Emery's Series D Bonds Slammed by Grand Jury Reports

Grand Jury Calls School Financing 
"Reckless" & "Ticking Time Bomb"

The Voice of San Diego, who broke the story the of California school districts issuing Capital Appreciation Bonds (CAB) for their school construction projects, is now reporting that numerous civil grand juries are issuing reports highly critical of this abusive method of buying now and paying much much later.   Our own Emery Unified School District recently issued such a bond as its "Series D" in which Emeryville tax payers will have to pay back nearly $70 million over 32 years in order to receive $17 million to put towards the construction of a new grammar school building at the Emeryville Center of Community Life (ECCL).
Emery is using its Series D CAB to finance the closing of popular Anna Yates Elementary School on 41st Street in order to move the children over to the Center of 'Community' Life site on San Pablo Avenue.  A Kindergarten through 6th grade building will be built on the site at a cost of approximately $17 million ($70 million including financing) School District officials have said.
The whole schools portion of the ECCL project is slated to cost in excess of $150 million, not including the City's $21 million portion and interest on that.

Emeryville's Anna Yates Elementary School
Photo shows an addition completed as part of a
 $9 million remodel a few years ago.  This will be 
replaced with a new $70 million building at the 
Center of 'Community' Life site.

As the Voice of San Diego reports, the San Diego County Grand Jury, the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury, and now the San Mateo Grand Jury have all issued reports that slam these balloon-payment bonds. San Mateo's report called Capital Appreciation Bonds, "reckless" and a "ticking time bomb." A spokesman for Bill Lockyer reiterated his position that using Capital Appreciation Bonds (CABs) "has been a big mistake that has hurt taxpayers." The recent San Mateo Grand Jury report was particularly harsh, calling CABs, "Too-Good-to-be-True Bonds" noting that the "taxpayers who approve these loans are presenting the tab to their children and grandchildren." Legislation to curtail CAB borrowing is currently under consideration in Sacramento.

The Voice of San Diego highlighted the story of Southern California's reckless Poway Unified School District bonds, in which that district borrowed $105 million and will have to pay back $1 billion because of the use of a Capital Appreciation Bond (CAB) that delays payments for years while interest accrues, making it the poster child for reckless school district financing.


Tattler readers will recall a recent debate via letters on the pages of the Tattler in which parent and former Bond Oversight Committee Chairman, Brian Carver, called Emery's dive into CAB financing through its Series D bonds "unbelievably bad" and CABs in general "absolutely terrible deals" while School Board Trustee, John Affeldt, defended the Series D bond as "prudent and measured."

It appears that counties across California are weighing in on the practice as well, and their conclusions are highly critical of Emery's choice.

They're both lawyers:  They can't both be right.

Who's telling us the truth?

Consider the source;

the insider or the oversight director.

Former Bond Oversight Chairman 
Brian Carver
 "This 'Series D' Capital Appreciation Bond
is a terrible deal for Emeryville taxpayers".

School Board Member 
John Affeldt
"This 'Series D' Capital Appreciation Bond
is a good deal for Emeryville Taxpayers."

One Citizen Takes On School Board Juggernaut

"Build It and They Will Stay Away"

Emeryville's General Plan took a hit at Monday evening's School Board Special Meeting when the Board members voted in executive session, behind closed doors to disregard 27 Citizen Commenters 18 pages and move forward with the ill conceived Emeryville Center of "Community" Life.  It was a bad day for citizens interested in government transparency, democracy, sustainable and green city planning and bike and pedestrian transportation.  It was a good day for those interested in seeing what real citizen engagement looks like however.  Five residents gave witness to an alternate vision of the contentious Center in the face of the School Board Center of "Community" Life juggernaut.  The Tattler presents the comments made by one of the commenters; Emeryville resident Brian Carver, arguably the high point of the night.
Posted by permission from Brian Carver:

"Good evening President Dice and members of the Board. My name is Brian Carver, I am a parent of a student enrolled in the District. I was a signatory of the Community Comments submitted last Thursday.

I urge you to conduct a full environmental impact report and consider feasible alternatives to the current plans. We only get once chance to do a big project like this.  Let’s make it better. In the past I’ve worried that the District was getting inadequate legal advice.  Please have your legal counsel explain to you the standards for evaluating comments on a MND: in particular the “any fair argument” standard.  I don’t see how any reasonable person could conclude that there’s not a single fair argument made by the Community Commenters in those 18 pages.  There obviously are. I believe several of them are not adequately addressed by this last minute revision that we received minutes ago and that we have not had adequate time to review.

