Sutter Hospital Continues to Say NO to a CBA - Community Leaders Push Back

 Impolitic Corporate Hubris:

Pushed to Commit to Negotiate With the Community, Sutter Demurs

Community Leaders are Unimpressed

News Analysis

Executives at Sutter Health Corporation redoubled their insistence recently, that they would not partake in any Community Benefits Agreement proposed by the Emeryville community associated with their proposed $1 billion hospital campus at 53rd and Hollis streets.  The surprising Sutter recalcitrance has prompted government officials, community leaders and city council candidates to publicly weigh in on the corporation's lack of faith in the same community it wants to locate within.  

Sutter is aware their participation is voluntary and there is no law constraining them with regard to such a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) made with the community.  They are however constrained by law with regard to negotiating and entering into an agreement with the City of Emeryville if they wish to locate their hospital campus here.  Such an agreement is called a Development Agreement (DA).

Sutter's Media Relations Manger
Monique Binkley Smith
She took issue with the Tattler's story on
Sutter's refusal to participate in a CBA.
But she refuses to commit to Sutter 
participating in a CBA.  Gaslighting?

Sutter’s latest dustup with the community and their CBA proposal came in response to a Tattler inquiry made after our September 8th story, where we broke the news of Sutter’s intension to waive off a CBA.  That story hit the streets with quite a fury causing Monique Binkley Smith, Sutter’s Media Relations Manager, to write a September 9th email to the Tattler expressing disfavor over what she saw as inaccuracies in the story.  Ms Smith asserted, “Statements [in the Tattler story], including the headline that 'Sutter Hospital Says NO Community Benefits Agreement', as well as assertions that Sutter 'will not participate' in a CBA or 'will not negotiate directly with the community', do not accurately reflect what we communicated”.  

The Tattler responded to Ms Smith and the management at Sutter, the email trail informs that they had in fact asserted they would not participate in a CBA for their Emeryville project but if Sutter wants to change their refusal (as hinted to by the denials in the September 9th email from Ms Smith), the Tattler would gladly commit to a story on Sutter’s new found community spirit and commitment to participating in a CBA.  We said in the email response we would give them ample time to mull it over.  That was September 9th.   We conclude now that Sutter continues to refuse to participate in a CBA associated with their Emeryville project and their refusal to clearly say they are willing to participate is what drives our conclusion.

Simply put, Sutter can inform the community at any time they want that they are willing to participate in a CBA and the community will oblige and the Tattler will report.  Gaslighting the press or the community directly will not help in Sutter’s quest to make the friends they will need in Emeryville as they attempt to move the project forward.  This obstinacy will make the city council’s job more difficult when they consider whether to grant approvals for the project and it is not a stretch to imagine this kind of impolitic corporate behavior by this want-to-be corporate neighbor, will harm Sutter’s prospects.

A CBA is a legally binding agreement between the community and a developer.  Municipalities are not part of a CBA.  Negotiations during the CBA process brings community benefits provided by the developer and signed off promises from the community to not further block a developer's project proposal.

The Community Speaks

The whole imbroglio has brought the community into conversation:  

North Oakland's Cathy Leonard
She has much experience with CBAs
in her community activism and she
indicates it is critical Sutter act in good 
faith to mollify community impacts.

North Oakland resident and Golden Gate Community Association (GGCA)  Board Chair, Cathy Leonard, stated, “The (GGCA) supports a formal Community Benefits Agreement negotiated with Sutter Health by a unified local coalition of residents and other stakeholders from project-impacted neighborhoods across all three cities, i.e. Oakland, Emeryville, and Berkeley.  As part of this coalition, GGCA would work to ensure that affected neighborhoods and taxpayers do not bear the hazards and cost burdens associated with Sutter Health's increased traffic, noise, pollution, and other probable impacts clearly identified through the EIR scoping process by more than 60 residents, public agencies, the City of Oakland, Emeryville City Council members and Emeryville Planning Commissioners.” 

United States Congresswoman Lateefah Simon said she expects “robust community engagement” with Sutter in Emeryville.  She added, “Sutter needs to listen to the people in the community”, while California  Assembly Member Mia Bonta told the Tattler simply, “CBAs are good things in the community”.

Emeryville City council candidates were eager to weigh in: 

Brandon Soublet said, “I’m glad to see local elected and appointed officials uniting around a resident-first approach. We all agree this development has to work for Emeryville—and with a non-profit partner like Sutter, that means securing binding agreements for real community benefits.  This project has to make sense for Emeryville residents, and because Sutter is a non-profit, that means legally binding agreements to bring tangible benefits to our community.”

Corry Frydlewicz told us, “I think developing a CBA can be a great idea. The ideas shared that get the community on the same page can be helpful for organizing and educating our representatives. Sutter has been asking for our feedback, so hopefully they'd welcome it too. There's really no downside for openly collaborating on a plan, even if it doesn't get accepted.”

Current City Councilman and candidate for re-election Kalimah Priforce had the shortest answer of any of them.  When we told him Sutter so far is refusing to commit to a Community Benefits Agreement, the Councilman simply said, “We’ll see about that”.

David Mourra, also current Councilman and candidate for re-election was asked directly about the Sutter refusal but he also refused….to comment.

Rounding out the City Hall response, the following were contacted but refused to comment on the failure of a Sutter CBA:

-Mayor Sukhdeep Kaur

-Vice Mayor Mathew Solomon

-City Councilwoman Courtney Welch

-City Manager LaTanya Bellow

-Emery Schools Superintendent Quiauna Scott

The initial September 8th Tattler story on the Sutter CBA refusal is HERE.

Congresswoman Lateefah Simon
California’s 12th Congressional District
U.S. House of Representatives
"Sutter needs to listen to the
people in the community".
"Nothing for us without us".

Private Business Advocacy Organization to Receive Emeryville Taxpayer Public Money (Again)

 Corruption Journal:

Gift of Taxpayer Money Going to the Private Chamber of Commerce (Again)

If the Recent Past is a Guide, the $30,663 is Just the Camel's Nose Under the Tent

Former Mayor Assured Residents This Day Would Never Come

New Council Is Nonplused: 'What Could Go Wrong?'

