Sorry to be out of pocket for so long, but news of Alameda city government and the erstwhile Alameda Point developer Suncal mediating to possibly resolve massive lawsuits can only be looked at as good news.

Unfortunately, they are likely to have a lot to untangle in the next 90 days as former acting manager Ann Marie Gallant’s M. O. seems to have been to play everyone off against everyone else.

Fortunately for us, she overdid it when she hired the private eye to try and build a case against an elected official who dared ask about her no-bid contract given to an old friend and colleague.  And the council was then able to step back, get an idea of what she had been up to, and vote unanimously to send her on her way.

Suncal had been claiming that she was not operating above board, but until the meltdown nobody seemed to take them very seriously.  It will be interesting to learn, if this mediation process allows it, just how many ways she may really have stuck it to them.

Their claim includes $17 million that they put up to get the process started in the first place. The $100 million number is their ballpark figure I guess for lost opportunity, reputation damage, et al; heck even maybe ‘pain and suffering.’

At any rate, a summary judgment or settlement amount could easily fall somewhere in the $17-100 million range, which is a huge departure from the $1 million Gallant once told us we faced in exposure if we flushed Suncal as she wanted. My guess is that the city would be hard pressed to cut a check for 17 million dollars if they lose, but what choice do they have? You remember the recent cries of anger when one pool was shut down? People went nuts!

Our two former city employees responsible for working with the developer and the Navy are now suspected of withholding information from us and our elected officials, as well as the developer, and it looks like at least one of them is also being accused of destroying evidence.

But it is human nature to emotionally filter or block information that messes with your world view, even if that view was seeded Manchurian style by Gallant. So we should expect her minions and bots to continue sniping for quite some time at Suncal and any elected official who didn’t drink her Kool-Aide.  Sniping indeed, all the way to some budget busting settlement or judgment.

It’s no surprise that the city isn’t releasing more information about Gallant and Highsmith, which needs to remain confidential because they are, in fact, suing the city of Alameda. With that in mind, this recent news that the city wants to mediate with SunCal is a message sent loud and clear to all: Gallant and Highsmith were up to no good, and we know we’re going to lose this lawsuit.

Ancient Athenians are credited with ‘inventing’ democracy.  But their system involved the winner getting the fewest votes, not the most.  Athenians threw their negative or ‘bong’ style vote at the candidate they liked the least.

The result was some seriously milquetoast leadership that likely led to their downfall.

By contrast, modern American democracy has been more ‘wedge’ style or divisive in the late Lee Atwater (Bush Senior’s strategist) tradition, leading to a different kind of downfall because we keep electing leaders who win by dividing rather than coalescing, after they gobble up blocks of single issue and special interest voters enough to get to a plurality. It’s called “Ranked Choice Voting.”

The advantage of our new ranked voting system is that you need a bit of both Athenian and modern style appeal in order to win, but it has it’s downsides.

Marie Gilmore won the majority of the votes in Alameda, making her mayor. Perata won the majority of the votes in Oakland, making him… not mayor. Fact is, Don Perata was effectively the absolute last choice of 51% of the public, but he was not declared Mayor of Oakland.

Under Athenian democracy we certainly wouldn’t have ended up with him, and likely would have ended up with Kaplan or someone else totally below the radar.  Yet with ranked choice voting, we end up with a leader who both stands out yet does not attract quite so much negativity along the way, in this case Mayor elect Quan.

Besides Perata, the real losers in this evolution of democracy are his political consultants. Tramutola, LLC certainly should have understood the basic math behind ranked voting, even if his client didn’t.  And Perata needs to be praised for leaving the sore loser Tramutola notion of a lawsuit behind, and pledging his support to the new Quan administration.

Here’s a couple eye opening links on the consultant:

Oh, Those Silly Campaign Consultants

PROPERTY OWNERS’ PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1 - LARRY TRAMUTOLA!

Looks like someone’s tired of getting the run around from the unelected down at city hall.  A mailer linking Alameda to the corruption plagued town of Bell, CA hit mail boxes and what it says about Acting Manager Anne Marie Gallant needs truthing, one way or the other.

So let’s get right to it.  First off, does she really pull down over $280,000 dollars a year?  Turns out the salary itself is a bit less than that at $250,000.  But the number would make sense if one were including a limited benefits package in the calculation.  So is that really more than the manager of big sister city San Francisco makes just across the bay?

