A Guy With A Camera Causes Most of City Hall To Be Permanently Closed

Really Emeryville?  You're Going to Permanently Close Swaths of the People's Hall to the People Because of a Guy With a Camera?

Emeryville: Imagine Democracy, Accountability

News Analysis / Opinion

A man with a camera came to peacefully, quietly and legally make a video of the publicly accessible portions of Emeryville’s City Hall.  Would the public servants we hire who work at City Hall allow him unmolested, to use his camera?  Or would they panic and call the men with guns to come and remove the videographer?  The answer is of course, the latter as the Tattler reported back on July 28th.

Now, large portions of our previously open City Hall have been quietly closed off forever.  Fully 2/3rds of the old part of Emeryville City Hall are now closed to the public indefinitely.   The grand front steps and front doors of the beautiful Beaux Arts people’s hall are no longer accessible.  Inside, the entire lower level, the main floor and the Council Chambers all used to be open but are all now closed to the public (the Chambers are open during meetings only).  

This is what counts as accountability
for Vice Mayor Courtney Welch
A majority of City Council members
refuse to be held to account:
John Bauters, Courtney Welch and 
the newly appointed Sukhdeep Kaur.   

This closing of our democratic hall of governance was done because of a peaceful man with a camera and an interest in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.  So says City Manager Paul Buddenhagen who told the Tattler after repeated inquiries, the man with the camera caused him to reconsider open government in Emeryville.  It is closed he said because of “security” but also because of “Covid”.

After several Tattler attempts, Mr Buddenhagen refused to elaborate what he meant by “security” and “Covid” as legitimate reasons to close our City Hall to us.

Before the mystifying closures, the public could walk all around the open areas of our hall as the man with the camera did.  The only difference was the camera.   However cameras are perfectly legal.  It is legal to film in public.  Somehow in Emeryville though that basic freedom we all enjoy is seen as a security risk.  

We don’t get it.  If a person can be in a public place, they can film in that place.  The Supreme Court has been very clear on that.  Cameras are not menacing and the public, especially public employees have no expectation to privacy in public.  In fact, we are expressly allowed to check up on our government and our public employees.  It’s the first law of the United States.  But our City Manager takes a dim view of this most basic right we Americans enjoy.  

And then there’s Covid.  Why, we asked, when the State of California lifted the Covid emergency order did the City of Emeryville then invoke this as a reason to close our hall of government?  Why did City Hall remain open for months before the man with a camera came, when the State of California still had the emergency order in place?  Again, the City Manager refuses to explain. 

Emeryville City Manager Paul Buddenhagen
Men with cameras are so scary, City Hall
must be closed to stop them.  Lack of community 
access to their government is a small price
to pay to stop cameras.

Put bluntly, phony unqualified Covid and security scares are not good enough reasons to close our property off to us.  This is an abuse of power.  We were told our old City Hall would be open to the citizens after the City moved back to the original City Hall site in 2000.  Before that, Emeryville’s City Hall unceremoniously occupied the 12th floor of a private tower at Watergate for decades.  One of the worst features of the Watergate City Hall location was the not-so-subtle message of closed back room politics sent out to the citizenry.  After the LaCoste corruption scandals of the 1970s and 1980s, reformist civil servants wished to highlight a new day and a new democratic vision for our town.  Reopening Emeryville’s beautiful turn-of-the-century Beaux Arts City Hall was central to the new vision.  So was the ample use of glass in the new addition.  It was to be transparent, literally and figuratively.  The grand front stairs were once again to be open to the public in a nod to the salve of democracy and openness for Emeryville.  But this noble vision has now been taken from us not because of the corrupt former police chief John LaCoste but because of a guy with a camera.

In Trump’s America, there’s a paranoia that has settled in.  Democracy has taken a hit.  In Emeryville, too.  A cult of personality has taken over the mayoralty, resulting in groupthink and homogeneity on city committees, accountability and transparency are in retreat as most City Council members now refuse to talk to the local press and now our beautiful City Hall is closed not because of security or Covid but because of a guy with a camera.

This is why we can't have nice things in Emeryville.

The End of Collegiality at the Emeryville City Council? Yes, But Why?

 Petulant Name Calling, Ugly Xenophobia and Racism 

Emeryville's Famous City Council Collegiality Evaporates

News Analysis/Opinion

The ugly specter of xenophobia was raised at the December 12th City Council meeting along with petulant name calling and something else by one Council member against another when Councilwoman Ally Medina, reversing the long storied Emeryville City Council culture of collegiality, attacked her new colleague, the incoming Kalimah Priforce.  Eight days after the outburst, at another meeting, Ms Medina announced her resignation from the City Council,  citing personal reasons of a financial nature.  

The disobliging attitude against Council member Priforce, who had been sworn in only moments before the attack, came after he had respectfully expressed his discomfort in Council member John Bauters being selected by the Council majority to serve a second back-to-back term as mayor.   Ms Medina defended the selection and accused Mr Priforce of sexism with his stated discomfort, calling out his male privilege and disparaging him as a "man" who will not be listened to.

Former Council member Dianne Martinez
and current member Ally Medina. 
They're panicked.

After a San Francisco friend of Mr Priforce phoned in during the public comment period, defending him against the attack, Council member Medina denounced the commenter as having come from outside Emeryville and therefore illegitimate.  “Be well aware that with a simple public records act request we can look at all of your text messages and confirm who is and who is not from Emeryville”, she warned Mr Priforce with xenophobic and autocratic flair.  Left unmentioned by Ms Medina is the red carpet treatment given to every out-of-town developer who comes to Emeryville with an apartment tower proposal she (and the rest of them) always lavish praise on.  Didactically lecturing Council member Priforce and acting as if Emeryville were not a regional player in power politics, ugly xenophobia is only to be aimed at Mr Priforce it would seem, others are to get a pass.

Noteworthy was the fact that the rest of the Council sat in stoney silence during Ms Medina’s tirade against our new Councilman, letting her comments stand unchallenged.

Council member Kalimah Priforce
....the reason the City Council
is so distraught.

Also of note in the evening filled with Council chicanery was the stern publicly given harangue directed at Mr Priforce by retiring City Councilwoman Dianne Martinez.  The outgoing Martinez wanted the incoming Priforce to know collegiality is the coin of the realm in the Emeryville Council chamber and that he is on notice to oblige.  The irony that Ms Martinez’s friend on the Council, Ms Medina, attacked the newly instated Councilman moments later, was lost on Dianne Martinez.

