School District Moves Against Bicycling at Center of Community Life Site

"Pimps and Drug Dealers" Will Prey On 
Our Children

No Intent to Build Required Path

The Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee ruled Monday against a plethora of high level authorities that had assembled at the City Hall meeting asking to approve a plan for bike parking at Emeryville's proposed new school and to remove a bike path adjoining the school.  After the Committee voted unanimously to require the path be built and the City Council concurred in April, the Committee was descended upon Monday by a dozen City and School District staff members and department heads.  Included in the fray was the Superintendent of the Schools, the Chief of Police, the head of the Recreation Department and the President of the School Board all pleading for the Committee reverse its earlier vote to compel the District to install the required bicycle/pedestrian path adjoining the incipient Center of Community Life.  The Committee refused Monday to reverse the earlier vote. The assembled group uniformly expressed concern that the proposed bike pedestrian path, called the ECCL Path, would attract a criminal element and that the children at the adjacent school would be imperiled.

Monday's appeal to the Bike/Ped Committee seems to represent a desire on the School District's part to get as much support as possible for not building the ECCL Path but the District indicated it has no intention of building the path in the foreseeable future regardless of the Bike/Ped Committee and the City Council vote forcing them to.  

"I'm Sorry, I Don't Have That Information" Part 2
The throng also asked the Committee members to accept a bike parking component of the Center of Community Life plan but the Committee rebuffed the proposal citing insufficient parking spaces. The plan called for 44 total bike parking spots (22 secure) for the entire Center of Community Life which will include 800 students plus teachers and staff plus the Recreation Department faculty and staff plus members of the public.

Emery schools architect Roy Miller
Again, he doesn't have the information.

The Committee attempted to determine how much bike parking would be appropriate based on how many people would be using the site on a given day, the standard metric the Committee uses as it recommends bike parking for commercial projects in town.  The School District architect, Roy Miller told stunned Committee members he had no idea how many people could be expected to be on the site leaving them unable to make an informed decision, "I'm sorry, I don't have that information" he said, in a moment of deja vu.  Mr Miller had uttered the same remark to the planning Commission and then the City Council in April about size of the existing school pool deck, as those decision making bodies attempted to determine whether to shrink the deck to make way for the ECCL Path.
After Mr Miller punted on the number of people expected at the Center of Community Life on a daily basis, the Bike/Ped Committee members determined on their own it must be more than 1000 and they called for at least 10% bike parking spots or 100 for the cramped site, a number that seemed to stun the school officials.

"Classist"

Schools Superintendent Debra Lindo
Bike/Ped paths are bad..."drastic" even 
So why are WE being picked on? It's not fair!

The meeting was punctuated with plenty of hyperbole and overblown bombast as the authorities attempted to throw their weight around and intimidate the Committee members.  Two school security personnel testified that the bike/ped path would be crawling with criminals preying on the school children, upping the ante of the previous "gang rape" rhetoric from Council member Nora Davis.  The chief of school security, Ken Wright noted thugs and criminals would use the path as an access point; "pimps and drug dealers" would be "cutting holes in the fence" to get at the children he said.  In an emotional plea, he hinted children could be "taken" and he said no one would want that on their conscience.
Schools Superintendent Debra Lindo said the bike/ped path is "drastic" and she complained that it is unfair that the neighboring private school, Escuela Bilingue Internacional (EBI) was released from a proposed path alongside that facility while the Center of Community Life is being forced to accepted its path, a double standard.  She called the April decision by the City Council allowing removal the EBI Path "classist",  owing to the advantaged private school and disadvantaged public school dynamic.

Ms Lindo and the anti-ECCL Path crew plans on taking its show on the road after the drubbing it suffered at the Bike/Ped Committee Monday.  They plan on giving the Committee a tour of the site in the near future in hopes of peeling off a majority of Committee members before appealing to the City Council at a later date.

