Pixar's Broken Promises Affect Schools, Affordable Housing

 Pixar Said it Would Fund Our Schools...

Where is the Money?

Tattler Protest Causes Pixar, Schools, City to 

Unite in Resistance 

City Hall, Schools Don't Seem to Want the Promised Money

Emeryville’s schools and affordable housing problems are worse today because two decades of broken promises by a local successful and beloved company that’s become one of the biggest corporations in the world.  In a deal made two decades ago for a corporate campus expansion that failed to deliver for local residents, Pixar, now a division of Disney Corporation told Emeryville voters they would fund Emeryville’s schools and give $700,000 yearly to help pay for affordable housing, neither of which has materialized. 

An election, held on November 2nd 2004, concerned whether Pixar, who wanted a major campus expansion, should be subject to a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) that would bring improvements to the Emeryville community.  Pixar, who didn't want to be beholden to a CBA said its promises to fund the schools and provide money for affordable housing were enough.  To help assure victory, Pixar told the City and residents, they would pack up and leave Emeryville if the two ballot measures allowing for the expansion didn't pass.  

The promises were not a part of the development agreement but Pixar spent more than $200,000 and went around the City of Emeryville, making their promises directly to the Emeryville voters in their 'Yes on T&U' campaign mailers sent to every household.  The majority of voters said yes, handing Pixar a victory and as a consequence, there was no CBA but the promises to fund the schools and to fund affordable housing are still in effect.    

The Tattler will continue the protest against Pixar's 
broken promises over the next few months despite the 
threats from the City of Emeryville.

The campus expansion agreement gave Pixar a very large parcel of land that was previously earmarked in the General Plan for housing and also an entire public street, the former Emery Street between Park Avenue and 45th Street.  The land consolidation made in the agreement created Emeryville’s largest ‘super block’, stretching all the way from Hollis Street to nearly San Pablo Avenue.  Super blocks are antithetical to pedestrian activity and other goals of mixed use zoning.   They are generally seen in planning circles as a hallmark of broken public policy. 

Since 2004, Pixar has failed to fund the school district at all and it has failed to pay the City for affordable housing at a rate any higher than it did before the campus expansion.  The promises were made in campaign literature mailed to every voter by the ‘Yes on T&U’ campaign committee registered with the State of California.

As the 20 year anniversary of Measures T&U approaches, the Tattler has stepped up the pressure on Pixar with a 12 foot protest banner placed at the main gate on Park Avenue.  The protest will continue on occasionally and unannounced through the summer and into November.

Pixar spent $200,000 to convince Emeryville voters, threatening
to leave if they didn't get everything they wanted.

Noteworthy in the protest, nobody from the City of Emeryville or the School District has shown any interest in getting Pixar to honor their promises.  Odd because those two agencies stand to benefit from Pixar paying the money they said they would.  In fact, the City has ‘sided’ with Pixar in the imbroglio.  In a January 19th letter obtained in a public records request, City Manager Paul Buddenhagen told Pixar Facilities Manager Patty Bonfilio, the impending protest banner would be considered a “threat to property” and he added, “we will be on alert to him”, referring to the Tattler editor.

We reached out to the School Board and the Superintendent of the District for this story but our letters and calls were not answered.  Also, Paul Buddenhagen was contacted but he did not return calls or emails.  Rounding out blanket refusals to comment was Pixar’s Director of Public Relations, Eric Zerton.  

We tried to hand out literature explaining about the broken promises to employees driving in
in the morning but none would take a flyer.  One employee expressed fear of reprisals from Pixar,
"There are cameras out here", they said.
One interesting thing we learned: Virtually EVERY Pixar employee
 drives to work.  We saw zero bikes and only one pedestrian in the hour and a half we were there.

Emeryville’s then City Manager John Flores sells the Pixar expansion to the Planning Commission (above).  

He said the suburban style development “will better meet the City’s vision for providing a more dense, vibrant urban city”.   In fact Pixar has not provided community vibrancy at all, locked away as they are in their sealed campus, with no community interaction whatsoever.  But he saved the biggest canard for last; “Pixar has been and will continue to be a major benefactor to the community, supporting the schools”, he told the decision makers.  No City Manager since then has explained the broken promise and what should be done about it.