At the May 19th city council meeting, the Emeryville council politicians unanimously agreed to issue a government check in the amount of $30,663 to the Emeryville Commerce Connection (ECC), a replacement organization to the former Chamber of Commerce, in order to promote dues paying restaurants in town; the money representing a public to private exchange former City Councilman John Bauters notably said was never going to happen again.   The controversial taxpayer payment to the private and exclusive ECC organization funds a ‘Restaurant Week’ event in Emeryville this October.  By way of transparency, the private organization says they will show the City how they spent taxpayer's money at a later date. 

The private ECC organization taking public money was debated in 2024 when the organization was newly forming amid assurances from then Councilman Bauters who offered that the group would never get any public money like the private Chamber of Commerce did before them.  Mr Bauters used his argument as a way to take away from Councilman Kalimah Priforce’s publicly made concerns about possible conflicts of interest if the group ever was in a position to take public money.  It is ironic that Mr Priforce, who has now two years later voted with his colleagues to give a tranche of public money to ECC, is receiving push back from his colleagues for again expressing worry about possible conflicts of interest he made before the vote.  In that vein, Mr Priforce expressed reservations about the private ECC receiving taxpayer money at both the 2024 meeting and also at the May 19th meeting, even though he ended up voting with his colleagues to fund the ECC in the end.  

Former Mayor John Bauters
'The new chamber of commerce, the 
Emeryville Commerce Connection, is a private
organization that will never receive public money
like the old chamber of commerce did.' 
Until on May 19th they did.

In the intervening two years, the tax exempt A 501(c)(6) organization ECC has made something of a name for itself for its opacity, drawing out the line of questions from Mr Priforce who told Mary Lou Thiercof, the organization's CEO he was not comfortable giving public money to the secretive group.  As a condition of his support, Councilman Priforce asked the CEO if she could reveal who sits on the Board of Directors, noting that information is not on the ECC website.  In response, Ms Thiercof assured the Councilman she would email him the list of Board members privately.  Notably, the other City Council members expressed no concerns about a secret Board of Directors for the organization they were about to give public money to. 

Finally delivering his YES vote to the ECC (with reservations), Council member Priforce said he thought Restaurant Week delivered good value for the City's brand and he doubted the City's public Economic Development Advocacy Committee’s (EDAC) capacity to pull that off effectively.

Perhaps sensing this day would come and recognizing the checkered past of the former Chamber of Commerce and all their gifts of public money bestowed on them by the City Council, former Mayor John Bauters notably told his colleagues on March 19th, 2024 that the ECC would not ever get any public money from Emeryville.  Pushing back against a questioning Councilman Priforce, who even then was concerned about possible conflicts of interest from the newly formed ECC that might arise as a result of them taking public money, Mr Bauters issued a strong rebuke to Mr Priforce.  Mr Bauters assured everyone that the ECC is not getting any public money and they won’t in the future.  He lectured his colleague Priforce,  “Chambers [of commerce] aren’t supposed to be run by the City.  A group of business owners and residents came together [to form ECC] and there’s no City money in that….zero dollars.  So there’s no conflict.”  Bauters pointedly took issue with the Priforce concerns, “There’s nothing wrong with a group of private individuals or businesses choosing to associate and work together [as long as they don’t take public money]” said Mr Bauters (brackets added by the Tattler).  

The private recipient of Emeryville taxpayer's money
is not transparent. 
Membership in the secretive organization at first was
by invitation only.  Now membership can be taken away
based on 'team player' unquantified capriciousness.   
  

It is interesting that Councilman Priforce who was prescient in his concerns about possible conflict of interest by ECC in 2024, now two years later is still being reprimanded by his colleagues for raising concerns about possible conflicts of interest when it is no longer a possibility that ECC will get public money but now a reality. 

As the ECC announced its formation in 2024, CEO Thiercof assured the Council the organization, like the Chamber of Commerce before, would be “open to all Emeryville businesses”, a claim that has since been quietly retracted.  After at first allowing membership to businesses by invitation only, the ECC now says membership is not granted to all, businesses can be permanently excommunicated if they offer any public criticism of the ECC, Ms Thiercof told the Tattler, “a lifetime ban will result”.  Notably, businesses that are represented by the City of Emeryville’s own public Economic Development Advisory Committee (EDAC), namely every business in Emeryville, are free to criticize the workings of the committee or even the City Council in any way they see fit.  That illustrating a primary difference between the private sector and the public sector.

Council member Priforce noted the ECC grew out of the EDAC and that committee, still extant, is publicly accountable and transparent, its meetings open to the public.  The new private and secret ECC business support organization getting public money is a source of concern for Council member Priforce who stands alone in his concern.  The other four Council members did not question Ms Thiercof about receiving public money in 2024 or on May 19th.

Emeryville Commerce Connection CEO
 Mary Lou Thiercof 
She told the City Council
ECC is open to "all Emeryville businesses "
but later she quantified that, closing the organization
to some Emeryville small businesses.
 ECC is taking public money regardless. She warned 
noncompliant business members will face a 
"life time ban" if they criticize the ECC.

The $30,663 given to the private ECC has been taken out of the City’s Economic Development Fund that the EDAC uses and so this gift demonstrably comes at the expense of public accountability.

Gifts of public money to private organizations can sometimes turn bad, commonly morphing into ongoing support after starting with a well meaning one time gift.   Notably, the former Chamber of Commerce started as an independent self sustaining organization but after receiving public money for specific projects, morphed into unconditional and ongoing free rent of a large City rented office space and a monthly stipend of $45,000 per year for its periodical newsletter called the Emeryville Connection that was printed and sent to every Emeryville residence.  Infamously, the Chamber’s newsletter was highly partisan, to the point that they even told Emeryville voters who to vote for in Council races….audaciously all done with taxpayer money.  That violation of public trust was illegal and after the Tattler reported on it, the City Council stopped giving taxpayer money to the Chamber for the Emeryville Connection.  Eventually City Hall stopped the free rent too, ultimately causing the Chamber to file for bankruptcy.  

Before forwarding the money to ECC, City Council members David Mourra, Courtney Welch and Sukhdeep Kaur all praised the private membership organization, Mr Mourra stating, “I can’t think of a better organization to invest this [public] money into”.

 The Emeryville Commerce Connection posts that their goal is to “bring [certain favored] people together” on their website (Tattler added brackets).  They indicated they would let the Council know how they spent the public money at some later date.

