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.

Tree Stumps on Horton Street Tell Us How Politics Works In Emeryville

 

The Stumps Are Telling Us How Broken City Hall Is

Emeryville Needs Tree Ordinance Reform 

The Ordinance is Too Weak to Save Trees

News Analysis

Tuesday June 15th 2021 has to go down in history as one of the low points in Emeryville politics.  That’s the date the City Council finally agreed to let the developer Lennar Corporation, kill every public street tree abutting their Sherwin Williams Horton Street project.  But this isn’t just a matter of a developer cutting our trees down.  That’s so common in Emeryville, it’s not even newsworthy.  Why the loss these particular trees is so notable is how revealing of the sycophantic culture at City Hall was the two year circuitous path that led to the stumps along Horton Street.  These stumps show us the how the government works at 1333 Park Avenue — how it works for developers, not for us.

Council members Dianne Martinez and Ally Medina
They're featured on one of the stumps their votes produced.
They steadfastly voted to cut all the Horton Street trees
over the years regardless of the wildly changing reasons
the staff has presented to them.

The final City Council vote to allow the developer to cut all the trees was 3-1 (Donahue dissenting).  The swing vote was delivered by the recently resigned Council member Christian Patz who changed his vote, his last vote as a City Council member incidentally, to allow Lennar to cut the trees.  Mr Patz told the Tattler he changed his vote after Mayor Dianne Martinez publicly announced right before the final vote that Lennar had before the Tuesday meeting, gone to the City staff to obtain a special ‘nuisance’ status for the trees that guaranteed the developer the right to cut the trees with or without the City Council.  Mr Patz said he felt at that point the trees were doomed and that the elected officials should take the heat for killing the trees, not the City staff.

Losing these street trees means a loss for the streetscape friendliness, the shade and cooling they provided and all the other benefits that can be said urban trees provide of course.  But it’s not that collectively we didn’t get anything in trade for agreeing to cut them.  What these stumps on Horton Street have bought us is the realization that our values in Emeryville, as codified by our ordinances, are only as strong as we live them.  As simple as it sounds, our ordinance meant to save our trees, the Urban Forestry Ordinance, can only actually save our trees if we vigilantly guard against developers who would cut them by living the life of the tree appreciators the UFO represents.   

That’s what’s missing at City Hall: tree appreciation.

Regrettable Backdrop

In 2018, Lennar went to City Hall seeking permission from the Planning Commission to kill all the street trees abutting their project.   The staff recommended the Commission permit the killing of all the trees along Sherwin Street claiming the existing trees didn’t match the developer’s desire for a different species and that Lennar had a right to a “unified streetscape” near their project (never mind this is not in the UFO).  After Planning Commission buy-in, the Council let that through and the Sherwin Street trees were all cut. 

Then there was the matter of the Horton Street trees, much grander and more visible than the Sherwin Street trees.  For those trees, the staff told the Planning Commission the Horton Street trees were all “unhealthy” and they must therefore all be cut.  But the Tattler pushed back and proved the City’s own arborist said the majority of the Horton trees were “fair” to “healthy”.  

Former City Councilman
Christian Patz
Frustrated by the vote, he said
'If there's a rule, Emeryville
will get around it'.

Undaunted, the staff, representing Lennar, still in 2018, told the City Council at the April 17th  meeting the Horton trees must all be cut because they would be in the way of underground utilities associated with the project.  Again, the Tattler led the drive to prove this was also false.  But not before the staff told the Council they must vote that night on the fate of the trees.  Council member Patz told the staff he resented the Hobson’s choice being offered that night and said he would therefore vote to save the trees. 

The vote that night was 2-2 with Council member Ally Medina joining Mayor Dianne Martinez in approving the cutting of the trees.  Council members Scott Donahue and Christian Patz voted against the cutting (Council member John Bauters is not allowed to vote on this because he lives too close to the project and state law forbids it).  The tie vote meant Lennar could not cut the trees. 

Backpedaling and still representing the interests of Lennar, the staff then reported the vote COULD be delayed and called for another vote at a later date.  

