's official ECCL site will be directed to the following address in all its prurient carnality (warning, click on it at your own risk and children are told to not click on this):

emeryvillecenter.org

Here is the City’s current webpage that invites people to click to see the porn: 

We had to go back to 2020 to see where emeryvillecenter.org used to direct to:

Now, it directs people interested in public art at ECCL here (Tattler expurgated version):

UPDATE:  As of 9:41 AM 1/6/24 the City of Emeryville has removed the link to emerycenter.org from its website.

City Throws in the Towel on Graffiti Tags

 The City of Emeryville and PG&E Celebrates 'Junior' and Hundreds of His Friends

Commentary

By Brian Donahue

A couple of months ago a few graffiti tags appeared on the wall of the PG&E building on Holden Street.  Citizen complaints were received by the City who is required by statute to let the owner of the building know about it and to remind the owner they are required by law to remove the tags.  Despite numerous complaints over many weeks, PG&E refuses to remove the tags and because graffiti is self propagating, one tagger’s efforts are repeated by another and another, now the whole building is covered and it is spreading to neighboring buildings. 

This could be a primer in how not to conduct public policy.

For years Emeryville did a pretty good job combatting graffiti (the CVS building notwithstanding) but now the process seems to be broken.  We don’t know the precise reason for the dysfunction but the City of Emeryville doesn’t seem capable of handling a problem like graffiti removal anymore.  Tellingly, the police report to us that the City has informed PG&E about the problem but they have so far rebuffed any directives from the City to fix the problem. In frustration, we offered to do it ourselves.  We said we will voluntarily paint over the tags free of charge but later, the police told us they spoke with PG&E and they said they will sue anybody that tries to paint over the graffiti tags on their building. The police, for their part, say they will arrest anyone who tries to paint over the PG&E graffiti tags if they catch them in the act.

PG&E will not obey Emeryville’s graffiti law and they will not let us do what they refuse to do.  That lets us know all we need to know about the lack of community mindedness of this giant corporation in our town.

But then something changed.  The police informed PG&E that the Tattler knows about their lawsuit threat. Quickly, PG&E told the police to inform us that they have had a change of heart.  Now apparently they will not sue anybody that tries to paint over the graffiti on their building, and they want us to know that.  

So now we know PG&E doesn’t care about our laws but they do care about bad press. 

City Hall, PG&E and the Police Department: all are here to make sure we can’t have a nice place to live anymore.  So we’re expecting more tags…..and more and more and more.  Graffiti tags everywhere is what you get with the civic dysfunction that embodies the new Emeryville.  

This is not the kind of thing that's solvable anymore,
says the City of Emeryville.
‘Junior’ wants us to know he was here
and who are we to take that away from him?

UPDATE: Today 1/6/25 workers from PG&E painted over the graffiti.  Problem solved!