The first-two meetings ordeal faced by our new Council member Kalimah Priforce was shocking to be sure.  It leaves us wondering why.  Mr Priforce made statements on the campaign trail that would indicate he might be an independent voice on the Council, it is true.  He was heard questioning Emeryville’s new pro-marketplace housing policies for instance.   But the force aligned against him was strangely disproportional.  Is this to be a new era of Council infighting we’re entering?  If Mr Priforce, who is Black, actually is an independent voice, that will likely be the case.  But the disrespect shown by the Council majority and the asymmetrical force of the attack makes us think there’s more at play here.  Name calling and lecturing the incoming City Councilman?  We think the Council is unduly afraid of Mr Priforce.  We think this is mostly racism.

Sherwin Williams Project: Violation of Public Trust on Labor Rights

 City of Emeryville Screws Construction Workers at Sherwin Williams Site

Dirty Double Deal as Workers Paid Substandard Wages in Our Name

News Analysis/Opinion

Conspicuous on Horton Street at the Sherwin Williams construction site recently is a large three dimensional representation of veiled black death and a huge thumbs down sign among other signs decrying unfair labor practices.  It's an embarrassment for our town as workers very visibly demonstrate a labor dispute with two sub-contracting firms building the Sherwin Williams project, something the City of Emeryville promised would not happen when this project was approved.  The two  firms, Steelwave Development and Lusardi Construction, have been cited by the demonstrating union workers at the project site over the last few weeks as reneging on the promise that the project be constructed with prevailing union wages that the City of Emeryville had guaranteed. 

The fact that the Sherwin Williams project, the largest construction project in years in Emeryville, is being built in violation of the agreement and so hurting workers in the community is bad for labor of course but the breach of trust violates the City's word as far as the local citizens are concerned too.  The people of Emeryville were promised this project would not be built by oppressing the workers building it.  Had we been told substandard wages would be paid by the subcontractors, we might well have protested this project.  But the City of Emeryville wanted this project to be built and so to get us on board, they assured us this would not happen.  They bought community peace with the assurance the workers would be paid prevailing union wages.  

Now we come to find out it was all a sham by the City of Emeryville.  This Sherwin Williams project is being constructed at the expense of local workers and its being done in our name.  

We admonish the two firms, Steelwave LLC and Lusardi Construction for screwing their workers in our city of course.  But these are profit driven corporations who can be counted on to always do what they think they can get away with as they seek to maximize their profits.  Corporations lie, cheat and steal as far as the law allows; that's to be expected.  So as far as their honor goes, we appeal to them to do the right thing.   But we're not holding our breath they're going to anything but continue to screw their workers as long as they feel they can get away with it.  And they know they can get away with it in a push over pro-development city like Emeryville.

All the parties concerned; Steelwave LLC, Lusardi Construction, the general contractor Lennar Development and Mayor Dianne Martinez as well as the City of Emeryville refused to comment on this.  We expect silence from the contractors but the City of Emeryville has to behave in a transparent manner.   This is public policy.  We want to know what City Hall is going to do about this.

We're calling out the City of Emeryville for this dirty double deal, screwing workers in our name.  We say the City has to make this right.  They made their promise to us, the resident citizens of this town, and now they have to step in and fix this.   

A city that loves developers is willing to screw workers. 
Emeryville promised us this wouldn't happen as long as we supported this project.

Defund the Emeryville Police Department

Defunding Is Our Best Hope For REAL 
Police Reform

Their Backs Against the Wall, Police Praise Protesters 
Against Police Racism

Next Will Come Phony Talk of 'Reform'

News Analysis/Opinion
After many retail establishments were broken into and merchandise stolen, the Chief of Police wrote a letter to the people last week telling us that looters in Emeryville are taking away from genuine and peaceful protests against the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.  Chief Jennifer Tejada's letter told us she supports the peaceful protests going on and she said she wants “equality for all” and to “give voice to those who are marginalized” and that “racism is real”.
And with that, our chief of police is repeating what chiefs of police are saying all across the country.  Racism must end, the chiefs are saying and they're nearly tripping over themselves to announce they are allied with the peaceful protestors that have taken over America’s streets of late while denouncing looters (even as some are clearly ordering attacks against peaceful protesters).  Praising peaceful protesters against police racism has become the thing to do for police chiefs in America in June 2020.  Thus, ipso facto, each police department is not racist they would have us believe.  It must be other police departments that are the racist ones.

Next up in this archetype is massive ‘police reform’.  Like last time, police departments are going to tell us they’re going to self reform.  In fact that discussion is already being presented by many chiefs.  They say they recognize the problem police have with race and they’re ready for reform.
So what’s going to be offered up?  Sensitivity training, police attending seminars on race sensitivity, First Amendment rights and that kind of thing.  Virtually every police department in America is going to be on board because the police hear our frustrations they say.  Chief Tejada says it.  Should we feel hope and encouragement by these stirring words?  Is this going to be enough to solve this problem that Chief Tejada recognizes?

Emeryville's Chief of Police
Jennifer Tejada
She loves peaceful 
protest against police racism
in June 2020. In 2017,
she loved racist police 
blotter posts.

The answer to those questions is: we should look to what they do rather than what they say they’re going to do.

Broken Record
‘The police are going to reform themselves to address systemic racism’.  Where have we heard that before?
We’ve heard it every time the media grabs onto a compelling story with above the fold reports of a racist police culture, starting with the beating of Rodney King in 1991 and extending past the shooting of Michael Brown and the choking of Eric Garner.  Academic studies have shown it over and over; police are far more racist than the control group of average Americans.  There is an enduring  culture of anti-black racism among America's police departments and everybody knows it.
Police keep telling us during these crises that they ‘get it’ and they’re going to reform.  But policing in America doesn’t get fixed.  Since Rodney King, it’s actually gone in the opposite direction as departments get more and more militarized, police arming themselves with deadlier firepower leading to more killings of citizens, usually unarmed black men.  All this has evolved against police claiming wholesale persecution of them by the public.  They’re claiming there’s a ‘war on police’ despite the fact policing has never been safer in America than it is right now.  They’re presenting a narrative of the loathsome public that hates police that must be controlled or else police will be killed or attacked.  This is driving municipalities around the country to pour more money into police departments.  Constrained by budgets, cities increase spending on police at the expense of community services.  Emeryville's police budget now resembles the pentagon's budget as a percentage of government spending.

Where police departments across America goes, so goes Emeryville’s police department.  This is a broken paradigm.  We should never expect any police department, including the Emeryville police department to self reform.  Police departments will only change if we force them to.  That force is their budget.  We need to join with other cities who are now openly talking about changing the paradigm by going after police budgets.  We need to begin defunding the EPD.  That’s the only mechanism that will drive real change.

