Toxic Lead Exposed Tenants Organize to Fight Developer, City

Tenant Blood Testing Reveals 300% Over Federal Safety Limit for Toxic Lead Contamination at Emeryville Residential Building

New Hollis Street Tenant Coalition Arises, Action by City Hall Demanded

Wareham Development Complicit in Urgent Health Issue Tenants Say

Tenants at 6221 Hollis Street have been doused with airborne toxic dust from a remodel project by Wareham Development Corporation causing widespread lead blood contamination up to 300% over the federal safety limit  the Tattler has learned.  The blood work done via a physician's order on some tenants at the building was performed after initial test results showed high levels of lead contaminated dust that had bypassed any mitigation measures by Wareham and settled into residential units and communal spaces in the General Cable Building, as it is known.  New testing of more comprehensive dust collection in tenets' units show the lead levels to be worse than originally had been suspected, with many locations over 1000% in excess of federal safety limits and one residential unit showing 2680% beyond the safety limit. 

The General Cable Building on Hollis Street
A biohazard says tenants.
Calls are for the building to be "red tagged".

The formation of a 19 member coalition of concerned tenants at the building has been announced in a July 15th letter to Council member Kalimah Priforce, a City representative that members say has shown determination and resolve to help.  The sole function of the coalition is to fight against an uncooperative Wareham Development and a recalcitrant City of Emeryville that has so far not risen to sufficiently address the contamination urgency one member of the group said.  Mr Priforce for his part, said he will continue to drive the City to better assist these and all renters whom he said are sometimes “treated like Emeryville’s invisible second class”.

The group has expressed a desire to have their members not be made public at this time, a request the Tattler will abide. 

In response to the increasing imbroglio, the City has issued a 'stop work order' against Wareham while the lead issue is investigated.  Tenants claim however Wareham has already violated the City order.  

The group, the 'Concerned Tenants of 6221 Hollis Street', say they want the City to ‘red tag’ the building, meaning all those living and conducting business at the building must stop until the issue is resolved.  Council member Priforce is attempting to help by getting the City to commit to an urgent temporary relocation assistance ordinance in addition to other city wide tenant protections he has been pushing for over the last year and a half.  So far, the rest of the City Council majority has flummoxed Mr Priforce's attempts by steadfastly refusing to entertain even any discussion of any new city-wide tenant protection policy.   

The Concerned Tenants' letter exposes a litany of abuses by Wareham so far including demolition activities such as jackhammering, wall and ceiling removal, and other heavy dust-generating construction,  “...all undertaken without visible or verifiable use of dust containment or mitigation measures, in clear violation of federal EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) Rule guidance and CDPH protocols triggered by the building’s pre-1978 construction.” the letter reveals.   “The violations are flagrant, ongoing, and extremely troubling”, they add.  Expanding on the previous lead dust testing done by two residents in the building and reported in a May 7th Tattler story, the group states, “Numerous laboratory-confirmed dust wipe tests, taken by multiple tenants, now show widespread lead contamination throughout both inside residential units and throughout common areas. These samples far exceed federal safety thresholds and show clear evidence that airborne lead dust has saturated the building over time due to uncontained construction activity.” 

Many of the health effects of lead exposure,
particularly those related to
 brain damage, are not reversible.

The letter excoriates Wareham, attributing efforts to rectify the situation more to attempting to placate the tenants: “…no comprehensive abatement has been proposed, and Wareham Development has refused to cease operations or fully vacate the building during this ongoing hazard.” The letter continues,  “It is clear from their [Wareham’s] recent conduct that their plan is to abate ‘piecemeal’, cleaning one unit at a time, while leaving the rest of the building contaminated and active construction zones ongoing, thus exposing both current and future tenants to serious health risks.”

Sending their concerns to Council member Priforce over anyone else at City Hall, the tenants recognize a singular council member with empathy for renters, a fact Mr Priforce acknowledged to the Tattler, "No one should have to breathe in poison just to keep a roof over their head." he said.   I'm fighting for actual tenant protections for Below Market Rate and affordable housing residents because right now, they don't exist."  Mr Priforce celebrated the Hollis Street tenants organizing themselves and promised to support them.  They have a right to organize he said, "...without fear of retaliation from landlords or city hall."