Measure C Beckons Residents to Finally Do Something About Housing

Measure C: A Chance to Finally Do Something Consequential Against the High Cost 

of Housing

The Costs of Doing Nothing Are Too High

Opinion
The Emeryville housing bond initiative known as Measure C is on Tuesday's ballot, giving voters a chance to finally do something about the crazy high cost of housing in our town and deal with its associated problems like chronic homelessness and the displacement of existing but vulnerable renters by helping them buy a home in our community.  Rising housing costs present a problem that has been well described but not adequately dealt with and Measure C puts a solution in our hands rather than simply continuing to trust in market vagaries who's result so far has been the $3600 Emeryville studio apartment owned by foreign investors.  Oops, make that $3700....the rent just went up again.

It's not that we haven't been building housing in Emeryville; our population has doubled in the last ten years.  Over that time we've gone from a city of homeowners to a city of renters as developers keep throwing up apartment buildings as fast as they can, trying to cash in on the high rent bonanza.  But all the harried building hasn't brought down the cost of housing.  In fact, the more housing we build here, the higher the cost of housing becomes, a reverse corollary that turns on its head the old supply and demand saw.  After 20 years building housing at a frenetic pace and with the limited amount of space now available, the sky-high cost of housing in Emeryville is clearly a beast that we, through the private sector, cannot build our way out of moving forward.

It's bad for Emeryville but let's not fool ourselves, the lack of affordable housing is a regional problem and no one thing we do in our little town to address this growing threat, not even the passing of Measure C, the first attempt to deal with it (by plebiscite), will completely solve the problem here.
But make no mistake either, Measure C will go a long way towards solving this existential problem, at least in our little corner of the Bay Area.  And by "a long way" we mean a long way.
This common sense and fair housing solution for Emeryville promises to be a game changer; likely up to at least $300 million spent on our little town to help thwart the seemingly inexorable rise in the cost of housing....that's enough to truly make a difference.  And that's what Measure C is designed to do.

The problems associated with high Bay Area housing costs are hugely complex and the solution can't be facile market dependency; we need a cogent big solution to this big problem.  The critical game changing components of Measure C with its relatively modest $50 million in local bond funding are its attendant State and Federal matching funds, a monster $300-$400 million brick that will bolster the relatively small amount Emeryville property owners are going to kick in.  It's $50 million on steroids, jacked up to as much as $400 million for a 1.2 square mile city.  That's an opportunity we should seize; a chance to face a major problem squarely with a rational solution and a large hammer.

Measure C is a progressive tax.  At $49.12 per $100,000 of assessed property value, a cost born 70% to 80% by businesses in our town, in a town of renters, the average Emeryville resident stands to pay nothing or almost nothing.  Homeowners will pay dependent on when they bought their homes.  Those who have lived here a long time, primarily the elderly, will pay less because the tax is assessed on the value of the property at the time of purchase, not on the current market value.  That means the average homeowner will pay just $10.50 per month.
The business sector picks up 3/4 of the tab for Measure C, taking the pressure off residents.  For instance Pixar/Disney, a miserly multi-billion dollar corporation in our town will pay $10,000 per month, a cost they will not be able to weasel out of as they and other corporations have infamously done with a loophole in Emeryville's business tax.

Another nice benefit of Measure C is that Emeryville will be able to finally clear up its portfolio of blighted and vacant land the City already owns, land set aside by the former Redevelopment Agency for this use.  Taking land acquisition off the table will help deliver more affordable units at a lower building cost.

Measure C is a well written and well conceived solution to this vexing problem and that's why its been endorsed by the Democratic Party of Alameda County, the Sierra Club, the entire Emeryville City Council, the Green Party, Residents for a Livable Emeryville, SEIU Local 1021, the League of Woman Voters and the East Bay Express.  And now to that list add the Emeryville Tattler.

Correction-  Please note, a reader found a misspelled word in the chart below and two mistakes.  See the comments below.