To the details, what this document and its technical appendices say about traffic varies between being utterly incomprehensible to completely unbelievable.  Page 60 says, “the project is expected to generate a maximum of 450 peak hour trips.” I made it to page 2 of the 13 pages of responses we received moments ago and that number has been changed to 686. (It should be noted that contradictory estimates appear on page 135 where we’re told that at AM peak hour the project will ADD 530 trips over current levels, making the max of 450 or 686 even more incomprehensible).

How could anyone familiar with this project find that number, whether it’s 450 or 686 peak hour trips, credible?  The project calls for 900 students and 90 teachers and staff. Instead of just having a high school on this site as we did previously, you’re adding all the K-8 students, the community members that might want to take advantage of the community gym, library, recreation center, senior lounge, or kinder buddies facilities.  Lots of services that used to be elsewhere are all being crammed onto this one site and somehow there’s a maximum of 450 or 686 peak hour trips?  That’s just not consistent with common sense.

The only way to believe that is to say what this report says on page 117, “The increased daytime population on the project site during operation hours that would result from the project is not expected to result in substantially increased usage of these new facilities.” That is, you have to expect to build a bunch of community facilities and resources and expect no one to show up. Unlike in the film Field of Dreams, the EUSD’s motto appears to be, “Build it and they will stay away.”  It’s just not a realistic assumption and so it hides significant impacts of the project.

But the biggest flaw in this document and the current project design is its inconsistency with the guiding principles and policies of this City’s General Plan that were designed to reduce negative environmental effects, particularly those from greenhouse gases.  The General Plan calls for an east-west greenway along 53rd street and the current project proposal does not comport with the requirements for that greenway.  The General Plan calls for this greenway precisely because the enhanced bicycle and pedestrian flow that such a greenway would enable reduces negative environmental effects, particularly greenhouse gases from cars, but other related negative environmental impacts as well. To give just one example, the six foot wide sidewalk proposed is not consistent with the General Plan’s greenway.

The General Plan also calls for a bike/ped path on the western border of the property and the current project proposal does not even put that on the drawings for Phase 2.  The General Plan designates 47th Street as a key green street and the current project proposal does not follow those requirements either.

The General Plan is our City’s constitution.  A lot of effort and planning went into that document and your architects had it available to them during your design process, but it appears they just willfully ignored the General Plan, and thereby the environmental impacts that numerous General Plan and specific policies were intended to reduce.  This is also where the cumulative effect occurs. When the General Plan and specific policies, such as the award-winning bike/ped plan adopted for environmental reasons are ignored in so many instances it has a cumulative environmental impact.

Particularly for a joint City-District project, flouting the General Plan in this way is just not permissible.  This project needs to be the embodiment of our City’s General Plan, not a partially compliant work-around."

Mr Carver is an Emeryville parent with a child enrolled at Anna Yates Elementary School and another ready to enroll in the fall.  He is an occasional contributor to the Tattler.

Brian Carver's MOU #3 City Council Statement

The following statement was read aloud by Emeryville resident Brian Carver at last Tuesday's momentous 'MOU #3 Council meeting' .  Mr Carver's statement, televised on ETV-Comcast channel 27, is reverberating around town and the Tattler has received requests to post it from many Emeryville neighbors.   The document Brian Carver refers to in his statement is the proposed MOU #3, a controversial agreement between the City of Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District that will quadruple the operating expenses for Youth Services and otherwise endanger the City's finances.

Here then is the July 2nd statement that's causing such a stir in our town, posted with permission from Mr Carver: 

"Good evening Mayor, members of the Council, my name is Brian Carver. I live in the Triangle neighborhood.

The document before you tonight is not a memorandum of understanding. It is a suicide pact.

The District promised us increased efficiencies and economies of scale from the Emeryville Center of Community Life, but instead, as your staff report points out, this document finally reveals that these are broken promises. Joining this project under these terms is going to cost the City dearly, in amounts that Staff are currently not even able to predict. What they can predict amounts to significant increases in annual expenditures that would require far more careful study than can be had in this single meeting.

If the State ultimately succeeds in taking away the nearly 22 million that has been the subject of the litigation described in the staff report, then this agreement would require the City to cover the District anyway—to “make them whole.” I am far less optimistic about the City’s ability to keep this money out of the State’s hands. It is an enormous gamble to take, because this could go the wrong way. When that happens, say goodbye to any hopes for a bike/ped bridge across the railroad tracks, forget about an Art Center, or a dozen other projects that might be important to Emeryville residents. All our resources will be allocated to this single project for a long time.