We must learn the only reason America's cops are talking so eloquently now about reform is their backs are against the wall.  They're hoping the talk will be enough to defuse the situation and they'll be able to stop real reform.  Indeed, every other time police faced this level of public outrage, it's been enough to eventually force a return to normal.  What’s normal?  Normal is when chiefs of police around the country feel emboldened enough for instance to castigate Colin Kaepernick for his peaceful protest of kneeling during the National Anthem.  Mr Kaepernick was outraged over racist police brutality in 2016 and so he peacefully protested.  But that was unacceptable said America’s police.  Now that their backs are against the wall, police say peaceful protest against police brutality is suddenly perfectly fine.  Just ask Chief Tejada.  Where was Jennifer Tejada when Mr Kaepernick was protesting peacefully.  We didn’t get any letters supporting him then, did we?

And what can we learn from our Chief of Police who wants us to rally behind the police who are rallying behind the peaceful protesters (she says) all while castigating the looters?  These are to be looked at as two separate groups of people she says; one good, the other bad.  What she isn’t saying (not part of the police narrative) or doesn’t know (even worse) is the peaceful protesters and the looters are one and the same.  America’s poor and working people of all colors, especially black people, have had their fill.  They’re using the only means available to them to try for change.  People pushed to the edge will turn to violence.  It’s totally to be expected.  The worse it gets for average Americans in contemporary America the more we can expect uprisings like this.  We can expect growing violence in such a downward spiral.  What isn’t helpful is our chief of police joining the chorus of chiefs everywhere trying to hang onto the narrative that empowers them at our expense.  She’s trying to keep the money flowing to the police and we’re trying to upset the dominant paradigm that only leads to more violence and more racism.  The looters and the vandals don't 'take away' from what the peaceful protesters are doing; it's all part of a greater whole, we're all in it together and it's all to be expected regardless of what Chief Tejada says.

We cannot expect vast numbers of people, the poor, working class and black people to behave in a manner that no other people would do.  People cannot be expected to be super human.  We can not have what Chief Tejada is driving us towards: a narrative that would posit black people’s civil rights are only as enduring as average people’s ability to not loot when they’re backs are against the wall and they’re rightfully angry.  We are not accepting attempts to divide us.

We should remember Chief Tejada’s record at the Emeryville Police Department.  After EPD shot and killed Yuvette Henderson, a black woman in 2015, Chief Tejada told us the State of California is wrong about the AR-15 assault rifle that killed Ms Henderson.  Chief Tejada told us that lawmakers in Sacramento who banned AR-15s have it all wrong about these weapons now carried by Emeryville police.  They are not assault rifles she says, rather simple sporting rifles.  This was her narrative when there was talk of taking away these guns from our police.  She was trying to downplay the deadly firepower of these assault weapons.  Incidentally, witnesses and forensic testimony reported the kill shot by an Emeryville police officer's AR-15 was made after Ms Henderson had been hit in the side and her gun she had flew back six feet behind her, making the kill shot unnecessary according to the testimony at the civil trial following the police clearing themselves of any wrong doing.
We should also remember Chief Tejada refused to stop posting racist crime reports in Emeryville’s official crime blotter in 2016/17.  It took nearly a year of Tattler reports for Ms Tejada to finally stop.

Emeryville should use this time to finally do something to change the unacceptable paradigm of anti-black police racism in our little neck of the woods.  It is our good fortune that our current Chief of Police is retiring now amid these epic protests.  We should use this time to drive real change and stop allowing soothing language from police attempting to save their funding, lull us back to sleep until the next crisis.  We need to think globally and act locally.  We need to use our nuclear option now at this propitious moment, and start defunding our police to force change now in the place that never changes.

Build Baby Build Hits COVID-19

Developers' Best Laid Plans No Match 

For the Virus

How California Cities Develop Will Change 

News Analysis/Opinion
Scoring a stunning victory highjacking California housing policy, multi-national development corporations and billion dollar real estate investment trusts who recently persuaded Sacramento lawmakers to legislate away the ability for California cities to maintain local control, appear to have run into a force even greater than they: COVID -19.  Poetry is invoked when such a lopsided and unexpected contest as this is joined.  Especially when the winning side is so small they can’t even be seen.  These squiggly little viruses are poised to run roughshod over the collective will of our ruling overlords and they don’t seem to care a whit about the hubris of neoliberal capitalism.  Unlike the Emeryville City Council majority, they’re downright unimpressed with all that power.  And so, as we wait for the calamity to pass, human nature, being such that it is, will no doubt reset the paradigm in its wake.
Alas, there are no guarantees we will return to the by now familiar refrain from the developer class, “build baby build”, caterwauled from the rooftops and boardrooms about the supposed existential threat of the ‘housing crisis’.  COVID-19 has taken care of that narrative, hasn’t it?
Nobody seems to be concerned with any of that now.  However, we know some new way to imagine our cities will assert itself....or maybe it's going to be the old way.  We may even collectively decide we want to return to the days when city planning served as a guiding principle for how to develop our town.

It’s pretty obvious that once this scourge passes with its economy wreaking recession in tow, things are not going back exactly how they were, in Emeryville or anywhere else.  And public policy is bound to reflect the changes.  We think that means the end, for all practical purposes, of build baby build.

It was bound to happen one way or another.  The former world, the former Bay Area real estate world, was never going to be sustainable.  The narrative from developers, that the housing shortage was here to stay until we handed the reins totally over to them, was as convenient as it was blinkered.  A market correction was bound to reveal that sham for what it was.  The only surprise is that it came in the form of a virus.

Looking beyond COVID-19, it would do us good to remember the former world.  Three Emeryville City Council members, John Bauters, Dianne Martinez and Ally Medina all told us they were throwing our lot over to the tender mercies of billion dollar developers as they sought to build baby build.  It was to be for our own good they assured us.  It was like the talking points from the former queen of the City Council, Nora Davis… except on steroids.  It didn’t matter that over the previous twenty years, Emeryville had build more than 200% of market rate housing as recommended by the Association of Bay Area Governments, the public agency in charge of Bay Area housing and jobs.  These three Council members, Bauters, Martinez and Medina  said that the fact that our population had doubled every ten years for three decades running amounted to precisely zero.  Developers wanted to increase profits and these three sought to help them by pledging their allegiance to their facile neoliberal notions of supply and demand.  So casting aside any ideas about market crashes (2007 forgotten), they cheered on Sacramento’s anti-democratic SB 330 and other legislation that takes away Emeryville’s right to decide for ourselves how we plan our town.  It’s an emergency they said and the only solution was to build baby build.