The old Emeryville Chamber of Commerce and their corrupt receipt of public money is HERE,  HERE,  HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Emeryville Small Business Owner Says City Should Help Small Business Owners

 Letter to the Tattler: My Emeryville Small Business Is Under Attack

Emeryville Resident and Small Business Owner, Empress

Small Business in Emeryville Should Be Encouraged

What's Happening Here is Discouragement

The Tattler offers citizens with news worthy stories about Emeryville to submit letters for publication for the 'Letters to the Tattler' feature.

I run a small, street-facing live-work business on Sherwin Avenue at The Emery, on the historic grounds of the former Sherwin-Williams site, where I craft and sell artisan cookies through my company, Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. What I’ve built is more than a cookie business. It’s a community-centered space rooted in culture, wellness, and connection. It’s also exactly the kind of neighborhood-serving storefront the City of Emeryville envisioned when approving this mixed-use development: active, locally owned, and engaged with the public sidewalk.

But since October, my ability to operate has been under coordinated attack.

A neighboring resident, Emeryville Housing Committee member James Brooks Jessup, who occupies an adjacent live-work unit, has led an effort to challenge the legitimacy of my business. He and a group of aligned neighbors have repeatedly claimed, falsely, that I am operating an illegal restaurant rather than a permitted retail cookie business. These claims have been submitted to the City, Alameda County, and property management, triggering investigations and enforcement actions.

The truth is straightforward: I have the permits required to operate my business. The City has confirmed this. And yet, a pattern has emerged where complaint-driven enforcement continues to escalate, regardless of verified compliance.

Through documents obtained via the California Public Records Act, I have uncovered what appears to be a coordinated campaign of complaints, surveillance, and targeted reporting. The result has been an environment of ongoing scrutiny and intimidation, one that no small business owner should have to endure simply for operating within the bounds of the law.

At the center of the current dispute is an attempt by Alameda County to reclassify my business under a Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MEHKO) permit. This designation is intended for home-based food businesses not street-facing, mixed-use storefronts like mine. Applying it to my business would impose a cap of just 90 sales per week, effectively making it impossible to sustain operations or grow.

I declined this misclassification and requested a designation that accurately reflects my live-work storefront model. At present, no such classification exists.

This is not just about my business. It reveals a larger systemic failure: outdated regulatory frameworks are being used to govern modern, hybrid business models; enforcement is being driven by complaints rather than facts; and there are no meaningful protections in place for small business owners facing bad-faith reporting.

Despite bringing these concerns forward, I have received little support from the City of Emeryville and no support from property management at The Emery. In fact, I was forced to remove my signage and outdoor seating from the patio outside my unit that is clearly designed for such use. With the exception of Councilmember Kalimah Priforce, there has been no meaningful intervention to address the harm being caused or to protect my ability to operate as intended within this development.

What’s at stake is more than one business. If I am forced out, it is likely that my unit will revert to residential-only use, leaving a dark storefront where there was once community engagement. That outcome would directly contradict the City’s stated vision for The Emery as a vibrant, activated neighborhood with locally serving retail at its core.

Instead, I now face housing insecurity, loss of income, and the erosion of a business I have spent years building while the systems meant to support small entrepreneurs remain silent or ineffective.

When I moved into The Emery, I was told these storefronts were meant for businesses like mine locally rooted, community-driven, and accessible to the public. That is exactly what Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. represents.

The question now is whether Emeryville will honor that promise.

BIO: A single-mother and lifelong native of 94608, Empress founded Choc’late Mama Cookie Co., now the only Afro-Indigenous woman-led cookie café and community hub in Emeryville.  For over a decade, her work has used culinary art and hospitality as both nourishment and medicine, intentionally creating spaces that cultivate connection across the Bay Area and beyond.

This moment is about more than cookies, she says.  It’s about who gets to exist, create, and thrive in spaces that claim to support small, local business, and what happens when that support is tested.  

Choc'late Mama Cookies' mailing address is 4310 Hubbard Street but pedestrian access is on Sherwin Avenue between Hubbard and Horton streets.  Phone: (510) 846-1229

Follow @chocolatemamacookies on Instagram to witness the community, culture, and consistency behind her work.

One Party Rule Skews Politics in the Bay Area: Progressives Face Erasure

 When Procedure Becomes Punishment: The East Bay’s Censure Politics and the National Democratic Crack-Up

In December, 2024 the Emeryville city council majority took a controversial and precedent setting move to censure and sanction their colleague Kalimah Priforce for being late on his FPPC filings, a harsh sentence considering many council members over the years have run afoul of the FPPC schedule and that the accusers themselves were also revealed to be late on their own FPPC filings.  Nonetheless, Mr Priforce was released from his censure and sanction in January as per City Hall rules.  But his colleagues on the council are still not satisfied.  So they have now moved to block the Councilman from all boards and committees as well as all regional boards and committees, the same punishment as when they placed him under official sanction but this time without the benefit of a legal vote to sanction.  Mr Priforce, the only progressive on the council and unsurprisingly also the most popular council member, is under permanent censure and sanction, put there by his conservative colleagues without transparency and accountability.  They have done so because of Mr Priforce’s progressive populist politics and because they can.  

It is no coincidence that Emeryville’s Council member Priforce, a Democratic Socialist, is shunned by the centrist majority establishment at the Democratic Party of Alameda County and in the region.  Indeed, politics outside Emeryville’s borders is controlling the anti-Priforce narrative and dictating a project of action against our Council member.  To understand why the politics in Emeryville is so mean and skewed against the popular Kalimah Priforce, one needs to look outside our little town.  

Mayor Kaur's latest silencing of Mr Priforce for asking questions “at the wrong time”  (covered by the Tattler)  is part of this new censure and sanction culture among the Corporate Democrat majority against a progressive Democrat that’s happening now around the whole Bay Area.

News Analysis

If you want to understand a political era, don’t start with campaign slogans. Start with process: who gets heard, who gets disciplined, and who gets told—explicitly or implicitly—that their job is to sit down and comply.