Pixar (and other businesses) will finally pay!
The business community picks up 3/4 of the Measure C tab.  The home-owning elderly in Emeryville like former City Councilwoman Nora Davis, won't have to pay much at all.   
Naysayers representing business interests like local blogger Rob Arias have been railing against it.  But how much does Rob Arias care about Emeryville?  The numbers tell the story: less than $10 per month.

Emeryville's Greedy Business Sector: No Support for Schools

Emeryville's Stingy Business Sector 

Emery Schools Left in the Cold

Tightfisted Businesses Extract From Community,
Don't Support the Community

Wareham One Bright Spot

Emeryville’s growing business sector, an economic engine that funds City Hall with a workforce that more than doubles the town’s population each work day, is nonetheless extremely stingy when it comes time to help fund Emery’s schools according to a document recently released by Emery Unified School District.  The document, obtained by a Tattler public records request reveals that only one business, Wareham Development, donated anything beyond a pittance to the schools during the last three years.  

Despite occasional claims to the contrary, corporate philanthropy to Emery schools has been anemic over the three years we checked; the top ten major corporate employers in Emeryville were all shown to have given the schools nothing or almost nothing.

Sad that Pixar is so miserly.
And Grifols...and Leapfrog...and
the Oaks Club...and Peet's Coffee...

Only San Rafael based Wareham and its CEO Rich Robbins, Emeryville’s largest developer, gave any substantial donations to Emery Unified, breaking the $10,000 mark three years running.
Major corporations in town have long made public claims of support for Emery schools but only Wareham and Mr Robbins have followed though, the document shows. 
Perhaps the other corporate actors in our town meant they support the idea of supporting the schools.  Or they support the schools in spirit...like saying the word support is itself support...like 'I support the troops'.  

A District spokesperson has noted in addition to the large donations from Wareham, some small non-monetary donations have come in from some businesses during the three years.

Also of particular note is the penurious parsimony of Pixar, a Disney subsidiary that has earned $11 billion for its parent company, itself a nine billion dollar a year corporate entity with a youth oriented focus.  Pixar has led all Emeryville penny pinching corporations in cupidity by offering virtually no support at all to the schools or the community.  Other than in 2004 when it needed Emeryville voters to support a major campus expansion and when it stated categorically it would be a continuing major benefactor for Emery schools, Pixar has never felt any need to share its good fortune with the education of the children of our community who pay to watch its films.  Pixar supports the troops and maybe they'll offer Emery schools their thoughts and prayers.
  

Chart courtesy of City of Emeryville and EUSD

Emeryville's Biggest Employers	Number of Employees	2014-2017 Donations to Emery Schools  (10K or greater value)
Pixar	1155	0
Grifols	544	0
AC Transit	511	0
Oaks Card Club	430	0
Clif Bar	397	0
LeapFrog	373	0
IKEA	348	0
AAA of Northern CA,NV,UT	300	0
Novartis	280	0
Peet’s Coffee & Tea	258	0

Fiscal Year	Donor	Amount
14-‘15	Wareham Development	$25,000.00
15-‘16	Wareham Development	$10,000.00
16-‘17	Nancy & Rich Robbins	$15,000.00

Grossly Overstated: Emeryville's former City Manager goes to bat for Pixar in 2004 with effusive public testimony as the citizens prepare to vote on Measures T&U; permission for a major corporate campus expansion.  They will be a "major benefactor to the schools" the City Manager said of Pixar.

Corporate Philanthropy In Emeryville: A Great Hill of Beans

Emeryville's Businesses Care About Money,
Not Our Schools

What Kind of Businesses Does Emeryville Attract?

Greedy Ones

News Analysis
Emeryville is well known throughout the Bay Area as being foremost a business friendly town, a reputation that's been well earned over the years.  But civic boosters here, concerned about the optics of that lopsided message, have often attempted to draw a distinction between how well we've been able to leverage our businesses for community benefits received versus whatever virtues that may be garnered simply providing a good location for a host of corporate headquarters.  In this way, much has been made of the philanthropic generosity of Emeryville's business community, especially where monetary donations to our local public schools are concerned.