It has become clear to those of us following this process that the School District will stop at absolutely nothing in order to achieve its misguided vision. When 70 stakeholders signed a letter to the District asking that they not move the elementary students from Anna Yates Elementary and into this K-12 on San Pablo Avenue, the District was unmoved.

When Emeryville’s assessed valuation dropped and adequate bonding capacity was unavailable to seek a conventional bond for its fourth bond series, known as Series D, the District turned instead to a controversial Capital Appreciation Bond that will cost Emeryville taxpayers nearly $70 million over the next 32 years and eight months in order to receive just $17 million for the project today. With a total payback price tag now at nearly $150 million, many of us will be long gone before Emeryville taxpayers can pay off the enormous burden the District has placed on us.

Even at this cost, the District admits that there is not enough money to pursue an environmentally-responsible set of buildings that could achieve LEED certification as Emeryville’s municipal code requires of public agency buildings. So, the District had to seek a special exemption in order to become part of the problem of climate change rather than an example of its solutions.

The Emery Unified School District has rejected legitimate community concerns, abandoned any semblance of fiscal responsibility, has shown a willingness to run roughshod over the environment, and in general has shown that there is nothing that will dissuade them from this ill-conceived and poorly executed project.

But tonight they want this Council and the entire City to join hands with them as they gleefully jump off a fiscal cliff. This Council should finally be the responsible party and say no.

But if you’re not ready to do that, then I implore you to at least send this out to relevant advisory committees and give it more study, fill in more details, and get a better deal."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Brian Carver is a parent of two children in the Emery Unified School District, was the Chair of the Center of Community Life Measure J Citizens' Oversight Committee from March 2011-2012, and has been critical of the School Board's moving of the elementary students from Anna Yates School to the Center of Community Life site on San Pablo Avenue.  An attorney and Assistant Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information, Mr Carver is an occasional contributor to the Tattler.

Letter to the Tattler: John Affeldt

A Further Response to Brian Carver by EUSD Board Member John Affeldt

Brian, I offer a few thoughts here in response to your recent piece responding to my letter to the Tattler responding to  your original opinion piece of February 13th.  Again, my thoughts here are my own and not an official district or board statement.

Future Bonding Capacity Will Be Available

Your primary concern—that the district has maxed out its ability to issue any new bonds and upgrade any new facilities for the next 30 years—is well-stated and, at first blush, understandable.  However, your assessment assumes all things remain static for the next thirty years.  At least three likely developments will occur—any one of which makes a freeze on the district’s bonding capacity highly unlikely.  

First, if Emeryville’s overall assessed property values (AV) rise for any meaningful period of time during the next 30 years above the district’s conservative 4% annual estimate, then there will be new bonding capacity available.  As discussed in my previous letter, the last 30 years, even with at least three different economic downturns and the Great Recession, saw the City’s AV rise at a 7.49% annual rate.  And, as also previously stated, I think the investment in improving our school quality with the Measure J bonds will also ultimately drive our property values up.  

While you are correct that the redevelopment agency is gone, that fact doesn’t alter the desirability of Emeryville as a well-situated city for commercial and multi-family development.  Both common sense and Emeryville’s General Plan indicate that, based on Emeryville’s central location in the Bay Area, our population growth and new development will continue their upward trends.  The improvements and amenities that were made with Redevelopment funding over the past 30 years have continued to attract businesses and residential developers who want to fulfill the in-fill development opportunities that are outlined in the General Plan.  The fact that construction of new buildings has continued during the recession is evidence of the pent-up demand as are the School District’s projections of anticipated developer’s fees for school construction which indicate that this trend in continuing.  In short, with or without Redevelopment, the overall assessed value of Emeryville’s tax base will continue to increase over the next 3 decades.  

Second, the State is sure to issue school construction bonds and probably more than once over the next thirty years as it has done repeatedly over the last fifty.  According to the Center for Cities and Schools at UC Berkeley, there is a current $117 billion unmet need among California’s public schools for bonds to build new schools or repair or modernize existing ones.  The district will be able to take advantage of these state bonds to address new facility needs that arise.

Third, if property values throughout the state don’t rise sufficiently in the coming years, there will be a public policy response that also increases the ability of local districts to respond to California’s $117 billion need.  It’s important to remember that approximately 200 of California’s roughly1,000 districts have issued capital appreciation bonds (CABs).  Thus, a significant number of districts have resorted to CABs to respond to the fact that their bonding capacity in the near term has been limited by economic conditions.  If all those districts are squeezed out of building or modernizing for the coming decades, new legislative or proposition initiatives will emerge to increase local bonding capacity.  