In Emeryville, Council member Kalimah Priforce’s formal censure brought by his four Council colleagues in 2024 may have ended on paper, but close observers realize it persists in practice—as a “shadow censure,” an unofficial regime where the status quo remains: the same narrowing of debate, the same chilling of oversight, and the same public scolding deployed as a governing style.  The four couldn’t defeat him at the polls (he won with the highest vote percentage among all five Council members), so this is how they take him down.

Igor Tregub
Chair of the Alameda County Democratic Party
He signed an anti-ceasefire in Gaza letter for the 
right wing Jewish Community Relations Council.

The city’s newest mayor, Sukhdeep Kaur, has become a focal point of that critique after a council meeting exchange in which Priforce sought to ask questions of staff during deliberations—a routine practice in many cities, and historically in Emeryville. Instead, he was admonished from the dais. Residents in the room pushed back, arguing the rebuke was out of line and selective. The episode is now preserved in the meeting record.

The immediate question is simple: Why is a Council member being disciplined for doing the job voters elected them to do—asking questions, interrogating assumptions, working in such a manner as to empower citizens and demanding clarity?

The larger question is bigger: Is Emeryville becoming a local case study in how centrist Democratic majorities use ‘decorum' and ‘censure’ to suppress democratic-socialist dissent—rather than defeat it on policy?

And if that sounds dramatic, look north to Richmond—where this same political epistemology is being tested, argued over, and normalized.

From ‘Accountability’ to Containment

Kalimah Priforce
 Emeryville City Council Member
A progressive Democrat, he voted for a ceasefire
in Gaza.  He's got a target on his back, put there
by establishment Democrats.  Priforce is the 
most popular council member in Emeryville.

Censure is often described as a tool of accountability. But in practice, it can function as something else: a vote of institutional ostracism by a domineering majority—a formal declaration that a colleague is outside the circle of legitimate participation.

That was the vibe in Emeryville when the Council majority voted to censure Mr  Priforce after a heated, highly attended meeting that local outlets framed as political theater and civic dysfunction.   East Bay Insider, a center right political Substack platform, described the special meeting as raucous and reported Mr Priforce argued the council provided no evidence of wrongdoing.

The Emeryville Tattler went further, portraying the episode as political punishment made possible by a structural flaw: Emeryville’s ethics enforcement is largely internal—City Council judging City Council—without an independent ethics commission to create a firewall between politics and discipline.

That structural critique matters because it points to the heart of the “shadow censure” argument: when a body can discipline a member without meaningful independent review, “ethics” can become a weapon—especially when power is held by a stable establishment majority and the target is a lone progressive dissenter.

Even critics of Priforce should be able to recognize the danger. If a council can define ‘decorum’ as ‘don’t embarrass the majority’, then democracy becomes stage-managed compliance.

Emeryville’s Long Political Backstory: Redevelopment, Power, and Whom City Hall Serves

This fight didn’t begin with one personality clash or one mayoral gavel.

Emeryville’s modern identity has been shaped by redevelopment-era politics: aggressive commercial transformation, land deals ostensibly in the public interest and a model of governance that often treated this model of growth as an unquestioned public good.

The City’s own redevelopment history notes that Emeryville’s redevelopment plans date back decades (including a 1976 plan and the Shellmound Park redevelopment plan adopted in 1987).  That redevelopment focus included major projects like Bay Street, built on land tied to heavy industrial contamination and the layered history of the Shellmound area.

Sukhdeep Kaur
Emeryville Mayor
She's leading a charge in Emeryville to
erase the progressive Democrat,
Council member Kalimah Priforce.

UC Berkeley alumni and documentary filmmaker Andrés Cediel documented the Shellmound controversy directly in a 2005 documentary examining the Native American cultural archeology that was destroyed and buried under Bay Street development.  KQED too has reported on how the Bay Area shellmounds—central to Ohlone life and burial practices—were erased through rapacious development across the region.

That history matters because Emeryville’s political center of gravity has long tilted toward pro-development governance skewed towards connected developers—a tendency documented by academic and policy observers who describe how redevelopment tools (subsidies, tax incentives, land assembly) were deployed to remake the city’s economy.  A landmark labor-oriented report by EBASE, a locally based social justice organization, on Emeryville redevelopment likewise treated the city’s boom as a political-economic project with winners and losers—not simply ‘growth’.

So when residents today watch City Hall clamp down on the council member who’s politics are most associated with anti-corporate populism—tenant protections, accountability rhetoric, and ‘people first’, especially working people—they read it not as a random interpersonal conflict, but as continuity: a city political machine defending its equilibrium.

Richmond’s Mirror: Censure Politics Goes Regional

In January 2026, the City of Richmond became the regional mirror of this new politics.

A proposed Richmond resolution formally censuring Mayor Eduardo Martinez described alleged conduct in sweeping moral and civic terms and sought to censure and bind the mayor to trainings and structured engagement.  Mr Martinez had forwarded an internet post that was construed as anti-semitic, a transgression he said he had done inadvertently and without malice and for which he apologized publicly.   The press covered competing narratives: harm and accountability on one side, and claims of political targeting and silencing on the other.

ABC channel 7 quoted Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) leadership calling for accountability, while also quoting Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) arguing Mayor Martinez was being targeted because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy and that the response should not be “isolation or silencing”.

KQED reported Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller of Temple Beth Hillel describing the posts as “shocking” and outlining fear within a small community, while also emphasizing the value of conversation and learning over immediate resignation demands.

Local News Matters later reported that the council did not ultimately adopt the censure resolution that night, instead advancing a separate “atonement plan” proposed by Martinez—while the censure item was pushed to a future meeting amid procedural wrangling about agenda order and time.

This is the pattern: whether in Emeryville, Richmond or elsewhere in the Bay Area; censure fights become proxy wars over legitimacy—who gets to speak, what counts as acceptable politics, and whether the institution will rehabilitate dissent or punish it.

‘Shadow Censure’ as Governing Style

In Emeryville, the claim now is that formal censure has given way to something quieter but arguably more corrosive: procedural discipline as a daily operating system.

What does that look like?

-Questions treated as disruption.

-Rules interpreted narrowly only when one member presses too hard.

-Public reprimands that signal to staff and colleagues: don’t engage the dissenter.

-A majority bloc that governs by denying oxygen rather than winning debate.

When ‘process’ becomes punishment, the public loses twice: once because oversight is weakened, and again because the whole council learns to fear conflict more than it fears being wrong.