Council Determines Pedestrian Path Unwarranted

General Plan Amended, Ped Path Removed

One Path Saved

The Emeryville City Council voted last Tuesday night to amend the City's new General Plan in order to remove a planned pedestrian path in east Emeryville but in the same evening they voted to stand by the General Plan and save another path in the same neighborhood, a move that surprised many including the mayor Kurt Brinkman.

  

EBI Pedestrian Path Deleted

The City Council revisited the two paths they claimed they did not want to delete from the General Plan two weeks ago.  The paths in question are one connecting 45th and 47th on the eastern property line of Escuela Bilingua Internacionale school (EBI) and one connecting 47th and 53rd on the western property line of the future site of the Emeryville Center for Community Life (ECCL).  The Council asked staff two weeks ago, to bring them amendments to the General Plan that would, in each case, move the paths to undetermined locations to the east instead of deleting them from the General Plan entirely.

In the intervening time between the meeting two weeks ago and last Tuesday, the Council lost its appetite for paths moved to the east.  The EBI path alternative considered would have continued Essex street northward through at least two private residences.  One resident that thought he might be affected showed up to ask what exactly the Council had in mind and whether they were planning on taking his property via eminent domain.  He expressed the view that a pedestrian path right between residences was not desirable.

The alternative design of the EBI path proposed by Planning Commissioner Sean Moss was not given serious consideration, although his recommendation to preserve the irrevocable 'offer of dedication' of the path property, already recorded against the title to EBI's property, found favor among a majority of the Council.   This would leave open the possibility that a path or other public use of that proposed path area could be made at any time in the future, even decades from now.

In a somewhat comical moment, EBI's attorney explained that the conditions of approval granted to EBI still require EBI to build the path no matter what the Council might do with respect to altering the General Plan.  Ultimately this means that there will be future public meetings discussing this path, because EBI will need to have those conditions altered and may negotiate to provide some other public benefit instead of the path.

In a 4-1 vote, Councilmember Jennifer West dissenting, the Council decided to simply delete the EBI path from the General Plan.

ECCL Bicycle/Pedestrian Path Survives

The ECCL path met a different fate. The alternative path location considered was a pedestrian-only path through the middle of the ECCL site, instead of the bicycle-pedestrian path that the General Plan calls for along the property's western border.  No one believed that this alternative path location was viable, and no modification of the current ECCL design was provided to show whether it could be accommodated.  No one was willing to make a motion to accept this alternative.

Councilmember Nora Davis then proposed that the Council simply delete the ECCL path from the General Plan.  

"What do we do now?"
Caught flat footed, Mayor Brinkman
seemed stunned after a majority
voted to save the ECCL path.  

 Mayor Kurt Brinkman agreed, both of them citing safety concerns regarding the path.  Council watchers will recall Ms Davis' warnings from the previous meeting of gang rapes being the inevitable outcome if the path were to be approved.  
Vice Mayor Jac Asher however highlighted a different safety concern, the large number of cars that are likely to envelope the ECCL site once the schools are consolidated there.  Ms Asher made reference to the tragic incident in 2001 in which an Anna Yates kindergartener was killed by a car during morning drop-off and argued that providing better bicycle and pedestrian connectivity around the site could actually contribute to safety rather than detract from it.  

Then, in a surprising vote, Councilmembers Atkin, West, and Asher voted against deleting the ECCL bicycle/pedestrian path from the General Plan. Mayor Kurt Brinkman responded with, "Well, what do we do now?"  
With no majority willing to move or delete the ECCL path, it simply remains in the General Plan.  
Director of Planning and Building, Charlie Bryant, then suggested to the Council that simply because a path is in the General Plan does not require it to be built today.  He suggested that the ECCL's various design components that might come before the Council could be approved even if they lacked this path, perhaps proposing that the path might be added years—or decades—down the road in "Phase 2" of the ECCL, if there ever is such a thing.