Building a Full Service Community School Program Throughout the District

Next, I disagree with the characterization that the district is over-focused on buildings over program.  My prior piece already addressed the fact that the district is building a full service K-12 community school in which the primary purpose of the ECCL campus is to enable us to improve program quality over existing facilities (while simultaneously increasing efficiencies).  It is important to realize as well that, even in advance of the new facilities, we have already begun to move toward a community schools model with more robust wrap-around services for our youth.  The District has heavily invested in a number of programs that move us in this direction over the past few years, including, among others, our:

After school program coordination with the City;

Newly opened pilot Family Resource Center;

Collaboration with Life Long Medical and other health care providers to address the issues of family health that otherwise distract from education;

Internship programs with graduate students in nursing, psychology and social work to provide additional resources for our children and families;

Partnership with Head Start to ensure that families who cannot afford the Emeryville Child Development Center still have access to affordable childcare;

Numerous efforts to develop mentoring and internship programs for high school students with outside businesses;

Partnership with Peralta Community Colleges and CSU-EastBay for adding to the community’s opportunities for higher ed and adult ed/job training; and

Open school yards that are available for access by neighbors for recreation after hours.

These are just a few examples of the full service community schools programming the district has been developing over the last few years.  

Moreover, in addition to building the ECCL site with the City, the board has also been thoughtfully planning how to utilize all of its available sites consistent with a full service community schools model.  The board has, for example, designated the Ralph Hawley site as a locus for pre-natal to K programming and this year successfully moved the Head Start program into improved facilities there.  

As well, the district’s and the City’s new pre-natal through grade 16 master plan task force will review how Emeryville can best utilize the Anna Yates and Recreation Center sites in the coming years and how these two sites fit with the anticipated uses of the ECCL and the Ralph Hawley sites going forward.  The need to accommodate potential future enrollment growth, an issue you identify, can be part of these discussions.  I urge you and any other interested residents and stakeholders to apply to serve on this task force.  Applications can be obtained from wendy.chew@emeryusd.org and are due by Monday, March 10th. 

In sum, I feel the district is thoughtfully planning how to utilize all of its available spaces to improve program quality and that it will have sufficient financial resources down the line, when needed, to address its facility needs.

John Affeldt has a son in Kindergarten at Anna Yates and was appointed to the School Board in July 2012.  For over twenty years he has worked on educational equity issues at Public Advocates in San Francisco where he has twice been recognized as an Attorney of the Year in California for his education work.

Reply to School Board Member Affeldt's Letter

Op/Ed Contributor Brian Carver

Brian Carver’s Reply to EUSD Board Member John Affeldt

I was pleased to receive John Affeldt’s response to my letter to the Tattler because after several years of asking questions and expressing concerns, I felt this was my first experience of an honest effort by a School District Trustee to engage publicly on the issues. A few thoughts in response:

Breaking the Promise about our Tax Bills

John points out that a reasonable growth estimate of Emeryville’s assessed valuation should take into account inflation, re-assessment after sales, and the average growth rate over the last 30 years. I agree. 

However, we should also take into account that a significant part of Emeryville’s past growth has been the work of our former Redevelopment Agency, now abolished by the state. What new mechanisms cities will use given the dissolution of Redevelopment Agencies remains to be seen, but until that time, extra caution about growth assumptions seems prudent. 

In recent years Emeryville has also learned first-hand that a property’s valuation can go both up and down after re-assessment as several of the largest property owners in Emeryville successfully appealed their valuations to the County, wiping millions of dollars of valuation off Emeryville’s books. Now that these property owners have proven a method for lowering taxes, we should expect that others may follow suit, again encouraging us toward cautious growth assumptions.

But our agreement on what a holistic approach to choosing a growth assumption would look like misses the point. The latest bond issued by the School District pushes our community right up to the $60/$100k limit that the District promised not to exceed (and that is dictated by state law). There is no buffer. Since you [Mr Affeldt] acknowledge that there may be additional downturns in the future, as there have been in the past, it is this aspect of the latest bond that is troubling. We’ve spent right up to the limit and now when those downturns come, we are virtually certain to see the District’s promise broken. But, as you say, no one has a crystal ball, so we need not argue about it. I predict the Trustees’ actions have already placed us on a course that guarantees that they will break their promise. Time will tell if I am right.

Long-Lasting Facilities

You note that the current plan is for the Center of Community Life (ECCL) to have a useful life longer than the 32 year 8 month series D bond. This is good news, but overlooks two key points that I believe are more important. 

