Going to pot

It was a good thing that the discussion about Pot Clubs was continued at the last City Council meeting, given that the already hefty agenda ended up in a meeting that ended in the wee hours of the morning.    However, the extra time has focused the East Bay Express’ laser like focus back on Alameda.   And this time, it’s about Medical Marijuana dispensaries and Alameda’s plan to ban them from our fair burg.

To quickly recap, the City placed an emergency moratorium on the City prohibiting any new pot clubs from opening in the City until this issue was resolved.   The moratorium was in response to the Purple Elephant opening on Webster Street after failing to properly fill out a form completely, claiming that they were selling “General Misc.” items as opposed to specifically stating that they were selling  marijuana.   Apparently though, when a pot club fails to include required information on a form they get holy hell rained down upon them, but when a Councilmember does the same, they get an hour and a half discussion on a non-issue.  But I digress.

Flip flops: not just beachwear

For those still following along with the Alameda County Board of Supervisors race knows that the candidates are busy making the rounds for their endorsements of various people and groups that can provide a little extra push.    I wrote about the little oopsie moment in Beverly Johnson’s campaigning that was reported by the East Bay Citizen, but he has given more juicy details on how the the Tony Santos endorsement error went down:

The Johnson camp had reached out to Santos as early as Feb. 19 to secure his backing over the likes of Wilma Chan or even at time Lena Tam or Shelia Young. Johnson told The Citizen a colleague of Santos informed her of his endorsement just before Tuesday’s event. The next day, Santos responded quizzically to news of his endorsement for Johnson. It actually was something like this: “Whaaaat?!” Johnson said she spoke to Santos Wednesday and apologized for the misunderstanding and still hopes to secure his endorsement soon. For his part, Santos appears conflicted on whom to endorse, but mentioned his work with Johnson on various regional boards as a plus. “I am staying neutral for time being,” said Santos. “I must say I work with Bev on number of agencies, so I do need to stay on her good side. I know them both and like them both, so it is a real dilemma for me.”

E for excellence

Two good real estate stories in SFGate over the weekend, the first was an article about data crunching the numbers from the real estate peak to the lowest of the low.   Alameda isn’t doing as badly as our immediate neighbors Oakland.

Only three zip codes actually weathered the storm fairly well: one in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Sunnyvale.

The other real estate article speaks to a very specific issue that keeps housing values in some areas higher than others: good schools.   Excerpt on why some choose to pay a premium to be in a good school district:

The school district premium is certainly noticeable in the purchase price of a home, but it may really pay off when it comes time to sell. Since there’s a steady stream of school-hunters looking to move to these communities, their homes tend to sustain their value.

“I think it adds more to the resale value than anything else,” Heafey said. “When the markets got hit a couple years ago, these markets didn’t get hit as badly because people are always interested in getting into these school systems.”

In 3D

Did everyone catch the Wall Street Journal article on the Alameda Theatre?   It was a bit of a fluffy piece, but nice nonetheless.    However, the photo of the theater exterior is clearly an older photo because it doesn’t have the bulb outs that were built in to protect the marquee from Pepsi trucks.  Excerpt:

“The Alameda and [Oakland's] Fox are successful rehabilitation examples,” says Katherine Petrin, an architectural historian and board member of the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to saving local cinemas. “But both were major undertakings that required huge commitments and public funds from their respective communities.”

So remember when I mentioned that the Civic Center Vision for the CVS lot included some movie screens?   According to Andrew Thomas who presented the vision at the Planning Board meeting (informational only, no action taken) the movie theater is doing really really well.   So well that they could totally use the additional five screens for showings.

No reservations

In light of the Reservation Letter sent by SunCal to the City along with their submission to “cure” the alleged default I thought this comment by DLM deserved revisiting for a bit of a fact check and clarification.   DLM wanted some attention brought to the very early morning discussion regarding the Tolling period requested (and then withdrawn) by SunCal, she says:

I’m looking forward to a similar treatment of Lena Tam’s comments during the Default Notice discussion, because — after all — she raised all those issues about the ENA that were OBVIOUSLY wrong! Didn’t she READ it?! Doesn’t she CARE?! NEVER MIND that it was 2:30 AM in the MORNING!!! (blah, blah, etc.)