City Council Kicks the Can Down the Bike/Pedestrian Paths

Bike/Ped Paths Will Bring "Gang Rapes" 
to Emeryville Says Councilwoman Davis

Opinion
Two amendments to the General Plan came before the Emeryville City Council Tuesday night, both aiming to remove bicycle and pedestrian paths from the plan.  The Council failed to act after deliberation, opting instead to postpone the decisions but not before providing council watchers with another evening of entertaining histrionic hyperbole.  
The General Plan, adopted in October 2009 after thorough vetting by residents, called for these paths, in keeping with its guiding principles of Emeryville as "A connected place", "Enhanced and connected open space network and green streets," "A walkable, fine-grained city, emphasizing pedestrians," and "A diversity of transportation modes and choices."

The General Plan’s guiding principles didn’t seem to mean much to the City Council Tuesday night as they looked for ways to remove these paths.  The first path would have connected 45^th Street and 47^th Street just east of San Pablo Avenue, and was a requirement of approvals sought by the private school Escuela Bilingue Internacional (EBI) when the school moved into the Triangle neighborhood.  The second path was intended to provide bicycle and pedestrian access between 53^rd and 47^th Streets along the western property line of the proposed Emeryville Center for Community Life (ECCL). 

In both cases, the Council voted to continue the discussion to the next Council meeting, asking staff to bring them amendments to the General Plan that, rather than deleting the paths entirely, would simply move the paths to undetermined locations elsewhere within these blocks.

One need only look at a map of Emeryville to see that the Council has dodged the issue in completely unrealistic ways. Neither of these blocks provides any realistic alternative locations for these paths.

In the case of the EBI path, the rest of 45^th and 47^th streets are filled with residences.  The City would have to purchase adjoining properties on both streets to ever have an opportunity to put a path elsewhere on the block.  Such an opportunity will obviously never arise and the City is unlikely to have the millions of dollars such an alternative would require.  But, in the fanciful hope of some multi-million dollar option arising some time in the distant future, the Council rejected the opportunity to get such a path at EBI’s expense today.

In the case of the path that could have enhanced access to and around the ECCL, the Council actually suggested that the General Plan be altered to show the path somewhere else on the School site.  The General Plan is supposed to guide our City for a twenty-year period and Council member West objected that she didn’t think it was likely that the ECCL would be redeveloped within the next 20 years.  Council member West was right about this. Imagining that a path might one day exist elsewhere on the site is pure fantasy.  Even City Manager, Patrick O’Keeffe, seeming exasperated by the Council’s unwillingness to simply delete the path, explained that it was not realistic to ask the District to come back in two weeks with an alternative location for the path: it must be on the western edge of the site, or not be a part of the design.

To their credit, Council members Jac Asher and Jennifer West tried to reject the proposed amendment to the General Plan deleting the ECCL bike/ped path, but they lost that vote 3-2.  In a subsequent vote, they joined Council member Ruth Atkin in postponing the issue to the next Council meeting, so that we can all consider this fantasy alternative location for the path.

The idea of these bike/pedestrian paths produced some entertaining hyperbole from those seeking to shut down consideration by the Council.  School District Superintendent Debra Lindo, alarmed at the prospects of the path near the future school site at the Center of Community Life told the Council members "bike/ped paths aren't helpful" to schools and the ECCL path would represent a "supervision problem" for the School District.  
Council member Nora Davis was less circumspect stating bike/ped paths represent "a place where crime can flourish" and she chastised her colleagues on the recklessness of the paths, "We have a responsibility to the citizens of this town" to stop these paths she said.  Emeryville residents could expect to see "Richmond style gang rapes" she said, if these paths are approved. 

Unfazed by Councilwoman Davis' antics, Planning Commissioner Sean Moss spoke in favor of retaining both paths, going so far as to say that the Council "could not in good faith" make the findings necessary to amend the General Plan in these ways, calling them "findings from nothing".  Commissioner Moss is right.  He simply wrongly assumed that this Council cares about acting in accordance with our City’s stated principles.