First, as I have said more than once at public meetings, Emery Unified School District Trustees are trustees in the literal sense because you [and your Board colleagues] hold public property on behalf of the people of Emeryville. By spending our entire bonding capacity on one site, while tying up our ability to issue further bonds for decades, while presenting no long-term plans for the improvement or maintenance of the other two public properties entrusted to you, the Board has behaved irresponsibly. I have been on tours and heard District Staff point out the problems with the facilities at Anna Yates and Ralph Hawley, but because of this Board’s actions we are left with no bonding capacity for decades and therefore little chance of making necessary improvements to these sites. In the future when the Board solemnly announces that it has “no choice” but to sell these properties or hand them over to competing charter schools that would further our District’s enrollment problems, it will be because of the poor choices made by the Board since the passage of Measure J, not because of circumstances beyond their control.

Second, due to one of many compromises caused by our lack of funds for this Board’s vision, the ECCL design has been scaled down to serve at most 800 students, which we nearly enroll now. That number will not remain stagnant for the next 30 to 40 years. We have instead heard Staff and past Boards insist that only with enrollment growth can we reach a size that is fiscally sustainable from an operational perspective. Greater enrollment numbers, we were told, would allow efficiencies necessary to operate, but now we are spending all of our money on facilities for one site that will barely house the current students, while investing nothing in our other properties that could have been turned to for overflow purposes. This is not an irresponsible plan; it is no plan at all.

Buildings Do Not Educate Our Children

You write about ensuring a high quality educational experience and improving the quality of our schools. I share those goals. However, I am continually disheartened by the focus on these new buildings as the key to that quality experience. Teachers teach, and sometimes good facilities can help teachers teach, but the buildings are not going to do it alone.

 "Teachers teach, and sometimes 

good facilities can help teachers teach,

 but the buildings are not going to do it alone."

This is why I am exasperated: over eight months ago the teachers presented a resolution of "No Confidence" in Superintendent Lindo, which had the support of over 90% of teachers in an anonymous vote, and yet the only public action the District has taken in response has been to praise the Superintendent. In the teachers’ statement they wrote that the Superintendent had “created an unprecedented all-time low in staff morale leaving teachers feeling unwanted, devalued, and disrespected” and that the Superintendent had “not authentically involved teachers by systematically and consistently seeking teacher's input.” This was a glaring indicator of an incredibly serious problem with the District’s ability to deliver a quality educational experience, and as a parent, I expected to see and hear about a decisive and swift response from our Trustees. This never happened.

I believe this Board, distracted by this building project, has lost sight of the things that can really make a difference to a child’s education. Yes, our facilities need to be improved, but the number of missed opportunities on the programmatic front and the number of downright backwards things I have observed are too numerous to recount here, but they mostly come down to an over-reliance on these buildings as the answers to our prayers. 

I Never Meet Anyone That Likes Co-Location

My own reasons for preferring that the elementary students remain at the Anna Yates site go well beyond safety concerns with the San Pablo Avenue site. When I speak to parents of future kindergarteners, again and again, they are absolutely aghast when they hear that the District plans to create a K-12 on San Pablo Ave. It’s often not even about safety. Rather, I believe that most parents recognize that children of different ages have different needs, and those needs can often be best addressed in a setting designed especially for them.

"Most parents recognize that children of

 different ages have different needs,

 and those needs can often be best 

addressed in a setting designed 

especially for them."

A recent overheard conversation among parents of some 7th and 8th graders focused on how poorly the needs of their middle-schoolers were being met by moving them to the Anna Yates site. After being promised specialized programming appropriate to their ages and needs, these parents felt the District had failed to deliver and they despaired at their need to find a new school for their children. The District is already doing a poor job at “shared space” and yet we are asked to place faith in its potential at the new site.

“Prudent and Measured” Bonds

You say that the Series D bond, which requires taxpayers to pay $70 million in order to receive $17 million, is “prudent and measured.” We will simply have to disagree about this. I will never be able to see this capital appreciation bond (CAB) as anything other than what California State Treasurer Lockyer called it: a payday loan. There is good reason that the State Superintendent of Schools called for a moratorium on this kind of financing and why the state legislature is considering banning this sort of CAB outright: they are absolutely terrible deals.

