Plenty of Nothing

Yes, it was all for naught.

What I am referring to? The 6 hours worth of the Measure A Ad Hoc Subcommittee meeting.

What was the consensus at the end of the 6 hours…that the group would never come to a consensus. Perhaps this was an exercise that was doomed to fail from the start. But the optimist in me really hopes that people could put aside their differences and try to meet somewhere in the middle. I even had typed out notes trying to capture the meeting as it went on, but I am so disappointed by the outcome that I can’t even bear to post it. With semantics issues kicking off the meeting it slowly got worse. Evidently “panel” is not a good term, but “presenter” is and a few members (coughappellantscough) couldn’t get past the issue that “panel” was used. The meeting was rife with raised voices and heckling from a few members of the audience which made the whole experience uncomfortable and –for me — wholly disrespectful.

The decision at the end of this meeting was to go back to the City Council for guidance and City staff and the Facilitator would write up a report — as neutral as possible — to present to the Council. The Planning Board members and the Appellant group members will have a change to turn in their own comments as well.

My reflection on this process having viewed the entire 3 hours of the first one on tape and then sitting through the second one was that the Planning Board members really tried to honor the process. To reach consensus by giving a little and compromising a little. I really felt as though the Appellant group went into these meetings with a set idea and when presented with a point where they would have to give a little, they dug in their heels and refused to move forward until they got what they wanted.

They came in wanting to divvy up choosing the speakers and at one point they pretty much had the Planning Board members convinced due to the discussion prior to that there was no way that — even though they had all agreed to at the first meeting to reach consensus on the speakers first — no way that they would ever reach consensus. In fact, rather than trying to come to consensus first, Barbara Kerr announced that she would not participate in that process if speakers living outside Alameda were considered. However, if they were to divvy up selecting speakers, then she didn’t care if speakers from outside Alameda were chosen. So, one of the first people to not “honor” the past agreements by even trying to go through the process previously discussed was not the Planning Board members as retold by Don Roberts, but Barbara K. who refused to be reasoned with on this issue. She was stuck on the “Eve Bachs” and the “Deena Belzers” on this list instead of focusing on the “John Kings” and “Anthony Itons” (Alameda resident by the way) of the group. The Planning Board members had nothing left to do but also concede and compromise on that issue.

They framed the discussion as “pro” and “anti,” disregarding the nuances that surround any issue, in order to further their cause to have each “side” pick speakers to represent a “pro” and “anti” side rather than choosing a topic first and selecting speakers who could speak to that subject matter.

At the end when the Planning Board finally realized that they had been giving and giving and receiving nothing but push back in return, they finally tried to present their own — very similar but more nuanced structure of how they thought the forum should be structured. But at the very end, even as the facilitator tried to explain to the group that the forum structure offered by Diane Coler-Dark and the alternate one from Anne Cook had more in common than different — a stone wall rose up. Diane C-D even went as far as saying, “I don’t care, I don’t care,” when David Early tried bring the group back to consensus by pointing out the similarities in the two forum structures. I’m relieved that the Planning Board members finally pushed back. Talk about a runaway train…the appellants were controlling each step of the process through sheer force of personality and the result if the Planning Board had not intervene would not have been a forum designed by consensus, but a forum designed by the appellant group and one that the PB members had just concede and compromised on each issue hoping that at some point they would see the same reciprocation, but none was to be had.

With that, here’s video of the first part, since people probably are not going to watch more than this, that’s all I’m posting. The rest are on Google Video, you can find them under my user name.

So you can either chose to believe the “spin” from Don Roberts and friends, or you can choose to believe my “differently biased” account, or you can say to hell with you all and watch all three hours yourself. I find in none too ironic that after talking about how terrible a facilitator David Early was for weeks and weeks on end, suddenly Don Roberts is a fan:

Despite valiant efforts by Alameda’s Planning Director’s hired facilitator David Early to bring the two sides together

Read into that what you want.

Let’s hope that the City Council will have some brilliant plan that will give Alamedans the Measure A Forum that a whole lot of people showed up to a very long City Council meeting to express that they wanted. And a Measure A forum that many Alamedans sent in names of speakers they wanted or thought would be informative to speak on the issue. At one point close to the end, even as optimistic as I was that it might come to a consensus, it was at a point that going back to the City Council for guidance seemed like the best idea. I just hope that the City Council members will not only take into consideration what the reports say, but maybe get the reflections of a few of the audience members.