The people's will didn't enter into the Council's thinking.  However, you have to assume people moved to Emeryville over the years because there’s something about it they like.  “The small town atmosphere” is what’s commonly cited.  It’s a stretch to assume people moved here hating the small town atmosphere but betting three Council members would rise up and overturn our autonomous City Hall in order to Manhattanize the town.  We know this is false because we’ve already  collectively said we don’t want that.  We voted on the town we’ve been building (more or less) before the build baby build crew took over.  That vote was taken in the form of our ten year old General Plan…the same document John Bauters, Dianne Martinez and Ally Medina now hold in contempt.  We voted on our General Plan…and then we voted for these three Council members.  They never told us when they were asking for our votes that they would move to destroy our General Plan.  Had they done so, it’s likely they would have lost their respective elections to the Council.

If COVID-19 had not reared its ugly face and we had done to our town, through the three member Council majority, what the developers had in mind for us, the wreaking ball would have begun swinging and a town filled with unaffordable luxury apartment skyscrapers would have begun to rise up, in contradiction of our General Plan.  After that, there would be no way to go back to what we were.  The reasons we created our General Plan would have all been rendered void amid all the hulking monstrosities.
But reality was bound to catch up with this boomtown winner take all mentality.  The virus has stripped bare the hubris of the elite, be they in the corporate boardrooms, among individual wealthy real estate investors, in the Statehouse and the warren of lobbying firms orbiting it or even in the Emeryville City Council chamber.  These three Council members either got caught up in the hyperbole or they’re true believers.  Either way, it’s clear in matters of city planning, one of the most fundamental functions of any municipality, they’ve simply stopped working for us.  They should stop trying to be heroes (as they couch it), doing the bidding of the developers and start doing our bidding.  That’s what we pay them to do.
Emeryville public policy in the hands of a developer smitten City Council has long bent towards destructive forces and more enthusiastically over time, notwithstanding our General Plan.  Developers have been having their way with us it's true but now it’s going to be COVID-19’s turn. Afterward, when we’re back on our feet, we’re going to tell the developers we’re no longer impressed by them.

For Shame: Emeryville's Minimum Wage Roll Back Debacle

Dust Has Settled From City Council's Use of Minimum Wage Rollback Bludgeon

Citizens Want to Know Why

They Took Us There

News Analysis/Opinion
Three months ago Emeryville City Hall launched a divisive attack on the working poor in our town; a paroxysm of pro-business ideology in action forwarded by three members on the City Council.  At their May 21st meeting, the Council majority three, working at the behest of certain restaurant owners in town and without consulting any affected workers, voted to rollback Emeryville's hard fought four year old progressive Minimum Wage Ordinance (MWO).  The injudicious action was subsequently beaten back by the people of Emeryville by way of a voter ballot initiative petition brought by a coalition of labor and community groups forcing the Council's hand who voted to retract the wage rollback on July 23rd.
So now that the dust has settled and the minimum wage has been successfully defended, we're right back where we were before this whole thing got started.  The people's befuddlement and acrimony however is lingering over the whole sordid and unnecessary affair. 
Citizens would be right to ask why did all that just happen.

It's been a roller coaster of drama in the people's hall, the actors all playing their parts: posturing, feigning, kibitzing, doubling down, pivoting and then closing with a July 23rd “heartsick” capitulation, to quote Councilman John Bauters, the initiator of the whole spectacle.  Dramatic to be sure, but it was drama the people of Emeryville never asked for.

The May 21st City Council minimum wage incursion, led by Mr Bauters and joined by his colleagues Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue, formed the spare three member majority needed to roll back wages for small restaurant workers in town.  The insurgent majority set up an ambitious timeline for themselves; by July 1st, they would have to finish the required second reading necessary to amend the existing ordinance (effectively creating a new ordinance), in order to make sure the restaurant workers didn’t get their MWO mandated Consumer Price Index pegged raise set to take effect on that date.  A lot of finagling of schedules was necessary owing to California’s Brown Act ‘sunshine law’ notifications and individual Council members’ personal calendars, to make the hard July 1st date.  The 'Council three' made use of a controversial but technically legal provision performed by a family event obliged Councilman Donahue phoning in live from the East Coast to cast the deciding vote.
All their hard work paid off and in the eleventh hour, the City Council three was able to stop the Emeryville restaurant workers from getting their raise, just in time.

Or so they thought.

The problem is they didn't sufficiently calculate the passions of an aroused and aggrieved Bay Area labor contingent.  Because  of the audacity of the Council’s action, the coalition of labor groups and community activists known as East Bay Working Families entered the fray with a bevy of hot off the presses voter petitions.  Weeks of door knocking and 871 Emeryville registered voter signatures later, the Council majority’s whole ambitious anti-worker plot came to its inglorious end.

Emeryville's Restaurant Sector 2013-2018
The Minimum Wage Ordinance took effect in 2015.  
Restaurant owners are claiming the high minimum wage  
costs are driving them out of business or forcing them to flee.  
Notice what happened beginning in 2015 with new start-ups.

That’s the history of the last three months in a nutshell.  Those seeking more detail may want to make use of the Tattler search bar; “minimum wage ordinance".  But still unanswered is why?  Why did this gang of three suddenly make this incongruous turn?
Surprisingly, in retrospect, the three Council members were all endorsed by the progressive citizen activist group Residents for a Livable Emeryville (RULE).  Cutting the wages of the poorest among us is not something one would expect progressives to do.  The official explanation didn’t shed any light. That argument posited that the restaurant owners had assured the three they were all pushed to the edge, business failures and bankruptcies looming if their workers were paid more as relayed and repeated by the Council majority.  But the City Council never checked to see if the bankruptcy claims were true.  They just took the business owners at their word.  And they failed to listen to workers or labor groups at all.  Again- not how one would expect progressives to act.

Trust But Verify
Emeryville, being a small town, has certain advantages when it comes to making decisions such as the Council made based on the word of the restaurant owners.  In this case, the Council could have easily directed the staff to check the veracity of the owner’s claims of looming bankruptcy.  With only as few as 22 restaurants affected by the minimum wage roll back in question, a manageable number, the City could have easily opened the books of these businesses.  A city like Oakland, with hundreds of restaurants, could not enjoy Emeryville’s capacity to actually check before they leaped into such consequential policy change.
Our City Council majority, instead of finding out before they tore asunder the lives of the working poor in our town, instead forged ahead based simply on the assurances of those business owners with a material interest in lying. 