Imprudent Actions Can Have Collateral Consequences

You mention that you’d be willing to pay your property taxes even if they went up to $90/$100k of assessed valuation. I would too and my family’s house is probably worth about $400k, just like yours. But what two attorneys would be glad to pay is not the point. The Trustees should abide by the law, which dictates no more than $60/$100k, and the Trustees should keep their promises to Emeryville voters. When public officials betray the voters’ trust, it can cause collateral damage. This District has great challenges on the operational side of its budget and will need the parcel tax renewed in a few years. Many voters may not understand that building and operating funds are totally separate and may instead simply remember that this is the Board that makes poor financial choices. That would be truly devastating for our schools: we’d have expensive buildings that we couldn’t afford to operate. And many voters may blame all of Emeryville’s public officials, so that if the City Council decides it needs to put forward a bond measure for a bike/ped bridge or for other public projects that Redevelopment can no longer fund, they too may face voter skepticism due to the School Board’s actions.

A Way Forward

While some Board decisions cannot be undone, I do not believe our District is without hope. If this Board would change course, or if a new Board were in place, there is much that could still be done to strengthen our schools. The District should revise its plans and explore dividing the available bond funds across at least two school sites. The District should make clear that supporting teachers is a top priority and ensure that it consistently seeks teacher input and improves morale. Community engagement events should change from opportunities for the District to explain its plans to a time to listen to the concerns and ideas of all stakeholders, especially parents whose schedules don’t always allow for in-person attendance at meetings. In general, the entire focus of this District should shift from one in which we are engaged in a great building project to one in which we are engaged in a critical educational effort. Too often it seems like education is taking a back seat to the buildings.

----

Brian Carver is a parent of a child in the Emery Unified School
District, was the Chair of the Measure J Citizens' Oversight Committee from March 2011-2012, and has been critical of the School Board's insistence on moving the elementary students from Anna Yates to the Center of Community Life site on San Pablo Avenue.  An attorney and Assistant Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information, Mr Carver is an occasional contributor to the Tattler.

School Bond Refuted: Real Costs Revealed

Op/Ed Contributor

Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?

by Brian W. Carver


The Emery Unified School District's letter to explain its issuance of a soon-to-be-illegal Capital Appreciation Bond (CAB) http://emeryvilletattler.blogspot.com/2013/02/cab-controversy-emery-school-board.html skirts around several important points.

First, while the District claims to be committed to keeping its promise that tax rates will not exceed $60 per $100,000 of assessed valuation, they were only able to issue this CAB by placing their faith in an absolute fiction: the notion that property values in Emeryville will increase nearly 4% per year, every year, forever.

According to Trulia.com, the average listing price for a home in Emeryville for the week ending February 6, 2013 was $397,626. If we, like the School Board, assume that average Emeryville home will increase in value by 4% per year, it takes only 24 years before that home will be valued at over $1 million dollars. If the School Board is to be believed, the average Emeryville homeowner is already a millionaire! Just sit back and watch it unfold over the next 24 years.

The reality is much different. In March 2003, Zillow.com put the average Emeryville home value at $280,000 (median sales price was $297,000) and as of January 2013, puts it at $271,300 (median sales price is $229,300). That is, over the last ten years, while there have been some ups, the downs have left things back where we started, so that values are basically flat or down over the last ten years. The School District's rosy assumptions don't account for this. Rather than look at the last ten years as a guide, they simply put blind faith in a
never-ending 4% annual increase.

The consequences of this false assumption will unfold on your tax bill. Now that the District has bonded us to the limit, it will take only one year with less than 4% annual growth in assessed valuation to see their $60/$100k promise broken. Your tax bill is going to exceed $60/$100k. Get ready for it. Indeed, if the next 10 years are basically flat, as the last 10 years have been, you will be paying nearly $90 per $100k of assessed valuation in 2023.

Second, the legislation that is being considered in Sacramento will limit these CABs to payback periods of 25 years, while our District issued one with a term of over 32 years. This component of the legislation was well-known before our District took action, and it is pure speculation on their part that this aspect will change prior to the legislation's enactment.

The 25-year payback period limitation is important because, contrary to the Board's false comparisons: bonds for school facilities are not comparable to home mortgages.

With regular maintenance one can reasonably expect one's home to appreciate or maintain its value over at least a 30 year period. However, District officials frequently inform us that school facilities,even properly maintained, only have useful lives between 10 and 40 years, and that's ignoring the fact that our District has already used bond proceeds for items such as iPads with useful lives of about 3 years (even though Emeryville residents will continue to pay for them for decades).

The better comparison here is to financing a car whose value depreciates immediately and, even with regular maintenance, continues to decline in value until it requires complete replacement. That is our experience with school facilities and should inform the payback periods on the bonds the District issues: the shorter the better.

Instead, the District routinely disguises what a bad deal this most recent CAB was by blending its payback ratio in with the lower payback ratios the District achieved in prior bonds sales. By participating in federally-subsidized bond programs with payback periods under 20 years, the District got a good deal on these earlier bonds. But just because you got a good deal then, doesn't justify accepting this lousy deal now.