And delayed it was.  At the September 17th 2019 meeting, the matter of the Horton Street trees was back before the Council.  This time, the staff admitted the trees were not in the way of the underground utilities (save for one) and they had been wrong about that.  An “embarrassed” Council member Ally Medina publicly apologized for her earlier vote to cut the trees.  She said she had believed the staff when they said the trees were in the way of the underground utilities.

Undaunted, the staff, still working for Lennar in 2021, accepted the developer’s claim the Horton trees were “nuisances” before the final Council meeting on the 15th.  The nuisance designation meant that the trees would actually have to be cut by order from the City of Emeryville as an abatement against Lennar (never mind it was Lennar’s idea).  The nuisance designation also meant Lennar would not have to plant equal replacement trees as the UFO mandates.  The final deal was all the trees would be cut and a two inch sapling would be planted for each tree as well as five other small saplings planted elsewhere.

None of this stopped the two Councilwomen from claiming victory for the people of Emeryville.  Council member Ally Medina said the five saplings would make for a “greener and more beautiful city” while Mayor Martinez, told her colleagues she would not listen to their deliberations in the matter of the Horton trees, she said she had already made up her mind to kill the trees before the debate, “Let me indicate for you tonight, how I’m going to vote” she said.  Later, before the 3-1 vote, Mayor Martinez told everyone that despite her 2018 vote to kill the trees and despite her earlier in the meeting admitting she had already made up her mind, she told a shocked crowd, “Before, I was on the side of doing everything we could to save the trees, but now I’m on the side of having the healthiest and most vibrant trees we can”. 

The staff, working in the interest of Lennar Tuesday said the roots of the trees were close to the surface and that’s why they lifted the sidewalks there and that’s why they should be killed (the nuisance abatement notwithstanding).  The two Councilwomen seized that argument and ran with it but Christian Patz was incensed.  He admonished his two colleagues for their votes to kill the trees because there were no new facts presented Tuesday night he said, “The arborist said [back in 2018] these are known facts” he told his colleagues.  

It was after that, the Mayor, feeling the vote could be another 2-2 affair like the 2018 vote announced, “If we deadlock tonight,  the developer has the opportunity to go straight to our city administration and ask for waivers.  I just want to put that out there.”  And then Christian Patz changed his vote to a YES to allow Lennar to cut all our trees, his last vote as an Emeryville City Council member.  

Casting his last vote, Council member Patz, clearly pained, announced "I'm frustrated by the nature of Emeryville, which is, there's a rule, but we'll get around it".  And those were the final parting words to the people of Emeryville from the former Councilman.

The Former Sherwin Williams Horton Street Trees (on left)
The staff, working in the interests of the developer, falsely told the Council the trees
were unhealthy and in the way of underground utilities.  Those arguments weren't enough 
to convince the Council majority.  Only after the staff said the trees were designated as
"nuisances" and legally required to be cut, did Councilman Patz join his two women
 colleagues and vote to kill the trees.

Existing 'Tower Separation' Rules to be Overturned to Help Onni Tower Developer

Onni Developer Wants Tower Separation Regulations Repealed

City Council Prepared to Acquiesce 

No Reasons Offered Why Existing Public Policy

is Unacceptable 

News Analysis
What was considered fantastic in Emeryville only a short while ago, now inexplicably and with no new information, is totally unacceptable.  
Apropos to that, the City Council votes Tuesday to, without findings, remove protections against overcrowding of architectural towers in town, a condition of 'Manhattanization' recognized by the City's own General Plan, at the behest of a specific developer who stands to materially benefit from the repeal.  The developer of the Onni project proposal, a Christie Avenue 700 foot apartment tower together with a 200 foot office tower on the same lot is constrained, like every other developer,  by Emeryville's 'tower separation' regulations but he says Emeryville's rules make it so his project "won't pencil out".  The City Council in response, is considering removing the pesky UD-P 35 tower separation regulations from the books altogether, making sure this or any other developers' towers will never again be so constrained in Emeryville.