Unlike the City Council, the people of Emeryville, historically, have shown they don't trust the business community to tell the truth when profits are on the line.  In 1997, the City Council looking to increase revenue, began discussions about whether to raise the taxes on the Oaks Club card room up to the Bay Area card room average.  At the time, the Oaks enjoyed an Emeryville tax rate at about 25% of the Bay Area average.  The Council majority believed the owner of the Oaks Club when he said the increase would drive his business into bankruptcy and they dropped the issue.  The people picked it up with a ballot initiative petition and ultimately Emeryville voters approved the tax increase on the Oaks.  Sharp eyed readers will note the Oaks club is still operating at their San Pablo Avenue address - the owner, John Tibbetts having been revealed to have lied about going bankrupt. 
Again in 2005, the people brought a ballot initiative concerning raising wages for hotel workers in Emeryville up to the Bay Area average after the City Council majority believed the hype coming from the hospitality industry warning about wholesale business failures with hotels fleeing Emeryville or being driven into bankruptcy.   An alarmed Council majority alerted the voters not to be "dupes" to organized labor and to vote NO to the 'Hotel Workers Living Wage Ordinance' proposal.  Emeryville voters didn't listen to the City Council who was listening to the warnings of the Hotel owners and they passed the 2005 Measure C easily.  Again, the hotel owners were lying about the effect increased costs would have on their businesses and the only people duped were the Emeryville City Council majority.  Emeryville at the time had four hotels, now we have five, making it hard to make the case for "wholesale business failures".

By 2014 however, the City Council finally learned that businesses will lie to protect their profits.  That year, a new more progressive Council majority didn't believe the dire warnings about wholesale business failure and bankruptcies from the California Association of Realtors and the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce if Emeryville were to raise real estate transfer taxes up to the Bay Area average.  Again, the voters approved Measures U&V that allowed for the increase in taxes and again, the business failure boogyman turned out to be nothing more than the business community not wanting to pay more money to conduct business in our town.

Moving ahead to 2019, it would appear it's back to the future for us.  The City Council majority seems to have unlearned what they knew in 2014 and it's back to the old familiar saw about wholesale business failures if the business community is forced to pay more money.  We'll have to wait and see if this time the warnings were prescient but something tells us it's gunna be more of the same.

So why did these three Council members take us down this path again?  Especially when their own staff told them the 2018 Emeryville Mills College Business Study that reported that restaurant business stress, while extant, was not sufficient to propose public policy changes, "A piece of trash that we never should have paid for" Mayor Ally Medina said of the Mills document.  The staff conducted their own research that showed little or no stress for Emeryville's restaurant sector from added labor costs.  High rent costs were shown to be the primary source of business stress according to the staff report that accompanied a May 7th Council meeting on the MWO and the commissioned Mills Study.

The question of why this Council majority listened to the business community instead of the people of Emeryville or the low wage workers who toil here will likely remain unanswered for the time being.  Following the political careers of John Bauters and Dianne Martinez however might help Emeryville citizens find the answer.

http://emeryville.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=5&clip_id=1686&meta_id=165991

Portrait of a Growing Emeryville Restaurant Sector
From the May 7th staff report to the Council.
Sales are beating the Consumer Price Index.  The Council had this info before 
they voted to rollback wages of restaurant workers despite the claims of looming 
bankruptcies from restaurant owners.
A 3.56% per year rise in restaurant sales average from the first year of the MWO
to 2017.  California CPI 2015 .01%, 2016 1.3% 2017 2.1% source: FRB 9th District

Onni Project Threatens City Hall With Regulatory Capture

City Hall, Enthralled  
Captured by Onni

Work Performed at 1313 Park Ave is Done to Onni's Benefit

"Regulatory capture is a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating."

News Analysis/Opinion
Resident communities get to plan their cities as they see fit.  That's a given.  All the planning documents ensconced in City Hall, made with lots of voluntary citizen work and taxpayer money is evidence of this.  And planning, by definition, means regulation and thus the people of Emeryville have created a regulatory framework to facilitate the building of the town as they envision it.  It’s a good thing.

The proposed Onni Development with its 700' Tower
So seductive to the City Council, they have allowed the
 Canada based Onni Corporation to capture our regulatory
safeguards meant to protect Emeryville's residents.

Except of course for those who end up being regulated.
We needn’t go into a lot of expository rhetoric parsing how the regulated tend to push back against the regulators in such a dynamic.  Suffice it to say the public commons are a contested space and there is always a yin to every yang in the administration of a democratic public policy.
What’s evolved of late in Emeryville however upsets this familiar apple cart; a new grand mal of late capitalism excess embodying total corporate empowerment; private for-profit entities, especially billion dollar entities pushing for and getting carte blanche access to the levers of public power.

Enter the specter of ‘regulatory capture’ to Emeryville; that being an abdication of the checks generally imagined to be inherent in representational governance, by a rapacious private sector intent on seizing the commons.  In a word, Emeryville  City Hall, in the thrall of the recently proposed Christie Avenue Onni project, has abdicated control of the regulatory regime to that corporate entity.  Meaning, the developer of the Onni project gets his say utterly in virtually all the circumstantial aspects of this looming mega-project in our town.  And that’s not all. The regulations that are being lifted for the benefit of Onni now, will expose the citizens of Emeryville to future development of a kind that will likely be at least as voracious. 

Onni Residential Tower Unit Mix as Proposed
A portrait of regulatory capture.

While this regulatory capture is unwritten of course, it can easily be seen in the City Council chambers when the existing tower separation regulations are repealed at Onni’s say so.  Done without public debate.  Did we mention this developer’s proposal would be constrained by our tower separation regulations?  …And when our family housing unit mix is repealed, again for Onni’s benefit and without debate.  …And when our General Plan’s provisions for acres of park per new residents are pushed aside, again all for the benefit of the Onni developer and again, without a public debate.  ...And when our General Plan's provisions to make our town a town of no more that 16,600 souls by 2029 are pushed aside, again to the benefit of Onni and again, without public debate.

It all adds up to a corporate capture of the constraints on greed that were set up to serve the citizens’ interests.  Barring a citizens’ revolt against Onni, the public will receive nothing but crumbs for all the destruction of the commons this project with its 700 foot luxury apartment tower and accompanying 200 foot office tower will bring.

Regulatory capture is evident when a single private entity is able to steer the government to its corporate bidding on multiple fronts, simultaneously and without real public debate.  It becomes weaponized when there are enough local calculating politicians with hidden agendas and/or when the private entity behemoth is out of scale with the local government.  City Hall, clearly enthralled with the billion dollar Onni Corporation and wont to hand over the reins likely represents a less corrupt version sometimes called non materialist regulatory capture or cognitive capture, meaning government regulators begin thinking like the regulated.  As opposed to a simple series of illicit money transactions taking place behind closed doors.  That's probably not taking place here.  Probably.