Wareham Development and its CEO Rich Robbins, is long considered Emeryville City Hall's most favored developer, having secured more than its share of government largess over the years.  Even this specific project saw a roll back of parking regulation to Wareham's advantage in 2022 after then Emeryville mayor John Bauters intervened on Wareham's behalf at Mr Robbins' request.  

Mayor David Mourra did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

Lead Contamination in Human Blood Cells
Basophilic stippling is shown, characterized by
the presence of small, dark granules
(ribosomes and RNA remnants)within the cytoplasm.

Council member Courtney Welch Violated FPPC Rules

 Courtney Welch: Latest City Council Member Found to Have Violated FPPC Rules

City Council Waits for the Next Shoe to Drop

After Mourra Fail, Will Accountability Come This Time?

Emeryville City Council member Courtney Welch recently failed to file a required political campaign disclosure form for elected officials with the California Fair Political Practices Committee it was revealed.  Following a second warning notice sent to the Councilwoman from the Emeryville City Clerk, Ms Welch appears to have made good with the FPPC for the transgression shortly after, the Tattler learned.

 The FPPC, a state sanctioned agency charged with ensuring all California elected officials are bound by the same election laws fairly, determined that Ms Welch had not filed her Form 460 as the law dictates, the same as her colleagues Mayor David Mourra and Council member Kalimah Priforce who the agency determined both to be in violation earlier.

Emeryville City Council member
Courtney Welch
She's violated FPPC rules.

Council member Welch, who did not return calls from the Tattler for this story, appears to have corrected her transgression with the FPPC in March, sometime after City Clerk April Richardson’s second attempt to notify her.  

Ms Richardson is tasked with ensuring  Emeryville’s elected and appointed officials are in compliance with FPPC law.

Over the decades, many Emeryville City Council members have failed to keep 100% current with the multitudinous required FPPC fillings and many have failed to file on time as is the case with the most recent Welch violation.  Transgressions have generally been seen as a technicality as far as the public and the press are concerned.  All of that changed however, in 2024 when the City Council majority used a late filing to try to bring down Council member Priforce by use of a censure and sanction against him.  

Mr Priforce, the sole progressive on Emeryville’s City Council, has earned animosity from the more conservative Council majority for his center left politics and they have have used every opportunity to try to discredit him in the eyes of the public for it.  Accordingly, his late FPPC filings were seen as a way to discredit him but they may have failed to realize the Tattler would thereafter see all Council member failures to file all FPPC forms in a timely manner as a hot ticket news item and that they would soon run afoul of the FPPC’s byzantine filing schedule themselves.  The Tattler has vowed to highlight each Council member’s violations as we find them.  

Before the Council majority, especially members Welch and Mourra, so sanctimoniously went after Council member Priforce for his violations, this was seen as something not newsworthy because most elected officials would run afoul of the FPPC from time to time.  The Tattler never reported on these violations because it was not seen as something nefarious, rather just an honest mistake anybody but a lawyer would be expected to occasionally make. 

So perturbed were the conservative Council majority,  they even spent public money to send a US postal service stamped letter to every Emeryville household to notify the public of the disciplinary action the Council majority took against Priforce.   Later, after the Tattler showed Mayor David Mourra was also guilty of recent FPPC filing violations, the Council majority pulled back and opted to do nothing, no public rebuke, no stamped letters, no hair on fire sanctimony, chalking it up rather as a simple oversight by the mayor.

It is not known if the council majority will now rise up in indignation at Ms Welch’s FPPC filing violations made public here by the Tattler like they did with Mr Priforce or if they will let this pass like they did with Mayor Mourra’s violations.  The Council has treated Welch (and Mourra) with kid gloves up until now.  The Tattler will report. 

The hubris smashing FPPC, now 50 years old, makes sure all elected
officials are transparent in their public works.  