Sad:
Last year once again, Pixar gave nothing to
the schools in Emeryville, their hometown.
$1.2 billion 2015 box office receipts = zero
for Emeryville's schools.  

Here at the Tattler, we have shown how this meme is not represented by reality and is more fiction postulated by the businesses themselves than fact.  Readers may remember our 2014 story about Pixar's miserly lack of corporate donations to our schools after a very public campaign of claims to the contrary in the lead up to and running concomitant with their major corporate campus expansion, begun in 2004.
In fact, that's been a repeating theme here in Emeryville; business will conspicuously donate to the schools when there is public exposure, especially when they are engaging in large and consequential building projects and need public support but when the need for that support ebbs, the philanthropy likewise ebbs albeit quietly.

A quick look at Emeryville top ten largest businesses is revealing.  Based on gross receipts, the metric the City uses for taxing purposes, the combined top 10 businesses monetary donations to Emeryville's schools last year amounted to zero.  The only Emeryville corporation that gave any money at all to our schools was Wareham Development, a business not in the top ten.  Wareham it should be noted, is exposed and in the public eye while they prepare to build the contentious 'Transit Center' on Horton Street.  Tellingly, Wareham last year gave the Emery School District $25,000 while they sought permission to build their project; a gift very much needed and appreciated by our schools.

The List of  Corporate Shame- What's in their eye is not about what they provide to the community, it's about what they extract from the community.  The following Emeryville corporations, our ten largest and most preeminent businesses, gave no money at all to Emeryville schools last year:

1. Disney/Pixar, 1200 Park Avenue:   Zip to Emeryville Schools
2. Berkeley Research, 2200 Powell Street:   Nil to Emeryville Schools
3. Ikea, 4400 Shellmound Street:    Nada to Emeryville Schools
4. Tubemogul, 1250 53rd Street:    Zilch to Emeryville Schools
5. Home Depot, 3838 Hollis Street:   Scratch to Emeryville Schools
6.  Plum Inc, 1485 Park Avenue:    Naught to Emeryville Schools
7.  Griffols Diagnostics, 4510 Horton Street:  Nix to Emeryville Schools
8. Gracenote Inc,  2000 Powell Street,   Shutout to Emeryville Schools
9. Fantasy Junction, 1145 Park Avenue,  Nothing to Emeryville Schools
10. Novartis Institute,  5300 Chiron Way,  Ought to Emeryville Schools

Don't Listen to the Hype
Look at the Hill
Here's how much Emeryville's business community 
cares about the children in our community.

Pixar/Disney Cannot Countenance Epic California Drought

The same crew that lawyered up, threatening the City Council to keep its tax rate lower than anyone else in town via Emeryville's infamous business tax cap, the same ones who pay Emeryville a whopping $8000 per year in taxes and turned off the philanthropy spigot at the School District, now turns on a different kind of spigot...Introducing the lush and verdant acreage of Pixar/Disney's  beautiful Emeryville oasis of a campus, kept that way by torrents of our Sierra Nevada snowmelt.
If the rest of us can't have anything green, it's heartening to know at least the billionaire corporate class among us can pretend California is Kentucky.  While we can't stroll on this luxurious emerald carpet in our town, we, the great unwashed (literally and figuratively), can peer through the fence and thorn bushes on Park Avenue and get a peek.  Pixar/Disney; corporate bad citizens creators of fantasy, living in fantasy.
To everybody else, remember: if it's yellow, let it mellow and no showers longer than three minutes (wet, shut off, lather, rinse...catch spare drops in buckets on shower floor).


Picture taken yesterday at the Pixar campus on Park Avenue:

Pixar/Disney's World

Our World

Emeryville's Worthless General Plan: Overturned on a Whim

Emeryville's Former & Current General Plan:

98 Pound Weaklings They

News Analysis/Opinion
The trials and travails of Emeryville's weak and pathetic General Plan have been well documented by the Tattler over the years, including last week's piece highlighting the destruction of the architectural gem formerly known as the First National Bank Building on San Pablo Avenue.  That iconic piece of Emeryville history in brick and stone was destroyed to make way for the post-modernist architectural pablum that now opprobriously occupies the same site.  The General Plan didn't have the legislative or moral authority to secure what Emeryville residents have declared as sacrosanct; part and parcel of progressing is remembering.  We wish to save some of our older buildings.