How bad are these latest Series D CABs? Unbelievably bad. The three prior bond sales were going to cost Emeryville taxpayers just over $80 million to pay back. That was expensive, but probably within our means. However, the Series D CABs, by themselves, are going to cost Emeryville taxpayers another $66,185,000 to pay back, increasing the cost of the project by over 82% to a new total payback amount of over $146 million. At current enrollment levels, it would be cheaper to present a $50,000 check to every graduate of Emery High for the next 40 years. Too bad that's not an option.

Prior to the issuance of these costly CABs, District Staff explained that without this latest bond, we could build a new high school, but we simply would not be able to also cram the elementary and middle school students onto the same site. Our School Board's insistence upon shutting down Anna Yates Elementary School is what has nearly doubled the cost of this project and forced Emeryville taxpayers to live far beyond our means.

There were alternatives that this Board refused to adequately consider. Over 70 stakeholders signed a letter asking them to keep Anna Yates open as our elementary school and simply build a less expensive high school on the San Pablo Avenue site. Our School Board refused to consider this alternative and remains doggedly committed to a project design that this City does not need and cannot afford.

Our only option now is a new School Board.

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Brian Carver is a parent of a child in the Emery Unified School
District, was the Chair of the Measure J Citizens' Oversight Committee from March 2011-2012, and has been critical of the School Board's insistence on moving the elementary students from Anna Yates to the Center of Community Life site on San Pablo Avenue.  Mr Carver is an occasional contributor to the Tattler.

State: New $60 Million School Will Be Sub-Standard

Sacramento Says:

New Emeryville School Doesn't Meet State Mandated Minimum Standards

Emeryville Parent Challenges Planning Commission

Emeryville parent Brian Carver has alerted the  Planning Commission, scheduled to vote tonight on the final schematic design of the new school planned as part of the Center of Community Life; the facilities do not meet California minimum space standards for children.  Additionally, Mr Carver asks the Planning Commission to consider the fact that the School District has engaged in an end run around citizen engagement and disallowed the people of Emeryville to help decide if the Anna Yates Elementary School should be closed and moved to the new high school site.   Lastly, the District has not committed on telling the people of Emeryville what is to become of the newly abandoned school properties as it moves forward with the contentious Emeryville Center of Community Life.

Here is Brian Carver's letter:

Dear members of the Planning Commission:

Thank you for service to our City.  I have followed the development of
the ECCL project very closely, and as a parent and active community
member I continue to have concerns about this project's design and cost.
Most importantly, I simply do not believe that this project provides
enough outdoor space for our children.  Even at Anna Yates, since the
recent change to move the 7th and 8th grades to that location, we do not
have enough space for kids to play (particularly in the morning, before
school).  We have had times at the school where the play structure is
"scheduled," meaning that only certain classes may use it for recess
that day.  My concern is that the drive for "efficiency" and shared use
will not solve this problem, but will be a very expensive replication of
it at the San Pablo site.

There are State guidelines that outline the amount of space necessary in
new schools.  While EUSD staff insists that no one meets these
standards, I do not believe that after many millions of dollars we
should be creating a project that shortchanges our kids and community on
space.  A new project should aim to do better, rather than to replicate
the failures of others.  We should also be looking at how much space
neighboring, successful public schools offer--these schools will be
competing with us--and if we do not have adequate space for outdoor
activities, learning, and programming, then enrollment will suffer,
potentially to the point that maintaining a School District in
Emeryville becomes fiscally unsustainable, all while leaving our
residents with decades of bond payments.

Finally, the Commission should condition any ECCL plan approval on firm
commitments from the District regarding the future uses of the Anna
Yates and Ralph Hawley sites.  Both Board Trustee Simon and
then-Superintendent Sugiyama promised the attendees of the July 2010
City-School Committee meeting, myself included, that residents would
have a voice in the decision to co-locate all the grades at one site.[1]
They assured voters that this opportunity was guaranteed by the
language of Measure J itself.  However, this summer, when over 70
individuals signed an open letter to the District urging the Trustees to
keep the elementary students at the Anna Yates site, the plea fell on
deaf ears.[2]  At this weekend's design meeting, Superintendent Lindo
told attendees that the co-location decision was made over a decade ago
and was not up for discussion.  This is not the community engagement
process that was promised in 2010 or in the language of Measure J
itself.  Since the District will not keep its promises to residents,
perhaps it will keep promises to the Planning Commission:  Ask them to
assure you that these public properties will not be sold off or rented
to a competing private or charter school.  Ask them to go on record as
to their plans for these sites' long-term use and maintenance as a
condition of any ECCL approval.  It should be part of their
responsibilities as Trustees to have long-term plans for the use and
maintenance of public properties, but residents have had no luck in
getting these Trustees to be transparent about such plans.  I hope you
can.  (Anticipating a rebuttal: A task force whose very charter directs
its members to conclude that the Anna Yates site should be used for
adult education is not a part of any transparent community engagement
process.)