Emeryville, long known for bending over backwards to accommodate developers, on Tuesday is moving into new territory to assuage the desires of a developer.  Normally, when city regulations are considered for amendment or repeal, new findings of fact are presented that change or negate the original findings.  The Council, if it goes along with the staff's recommendation on Tuesday however, vacates UD-P 35 (and addendums) and all its original findings with no new findings whatsoever leaving open questions about the truthfulness of the original findings; as in were they false?  Did the City of Emeryville make bogus findings of facts about tower proximity for the General Plan ten years ago?  Or is the problem occurring now?  Should the City, for transparency's sake, let us know why the regulations need to be overturned?  Or is it rather that City Hall doesn't even care about policy optics anymore and has entered a new phase of naked (anti-public) policy?

The current City Council members, not seated ten years ago when the General Plan was written, do not owe allegiance to the sentiments that brought us the UD-P 35 tower separation regulations.  But any reading of democratic governance tells us they need to reveal why they disagree and not just rely on facile procedural claims to their authority to reverse the regulations.  Their authority or even the legality to do that is not what's in question.

It's noteworthy that the staff report accompanying Tuesday's City Council decision goes into some detail highlighting the legitimate authority of the Council to overturn the tower separation regulations but nothing as to why they should do so. The report highlights how the Planning Commission had agreed with the Council that tall steel constructed buildings should not have to abide by the City's family unit mix regulations (also a gift to the Onni developer) and then by extension somehow that the Council should now overturn the tower separation regulations as well.  From Tuesday's staff report sent to the Council:

 "At the City Council meeting on October 16, 2018, the Council directed that the Planning Commission reconsider the Planning Regulations unit mix requirements for residential buildings that are taller than the California Building Code allows for wood-frame construction. In this context, staff also identified an additional regulation to be examined, namely the minimum separation of buildings over 100 feet tall, or 'tower separation'."

It's neither cogent nor rational.  The conflating of the two regulations is not warranted beyond a naked and undemocratic greasing of the skids for a specific development proposal and a specific developer, unless the current Council wishes to announce a new pro-development, anti-regulatory regime that's being assembled.  That seems unlikely though, owing to the fact that the new City Council, RULE endorsed with progressive bonafides touted to the rooftops, has always sought to distance themselves from this sort of reputation-proceeding Emeryville city planning ethos from a earlier era.
If for nothing more than transparency's sake, it is hoped Emeryville citizens will get a stated reason from their representatives Tuesday night as to why their laws from a few years ago, considered to be a good thing by all involved, are now suddenly not up to snuff and must be utterly vanquished.

Planning Commission Votes to Kill Trees Without Critical Arborist Report

City Hall Staff Withholds Critical Document from Planning Commission 

Healthy Trees Called "Unhealthy" by Staff

Commission Voted to Cut Trees Without Knowledge of Arborist Report

Ten trees fair to good, Two fair to poor = "Unhealthy"

The Emeryville Planning Commission, siding with City Hall's Planning Department staff, PG&E and the developer of the Sherwin Williams project voted unanimously March 15th to overturn the City's Urban Forestry Ordinance and to kill every street tree on Horton Street fronting the incipient apartment project slated to break ground later this year.  The unanimous Planning Commission vote was based on staff recommendation the trees be removed, putatively to accommodate the under grounding of overhead utility wires based on a dubious claim from PG&E and owing to their unhealthy status, a finding counter to an earlier City sanctioned official arborist’s report.  The staff did not inform the Planning Commission before their vote about the document from the arborist that said the majority of the trees are healthy.
The vote prepared by the staff March 15th was to decide if the Planned Unit Development (PUD) agreement earlier made should be amended in order to facilitate the cutting of the trees.  The Planning Commission vote overturns that earlier (unanimous) 2016 vote by the City Council directing the staff to save the trees on Horton Street when they approved the Sherwin Williams PUD. 

Emeryville's Appointed Planning Commission
A majority found the "unhealthy" state of the trees
on Horton Street to be reason to cut them down. 
The staff never told the Commissioners
about the arborist's report that found
a majority of the trees to be healthy.

The final decision about the trees and the integrity of the Urban Forestry Ordinance (UFO) will be decided by the City Council on April 17th when they consider allegations made by the staff at the March 15th meeting that the trees in question are “unhealthy” as well as dubious and not proven claims that PG&E will "not allow" the overhead wires to be placed under the street, necessitating the cutting of the trees according to the staff. 