Emeryville's General Plan
Not up to the task.

The problem comes when developers seek permission to construct projects that involve tearing down our historic and architectural buildings of merit.  The General Plan expressly forbids that but we've yet to see an instance where the Plan has been strong enough to ward off such an attack.  It's clear to all; our General Plan, so democratically vetted it won an award from Sacramento, is no match for any developer seeking to make a buck in our town.
But what about Emeryville's former general plan?  How did that plan fare against developers also so inclined?

As it turns out, Emeryville's previous general plan was no better than what we've got now.
The previous general plan, encoded some 25 years ago was not nearly as vetted by the citizenry as the current iteration.  The City Council simply paid a city planning firm to write it up and then the public was given a few chances to comment before it became the central guiding document for the City.  However even without the current Plan's democratic bona-fides, the old plan also recognized the value in retaining Emeryville's historic architectural legacy, especially in the Park Avenue core.  Vernacular nineteenth and early twentieth century brick factories and warehouses were identified as a specific protected class of buildings by the plan.  These buildings were to be retained and converted for new uses.  The idea was not only to save Emeryville's architectural legacy but also to keep Emeryville as a place for start up entrepreneurial businesses, owing to the cheaper rent in these existing buildings versus new construction.

Consider the Disney/Pixar campus site.  The Emeryville General Plan was unequivocal; The old nineteenth century brick cannery row Del Monte factory on Park Avenue, its many buildings torn down in 1996 (mistakenly reported 1992 by the SF Chronicle), should have been saved.  But it wasn't that our General Plan lacked the cajones to stand up to Pixar...it wouldn't have, but it wasn't Pixar that demolished this massive site.  It was actually torn down for no reason at all.

At first, Kaiser Permanente wished to tear down the old Emeryville cannery row to build a hospital.  The General Plan needed to be amended to specifically allow hospitals to be built on that parcel and that was quickly done by City Hall to accommodate Kaiser in 1994.  The beautiful Del Monte buildings were to be torn down, the General Plan be damned.  But then suddenly Kaiser pulled out of the deal, presumably returning the buildings to their protected status afforded by the General Plan.  But that was not to be the case.  Instead the Redevelopment Agency took it upon itself to demolish Emeryville's historic legacy on Park Avenue with no proposed construction project even in the pipeline.  The General Plan was overturned so Emeryville could clear 20 acres of land in the center of our town to search for a developer to buy it.  It wasn't until later, 1998 with the site cleared, that Pixar bought the land and finished their first building in late 2000.
In a case of governmental hubris, Emeryville City Hall is now claiming on their official website, the land was cleared before Kaiser backed out of the deal...probably because the truth about a General Plan not even worth the paper it's printed on is embarrassing for City Hall.  

One gets a visceral sense of the people's wisdom reflected in their General Plan by gazing at the before and after pictures below:

Park Avenue (Before) 
Cannery Row: part of the old Del Monte Canning factory.
The General Plan said save this building (and others on the site).

Photo used with permission 

Park Avenue (After)
Same site, same camera angle.  Cannery Row today...
Large street trees and a security fence.

Emeryville's Minimum Wage Under Attack by Sacramento Group

California Restaurant Association Moves Against East Bay Cities

The attacks from outside groups on Emeryville's proposed minimum wage law are coming from all sides.  Yesterday the Tattler reported the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the National and California Restaurant Associations (NRA/CRA) are coordinating with Emeryville businesses to lobby City Hall and now California Assembly Bill 669, crafted by the California Restaurant Association, that would invalidate any ordinance Emeryville might come up with.
The story produced by Capital & Main, an online publication highlighting the influence of big business on government and how special interest money works against the public interest, makes a special Emeryville connection; Pixar/Disney is one of the largest contributors to the California Restaurant Association.