         =

Planning Commissioners Reject Colleague's Plea to Save Pedestrian Path

EBI Path Dead, 

ECCL Path Gets a Second Chance
Commissioner "disheartened"

In a unanimous voice, the Emeryville Planning Commission spurned their colleague, Sean Moss as they collectively voted to move ahead with a proposal to amend Emeryville's General Plan to remove the EBI Pedestrian Path tonight.  The path would connect 45th and 47th Street in Emeryville's Triangle neighborhood.

No good.
We have enough of this already, thank you.

The absent Commissioner Moss made an impassioned plea in a letter to the rest of the Planning Commission to not change the General Plan and to retain the path ahead of the vote tonight but the letter fell on deaf ears.  All four attending Commissioners voted to get rid of the EBI path but at least three wanted citizens to know they did so with a heavy heart.  Commission Chairwoman Vanessa Kuemmerle said she was "disheartened to take apart the General Plan" with her vote.  Commissioner Steven Steinberg recused himself because of his home's proximity to the proposed ped path.
Surprisingly, one of the two original neighbor complainants to the path spoke in favor of keeping the path but he said he wanted adjustments made to it to address safety concerns.  The neighbor indicated that the other original complainant also was not in favor of removing the path, creating the bizarre spectacle of the Planning Commissioners one by one voting to eliminate a General Plan mandated pedestrian path against the wishes of the original complainants.

ECCL Path Saved
In another action, the Commission later voted to keep the General Plan as it is and not amend it to remove the so called ECCL Path.  That proposed path connecting 47th and 53rd Street behind the future Emeryville Center of Community Life, is also required by the General Plan but School District officials and some residents at adjoining Emery Bay Village have said they want it eliminated.  The Commission voted 4-1 to keep the ECCL Path and retain the General Plan (Buzz Cardoza dissenting).
The city staff advised the Commission to elimintate the ECCL (and the EBI) Path and amend the General Plan to reflect that.

Both votes; against the EBI Path and in favor of the ECCL Path, will now go to the City Council for final say.

Council Says NO To Bike/Pedestrian Paths

Council Seeks To Overturn General Plan 
On Bike/Ped Connectivity

The city council moved Tuesday night to kill two bike/pedestrian paths in east Emeryville after neighbors abutting the paths complained.  Both paths are identified by the General Plan as crucial for much needed bike/pedestrian connectivity, adding fire to growing charges that the new Plan lacks teeth and without enforceability, it is simply being ignored.

One path, informally called the EBI Path (or Escuela Bilingue Internacional), named for the private school on the east side of San Pablo Avenue, is proposed to be located behind that school and connects 47th and 45th streets.

Center of Community Life looking west.
The pedestrian/bike path is located at the top of
the photo on the property line connecting
47th Street on the left and 53rd Street on the right. 

The other path called the ECCL Path (or Emeryville Center of Community Life) is on the west side of San Pablo Avenue, and is to be located behind the school/community center.  It connects 53rd and 47th streets.  The ECCL Path is in an identified "Pedestrian Priority Zone", a special region where extra provisions and deference should be considered for pedestrians according to the General Plan.

The two paths are part of the General Plan's goal to deliver better connectivity for residents that was vetted by citizens and city planning professionals over a five year period ending in a city council approval in 2010. The Plan received an award in 2010 for its highly democratic vetting and identifies one of the biggest problems with Emeryville is the lack of connectivity for bicyclists and pedestrians.

The council said they changed their minds about the two paths after they received complaints from residents near the proposed paths.  The ECCL Path received complaints from residents at Emery Bay Village, a housing complex abutting it to the west and the EBI Path received complaints from Triangle residents adjacent to that path.

The General Plan will have to be amended to officially kill the two paths, a process that will involve the Pedestrian/Bike Committee and the Transportation Committee.  It is expected to take some months.  The Plan, already amended numerous times mostly to accommodate business interests, is expected to guide Emeryville for 25 years.  It cost some $2 million outright and another $2 million in city staff time according to city officials.