Onni, at 638 units is an extremely large development, and it would remake our town even if we still had control over our regulatory system.  The problems the Onni project brings are legion if not familiar for such a large project; massively increasing traffic and congestion, increasing pollution in all its forms, the blocking of views and the creation of a generally alienating environment of course all come with any large development project to a small city.  But Onni, being a 100% rental project also dramatically drives down the ratio of homeowners in our town, a town that already has the lowest percentage of home ownership in the East Bay.

Onni Residential Tower if Built as Required
Emeryville's existing family friendly unit mix regulations
provides housing for families.  A portrait of a town trying to
make up lost ground after a generation of losing families.

But what’s at stake specifically is our capacity for our own autonomy as we attempt to make our city a city for families, to build park land, to address legitimate concerns over crowding of towers and to limit our city's population to 16,600.  All things we have identified as desirable for us.  All things the law allows us to pursue.  And unfortunately, all things the developer of Onni has captured and turned away from us.
And woe be it to anyone who attempts to defend our public regulatory system in such an environment.  Indeed, the old familiar epithet of NIMBYism has already entered the Onni debate such as there is one.  But there is nothing beyond a debate tactic to conflate the idea that people who don’t want more traffic in their town or their views blocked and those who don’t want to see outright regulatory capture by a specific developer.  One is democratic and the other isn’t.

Residents Per Acre of Park Land
Emeryville Already Has the Least Acreage of Parks in the East Bay
The Onni project will drive down our already lowest
in the East Bay acres of park per resident.
Onni provides park land at 2200 residents per acre. 
Emeryville's existing average is about 512 residents per acre.
The General plan says we should have no more
than 333 residents per acre.

Number of People Per Rental Unit
Emeryville Already Has the Fewest Families in East Bay
Emeryville compared with our neighbors.
Onni will drive down Emeryville's average even lower.
Our schools will suffer the consequences. 

Emery School Board Member Cruz Vargas: An Authoritarian Without Authority

Last Authoritarian Holdout on School Board,

Cruz Vargas Warns that 

President Barbara Inch 

"Must Be Kept Away From the Children"

News Analysis/Opinion
Normally a body of relative comity, the Emery Unified School Board has lately devolved into a place of ugly ad hominem Trumpist vitriol, member Cruz Vargas leading the charge.  His political will thwarted by his colleagues, the City Council and the people of Emeryville, former Board President Vargas used his place at the dais to warn parents and citizens that their newly selected president, Barbara Inch, must be "kept away from the children".
It seems a nadir for Emeryville's last authoritarian political soap box orator, the ostracized and dispossessed board member who sanctimoniously and without a sense of irony, rejects the title 'politician'.   He's here not to play politics he says, rather he's here for the children.

Board member Vargas has become a curiosity.  Among the authoritarian right wing in Emeryville, formerly a syndicate establishment that for decades ran this town, he's the only one of them left standing from what was the entire elected political class.  But following a righteous two year democratic purge at the hands of Emeryville voters, there's now a near total loss of authority for Emeryville's right wing.  It's been a slow motion train wreak that leaves only the impolitic and obstinate Emery School Board member Cruz Vargas standing athwart the rubble of the once mighty right wing power elite.

Mr Vargas has faced a recriminatory and humiliating onslaught from all comers as of late.  But it hasn't been without merit.  This year he was stripped of his Board presidency by a unanimous vote of his colleagues in an epic take down over unnamed behind the scenes transgressions, called out publicly for his lies by the City Council and then in November, Emeryville's voters denied Cruz a sympathetic Board majority he would have needed to build an army of followers to beat back the progressive tide.  Rather than graciously giving way to the will of the voters, an embittered Cruz Vargas is instead howling against the democratic wave that swept the last of his kind away, now telling anyone who will listen that Emery's new School Board president and architect of his demise (at least as he sees it), must be stopped.  It's for the sake of the children he says.  Literally....Board member Vargas announced at the December 12th Board meeting when the new officers were being selected by the Board, positions taken by all members except for him, his new job on the Board is to keep the chosen School Board president, Barbara Inch, away from children.  "For two years I've fought to ensure that we keep politics and politicians away from our children.  Barbara Inch has shown where politics trumps progress." he said.

Abject Politics
It's been two years filled with political drama with Cruz Vargas on the School Board, his authoritarian philosophy of education serving as his guide.  An early supporter of and apologist for former Superintendent John Rubio, Cruz moved to protect the alpha-male schools chief as he drove an authoritarian campaign of disruption leading to the worst teacher retention problem in the Bay Area.  Nine departing teachers inveighed against the Superintendent's bullying and racist tactics at a School Board meeting prompting member Vargas to lead a drive to scrub their outgoing speeches from the official record in retaliation.  Dissenting School Board member Inch was the sole vote to allow the teacher's comments to be part of the record as reflected in the official minutes.
Later, as Board President, Mr Vargas led a drive to stop the Board from endorsing Measure C, Emeryville's $50 million affordable housing bond because the School Board has no interest in helping families move to the District, he said.  Dissenting Board member Inch cast a dissenting vote stating that Emery Unified School District in fact does have interest in having families with children afford to live here. Seventy two percent of Emeryville voters agreed with Ms Inch.
Most prominent over the years was Cruz's failed bid to get the taxpayers to pay for a full time sworn police officer to patrol the school campus; the infamous Emery School Resource Officer (SRO) debacle.  After the idea was forcefully shot down by the entire City Council as a sociopathic exercise in service of the right wing's greater 'school to prison pipeline' syllabus, President Vargas swore a quixotic oath to go around the Council.  Using an emotional pleas to parents, Cruz engaged in a pious go it alone political gambit that came up empty handed.  Countering President Vargas, Mayor John Bauters made a legendary speech calling for evidence-based policy on the SRO issue and to be cautious of politicians using demagoguery in its service.

The downward spiral of the delusional former Board President Vargas is quite a spectacle to behold and his displays of abject hypocrisy would make for some pretty entertaining viewing were it not for the disturbing complete unmooring from reality.  In his failed attempt to derail the vote to make Barbara Inch Board President, she the most popular candidate ever elected to the Emery School Board, Cruz Vargas told the audience at the December meeting (again lacking a sense of irony), "Not every Board member should be president."  The guileless former president Vargas added, "It requires a special level of leadership, presence, demeanor, social skills and composure."   Those being words his Board colleagues believe....and acted upon, when they stripped him of his Board presidency.