From Capital & Main:

Will a New California Bill Trump Minimum Wage Ordinances?

By Bobbi Murray

April 1, 2015 

California is one of only seven states that pays tipped workers their state’s minimum wage instead of the penurious $2.13 (the federal minimum) to $5 range. California’s wait staff and other service workers collect a $9 hourly minimum—plus gratuities. Legislation will raise the state minimum wage to $10 hourly next year. But that won’t apply to tipped workers, if a proposed bill passes the California legislature and becomes law.

Assembly Bill 669 was sponsored by the California Restaurant Association (CRA) and introduced by Assemblyman Tom Daly (D-Anaheim). Daly’s bill would cap the minimum wage for California’s tipped workers at $9 if they earn a total of $15 hourly. Far more disturbing to low-income service employees, however, is a passage embedded in the bill that could undo local minimum wage ordinances previously approved by voters in Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco and San Jose.

Those measures would be overturned unless they “specifically reference” the Daly bill’s language – an unlikelihood, given that the language of the local ordinances could not have anticipated the Daly measure. Specifically, the present bill states, “This bill would supersede local minimum wage laws unless the local law contains specified provisions” and:

This section shall preempt local ordinances setting forth a minimum wage in excess of the minimum wage established by this subdivision, to the extent the ordinance is applicable to qualifying tipped employees, unless the ordinance specifically references this section and states the local jurisdiction’s intent to establish a higher minimum wage for qualifying tipped employees.

“It’s a Restaurant Association sneak–what they really want is to preempt legislation,” says veteran labor attorney Margo Feinberg, who has crafted local wage legislation. “They don’t want to pay the cities’ minimum wages.”

Last November Oakland voters raised that city’s base wage to an hourly $12.25 – which Feinberg says could be threatened by Daly’s legislation.

“Say I work at the Denny’s in Oakland, they have to pay me $12.25 an hour,” she says. “If this goes through, my base pay goes down to $9 an hour.”

Manuel Villanueva, a Los Angeles organizer for Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC) who worked as a server at local eateries for 10 years, explains the stakes for wait staff.

“A tipped worker would never work eight hours,” he says. “You only work four hours or five. Your tips are taxed so your paycheck is lower.”

Those in favor of capping the minimum wage for tipped workers say that it’s a matter of equity—that workers “in the front of the house”—wait staff and table bussers—collect tips while the “back of the house” workers live with the minimum.

“If they are so worried about that why don’t they pay them a fair wage in the first place?” Villanueva asks.

The CRA did not respond to requests for comment.

Sylvia Allegretto, a co-chair of the Center for Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of numerous reports about minimum wage industries, says it’s not as though wait staff make very much money in tips.

“This idea that people make so much in tips—there are way more workers working the slow hours,” says Allegretto. “Somebody works the midnight shift at Applebee’s, somebody works the third shift in the truck stop.”

Feinberg notes that tipped workers are not only restaurant servers, but valet parkers, hairdressers and nail technicians. Women are overwhelmingly represented in the tipped worker sector — a White House report puts the figure at 72 percent.

Allegretto observes: “To the degree it’s a women’s issue is the degree to which the issues disproportionately affect women—the majority of wait staff are women.” Worse for these women, sexual harassment can become just another part of their job: The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says the restaurant sector logs in at 37 percent of sexual harassment complaints.

The attack on tipped worker wages is nothing new for “The Other NRA,” as opponents call the National Restaurant Association, the CRA’s parent organization.

Herman Caine — Tea Party activist, former presidential candidate, Godfather’s Pizza magnate and CEO of the NRA from 1996 to 1999, lobbied hard to “[freeze] the federal tipped minimum wage, keeping it at $2.13 an hour,” says Saru Jayaraman, co-director of ROC and author of the book Behind the Kitchen Door. President Bill Clinton signed the legislation, leaving the hourly in place, for all practical purposes, “in perpetuity.”

Last week in Minnesota a measure “crafted and supported by the Minnesota Restaurant Association” — another NRA offspring — passed the Minnesota House of Representatives to limit tipped workers’ hourly pay to $8 an hour.