The PG&E claim is especially questionable owing to the fact that the staff told the Planning Commission that the utility company “does not allow joint trench boxes [wires] in the roadway and it needs to be routed to the sidewalk”, an eventuality synonymous with cutting the trees they said while at the same meeting they also said that it is “likely” that some of the trees will need to be cut.  

Further, PG&E has already been caught lying to the City of Emeryville about cutting our street trees in the past when Councilman John Bauters found the company making false claims in furtherance of the utility company's zealous efforts to cut 30 trees in our town as part of a program to keep roots away from underground utilities last year.  Mr Bauter’s diligence ended up saving 21 of the trees and net an apology from PG&E for their misrepresentations to the City.

From the Official Arborist's Report on the
Sherwin Williams Trees on Horton Street
7 fair-good to good with 2 fair-poor to poor
and 3  fair equals "unhealthy trees" 
status according to the City of Emeryville.
The Planning Commission never saw 
this report before their vote.

Perhaps most damaging for City Hall in this escapade is their insistence that the Planning Commission see the trees as “unhealthy”, a direct contradiction of the professional arborist retained by City Hall who characterized the trees as being in good health and the fact they kept the tree report from the decision makers. The report prepared for the City Council by SBCA Tree Consulting on December 29th 2014 found of the 14 trees along Horton Street four are ‘good’, two are ‘fair-good’ , four are ‘fair’, one is ‘fair-poor’ and one ‘poor’.  Predictably, the Planning Commission seized on the claim of the trees being unhealthy and a majority of Commissioners cited that as a reason for their vote to cut them down. 

The 2014 tree report was conducted to inform the City Council as they voted on the approval of the Sherwin Williams project's PUD and the healthy state of the existing trees as shown by the report was instrumental in the subsequent unanimous Council vote to save the trees. 

The staff also recommended to the Commission the 
fees normally paid to the City by a developer seeking and receiving permission to cut our street trees be waived based on two non-sequiturs: the fact the replacement trees will get "better soil" and inexplicably because the trees on the other side of the street will not be cut.  The Planning Commission found nothing untoward or unreasonable about those two findings.

Regardless of the staff reporting as a fact there's no room under the street, an Emeryville Tattler Public Records Request revealed the City of Emeryville in fact has no documents that would confirm their claims that PG&E says the underground wires cannot be placed in the Horton Street roadway.  Even if the utility company told the staff this, the company's credibility has been damaged due to their previous false claims.  A map of Horton Street showing pipes obtained by the Tattler Public Records Request suggests there may be plenty of room to place the underground utility wires in the roadway but is ultimately inconclusive. 

A group of residents living near the Sherwin Williams site Park Avenue Residents Committee (PARC) also encouraged the Planning Commission to vote to cut the trees because of their "unhealthy" status. 

The Planning Commission, cited in addition to the "unhealthy" status of the trees, their opinion the trees should be cut because the existing sidewalk isn't safe (also cited by PARC) and that replacing them with 24" box lollipop trees would make for a "more uniform street". 

The City Council takes up the issue on April 17th however Mayor Bauters must recuse himself, his residence being in close proximity to the project.

The arborist sees the tree on the left
but the staff sees the tree on the right.

Sherwin Williams Project: Emeryville's City Staff Prepares a Bogus Environmental Document

An EIR is Supposed to Tell Decision Makers About Negative Environmental Impacts 

What Will the Sherwin Williams Traffic be Like?

Nobody Knows

Opinion/News Analysis

EIR's Are Supposed to Measure
Will the City Council demand
measurements from the
Sherwin Williams EIR?

Emeryville’s City staff has prepared the environmental document that facilitates the last large development project for our town, the Sherwin Williams Project (SWP), and the City Council decides Tuesday night whether to certify the Environmental Impact Report as a properly prepared CEQA document.  
But hold on; there’s a huge problem.  The City Council cannot certify the EIR for Sherwin Williams because the EIR fails at it’s most elemental CEQA charge; to inform the decision makers about how the proposal will effect traffic in our town.  

