Transference

The newest member to the In Alameda blogging team, Susan Davis, has a wonderful debut post with an appropriately Halloween themed flair.   It’s all about Halloween in Alameda, Alameda Unified School District Master Plan meetings, and out of district student transfers.

Excerpt:

In the ensuing decade, of course, I’ve learned that such xenophobia is not so rare on the island. Still, I was surprised to hear hints of it at the October 6th Master Plan community meeting held by AUSD. The topic had been potential cost-saving strategies for the district — including furloughs, changes in class-size reduction, and allowing off-island children to attend under-enrolled schools here. Following the presentation, Boardmember Trish Spencer explained that she thinks AUSD should stop accepting kids from the off the island, “because our parents don’t want their parcel taxes going to educate children who don’t live here.”

A Chipman off the old block

As reported by Michele Ellson, at Tuesday night’s School Board meeting a group of parents and teachers presented the School Board with an application to turn Chipman charter.

So, full disclosure, I am a member of the Founding Board for the new charter school which will be named the Academy of Alameda.    When I was asked to join the Academy board I wanted to be assure that  –  because,  let’s face it,   I tend to be skeptical about most charter schools  –  the critiques that I had of Nea/ACLC/NCLC would not be duplicated at the Chipman conversion charter.    The major ones I had were (1) diversity reflective of the school district and (2) the charter not being a financial drain on the school district.

Bay Bridge Closed

Indefinitely!

511.org

Design challenges

Monday night the Planning Board had really only two items on their agenda.   But as with anything in Alameda, it took a long time to make a decision on the issue and for the first project, it’s not really there yet either.

So the first one involves a parcel of land that is directly across the street from Lincoln Middle School’s park/playground-y area.   It’s that big vacant lot that has been vacant forever.   Here’s the background, guy wants to build two-story house there, apparently his first design was terrible and he was told to go back to the drawing board.  Some neighbors don’t like the idea of yet another two-story house being in their mostly one-story ranch home neighborhood.  It’s the usual complaints about sun blockage and reduction of views.

Once you go private, you never go back

Well…it appears that the City has dropped all pretense of the privatization of Chuck Corica Golf Course Management being on a trial basis.   The City has recently released a Request for Proposals for long term management of the golf course.    And when I say long term, I mean, long term.   As in 30 years long term.

The City does have the option of “reopening” the lease every ten years, if that helps at all.

No way, St. Joe’s

Tonight, the Planning Board will be considering whether to extend the time period for St Joseph’s for their Master Plan.   According to the staff report, they were given ten years to complete, but because of the usual setbacks: downturn in the economy yadda yadda they need more time.   An additional 15 years to be exact to bring the total time for their master plan to be complete to 25 years.

Personally, this seemed like sort of a ho hum sort of item.  Whether it was extended or not really didn’t interest me much, until I read the opposition letters.   Well, letter to be exact.   If someone cares enough about a project to submit a 10 page letter about it, you have to figure that they really care.  

Tapping that asset

On In Oakland, the Oakland version on SFGate.com, blogger V Smoothe of a Better Oakland pointed to a post on East Bay Conservative’s blog and her open forum thread regarding the jump in Oakland’s Ad Valorem tax rate.   In Oakland, they have passed a series of General Obligation Bonds which are used to fund various items for the City of Oakland, like public safety pensions and because of these Bonds each year the City Council of Oakland must fix a rate for property taxes.

Essentially some Oaklanders are not pleased because the amount they are paying this year (1.41%)  is a lot more than they paid last year (1.33%).   To compare, Alameda’s ad valorem, according to my property tax bill, is 1.14%.   This does not include the additional parcel taxes or other assessments.

That’s what she said

At Tuesday night’s marathon City Council (and other various governing bodies) meeting, the Mayor had her Council Referral item up for discussion and putting aside why there was the need to introduce this item as a Council Referral item rather than just as direction to the City Manager, I’ll never know.

The meeting came on the heels of two letters that were sent by SunCal to Interim City Manager, Ann Marie Gallant,  essentially taking the letter that they had written and released after the Mayor’s Press Release one step further.  In addition to providing a point-by-point rebuttal to the Election Report, they also provided a letter saying that they agree to execute legally binding agreements (aka contracts) that would address the major issues that the City has with the terms of the Development Agreement, which are, from the letter:

Trauma drama

Nothing like some wild speculation about the motives of city staff to keep Alameda interesting.    By now most folks should have either read the Action Alameda “story” or been on the receiving end of some email about it.    For those that have not been on the receiving end of the many emails about this here is the nutshell version.

Trauma, the NBC show about paramedics? doctors? random people extracting others from exploding vehicles — I’m not quite sure because I don’t watch the show, films mostly in San Francisco.   You might recall how the City of San Francisco had to shell out some big bucks in order to pay for a giant tent for Oracleworld convention goers because Trauma was filming in their space.   Anyway, Trauma wanted to film a piece of some action in Alameda because they wanted to use some runway space next to the water.   Somehow some lines got crossed somewhere and apparently the purported inability to film on Alameda Point was because someone in the City wasn’t doing their job or deliberately blocking the permit.   Of course in the myriad of “news” reports, no one saw fit to ask Leslie Little, the Economic Development Director what the heck is going on.   After all, this falls under her department so it would naturally fall under her purview.

I can’t get no satisfaction

In response to the Mayor’s press release announcing that she has shifted from being in the pro to the con column, SunCal sent a  letter to the Mayor from Pat Keliher.   This letter essentially boils down the terms they have been negotiating with the City in weekly meetings to these particular issues:

Strengthen City’s fiscal protection

Removal of Fiscal limitations/caps on public benefits

Allowed uses of redevelopment funds

Phasing

Development fees

It would appear, from this letter, that SunCal and the City has been working to reach mutually beneficial terms that both parties can live with, if not completely thrilled about.   Would these issues have been better if they had been negotiated without the specter of it being codified in the Initiative language?  Absolutely.    But it appears that something can be done, or else these negotiations would be moot.