According to an article called “Small cities, big pay,” Administrator Edwin Lee of San Francisco takes in a base salary of just under $180,000.  The article translates that to about $250,000 once benefits are included.  Apparently the city manager MO is to increase their base pay which will lead to a higher retirement salary.

Looks like our little island really is paying big league money to say the least. So what kind of big league talent are we getting for our big league pay?  The mailer says Gallant has blown thru 6 similar posts in the last 10 years – not exactly anchoring needed municipal stability if true.  Here’s a 2005 piece on point from Desert Hot Springs pondering ‘3 city administrator jobs in 2 years’ for Gallant.

Since she also worked for the LA redevelopment authority recently and came to us from King City, we can account directly for 5 out of the 6 claim anyway.

What’s frustrating in this research is that Gallant’s actual vitae or resume doesn’t seem to be anywhere in cyberspace, despite her unsusual enough name.  I searched both ways and have to say it’s just not out there.

Anyway, the mailer may be nothing more than sour grapes once superior court dismisses SunCal’s lawsuit against Gallant for what they allege was a pattern of obstruction, destruction of evidence, and a breach of contract.  I can’t imagine the courts weighing into these waters, regardless of the merits since there’d be no end to it.  But for now it looks like a clean shot and a direct hit at the shenanigans at city hall.

To hear Frank Matarrese tell it, his long tenure in Alameda government has been nothing but sugar and spice, everything nice.  So why is he getting no traction in his bid to become Mayor?

Maybe it has something to do with the twin crises of our current jobs famine and Alameda budget fiasco.  Even our fair wage friends in organized labor are turning away from Frank.

You can only blow so much smoke I guess, before folks began to see that Matarrese doesn’t walk the talk.

And speaking of walking, didn’t he promise to hit every street in his “listening tour” when he made his big mayoral announcement back in January?  My little Schotzie and Freckles have been anxiously awaiting their chance to give him the Mail Man (excuse me, Letter Carrier) treatment.  No sign yet, however, of Frank’s fancy footwear darkening the doors in our neighborhood.

“Woof”

Meanwhile, Marie Gilmore seems to be racking up the endorsements of those who care most about the future of jobs and our city budget in these tough times.  The Democratic Club, labor and more are getting on board.

Marie, if you read this, Freckles is all the way in for you too (with all 4 paws).

So it’s finally come down to this:  For better or worse, our little patch of island paradise was chugging along on a community driven plan to finally take on the festering redevelopment issues surrounding Alameda Point.

We know the expenses are large and growing.  We know also we don’t want development that will add to traffic.  We do want jobs and things like open space to preserve and enhance the island’s quality of life features.  And we knew we had neither the capital nor the expertise to redevelop such a massive project ourselves.

We have, or had, an emerging consensus about what we would and would not allow the developer to do.  And then we got ourselves a new ‘interim’ city manager and the next thing we knew everyone is at everyone else’s throat.

Then we learn that our manager has quite a ‘history’ of leaving communities bitterly divided after short stints running each place, along with litigation and lingering divisions.

But until interim city manager Ann Marie Gallant went and used taxpayer funds to sic what is essentially a Private Eye on one of our duly elected officials, we didn’t really have any clear examples of the divide and conquer style Gallant seems to be so fond of using.

Think about it.  Rather than just facing the elected official you have concerns about and saying ‘hey, I don’t think this is okay,’ she hires someone to build a secret file on the unsuspecting councilmember.

Then, when that councilmember gets out of line, in this case daring to question a sweetheart no bid contract to an old boss, wham.  Out comes the file, straight to the DA and with much public fanfare to go along with it.

Machiavelli would be proud.

And of course the rest of our council, perhaps now alarmed that their own files might also be cocked and ready for DA referral, go along with whatever Gallant wants.

It’s no wonder we have no developer, no plan and no daylight except that we’re now being sued.  We hired “The Temp” and she’s methodically putting us through the wringer.

Political turmoil is brewing in Alameda, and the stakes are high due to the November 2 mayoral and city council elections.

Because there is quite a lot of controversy surrounding a few of the candidates, I’d like to take a moment and outline the platforms. As voters, I believe it is our collective duty to ignore political games and focus on the facts.