Why This Is Happening Now: The National Rise of Populist Socialists—and Establishment Democratic Failure on Affordability

To understand why these fights are intensifying, zoom out.

Across the U.S., democratic-socialist and populist-left politics have grown—not because of a TikTok algorithm, but because material conditions are crushing people, and the establishment wing of the Democratic Party has offered promises that don’t cash out in daily life.

Start with housing:

-Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that renter cost burdens have hit record highs, with tens of millions of households paying unaffordable shares of income.

-HUD reported more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2024, the highest on record, and an 18% increase from 2023.

-California’s affordability crisis remains structurally entrenched, as the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office continues to track persistent housing-cost pressures.

-Multiple sources show a majority of California renters are cost-burdened (paying >30% of income toward housing), which turns “affordability” from a talking point into a lived emergency.

So when establishment Democrats run on affordability and inclusion while housing costs, homelessness, and rent burdens continue climbing, many voters conclude: the establishment is performing progressivism, not delivering it.

That’s the fuel.

Now add the organizational fact:

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has expanded dramatically since 2016—DSA’s own “State of DSA” notes that the organization is more than ten times larger than a decade ago, with the overwhelming majority of members joining after 2016.  It’s no coincidence that our own Kalimah Priforce, a DSA member, is the most popular politician in Emeryville.

This growth is not an abstraction. It translates into local races, local canvasses, and local governing fights. And it triggers establishment backlash—often framed as “responsible governance,” but experienced by insurgents as containment.

International media coverage of insurgent socialist campaigns (including New York’s) has highlighted both the appeal—rent freezes, transit affordability, public options—and the counterattack: establishment officials and aligned donors treating left candidates as existential threats rather than internal debate partners.

In other words: the ‘anti–Zohran Mamdani’ sentiment is not really about one person.  It is about a broader insurgency that threatens the donor-mediated equilibrium of the Democratic Party.

The East Bay Version of a National Story

What makes Emeryville and Richmond important is not that they are famous. It’s that they are legible.

They show how a centrist establishment Democratic majority manages a left insurgent when it cannot easily remove them: not by debating them, but by disciplining them.  Not by winning policy, but by controlling procedure.

And if that is what is happening—if Emeryville City Council rules are being applied selectively, if deliberation is being narrowed, if censure logic is lingering as ‘shadow censure’—then Emeryville isn’t just having a personality conflict:  it’s rehearsing a regional and national fight inside a five-seat chamber.

The question for residents, then, is not whether they like any particular Council member.  The question is whether they want a city government where asking hard questions is treated as misconduct.  Because if procedure becomes punishment, the next target won’t be a democratic socialist.  It will be the general public—finding out, too late, that the Council no longer debates anything that matters.

Mayor Kaur Goes on Attack Against Councilman Priforce

Mayor Kaur Attacks Council Member Priforce From the Dais

Flashing Anger and Denunciations Directed at Priforce for His Questions

Citizens' Access to Their Government Ratcheted Down to Get Priforce

News Analysis

Kalimah Priforce, being the only progressive on the five member Emeryville City Council, gets a lot of knocks and worse from his colleagues on the council but few can be seen as so petty in its histrionics as was delivered against him by Mayor Sukhdeep Kaur on Tuesday.  Mayor Kaur was extremely angry that Councilman Priforce asked a question of a staff member before he was ready to cast his vote on an action item before the Council.  Where normal people saw a Council member doing his duty, asking a question before a vote, Mayor Kaur saw chaos or perhaps nefarious intent. Surprisingly, Council members asking questions about details of an impending vote is over the top in its audaciousness according to Mayor Kaur.

Mayor Sukhdeep Kaur
Angry.
A conservative, by her vote,
she is in favor of a ceasefire
in Ukraine but NOT Gaza.

Readers may have trouble understanding what transpired at the council chambers Tuesday because how Ms Kaur’s tirade against Mr Priforce seemed so unbelievable.  Why was she so angry?  Surely there must be some back story, readers are likely to think.  Surely the politics at the Emeryville City Council chambers have not gotten so dysfunctional that a Council member can’t ask a question before a vote.  But to those readers who are having trouble, understand that there is no back story other than a moral panic if not pure hatred by the four members against the one.  That is what's driving the current dysfunction in our Emeryville government.

The problem as stated by Mayor Kaur is meeting protocol.  Mr Priforce asked to ask a question during the “deliberation period”, and that is not permitted said our Mayor.  Ms Kaur quoted from Robert’s Rules of Order: deliberation periods are not a time of asking questions, Ms Kaur says Robert’s Rules says.  Her anger came from Mr Priforce violating her interpretation of Robert’s Rules.  However what Ms Kaur, being a new member and a relatively new Emeryville resident, doesn’t realize is our 40 year precedent of letting citizens address the Council and letting the Council ask questions of the staff (or the presenter at the meeting) about things related to citizen comments.

The way council meetings are run in Emeryville with regard to action items or public hearings is as follows (approved by California’s Brown Act):

1)  A presenter makes a presentation for a proposed new thing for the Council to vote on.

2)  The Council asks ‘clarifying’ questions of the presenter.

3)  The citizens are heard.

4)  The Council deliberates (including asking questions about citizens’ points made during public comment).

5)  The Council then votes.

It has been set up this way for decades because the City of Emeryville has been sensitive about not just allowing citizens to speak, but also about the notion that a citizen could conceivably bring up a good idea that a Council member might want to explore.  That might require additional questions by Council members after the public had their three minutes to speak before a vote could be taken.  

Council member Kalimah Priforce
The object of Mayor Kaur's disdain.
A progressive, he is in favor of a
ceasefire in Ukraine AND Gaza. 
A 'peacenik'.

Democracy Takes a Backseat in Mayor Kaur's Emeryville

Mayor Kaur has a problem with the way Emeryville has conducted meetings for at least 40 years.  She sees a new way, a Robert’s Rules way, that means the citizens’ comments will have no effect on the Council member’s decisions.  Citizens are allowed to speak as the law dictates, but they don’t have the power to change a Council member’s mind in Mayor Kaur's view.  In a word, Ms Kaur will let citizens make comments as before but she is putting forward a new way that means public  comments are free floating and not connected to actual public policy.  It's an autocratic way of looking at the role of government. 