EUSD December 12 2018 FULL Board Meeting from Emery Unified School District on Vimeo.
Video Legend:
21:12 - 21:50 Cruz tells his Board colleagues they must protect the children from Barbara Inch.

Mayor John Bauters: Democratic Ideals Mix With Good Public Policy

A Mayor of Consequence

Mr Bauters Finishes a Year of Competence 

News Analysis/Opinion
It's not often the Tattler mentions a job well done by Emeryville's politicians- as far the elected's work performance goes, usually no news is good news.  But we're going to make an exception in the case of Mayor John Bauters.  An elected public official who knows the proper role of government mixed with extraordinary political competence has made for that rarest alignment of political stars: a democratic government that reflects with fidelity the desires of the citizenry.

As he rotates back to the City Council sidelines, Councilwoman Ally Medina now taking the role of mayor for the next year, we pause to look back at a year in Emeryville with Mayor Bauters in charge.

Emeryville Mayor
John Bauters

Mr Bauters sees a central role of government as attenuating the growing rift of inequality in our riven society.  And the most important things he accomplished as mayor were designed with that in mind; things like the introduction and shepherding of Emeryville's landmark $50 million affordable housing bond known as Measure C and the daunting but critically needed work of ameliorating homelessness in our community (please see the video below).
In addition, Mr Bauters made community values affirmation central to the bi-monthly assemblies of the citizens, the gripefests also known as City Council meetings, in the form of uplifting 'Community Celebrations'.  These celebratory acknowledgments of the civically virtuous in our town, be they the best of the LGBT community, the African American community, girls in the community or simple citizens officially highlighted before each Council meeting for whom community means a selflessness in giving back, have served to offer to us all realization in the proper role of government.  City Hall, Mr Bauters reminds us, is not here just to fix potholes but to help bind us together into a cohesive community.
Further, Mayor Bauters has kept his focus on budgetary concerns like the payment of an additional $4 million towards liabilities on his watch, saving the taxpayers some $11 million in interest.  He has also reached out to small businesses with a listening series of well attended quarterly town hall events meant to mollify their concerns.

As with any politician of consequence, Mayor Bauters took his share of knocks from the critics for his bold moves on behalf of the community.  He has taken on the label 'progressive' proudly and it has earned him the enmity of the right wing in Emeryville.   The editor of the pro-business blog the E'Ville Eye, Rob Arias has practically made taking down John Bauters a personal crusade.  One only needs to peruse the cesspool that is Mr Arias' Twitterfeed to get a taste of the villainization of Mr Bauters there.
Rob Arias uses his blog and twitter account to promote disdain for homeless people and disdain for those who would help people trying to afford homes in Emeryville while taking on Emeryville's mayor and champion of those issues...that's something one would expect but over the last year, John has kept his focus on what matters.  We remember an issue not related to public policy while we have watched Mr Arias' slimy spectacle; we remember how Mayor Bauters brought to Emeryville a brave young man from Kentucky.  This young man, a recent valedictorian at his high school, had been refused to give the traditional valedictorian speech to the student body there because his hometown cannot countenance that he is gay and gender non-conforming.  Mr Bauters cleared the way for that speech to be given...here in Emeryville at one of our Community Celebrations.  We can't think of a better way to show who we are as a community.
Our City Hall should be used in this kind of way, the way Mayor Bauters sees it, the way the greater Emeryville community sees it.

After Rubio: School Board Hopefuls Need a Litmus Test

Emery Unified School District:

Emeryville's Last Bastion of 

Pure Civic Dysfunction

With a New Superintendent and a New Board President,
Will We Have Turned a Page?

We're Guessing NO

The only change that will come will be from the ballot box

News Analysis/Opinion
Last week two more teachers announced they will not be returning to Emery Unified School District in the fall.  That adds to the eight that already announced earlier for a total of ten this, the last year of John Rubio as Emery superintendent.  Really bad, but an improvement over last year's 37% teacher exodus.  Emery, under John Rubio, infamously can't hold on to its teachers. 
Mr Rubio's anti-teacher tactics, described by the teachers themselves as "bullying" and "racist", however bad, are nothing new for Emery superintendents.  The last two out of three supes here tried to outright destroy the teachers union.  The last one, Debbra Lindo, offered to testify against Emery's teachers in the union busting Vergara case after receiving a vote of 'no confidence' from 92% the entire teaching staff in their 2012 Teachers Resolution.  Rabidly anti-teacher policy: It's an ongoing pattern and practise at Emery.

 But now it would seem Emery is changing.  The leadership, if you can call it that, is falling like dominoes; we're getting a new superintendent and just last week the School Board ganged up and kicked President Cruz Vargas out of his leadership position.  Normally you would expect after a substantive course change with that kind of power shift, a move towards competency at least would be forthcoming.  But this after all is Emery, and therefore it's ossified.

Every time a superintendent is removed or a School Board is replaced or a breathlessly announced new program is initiated, we inevitably drift back into the same culture of dysfunction centered around incompetency, lack of transparency, authoritarianism and a general aversion to evidence-based policy.  Politics as usual. The results for Emery where the rubber meets the road, are low enrollment numbers and low student academics resulting in failing school 'growth' and a district-wide lowered ranking.  The only way forward by the way (and the only way not tried at Emery), is to support our teachers, not engage in a war against them, the heretofore default Emery programmatic expediency from an uncreative and ossified School Board.

The debacle at the June 14th School Board meeting is emblematic of the culture of decline that has a stranglehold at Emery.
To wit: A power hungry and vituperative Board President pissed off one too many colleagues (as well as the Superintendent) and found himself kicked to the curb.  Stepping in to correct a locus of dysfunction; that would normally be considered a good move made by a public entity trying to center itself around what should be its core duty.  But again, this is Emery.  So what ensued instead was just another political power struggle.  What could have been a moment of accountability  turned instead into just so much more counterproductive churlishness.  Due to Board factious infighting, what the people of Emeryville now have is a School Board president and vice president that none of us ever voted for; in what should be a democratically elected body we now have two unelected and unaccountable leaders.  That's a terrible place to be with a new superintendent coming in.

The Definition of Out Of Touch
He's working for the kids...blah, blah blah.
In reality, Board member Donn Merriam  joined
colleagues Bailey Langner and Cruz Vargas
in saying NO to affordable housing
for Emeryville families. 
72% of Emeryville voters
disagree with them. 

Post Vargas, there is no reason other than pompous impetuosity that the people of Emeryville couldn't have figured into the equation.  What about democracy, Emery? You know, the people themselves getting the chance to have the people they picked govern this public enterprise?