Thank you. Please do what you can to ensure that our children have
adequate facilities for recreation and play to support their learning.

Sincerely,
Brian W. Carver
Emeryville resident and parent of a child at Anna Yates

[1]
http://emeryvilletattler.blogspot.com/2011/10/cityschool-district-bogus-co-location.html
[2]
https://www.change.org/petitions/emery-unified-school-district-do-not-close-anna-yates-elementary-school

Citizen's Oversight Chairman Resigns In Protest

Crisis at center of Center of Community Life:

Second Resignation At Oversight Committee

At Thursday night's City/School Committee meeting, the Chair of the
 Measure J Citizens' Oversight Committee, Emeryville resident and parent Brian Carver, indicated that he does not intend to seek an additional term on the Committee due to his
 having "lost faith" in the Center of Community Life project and in the School Board's
 management of it.

  The action makes the second such resignation in less than a year for the embattled Oversight Committee.

  

Mr Carver, an attorney and professor at Cal Berkeley's School of Information, gave his monthly report on Oversight Committee activities in
 which he described the Committee's continuing frustration with trying to
 work with the District Staff and Board on even mundane issues such as 
the structure of the Committee and member term lengths and also
 explained that his one-year term as Chair would be expiring making this 
his last report as Chair to the City School Committee.  



Schools Superintendent Debbra Lindo and Council member Nora Davis followed his
 monthly report by praising Mr Carver's work on the Committee over the last
 year, acknowledging the difficulty of the task.
  



Mr Carver then told the Committee that he had also
 prepared a public comment to express his own personal view of the last
 year's work of the Oversight Committee.  

At that point he told shocked attendees he would not be inclined to continue serving on 
the Oversight Committee because he had lost faith in the Center of Community Life project
 and in the District's handling of it. 

  

Mr Carver said he could not summarize a
 year's worth of issues but would highlight three:



First, he argued that the Board should have a clearly articulated
 long-term plan for all three of the School District properties, Emery High School, Anna
 Yates Elementary School, and the abandoned Ralph Hawley Middle School.  He added that it was “irresponsible” for 
the School Board not to clearly communicate to the public such plans for all
 three properties, instead of focusing $95 million  of bond
authorization that will take 20-40 years to pay off all on a single
 property.



Secondly, Mr Carver argued that the Board should be open to alternatives to 
the Kindergarten through 12^th grade co-location model that the Board favors. He explained that
 parents and a former school board president have repeatedly asked the
 District to seriously consider such alternatives but the District
 instead carries on blindly with a single-minded devotion to the K-12
 silver bullet.   Mr Carver argued that even if the K-12 model were 
educationally superior, which he disputed, he said that the finances 
and the space available “don't pencil out” and that the District would be 
better able to achieve its goals if they were not trying to cram
 everything onto the single High School site.



Lastly, he said that it should not be so hard to contribute one's
 opinions on what one would like to see in a future school and community 
center.  He said he has felt ostracized for expressing a different 
opinion than the District staff and Board.



He concluded by highlighting for the public what he thinks is a 
looming mistake on the horizon. He said that the District will likely
 soon finalize its decision to enter into a “lease-leaseback” arrangement 
with Turner Construction for the construction of the Center of Community Life, likening it 
to writing Turner one big check and hoping for the best.  Mr Carver argued
 that in this economy, the District should instead put the project out 
for competitive bidding, a process he said could save the District 
millions of dollars.



Later that same meeting the City/Schools Committee blithely approved the Center of Community Life’s
 conceptual design, placing K-12 and Community Services all on the High School 
site, without so much as a word in response from a school board or city 
council member to the (former) chairman of the Citizen’s Oversight Committee, Mr Carver's concerns.

Mr Carver's resignation in protest makes the second time for the Citizen's Oversight Committee; last September, committee member Shirley Enomoto resigned from her position in protest citing an unsupported and recalcitrant School Board.  Ms Enomoto was serving as the State mandated taxpayer's representative to the Oversight Committee.


Brian Carver lives in the Triangle neighborhood with his wife, council member Jac Asher and their two children who both attend Emeryville public schools.