Stop, Drop and Roll

16 July 2007 | Alameda Community, Alameda Community Development Forum, Measure A | John Knox White

The second installment of the Alameda based soap opera “Planning a Meeting” aired on Friday. And it picked up where it left off almost immediately. Facilitator David Early started to reiterate what had been agreed to by consensus at the last meeting and before he could finish Ms. Coler-Dark shouts out “No!” Early continues and Ms. Bail says “that’s not what we agreed,” within minutes, Ms. Kerr is also arguing as well. And then everyone agrees (and argues) that they all agreed to what Facilitator Early is saying, and at the same time, they didn’t. My head hurts.

{quick editorial break: this meeting had all the interdimensional aspects of the first meeting and things get complicated quickly. In order to better understand what happened, I think it’s better to start at the end.}

Part 4 10:14 - The meeting ends with a rousing call for civility and non-contentiousness. Pat Bail gives what was a sincere and very nice speech on how everyone can be passionate about their positions, but there’s no need to attack and become contentious. “We all want the best thing for this community. Because there’s a disagreement doesn’t mean that anybody is a bad person, it means that there’s a disagreement. And because I disagree with you doesn’t mean that gives anybody the right me to you or you to me to say we’re stubborn or contentious, because we simply disagree, so these little sly comments really just doesn’t hold any place in this. If you have something to say, just stand up and say it. I don’t have any problem standing up and saying what I mean. And what I mean is, this group could not reach an agreement because there’s too many political agendas going on. And that’s it pure and simple. And if the city council doesn’t understand it, they certainly will that after I write my report because that’s exactly what’s going on. This was a simple task that could have been taken care of very simply. But unfortunately it’s overwrought by these other messages going on.”

Part 4: 8:43 – Barbara Kerr, For the second or third time, non-contentiously calls the planning board non-integrity having people who she doesn’t trust. “I don’t think there’s any point in this group meeting again, as I said before “we had an agreement from the first meeting and we agreed to do it in this meeting and these three planning board members are quote revisiting it unquote which means that they are not keeping their agreements and once you start dealing with those kinds of people there’s no point of continuing.”

Part 3: 51:09 – Barbara Kerr explains why small group discussions won’t work “the anti-measure a people bring in a lot of people from out of town, Eve Bach and her ilk” {editorial note: what’s up with describing people as an ilk? As one who has attended a lot of Alameda community meetings, I have to ask how, in a town of nearly 75,000 people, Barbara Kerr knows who is from Alameda and who is not? Because I have been to one meeting where there were a ton of folks from Oakland (and I know because they all announced themselves before addressing the planning board about traffic in Chinatown), and other than that, I’ve never seen a meeting with more than a couple of non-Alamedans. This kind of rhetoric (see Bail: above) points to exactly the problem with debate in this town. If people disagree with Barbara Kerr and friends (notice lack of “ilk”), then obviously, they are not Alamedans. It’s like Bush and his use of “traitor” or “helping the enemy” if you have no response, then just make up stuff.}

Part 3: 49:28 – Barbara Kerr vigorously waves her hand for 5 seconds and says, non-contentiously, “It’s about time if Marilyn won’t interrupt me”

Part 3: 23:50 (this is the money shot of all the meetings)– Barbara Kerr is explaining how the Planning Board members are untrustworthy and Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft attempts to interrupt (something that Kerr, Bail and Coler-Dark have also done in the meetings keep in mind) and Kerr goes mental. “Will you shut UP!” she screams slamming the desk with her open fist. (this is not hyperbole! Check the tape). “Will you stop interrupting me,” she’s screams, leaning into Ezzy Ashcraft’s personal space. Now I’m not going to defend interrupting people in meetings, I know I’ve done it myself but it’s rude. But honestly, screaming and slamming tables is unacceptable (and the facilitator did a great job of making that clear). What’s amazing is that even though she has no called consultants “whores,” city staff untrustworthy liars and planning board members liars with no integrity who can’t be trusted. The “news” coming out of this meeting is that the planning board were just a bunch of uppity, self-serving people with an agenda. Note to “Keep Measure A” keep Kerr away from your discussions, she’s not helping your cause.

Part 3: 18:01 – I think this is where we began to suspect that things were jumping the rails for good. Ms. Bail is explaining what can and cannot be discussed during the forum. “see all these tabs in my housing element? These are all the things that talk about the good things that measure A does within the housing element.” So far, so good, no big surprise. And then “I could spend three hours on this in educating you about this….so my view is this forum is an educational opportunity, it’s not a political opportunity, nor is it an opportunity to advocate any one position.” See? It’s simple, it’s just education on how Measure A is benefiting the city. Talking about other tradeoffs is advocating a political position, highlighting and talking only about the benefits isn’t a position at all.

And the absolute kicker in the whole, “hey you guys need to be nice to us” lecture from Ms. Bail (to Marilyn Ashcraft and the planning board members):

Part 1: 16:00 – Ms. Ezzy Ashcraft is explaining why she thinks there should be what some might considered a well-rounded presentation on Measure A and its history and Ms. Bail interrupts with “I object” and when Ezzy Ashcraft asks her to wait for when she has the floor (note to Kerr, watch this part, it’s a good example of politely asking not to be interrupted). Bail continues however, non-contentiously saying “Marilyn, you know what, you’re going off on a tangent like you always do.”

So see, planning board members pointing out (slyly I might add) that the last meeting was contentious because Barbara Kerr was calling people whores and picking grade-school fights with the facilitator because she wasn’t allowed to dominate the meeting like she had hoped, that’s unfair, personal and contentious. Team Appellant, telling fellow committee members to shut up, slamming fists on tables, getting up and walking out, and making not very nice remarks” (I won’t get into the inappropriate comments and derisive laughter from Don Robert and David Howard every time Ezzy Ashcraft spoke (very classy). That’s not contentious, that just standing up for what you think and being clear about it.

The meeting actually jumped the rails at the beginning when Team Appellant came in and agreed that the entire group had formed a consensus around the idea of picking speakers for the forum through consensus (meaning the ad hoc committee would sit down and choose six speakers). And then, Team Appellant, to a person, said that they wanted to throw that agreement out the window and do exactly what they said they wanted at the first meeting, pick half the speakers and the planning board pick half. At the end of the second meeting, Team Appellant had not given one half-inch in the discussion. It was their way or the highway (the tape backs this up, so don’t take my word for it). And now they want to run around and yell “the planning board won’t play nice.”

It’s really embarrassing, because the council offered Team Appellant a seat at the table, and they spat on it. It’s now time for the council to thank them for their time and for the planning board to reassert itself as the city’s land-use planning board and put together a forum on Measure A.

I will present the rest of last Friday’s meeting in details in my next post. As always, I encourage you to check out the videos yourself, see what your opinion of the meeting was. It’s presented here in four parts:

Part 1 /Part 2 /Part 3 /Part 4