Part I is an overview of the five mayoral candidates:

·         Tony Daysog - http://www.daysog.com/biography.html

Former City Councilman; businessman and urban planner

Platform: Change, Balancing the city budget - no new taxes, jobs, downtown renovation, schools, historic preservation

Urban Growth Angle: Daysog is our top “urban growth” pick. As an urban planner by trade, Daysog gets it.  He is a champion for transit-oriented development, and realizes that the city can maintain Alameda’s small-town feel with the redevelopment of Alameda Point… only if the city can secure a source of funding.

·         Marie Gilmore - http://www.gilmoreforalameda.com

Councilmember (Term: Dec 2004 - Dec 2012)

Platform: City budget, Jobs, Alameda Point, Youth opportunities, Senior   needs

Urban Growth Angle: Gilmore’s active advocacy of and participation in the creation of Alameda Towne Center, renovation of Park Street and development of Harbor Bay Business Park shows she has a keen eye on urban economic development. We’d like to see her continue her good work.

·         Frank Matarrese - http://frankformayor.org

Councilmember (Term: Dec 2006 - Dec 2010)

Platform: Preserving the character of Alameda, Jobs, Education, Alameda Point, City budget

Urban Growth Angle: Mararrese is never quick to vocalize his own opinion, but is usually quick to follow someone else’s – let’s hope smart, sustainable urban growth becomes an Alameda trend, so we will follow it. He has supported Webster and Park Street development, which is promising.

·         Doug deHaan - http://dougdehaanalameda.com/

Vice Mayor (Term: Dec 2004 - Dec 2012)

Platform: City budget, Alameda Point, downtown renovation and retail expansion, community services

Urban Growth Angle: DeHaan holds some archaic views on urban growth. His Alameda Point redevelopment stance leaves a bit to be desired:  

“Work/live has its place to utilize worthy existing industrial buildings. It’s worth coming back to (the ordinance) and look at it. Should it have come to the voters as a change to Measure A? That’s still a questionable thing.”

·         Kenneth Kahn - http://www.myspace.com/kennydaclown

Professional clown who ran in 2006

Urban Growth Angle: We are always open to fresh ideas from up and coming candidates. Show us what you got Kenny the Clown!

We’ve reported here before that there was a real disconnect brewing between the current Alameda City Council plus staff and the master builder of the Point, Sun Cal.

In the wake of today’s news about a federal lawsuit Sun Cal is now filing against the city, an apology for total understatement seems warranted.

I have to assume that Sun Cal ran their press release by attorneys before sending it out.  Yet it claims that the acting city manager Ann Marie Gallant “Torpedoed” the project, right in the headline.  It goes on to assert that she did it so that she and others could, and I quote, “…put themselves in charge of a multi-year multi-million dollar project, despite having no development experience or expertise, so they can perpetuate themselves in public office and receive remuneration for “services rendered” indefinitely.”

Wow.  That’s quite an accusation and it will be quite the interesting legal dance going forward, I’m sure.  It’s certainly not the kind of accusation one’s attorneys let go out without being able to back it up.  Again, wow.

And if anyone has any doubt that this atomic bomb of a suit (and that release) was lawyer previewed and approved, just go back and look at the word “remuneration.”  Lawyers sometimes seem to bill by the syllable, so nobody outside the legal profession uses such a word when “coin,” or “money,” or “cash”  or “bread,” etc, etc would do just fine.

The other interesting development in today’s glowing mushroom cloud of news is Sun Cal’s roster of Gallant’s previous short and seemingly rocky stints in other towns.  This will require some more digging from yours truly here at Truth, Lies and Urban Growth because it’s just to juicy to wait for the wheels of justice to grind it out to us.

Meanwhile, if there is a bright spot in the melt down at city hall, it is that those of us who want to see higher quality-of-life focused planning (pedestrian and transit friendly, integrated uses, housing over shops and the like), have a chance to regroup and move our case forward with our neighbors.  Most of us seemed to like the Calthorpe plan, but enough of our neighbors were not on board that I believe more dialog would be helpful.

On the downside, you and I are going to be the ones who pay for city hall’s legal bills between now and then. 

A potentially complicating factor for the City of Alameda in defending itself it the policy of destroying city emails after 30 days, although the California Secretary of State’s guidelines say preserve a minimum of two years.  It is a generally accepted practice to preserve all forms of correspondence for two years, but city hall claims their servers can’t handle saving information beyond the 30 days.  Gmail can save anyone and everyone years worth of emails and not even charge you for it… I’ve also heard the argument that emails are “drafts” and therefore do not require records retention. 

