Tonight at Planning Board, the Boatworks Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will get its day in the sun. The plan, 242 housing units shoe horned on to an old industrial site with very little public open space and contrary to the General Plans goals for roadway design. (quick note to Planning Board, please, please, please [...]
To me, Measure B is a choice between moving forward to develop a very good, sustainable (environmentally and economically) vision for Alameda Point. The question before us is, will we (the city) be able to see this vision come to fruition, and after much research and thought, I’ve decided that yes, it does.
I wanted to talk about the conversation around the leases, especially with Darcy Morrison running around claiming that Alameda Point has generated $126 million in net income over 12 years. As proof, she points to David “Action Alameda” Howard’s “analysis” of the ARRA’s cash flow analysis (wonky terms, but stick with it for a second). That should have been her first tip off that she should check her math.
I really think that when the dust settles and the lawsuits begin (those filed by SunCal for breach of contract and not negotiating in good faith), last Tuesday’s meeting will be included in the list of places where City Staff stepped away from their legally required neutrality and fell head first into advocacy by presenting inaccurate (or more specifically, incomplete) information to the City Council, the School Board and the citizens of Alameda.
So back at the end of September, Renewed Hope released the much ballyhooed “Doubtful Promises” report. Upon reading it, I had some questions and reached out to Eve Bach and Bill Smith, the authors who graciously offered to answer them. Time availability being what it is (see:JKW:lack of blog posts), it took me a while to dash off a list of the things I was trying to understand.
The responses that I received were great, a lot of time and effort went into them and I wanted to post them in a way that respected that.
Tuesday night, the City Council took up the issue of holding a presentation on the City’s two election reports. The referral was brought by the Mayor, and if you watch the full meeting the City Manager. (Interpretive video of the discussion below)
I was glad to see someone else picked up on the interesting comment in SunCal’s response to the mayor last week. Michele at The Island not only noted that SunCal let drop that they have been negotiating an amended Development Agreement (DA) with the City, in response to some of their concerns, but also got Deputy City Manger Lisa Goldman (DCMLG) to confirm and to indicate that there are legal ways for the city to lock in changes pre-ballot.
Apparently, hedge funds are so toxic in Alameda that just throwing the word around is enough to qualify as in depth criticism of the Alameda Point Revitalization initiative. The question at Alameda Point is whether or not there will be money to build the projects, and it seems that Hedge Fund money is unacceptable, unlike [...]
Huffman and Elkind write: “So why is suburban sprawl the norm instead of housing close to shops, cafes and transit? The primary roadblock to this development is local land-use policies.”
While in Alameda, our 25 mph roads continue to be engineered to the same standard (or even wider) than CalTrans requires for 65 mph freeways, the dutch have started going the other way with amazing results.
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Mindfulness in the face of challenge.