The issues that Lena Tam raised w/ the ENA’s requirement for an MA-compliant plan etc. were in fact completely pointless, but my best guess is that Ms. Tam was raising issues that some constituents wanted to see addressed, so for their sake she went ahead with that, at length, even tho it was 2:30 AM — tho I can’t blame the city attorney for getting annoyed…

Lena Tam’s first question:

The SunCal also rises

As reported by Michele Ellson yesterday, SunCal has submitted an application to the City of Alameda attempting to “cure” the “Notice of Default” that the City had sent in response to its Optional Entitlement Agreement (OEA).

The biggie, according to the City, is that SunCal needed to submit a Measure A compliant Master Plan in order to not be in default under the Exclusive Negotiation Agreement (ENA).   Of course, SunCal has — and still does — disagree with the legal interpretation of Alameda’s City Attorney that the ENA specifies that the OEA must be Measure A compliant, but SunCal has decided to move forward than argue that legal analysis, for now.   However, they have submitted as part of the “cure” a letter of reservation which essentially says, “we disagree with your interpretation, but for now we are going to table this issue to move forward.”   The contents of the letter are really fascinating, but that is for another day and some video capturing.

Not an option

Some of the criticism leveled at the parcel tax scheduled for a mail in vote has to do with displeasure with the Master Plan for the Alameda Unified School District.    Some folks are peeved with the idea that one of the cost cutting measures in “Plan A” of the Master Plan is to increase class sizes, other folks have clung on to the typical talking points of there being a “bloated administration,” that teachers need to just accept less money for doing their job, that kids from outside Alameda are draining the AUSD coffers, or that somehow consolidating and closing schools will save enough money that a parcel tax is unnecessary.

Other critics claim that the school administration, boosters, and school board have not done enough to lobby the state for Alameda’s fair share of money, but honestly, considering the difficulty that the State of California has been having in paying its own bills, I would imagine that AUSD holding out its hand and stamping its feet saying, “you owe us!” isn’t going to go over well in the short term when AUSD is facing serious and devastating cuts.

I remember when…

John Knox White has spent a fair amount of bandwidth over on In Alameda talking about how the Kohl’s Call for Review went down.   So, it turns out that it was Doug deHaan that made the Call for Review and there was some confusion as to whether or not the Call for Review (essentially the City Council’s version of an appeal without the need to pay the fee) needed to be in writing and whether the Call for Review was appropriately made.

But instead of just saying, “hey, I’m messed up, I didn’t realize that I needed to provide a reason why I am calling something for review, mea culpa.”  Doug deHaan proceeded to go into a lengthy defense saying that he had told the Interim City Manager and the City Attorney was present and that at that time, neither of those two officials told him that it needed to be in writing.

It’s ladies night

I don’t follow San Leandro or San Lorenzo politics, so I generally rely on the East Bay Citizen who does a great job covering that region.   But what the East Bay Citizen has been covering thoroughly  is the race for the Board of Supervisors, District 3.

As folks probably know, Alice Lai-Bitker has decided to not run for re-election which means that there was a brief feeding frenzy where folks started throwing their hats into the ring left and right.   But now that the filing period is over and the political calculus has been performed, the race has now been whittled down to two (major) candidates.   There are actually three but the third guy is not as politically “known.”  So the two candidates that are going to collect the lion’s share of the votes are Wilma Chan and Beverly Johnson.

SunCal and solar power

Unfortunately, given that Tuesday’s meeting was seven hours long.

Yes, seven. hours. long.

Something was wonky with the system of uploading it to the internet so the video feed was not online when I wrote this and by the time it went up I didn’t have a spare seven hours to listen to it.

Fortunately, Michele Ellson loaded up on just enough caffeine to stay up long enough to hear the update from SunCal about their plans for Alameda Point and what they intend to do moving forward.   The big takeaways from Michele’s report was that :