What exactly is Mayor Kaur’s point (never mind her anger)?  She wouldn’t say on Tuesday and we doubt she will ever say because the truth is probably too embarrassing.  There is nothing for the people to gain by the Mayor's new way of running our meetings.  In fact there is only downside for the people.  It makes public comment unnecessary.  It locks the public out of the deliberation.  The up side is for the four conservative Council members.  They don't have to listen to the public and they can excoriate and berate the progressive Council member Kalimah Priforce for listening to the citizens as the Mayor did Tuesday.

For his part, Mr Priforce seems to be just continuing on as Council members have done for the last 40 years, as if this new undemocratic polity at the council chambers angrily stated by Ms Kaur is not the actual new paradigm.  

The law, interestingly, is rather mute on this subject.  Citizens have a legal right to be heard (the Brown Act guarantees that).  But the Council doesn’t have to listen to them.  They can put in their ear buds and zone out when the citizens are addressing the Council if they want (as Council member Courtney Welch frequently does).  Notably, Mayor Kaur’s reading of Robert’s Rules of Order do not carry the force of law here.   However the Brown Act IS law in California and any fair reading of that suggests that citizens’ rights to speak can be extended to where they could conceivably have an effect on government decisions. 

 The democratically concocted Brown Act does posit in its highfalutin preamble the following poetic prose:

The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created. 

Notwithstanding that, it is seen as problematic that Emeryville’s mayor, an attorney, cannot seem to wrap her head around this basic concept of citizen empowerment and engagement (that is also law).  Either that or she sees tamping down citizen engagement as a smaller price to pay in order to do the essential work of  public admonishment of Council member Priforce.

The people of Emeryville have a right to expect a functioning government without petty squabbles among the Council members erupting and subverting their interests as does this new set of rules issued by decree from the mayor.

How long before one of the four conservative Council members violates the mayor’s new rules?  We know they have all been ‘violating’ it for years before Tuesday night, including Council member Kaur herself.  Will Ms Kaur be a fair and faithful arbiter of her new rules, assuring all Council members be equally constrained by her loudly slammed gavel?  We will see and the Tattler will report.

Mayor Kaur was contacted for comment for this story but she did not return calls.

Not that it matters much to his colleagues on the Council but Council member Priforce is the most popular Council member in Emeryville with the people, having won his election with 23.9% of the vote.  Every other Council member won with a lower percentage.  Interestingly, Ms Kaur won her election (after having been appointed by former City Council member John Bauters) with 20.7% of the vote.  The people's choice is Kalimah Priforce.  In a better Emeryville, our conservative Council member majority would acknowledge this basic if difficult for them fact.

Below: The Mayor melts down at 53:00 - 53:51

The STROAD: 40th Street to Become a 'Super Stroad'

The '40th Street Multi Modal Project' Shows Emeryville Continues to Aspire to Be a Place to Travel Through On the Way to Somewhere Else

People Who Want to Travel to a Better Place Than Emeryville Will Be Helped by the $33 Million Infrastructure Project

"A stroad is a thoroughfare that combines the features of streets and roads.  Stroads attempt to be both a high speed traffic connector (a road) and a place for business and people (a street) but fails at both.  They are wide arterials (roads for through traffic) that also provide access to strip malls, drive-throughs, and other automobile-oriented businesses (as shopping streets do).  They are the most dangerous type of urbanized thoroughfare and have come under near universal criticism among city planning professionals.” WIKI

 

News Analysis

A street

Emeryville has cleared the way to make traffic on 40th Street move more efficiently through a proposed $33 million infrastructure project known as the ‘40th Street Multi Modal Project, a project that will exacerbate current problems associated with a lack of habitability and the alienating civic space created by the street.  Effectively, Emeryville is preparing to turn a ‘stroad’ into a super-stroad and any improvements for bus travel or bike travel touted by proponents are threatened to be overtaken by a greatly diminished livable space for Emeryville by the pyrrhic effects of the 'improvements'.

The project, seven years in the planning and slated to begin construction in the new year, will cost $33 million, $5.5 million of that paid by the City of Emeryville and will likely result in higher speed traffic and more people moved per hour; part of the touted efficiency.  But in so doing, it will create a reduced access ‘super-block’ grid out of existing small blocks, cutting neighborhoods off from each other with more traffic noise and more air pollution for people living nearby.  The built out project promises to reduce desirability for neighborhoods close by, as these kinds of high efficiency arterials have been shown to do.  People who don’t live in Emeryville but who travel through or commute to our town or who travel here to go to the auto-centric shopping malls Emeryville has built will benefit however.

A road

City officials insist the 40th Street project will not just help regional shoppers and people cutting through our town headed to other (more desirable) destinations, but it will also help people traveling to the planned $1 billion Sutter Health Hospital planned for Emeryville.

Proponents of the project which includes four out of five City Council members (Priforce dissenting), tell us bikes, bus users and drivers will be helped because of, rather than in spite of, the closing of 40th Street side streets.  The closing of the streets will create several 'super-blocks' of the sort that the late Canadian city planner Jane Jacobs warned us against.  She has shown how this consolidation of small blocks into super-blocks in the street grid devalues the neighborhood.   Discounting the Jacobs inspired city planning ethos (begun as a 1960's scrappy rebellion, now turned into orthodoxy), the proponents of the project have shown how traffic will move more efficiently, including bus traffic and bike traffic, with fewer (side street) conflicts.  Between Adeline Street and Halleck Street, there are currently nine small blocks that intersect 40th Street.  After the $33 million project is complete, that number will be reduced to six large super blocks.

Traffic engineers have long worked to increase flow rate efficiencies without concern for livability downgrades for people living nearby.  The real estate market has long shown how major arterials, including stroads and freeways, reduce value for home prices and there is nothing about the 40th Street Multi Modal Project that would suggest the improvement for traffic efficiencies it will bring will be any different.  Indeed, the market has shown people like their communities to be quiet as far as traffic goes, with the low speeds and volumes that low efficiency streets bring.  

A stroad
40th Street in Emeryville

Emeryville has three existing stroads: Powell Street, San Pablo Avenue and 40th Street.  These corridors exhibit all the negative effects of stroads: induced demand traffic congestion, high volume, high noise and pollution, danger, and other intangibles that equal a high ‘ick’ factor.  Improving the carrying efficiency of 40th Street, a street that already embodies these bad qualities, will only worsen the civic space.  It threatens to turn a stroad into a super-stroad.

