Stop, Drop and Roll

08 April 2008 | Alameda Community, Tranpsortation, Transportation Commission | John Knox White

You will all remember that last Summer, a bill slipped quietly and quickly through the state legislature that authorized the State of California to take over Alameda’s ferry system into a regional agency called WETA. (a quick refresher).

After the passage of the bill, there were promises of clean up language, since in their haste, the authors had written a pretty ugly bill with lots of open questions. Much has transpired. The Governor has refused to appoint Ron Cowan to the WETA board, despite (or perhaps because of) his heavy hand in this deal. However, Don Perata’s office has kept some of its promise to protect Alameda’s interests by appoint mayor Beverly Johnson to the WETA board.

Last October, I pointed out that staff would be working to protect Alameda’s service in the following areas:

A)    continuing service levels,

B)     guaranteed emergency service to the main island,

C)    protection of the will of the voters,

D)    representation on the WETA Board.

So the WETA legislation clean up language is now public, sponsored by Assembly member Wiggins of Vallejo. And guess what! Vallejo’s interests are very well protected and Alameda’s ferry system is now the only service on the Bay that is has not been protected in this take over.

The Golden Gate Ferry was excluded from the take over and now the language states that:

(3) To the extent the plan required by this subdivision includes proposed changes to water transportation services provided by the City of Vallejo, those changes shall be proposed in a mannerconsistent with that city’s general plan, its downtown and waterfront redevelopment plans, and its development and disposition agreements, including, but not limited to, the construction of the proposed Vallejo Station Joint Development Project, which includes a parking garage and a separate bus transfer facility.

(4) To the extent the plan required by this subdivision includes proposals for ferry maintenance facilities, the authority shall ensure that the existing ferry maintenance facility located on Mare Island remains in operation and that any plans for the improvement or expansion of the facility that have received funds on or before January 1, 2008, are completed.

See that. A guarantee of continued service for Mare Island, and consistency with existing Vallejo plans. Notice anything missing? That’s right the words “Alameda” and “Alameda Point.”

The language also includes a guaranteed seat for any terminus that brings in 40% of the receipts of the system (read “Vallejo”):

(c) If a ferry terminal collects at least 40 percent of the total receipts of the ferry system under the control of the authority, the city or public agency where that terminal is located shall have a representative on the board.

This is great for a large city or a wealthy city. It might benefit Vallejo for a few years, but after a while, as the system becomes larger, it will become meaningless.

This clean up language again ignores the fact that the Bay Area has one city that is an island. A fact that directly affects its daily transportation needs, but even more importantly affects its emergency response needs.

At the time, I think the political calculus was that by playing along (not yelling and screaming like the Mayor of Vallejo) goodwill would be garnered and the city’s needs would be met. Unless someone knows something I don’t know (and I’m sure many people do!), this looks like the opposite of that. This looks like the loud-and-nasty tactics of the now ex-mayor of Vallejo (who was also appointed to the WETA Board) have allowed Vallejo’s political leadership to write a bill that benefits them directly, and despite the author’s platitudes about working together, yada yada yada, not one Alameda issue has been addressed.

It’s not too late. Senator Perata’s office said that they would be willing to bring this issue to Alameda for a public meeting, we’ll wait and see if that happens.