Planning Commissioner Sam Gould Served Court Order for Harassment of Council Member

Age of Trump in Emeryville:

Planning Commissioner Gould Draws Civil Harassment Court Order From Council Member Priforce

Emeryville City Hall Continues Breakdown of Collegiality and Decorum Amid Continuing Attacks

Vanquished Culture of Collegiality Lands Commissioner in Alameda County Superior Court

Emeryville Planning Commissioner Sam Gould was served this week with an Alameda County Superior Court notice to appear for a civil harassment court order brought by City Council member Kalimah Priforce.  The action is being taken against Mr Gould for “targeted harassment, intimidation, and racially charged retaliation” among other charges, according to Mr Priforce.  Mr Gould began a campaign of publicly made charges, including smears against Mr Priforce from the beginning of Priforce’s 2022 City Council electoral victory, a free speech right for a private citizen, but he (Mr Gould) has been making the attacks as a member of an official City committee including also after he was appointed by the City Council to the Planning Commission, a violation of the Emeryville Code of Ethics, according to the Emeryville City Attorney.  Mr Priforce is requesting a restraining order against Mr Gould at the hearing in civil court, Department 105, scheduled for July 23rd.

Emeryville Planning Commissioner
Sam Gould

As part of a conspicuous anti-Priforce campaign, Commissioner Gould has made several official complaints (including a sworn complaint) to the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) for alleged rules violations by the Council member.  Of the three complaints received by the FPPC by Commissioner Gould against Kalimah Priforce, Calvin Dillahunty, and Mia Esperanza Brown (Two Afro-Latine - All Black), one was dismissed, one resolved and one, a duplicate from an “anonymous” complaint, is still being investigated.

For his part, Council member Priforce is positing that Commissioner Gould has been disproportionately targeting Black individuals in Emeryville civic life.  “This pattern is not isolated” Priforce told the Tattler, “It reveals a broader issue of racialized political hostility masked as procedural concern”, he said. 


The spectacle of Council members publicly attacking colleagues and now Planning Commissioners joining in the fray, is a new cultural affect for Emeryville, one that the hidebound City Council has been loath to acknowledge, much less address.  Concurrent with the New York City mayor election, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani taking hits from the Democratic elite for being too progressive, the culture of public attacks against progressive Council colleagues in Emeryville pre-dates the NYC state of affairs.  But the culture of anti-collegiality at the Council arguably began when voters overwhelmingly elected the progressive candidate for Council, Kalimah Priforce in 2022.  Emeryville has almost always had one or two progressives on its city council that were disliked by the pro-business majority but the culture of wholesale attacks and publicly ‘airing of dirty laundry’ by the council majority only began when Mr Priforce took office. 

Perhaps the most damning claims born of the Gould allegations comes from Council member Priforce, who has admonished the City for failing to act to check a “hostile environment for Black progressive leaders and residents”.  The attacks amount to what Priforce has called a “vendetta”, amid the barrage of unethical Gould missives.  Despite being a sitting Council member, Mr Priforce has received no protection from the City he says.  Notably, City officials, including new City Manager LaTanya Bellow and HR have failed to intervene—even after multiple complaints from the Councilman.  Meanwhile, Mr Gould—an appointed Planning Commissioner—has faced no accountability.

Mr Gould was hand selected and forwarded for a Planning Commission position by the influential former City Council member John Bauters, a primary Priforce antagonist, it should be known.

Mr Priforce notes that Sam Gould is acting in a manner that would tend to allow him to escape some level of accountability from the City.  For instance, Sam set up a publicly accessible blog to innumerate his charges against Councilman Priforce on the day before he took his oath as a Planning Commissioner, presumably done to escape the Emeryville Code of Ethics' prohibitions against a Commissioner making such attacks.  However, it would seem Mr Gould didn’t realize his status as a member of Emeryville’s Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee, of which he was previously a member, also precludes such attacks, according to City Attorney John Kennedy.

Commissioner Gould was contacted by the Tattler for this story but he did not answer several offers to respond.  As an appointed government official, Mr Gould is also extended the courtesy to submit a ‘My Turn’ story for publication in the Tattler, unedited and in his own words for the people of Emeryville if he wishes.

Planning Commissioner Sam Gould gets served 

in the Planning Commission chamber