Stroads are part of a rationally based modernist vision for cities.  Traffic engineers are taught the rationality of efficiency in graduate schools.  Towns that throw their transportation plans over to traffic engineers as Emeryville has done, tend to get less than desirable places.  Robert Moses, the formerly great urban planning expert knew about moving people with the greatest efficiency; he's the godfather of the top-down urban renewal ethos of the 1950s and '60s that bulldozed entire neighborhoods to build massive freeways cut through all across America.  His star however has been dimmed in recent years by people demanding more democratic control of their cities.  In this milieu, stroads seem to be a part of the last vestiges of this heavy handed vision of how not to create livable urban spaces.  The YIMBY movement too is part of the anti-democratic top-down Robert Moses vision but is not a vestige, rather it is a new iteration of the Moses vision.  YIMBYists' propose stroads to be used to connect their apartment towers to freeways for 'easy in, easy out' commuting to help developers maximize profits.    

The 40th Street Multi Modal Project calls into question what Emeryville is for.  Is it a place for people to come to, get stuff and leave?  Is it a place for people to travel through on their way to someplace else (more desirable)?  Is it a place where the politics have tried (and failed) to create a nice place to live or to be?  Stroads are built by municipalities that have no pride.  They are built by towns that pay deference to corporations seeking to make a profit.  After a couple of decades of Emeryville granting developers approvals to build auto centric sprawling shopping malls with big box retail surrounded by acres of parking lots, after another couple of decades building massive auto centric all-rental housing projects that are linked to the shopping malls and the freeway by stroads, after making Emeryville a place to get through in order to get to a place people desire to be, perhaps we should be turning stroads into streets as opposed to super-stroads.  

After spending $33 million on this project, it would seem Emeryville's future is already decided for the next 40 years, the useful life of this expensive infrastructure.  Desirability is out and moving people more efficiently by use of rational traffic management is in.  Regardless, people don't like being near stroads, living or lingering and Emeryville residents will be able to use the 40th Street Multi Modal Project for decades to come to travel from the place they live to places they want to be....places not run by developers and traffic engineers.

The 40th Street Multi Modal Project is HERE.

Robert Moses is HERE.

YIMBY is HERE.

Jane Jacobs is HERE.

Councilman Priforce Returns to Duties: YIMBY, Haters Upset

 

Priforce on the Mend But Haters & His Detractors at YIMBY Still Hurting

Kalimah Priforce returned to his City Council duties Tuesday after being struck by a car and injured last week while riding his bike.  The accident occurred on San Pablo Avenue in front of Emeryville Citizens Action Program (ECAP) in Oakland where Mr Priforce was volunteering his time to hand out food to needy community members in the wake of the federal government’s partial suspension of SNAP food benefits.  

Even though Council member Priforce broke his shoulder in two places and may require up to a year to recover full use of his left arm, he attended Tuesday’s Council meeting, his arm in a sling and helped distribute food to needy families enrolled at Emery schools at the Center of Community Life on Monday.  Said Mr Priforce about the quick bounce back, “Volunteering with families, being present in council chambers, staying connected to the work is what gives me strength.”

Family Food Donation Drive at ECCL
Council member Priforce (on left)
helped give out food Monday with his
right hand.

Despite being in considerable pain, the Councilman put on a happy face, “Healing has been slow, painful, and humbling, but the people of Emeryville keep me moving. Even with limited mobility, even on the days when it takes twice as long just to get dressed or make it across town without my bike, I show up because our community shows up for each other” he told the Tattler.

Unsurprisingly in today’s Emeryville where it seems much is made to service a procrustean binary narrative, YIMBY and YIMBY adjacent members of the community have used the progressive Councilman’s injury to forward a political aim.  On Emeryville specific social media, anonymous sources have impugned Mr Priforce’s injury stating he is faking it (presumably to take away community sympathy from the sole progressive on the Council) or to malign the Councilman’s ideas about the 40th Street Multi-Modal Project, a project idea promoted by YIMBY.  Mr Priforce, for the record, has expressed concerns that the 40th Street proposed project does not increase bike safety as much as it takes away from resident livability and small businesses ability to continue doing business.  Others have also called out the lack of resident desirability of the fast tracked public works project (see future Tattler story) but the YIMBY organization has sought to question the legitimacy of views that don’t exactly meet their desires for the project. 

Mr Priforce remains undaunted in the face of his injury or the subsequent anonymous internet attacks, “Public service doesn’t pause when life gets hard” he said as he handed out food to hungry neighbors.

The 40th Street Multi-Modal Project is a proposal to eliminate side streets, making large ‘super blocks’ to facilitate more and higher speed traffic for 40th Street.  YIMBY California is a corporate backed Sacramento lobbying firm, active in Emeryville, that seeks to increase the profits of Real Estate Investment Trust Corporations by taking away local democratic control of public housing policy.

The Councilman was injured but let me take this opportunity to trash him for disagreeing with YIMBY.

What I mean to say is the lone progressive on the Emeryville City Council faked this bike accident.

Priforce 'Severe' Shoulder Breaks, Released From Hospital

 Council Member Priforce Hit By Car: Recovering at Home, Shoulder broken in two places

Emeryville City Council member Kalimah Priforce was released from Highland Hospital Wednesday after having spent the night in the emergency department as a result of being struck by a car Tuesday.  The Councilman sustained a broken shoulder in two locations and other minor injuries after the car struck him while he was riding his bike to volunteer at ECAP to help distribute food to needy community members.

The shoulder injury is very painful the Councilman reports and he may still have to undergo surgery according to his surgeon.  The shoulder break is severe and he may take up to a year for a full recovery he indicated.  

It is unknown at this time if Mr Priforce will miss the next Council meeting scheduled for November 18th.  He is currently on pain medication and waiting for a call to return to the hospital for further treatment.  

Breaking: Council Member Priforce Hospitalized, Struck By a Car

 Council Member Priforce, On Bike, Hit By Car

Breaking News

Emeryville City Council member Kalimah Priforce was struck by an automobile and injured at the site of the Emeryville Citizens Assistance Program (ECAP) at 2628 San Pablo Avenue in Oakland this afternoon.  The extent of Mr Priforce’s injuries are unknown but are not life threatening it is being reported.  