In fact the EIR contains no useful information about traffic at all.  That’s because the traffic study within the EIR was written with the assumption the City Council will amend our General Plan to get rid of the Horton Street Bike Boulevard as it calculated the traffic effects the SWP would have on the neighborhood.  It's not up to the staff to decide the General Plan will be amended.  

What if the Council decided they like bike boulevards?  What if they want to keep the Horton Street Bike Boulevard as the General Plan says it should be?  As they have said many times they wished to do?  Well then less traffic would be using Horton Street and that excess traffic would move to other streets.  And that would change the ‘level of service’ on those other streets to a lower level.  In that case, the streets in the neighborhood would be more negatively impacted by the Sherwin Williams Project than the current EIR shows. 

The City Council and the people of Emeryville are in the dark about how the Sherwin Williams traffic will impact our neighborhoods.

The City Council needs to know this to make an informed choice about the SWP.  Is it too impactful to traffic in the neighborhood?  Is it acceptable? The Council needs to know this before they can decide on this project.  Says who?  Says the State of California: the central function of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is exactly this….to properly inform the decision makers about development proposals.  

The document the staff will be pushing Tuesday night doesn’t do that.  It fails at the sole task it’s supposed to perform.  The City Council needs to throw it back.  They need to tell the staff to prepare a  new EIR with traffic numbers that show the effect on the neighborhoods with the assumption we’re going to keep the Horton Street Bike Boulevard, that's all.

More Traffic on our Bike Boulevards Means
More Ghost Bikes for Emeryville
Will the City Council make the right decision
on Tuesday night? Will they keep open the
option to have a bike boulevard for Horton Street?

The citizen activist group Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE) wrote a letter to the staff about this subject.  Inexplicably, the response to RULE’s letter was the staff didn’t understand the question.  That seems like a canard.  They're paid to know about this. 
We understand it: this is an end run on what’s supposed to be a transparent process.  The staff is trying to show a Sherwin Williams Project with less effect on traffic to make it more palatable to the public, to make it an easier sell for the Council. 

We have a right to know what the effect on traffic the Sherwin Williams Project will have in our town assuming we keep our bike boulevards. We need to know how this project will effect the real world. The world that contains the Emeryville General Plan and bicycling as a safe possibility here.  If the City Council certifies this EIR as it is being offered up to them by the staff on Tuesday night, we’ll know they never had any intention on having a bike boulevard on Horton Street.  The developers for the Sherwin Williams Project don't want a bike boulevard on Horton Street.  Let’s see who’s back this City Council has.  Watch this space….

Staff Now Says 'Back-Up Beepers Can't Be Disabled'- Who Could Have Known?

Back-Up Beepers at ECCL Morph From 

'Deal Breaker' to 'No Big Deal'

As it turns out, back-up beepers on heavy construction equipment can't be silenced to satisfy noise ordinance restrictions we found out at the June 21st City Council meeting.  Who could have known that?  Emeryville's city staff?  Could they have known?  Perhaps Turner Construction, were they in any position to know?  How about John Baker, our ECCL construction consultant representative, is this something we could expect him to know?   The answer is apparently no one could have known, regardless of all the public money being doled out to know this kind of thing.

The thing is Cal/OSHA doesn't permit back-up beepers to be disabled on construction equipment.  But nobody paid to know that in Emeryville knew that.  Perhaps they're not paid enough.

The Emeryville City Council is concerned about all the construction delays at the Center of 'Community' Life.  They're so concerned that they granted Turner Construction a waiver of our Noise Ordinance so they can work on Saturdays starting in April.  Construction however is loud and neighbors have a reasonable expectation of quiet weekends...at least that's what City Hall said when the City Council passed our Noise Ordinance.
But not to worry, the new progressive City Council majority doesn't grant waivers willy nilly to developers like the previous Council did.  So this time they assured neighbors their reasonable expectations of quiet weekends will be taken seriously and so the Council required Turner to disable the loud back-up beepers on the heavy equipment being used.  All parties, the staff, Turner Construction and John Baker our construction consultant agreed this was the reasonable thing to do and so a contract disabling the back-up beepers was signed.