Come on, City of Alameda. I’m not buying this excuse. Why are they really deleting emails? What is there to cover up?

If you live in a sea level community like the Bay Area, you need to be concerned with polar ice melt and rising sea levels.

Even if you don’t live at sea level, you still need to worry about a world where billions of people will be displaced by rising oceans and other impacts from weather in upheaval.

In response to the need, California has taken a leading role through SB 375 as it has in the past, and is pursuing hard targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Since 40% of our emissions are vehicle related, getting past the suburban commuter mentality must be part of the equation, as the urban planner and author of Vision California, Peter Calthorpe, points out in a recent Bay Citizen article.

Calthorpe’s reference, or perhaps it was the reporter’s take, is that Alamedans seem to want to be ‘suburban’ even though we’re right here in the heart of it all. And the evidence is supposed to be our recent rejection of Measure B.

What they’re missing here, however, is simply that we didn’t like the unique special exception to Measure A.  People like the Calthorpe/Suncal plan for Alameda Point and its potential to help alleviate traffic and provide jobs, as well as its positive impact on our carbon footprint.  What we didn’t like was the backward way we’d be brought into it under Measure B.

Give us smart, traffic reducing redevelopment that complies with existing laws and you can still have higher density, mixed use infill.

In addition to reducing our overall ‘car’-bon foot print by 17% from transportation, new urbanist redevelopment also means sustainability focused buildings – both new and renovated historic structures.  Since structures are the other major source of emissions after cars, our footprint going forward with projects like Suncal’s plan for Alameda Point will be that much smaller still.

If we don’t move in this direction and do it soon, beachfront property will ultimately begin at the base of the Oakland Hills.

The Alameda Point project, a Bay Area urban growth hopeful, is struggling to break through legislative red-tape. The argument of the moment? It seems that the City of Alameda and the developer, Suncal Companies, have conflicting fiscal analysis reports.

The city’s report, done by Economic Planning System (EPS), concludes that the Alameda Point project will be much more costly than the developer’s report, done by The Maxima Group, concludes. Each report has chosen a different market to base its numbers on. Actually, EPS admitted in a recent Alameda City Council meeting that the fiscal analysis numbers are based on numbers from “a textbook.” The Maxima Group chose numbers based on a planned development on Treasure Island. Maxima states, “The Treasure Island project is similar in scale (5,500 residential units, over 250,000 commercial square feet) and geography to the Alameda Point project.” Herein lies the problem: the EPS report is not representative of the development area, where it appears the Maxima Group’s is.

So why would the City of Alameda place so much stock in this inaccurate fiscal analysis?

Jennifer Ott, the Deputy City Manager of Alameda, is a past employee of EPS. It looks like Ott and EPS are trying to stack the cards against Suncal’s Alameda Point development.

Foul play in the Alameda Chambers may stem from Interim City Manager Anne Marie Gallant. Could it be that her deputy is following her example?

“The problem: Gallant has been awarding city contracts to her former business associates without the City Council’s approval because the total amount of each contract is being kept just under the $75,000 threshold requiring a Council vote. Gallant has given such contracts to her old colleagues at Westhoff, Cone & Holmstedt, Rips Consulting, and Graphtek.”

http://savealameda.com/2010/06/24/gallants-bad-judgment-not-good-for-alameda.aspx

Taking some info from the 2000 Bay Area Travel Survey (2000 BATS), MTCH, I’ve included some interesting statistics regarding rail and ferry transit oriented development (TOD):

People who live or work within a ½ mile of a rail or ferry station:

-          4x as likely to use transit for all trips

-          30% of commute trips by transit

-          19% of all trips by transit

-          4x as likely to walk/bike to work

-          2x as likely to walk/bike for non-work trips

-          1/3 of households are zero-vehicle (3x the national average)

-          70% of commute trips made by people who work in San Francisco, live elsewhere and are close to rail/ferry transit

-          2x as likely to use transit for commuting despite living more than one mile from rail/ferry transit

-          2x as likely to walk for short trips (one mile or less) than people living farther from transit

-          50% decrease in automobile travel

-          ½ the vehicle miles of travel of suburban development