If the Emery School Board weren't so highly dysfunctional, the Board President would now be the people's choice....the one who faced the voters and who the voters said they liked to run Emery; namely Barbara Inch.  But politics as usual has taken hold once again. This is not a good sign.  It foretells that where we're headed is where we've been.  Again.  A new superintendent, who presents us with a moment of great possibility, will be infected by incestuously base and venal Board politics.  Again.

Now presents a rare chance to actually change this District the Board has refused to seize.
It's rare because we have a new superintendent who wants to do the right thing (but needs a competent Board).  Rare, because this time our new superintendent will be the beneficiary of a "threesy" election this November.  Three Board members will be selected by Emeryville voters.  This aligning of the stars could actually change this school district.
But Emeryville voters will have to step up.  We cannot leave this to the usual lying poseurs seeking office.  Anyone running for School Board needs to face a litmus test.  The test need not be anything radical...it only needs to be radical for Emery.  Below are the minimum bars needed for prospective School Board members at Emery:

• Do they accept high teacher retention as a worthy goal? 
• Will they work to ensure high teacher retention is achieved?
• If Emery again fails to retain teachers (as compared with other districts), will the prospective Board member intervene?  How exactly?
• Will criticism from parents or the citizenry be encouraged?  How?
• Will bad news or flawed policies be openly discussed?
• Will rational and evidence-based policy be the default?  Will the prospective Board member be open to public discussion and debate, supported by the evidence, about merging Emery with a neighboring school district if that's shown to be the best course for the students?
• Will all parents be treated equally?  How about law abiding but unpopular and critical parents?  Will they be treated the same as popular and flattering parents by the Board member?
• Will the Board member generally support teachers over administrators?
• Will they own up to failures on their own?
• Will they be available to parents, the citizens and the press?  Even a critical but law abiding press?
• Do they think it's possible to measure the job performance of a schools superintendent?  How?

Three out of four current Emery School Board members would fail every bar above.  If a majority of School Board members passed the above bars, the end result would be better educational prospects for Emeryville's children.
We need to leverage this new Superintendent's skills with a normal, not dysfunctional School Board.  A normal school board.  That's something Emeryville hasn't had for more than a generation so it's easy to see how naysayers will spin this.  Our normal IS dysfunction.  But it really doesn't have to be that way.
This opportunity may not come this way again for another generation.  We can't squander this: We need to elect three new School Board members that have a progressive vision of public education.  That's Emeryville by the way: progressive.  All we need to do is keep out the ego driven charlatans, poseurs and con men.  We only have to elect the same kind of people we've been electing for the City Council: not necessarily great, just competent and reflective of our values.  That should be an easy lift.  Remember, we recently elected Donn Merriam to the School Board and he rallied against Measure C, the affordable housing for families bond initiative that passed by 72% of Emeryville voters.  Donn would never have passed our litmus test.  We could have stopped the sociopathic Donn Merriam.  Let's make sure we don't elect another sociopath to the Board.

Let's use a litmus test this time.

Emeryville voters: Imagine a school district that's not in the news....a school district quietly doing its job.

Acquiescent City Council End Runs Around Noise Ordinance

All Developers Get Free Pass on 
Noise Ordinance 

New Interpretation Strips Ordinance of Meaning

"Public Benefit" Drives Waivers
Diminished Law Exists Only Now in Name

News Analysis/Opinion
The Emeryville City Council moved to greatly expand the conditions for noise ordinance waiver requests from developers on July 25th when the developer of the Public Marketplace was issued a permit to work on Saturdays in order to “finish the project more quickly”.  The new paradigm revealed itself when the Council majority (Patz, Medina dissenting) ceded to the pleading developer after they found that because the project has public benefit, ipso facto a waiver should therefore be granted.  The bold new idea is that any project that has public benefit should supersede and be allowed to bypass the public’s expectation for peace and quiet. To speed the benefit of the project to the public you understand.

How thoughtful of them.

In fact it was a remarkably egregious City Council assessment that turned a deaf ear to the original precepts for Emeryville’s beleaguered noise ordinance but perhaps more astonishing was not what was said, rather what was left unsaid: every development project approved by the City of Emeryville has public benefit.  They don’t get approved around here if they are found to not have public benefit.  And that means every development from now on gets a carte blanche noise ordinance waiver.  It’s taken as a tautology.  And that means there’s no need for the City of Emeryville to have a noise ordinance any more.

Mayor Scott Donahue &
Councilwoman Dianne Martinez
They swear to get developers their
noise ordinance waivers.

Frankly, we’ll miss watching developers squirm before the cameras.  For the new metrics of the noise ordinance finally puts to bed the endless procession of poor, woeful developers sheepishly appearing before the City Council asking for waivers for a host of reasons including the ever popular ‘rain delay’.  Because rain unexpectedly falling in the rainy season is not something that could be planned for so can you give us a break Emeryville City Council? (because who could have anticipated THAT?), made even more brazenly when it was invoked by Turner Construction as they built the ECCL during last year’s worse ever drought in California.  Sometimes developers will dispense with all that and report they should get a waiver just because they really, really want one (as Wareham Devlopment did recently). 
Each time since the ordinance was encoded, developers seeking waivers have publicly contorted or even debased themselves, the Council has felt their pain and granted a waiver, no matter the reason provided.  The groveling spectacle has brought much comic relief to the sometimes boring Council meetings; watching these greedy developers go through their stations of the cross before the Council (themselves also performing for the cameras, feigning resident fealty), on the road to delivering their maximized quarterly profits to their shareholders.

Vice Mayor John Bauters
It's best if we can speed
up these projects.
The noise ordinance only
slows them down.

The new interpretation of the ordinance; dispensing with the sideshow of developers carping about what constitutes a reasonable hardship and simply granting the waivers pell mell based on speeding up public benefit will certainly speed up the meetings and remove embarrassment for all concerned but we have an even better idea. Let’s stop the charade and finally get rid of this asinine noise ordinance of ours.  It’s never worked as it was intended to and has only served to give a sense of legitimacy for our town (see? Emeryville’s got a noise ordinance too, just like real cities).  

The removal of the Noise Ordinance, if the Council has the cajones to do it, will finally bring some kind of silence, if only poetic;  it’s abolishment will likely happen quietly in the night.  Residents will not notice any change whatsoever in the extra weekend traffic, dust and loud construction.  That goes on unabated in Emeryville, with or without a noise ordinance. 

Earns One Smiling Nora Davis!
Nora Davis Smiles Down on 
Scott Donahue, Dianne Martinez 
and John Bauters.