Oops!  Strike that!  The loud back-up beepers, a deal breaker at the April 5th Council meeting when the waiver was granted have now become no big deal they say.  By last Tuesday's meeting, concern over beepers had all changed.  Now Turner can beep away says our City Council and they still get their waiver.  What happened?  The City Council made no attempt to quantify the noise from back-up beepers, formerly determined by them to be excessive, citing instead the need to finish the ECCL project.

City Hall now holds that residents won't be told what constitutes a reasonable expectation of quiet weekends, however with regard to its imbroglio over back-up beepers at the Center of 'Community' Life, Councilwoman Jac Asher spoke for her colleagues, shifting blame to John Baker, our Turner Construction go-between working under contract ($1.2 million) with the City.

Ms Asher put it bluntly to Mr Baker, "Our staff takes the blame for being unaware of the OSHA regulations.  What I don't understand is why were you not aware of the OSHA regulations?  Isn't construction and management of construction projects what you do and what you're being paid for?"

John Baker's haltingly staccato response, unclear in its presentation, makes clear what's going on between the City of Emeryville, Turner Construction and Mr Baker himself as the ECCL construction struggles across the scheduled August finish line.  By way of an answer to Ms Asher's charge, he told the Council, "What, what occurred is when we, we started doing the Saturday work, there was some equipment that when, when, when, uh, Turner went to disable the back-up beepers, uh...we were not aware."

John Baker, Emeryville's Construction Consultant for ECCL
On the Job
"What, what... uh when, when, when, uh... we
were not aware" = $1.2 million

Emeryville City Hall Staff Doesn't Understand Bike Boulevards

"Like a Squeezed Balloon..."

Emeryville's City Hall Staff Can't Imagine

Bike Boulevards

Analogy for Sisyphean Meaningless Work: 
Squeeze it here and the air goes over there;
you've accomplished nothing says Emeryville.

News Analysis/Opinion
Sometimes a single utterance gives away the whole game...
When a feature of a democratically vetted new polity is described by those entrusted with promulgating it as a flaw, you know there's a fundamental lack of understanding going on.
And that's what's happening behind the scenes at Emeryville City Hall right now.

Case in point: when recently interviewing the department heads management staff, the same curiously quoted axiom kept coming up: the idea of the futility of squeezing a balloon as a stand-in for meaningless work.  What these paid staffers are referring to is our Bike Plan and its provisions for building a network of bike boulevards in Emeryville.
Bike boulevards are corridors set aside primarily for bicycles and central to that endeavor is the requirement laid out in the Bike Plan to strictly limit the number of motor vehicles using these specially designated streets.  The Plan seeks to force cars from the bike boulevards over to regular streets for the safety of bicyclists.  This isn't a bug, it's a feature.

"If the idea is to atomize traffic in town, 

trying to keep an equal amount 

on all streets that the balloon 

analogy reinforces, then there's really 

no such thing as a bike boulevard". 

And yet our City staff can't seem to understand this basic principle, hence the oft repeated balloon analogy.  What they don't understand, they don't want.  At its core is a refusal to accept bike boulevards.  If the idea is to atomize traffic in town, trying to keep an equal amount on all streets that the balloon analogy reinforces, then there's really no such thing as a bike boulevard.  And viewing their actions trying to stop the Horton Street Bike Boulevard specifically over the last couple of years, it's safe to say we now know the philosophic underpinnings to their work: they can't even imagine a bike boulevard.

City Manager Carolyn Lehr
A fundamental lack of cognition:
"Like a squeezed balloon, the traffic
will just go elsewhere, you're
not solving anything" she said
of bike boulevards.

Who has spoken of squeezed balloons at City Hall?  The top brass; our City Manager Carolyn Lehr, our Director of Public Works Maurice Kaufman and also at least one underling.

We call on the Emeryville City staff to educate yourselves about our General Plan, our Bike Plan and Bike Boulevards.  The squeezed balloon image that you've been citing as reason for your dismissive demeanor is actually how it's supposed to work; we're supposed to squeeze traffic off the bike boulevards and onto regular streets.  Remember, it's bikes preferred, cars allowed on bike boulevards.  So stop trying to subvert that basic premise and get with the program.