Reportedly, Council member Priforce was traveling to ECAP to help with the volunteer food drive initiated last week as a result of the curtailment of the federal food assistance SNAP program.  It is reported the driver did not attempt to flee the scene.   Mr Priforce is currently being attended to at Highland Hospital’s emergency department.

The Tattler will report when more info is obtained.

Emeryville City Hall Celebrates 'Peace in the Park' While Supporting the War in Gaza

 'Peace in the Park' : Government Propaganda

City Council Likes War Depending on Who is Being Killed

“Government propaganda is the systematic dissemination of information and ideas by a government to influence public opinion and behavior in order to promote a particular agenda. It often uses emotional appeals, selective facts, or misleading information to shape how people perceive political realities.“ -Wiki

Despite the City Council’s refusal to support a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza, the City of Emeryville held a city wide celebration of world peace in October, seemingly oblivious to that two year war that has killed some 70,000 Palestinians including 20,000 children.  The City is instead focused on celebrating world peace by hosting an event in Christie Avenue Park filled with fun and frivolity, 7500 miles away from the war.  To people not paying close attention, the message received would be that Emeryville likes peace.  That was probably the idea.

Emeryville’s counter factual anti-war propaganda campaign has recently taken the form of the City sanctioned event October 18th called “Peace in the Park”, an event that represents the antithesis of an earlier Council majority vote to not allow council discussion of peace in Gaza.  This Council majority is so pro-war, they will not even allow discussion amongst themselves of a proposal to resolve they are against the killing of Palestinian children.  The five Council members made it be known they are against  Ukrainian children being killed however.

The City Council voted to not allow any discussion of a resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza (4-1 Priforce dissenting),  December 5th 2023, after they earlier voted unanimously for a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine.  Responding to Tattler questions about that double standard, Mayor David Mourra said the City of Emeryville “should not get involved in international politics, including foreign wars” despite the fact that he himself voted for the ceasefire in Ukraine on the Council.  Follow up questions about the Council double standard went unanswered by Mr Mourra and by the rest of the Ukraine supporting Council majority.

The sparsely attended Peace in the Park event at Christie Avenue Park featured booths and tents calling for world peace with some not for profit organizations, church groups and private companies taking part as well as tents for the Emeryville Police Department and Emery Unified School District. 
 

On a side note, the editor of the Tattler distributed flyers at the event, alerting celebrants of the City’s double standard for resolutions concerning foreign wars.  Taking umbrage with the open leaflet distributing, an Emeryville police officer physically battered the Tattler editor.  An investigation of the incident is currently underway by the police department's internal affairs division. 

Emeryville's 'Peace in the Park' celebration was
sparsely attended despite the City's wall to wall
advertising for the event.

Because no one at City Hall would speak about the Council majority’s support for a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Russia’s war against Ukraine while refusing a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Palestinians in Gaza, it is taken as a self-evident fact that this Council majority dislikes some wars but they like some other wars.  Some would question: is it a matter of the ethnicity of the people that are being killed in the war that determines the Council's support or rejection? Are Palestinian children more expendable than Ukrainian children?   None on the City Council majority that voted against the ceasefire in Gaza would answer that question.  But the whole City Council and City Hall want us to know they are in favor of world peace (at least in the park).

Here's how the votes on the two proposed war resolutions went:

Russia/Ukraine War Resolution (is Emeryville against the war?)

(former) Mayor John Bauters:           YES

Council member David Mourra:        YES

Council member Sukhdeep Kaur:    YES

Council member Courtney Welch:    YES

Council member Kalimah Priforce:    YES

Israel/Gaza War Resolution (is Emeryville against the war?)

(former) Mayor John Bauters:        NO

Council member David Mourra:    NO

Council member Sukdeep Kaur:     NO

Council member Courtney Welch:    NO

Council Member Kalimah Priforce:     YES

Council Decision: Committee Selection at City Hall Will No Longer be Subject to Public Scrutiny

“Efficiency” Touted as Reason Why What Formerly Was Public Must Now Be Behind Closed Doors

“That is Not Democracy, That is a Closed Loop”

City Council member Kalimah Priforce reports how public accountability is being taken away by a recent Council majority decision to cut citizens out of longstanding City Hall committee selection process.  At the September 9th City Council meeting, the Council changed the status of Emeryville committees from 'standing' to 'ad hoc' in order to get around California law meant to keep processes publicly accessible.

 

By Kalimah Priforce

What this Council was asked to do on September 9th is not just a matter of “efficiency.”  Let’s call it what it is: a quiet consolidation of power.


We are being told that committee appointments will now be screened in small rooms, by just a couple of Council members, and then slipped onto the consent calendar for approval.  No debate.  No discussion.  No public scrutiny.


That is not democracy.  That is a closed loop.  And Emeryville knows this story - we lived through it in the John Bauters era.  The back-channeling, the rubber-stamping, the chilling of dissent.  We paid the price for it.


Now we are told this is about “streamlining.”  Well, let me tell you: corruption is always streamlined.  Inequity is always streamlined.  When you cut out public process, when you silence debate, when you bury decisions in the consent calendar - you are greasing the wheels for insider politics and shutting the public out.

The Brown Act is crystal clear.  Ad hoc committees are supposed to be temporary, narrow, and dissolved when the job is done.  If they meet every year, if they take on standing jurisdiction, they must be open to the public.  Period.  Pretending otherwise is playing with fire.

Look at Anaheim.  Look at Bell.  Both cities thought they could cut corners, centralize decisions, and keep the public in the dark.  And what did it lead to?  Scandal.  FBI raids.  Corruption.  Broken trust that took years to rebuild.


And now Emeryville is flirting with the same mistake.


Enough is enough.  If we care about equity, if we care about diversity, if we care about trust in this city, then we cannot funnel power into fewer hands.  Keep appointments at the full Council.  Let the public see who we choose and why.  That’s how you build faith in government.  That’s how you expand democracy.


 

Anything less is a Trojan horse. Anything less is a step backward.

Kalimah Priforce is an Emeryville City Council member.  He was elected to office in 2022.

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.