The plight of tipped workers is a recipe for poverty, says Jayaraman. “This is the second-largest and fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy,” she tells Capital & Main. “Three of seven employees work in tipped occupations.”

Assemblyman Daly does not directly represent the National or the California Restaurant Association, of course—he’s an elected official. He has served as Mayor of Anaheim—the Disney-dominated Orange County city that is home to the Disneyland Resort, a cluster of theme parks, hotels and restaurants that helped boost Disney profits by 32 percent last year and added to Disney’s 2014 gross income of $20 billion in 2014.

The Mouse has muscle. In 2007, when the Anaheim City Council approved a development that included some affordable housing and threatened to infringe on one of the Disney theme park’s expansion plans, Disney created SOAR– Support Our Anaheim Resort Area with $2 million – to oppose it. A Disney-backed referendum to upend the City Council vote in favor of the project eventually prevailed.

SOAR endorsed Daly in 2014 as “a strong business voice in Sacramento” and the CRA Political Action Committee hosted a fundraiser for Daly at Disney’s Grand California Hotel and Spa. Disney contributed $7,500 to his campaign. One of the four candidates Daly vanquished in the 2012 primary was Julio Perez, head of the Orange County Federation of Labor.

Disney is one of the four largest contributors to the National Restaurant Association, says James Araby, Executive Director of the Western States Council of the United Food and Commercial Workers. (Disclosure: The UFCW is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)

“I think this is an underhanded way for Mr. Daly to serve the National Restaurant Association,” he says of the bill, which has been referred to the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee with no hearing date set. “My hope is that the Democrats in California aren’t fooled.”

He’s rooting for a measure by state Senator Mark Leno that would raise the state minimum to an hourly $13 by July 2017 and tie future bumps to the Consumer Price Index. “Don’t try to put a downward pressure on wages—raise the floor.”

Daly, Araby says, represents a district that is 74 percent Latino—with many employed by the hospitality industry. “Mr. Daly should understand who his constituents are—his constituents would suffer disproportionately if this passes.”

U.C. Berkeley’s Allegretto agrees. “If the Restaurant Association had its way everyone would make $2.13 an hour,” she says.

City of Emeryville Shows Off Its Accomplishment

Disney/Pixar Fence: A Source of Civic Pride

Opinion
The City of Emeryville has redesigned its website!  And for the new and improved look, City Hall decided to highlight the things it's most proud of.  Front and center on the new site is a photograph of the half mile long Disney/Pixar fence right across from City Hall.  That's the fence that sternly reminds everyone that Disney/Pixar isn't interested in Emeryville and keep the hell out...the fence that runs the entire perimeter of the corporate campus, six blocks by two, along Park Boulevard from Hollis all the way up to San Pablo, right through the heart of Emeryville.
We don't need two point perspective in Emeryville; to illustrate it, just make a vanishing point and two lines emanating from it in the form of an inverted V, signifying the edges of the sidewalk...and a fence along the side of it.

Evidently, City Hall thinks getting the Disney/Pixar fence was a big score for Emeryville.  A real coup d'etat in the realm of city planning for our town.  If they weren't proud of the fence, why else would they showcase it as the premier photograph in the new official website representing our town?

The fence cordons off the super block that the City made when they gave Disney/Pixar Watts and Emery Streets to the corporate giant as a gift to help them consolidate their campus.  It's the same fence that blocked the Spur Alley bike path from its planned connection to City Hall.

To those who might not feel that the Disney/Pixar fence is civic pride in steel and thorns, realize, this City is looking out for you in more than just the erection of a fence, the multi billion dollar Disney/Pixar also contributes taxes to our city: $8000 per year.

Other cities may have super blocks, but Emeryville has super duper blocks!  If you're headed north or south, you have to walk an extra mile to get around Disney/Pixar.  You'll have a long walk but not to worry, we've got an eight foot steel fence running the entire length, proving to everyone how much clout Emeryville has; a physical manifestation showing everyone just what our values are.

Vanishing Point:
Civic Pride in Thorns and Steel 
We've got super duper blocks and a half mile long
fence in the heart of Emeryville!