That’s the Keker

While some commenters have been touting the City’s hired gun lawyer Michael Colantuono’s award from the Bar Association this year, they’ve been a little more quiet about the lawyer Lena Tam has secured to defend her against the Interim City Manager’s accusations other than to question how Lena Tam could possibly afford John Keker and make insinuations that someone else is footing the bill for her defense.

Personally I don’t know how Lena Tam is paying John Keker, I assumed she was paying him herself with her savings, which simply makes me sad to think about.

And while “Incredulous”:

“simply cannot recall any California elected official having a defense fund paid by third parties…”

“Incredulous” meet Don Perata.  An Alamedan interested in politics who can’t remember Don Perata and his legal woes is definitely strange.   Here’s another one: that’s Shelley as in Kevin Shelley.   These are all fairly prominent Bay Area politicians and cases.

Anyway, back to John Keker.

Whatever you do don’t put the blame on you

The attention on both Alameda Point and, what I guess is now being called “Tamgate” has pushed Parade-Gate into the sidelines, but it’s still an interesting issue in light of the fact that no one wants to take responsibility for who asked for the legal opinion to be issued by the City Attorney.   Councilmember Marie Gilmore has asked that the issue of the parade and contributions from the City to the parade be agendized so that the City Council can talk about the…um…conflicts that arose for this last 4th of July Parade.

I posted this in the comments section a while back, but for those that don’t read the comments after a certain number of posts would have missed the link to the KPIX coverage of Parade-Gate.

According to the piece, Mayor Beverly Johnson told the reporter this:

The Parade Committee asked for an opinion from the City Attorney and the City Attorney’s opinion was that it was certainly appropriate to not allow candidates campaigning in the parade.  And I agree with that because we want to keep it a community event, not a campaigning event.

Which is in stark contrast to Councilmember Marie Gilmore’s position on the issue — as well as the two average Alamedans interviewed for the piece.  Including one woman who said,

I would be spurred to do something like obviously cover up the word so it was obvious what it was covering up and kind of thumb my nose at it.

Great Park / Grand Jury

It’s rather interesting now that both Frank Matarrese and Doug deHaan have both now — publicly — announced that they would be totally interested in a non-profit city led development corporation to move forward with Alameda Point.   Frank Matarrese also placed this as a Council Referral last night.   Frank Matarrese mentioned in the Island article that one could be formed in the vein of the Great Park in Orange County.   If you will remember  Frank Matarrese, Beverly Johnson, and the Interim City Manager paid a visit to Orange County to check out the Great Park lats November.   In a Sun article describing the visit to Great Park, Frank Matarrese said the reason why they paid a visit was:

“We are hoping to get a little background on what they have been doing,” said City Councilman Frank Matarrese, who is traveling south for the one-day visit. “They have been dealing with the Navy and that’s something we also must do.”

Which is a laughable excuse since the deal between the Navy and the City of Irvine about the El Toro base was extremely straightforward.   The Navy did an outright auction of the land in parcels.   Lennar won all the parcels and then the City of Irvine and the private developer worked out an agreement on their own.  $200 million to the Great Park folks and 1300 acres for their “Great Park” and Lennar can pretty much do whatever it wants with the rest of their land (in excess of 3000 acres).

What makes the “Great Park” model even more suspect is the recent (and past) Grand Jury scrutiny about (1) the structure (2005-2006 report) and (2) the financing (2009-2010 report)

Playing with the Firefighters

Tonight there is a proposal to place on the ballot a charter amendment to get rid of the Charter ordinance which compels the City to go into binding arbitration with the Firefighters  if negotiations fall through.

What is extremely bothersome about the way the staff report was written is that, on a cursory reading it appears that when the staff report indicates that there is state law that prohibits whatever is in the Charter ordinance already, that both binding arbitration and strikes are disallowed by state law, when it is only strikes that are not allowed by state law.

And, I’m not disagreeing with the contention that our public safety employees should not be allowed to strike.  Absolutely they should not be allowed to strike.   I don’t care how bad negotiations are going, striking is not an option.

However, I don’t really think that the Interim City Manager put this charter amendment up in order to get rid of the striking provision, given that it is already illegal under state law.   No, rather it’s the binding arbitration portion that is really at issue here.

$10,000 question

Finally, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters has uploaded Beverly Johnson’s last election report to their online website. And while it was late, it wasn’t as late as originally believed. Her treasurer turned it in one day before election day even though it was due days before that.

Here’s the kicker though, remember how Mayor Beverly Johnson was absolutely insistent that the City ram through the Campaign Finance Reform Ordinance as soon as possible? So much so that after the City Council voted to send it to the Sunshine Task Force first, she brought it back to the Council in the form of a Council Referral.

That was quick

That was the thought that popped into my head when the Press Release from the Firefighters landed in my email box yesterday afternoon.   The Firefighters Union has beaten all other groups to the punch and put out their endorsement for Mayor already.   Which is timely considering that at least one candidate: Frank Matarrese has been running since what feels like forever.

But it wasn’t Frank Matarrese that they endorsed, oh no, it was fellow Councilperson Marie Gilmore that they have decided to back for Mayor.   From the press release:

“Alameda needs a thoughtful leader [to] bring our city back together to find positive solutions to the challenges we face,” Alameda Firefighters President Dominick Weaver said

“We’ve been working with Marie for years. She is smart, focused and interested in results, not political games. She’s in this race for the right reasons. She believes in making Alameda city government more efficient, but not at the expense of public safety. We trust that Marie Gilmore will build consensus at a time when Alameda needs it most.”

You couldn’t ignore me if you tried

Buried at the end of the very long City Council meeting the other night, there was this Council Referral brought to the City Council by Mayor Beverly Johnson.  Up until the Council Referral document was actually drafted, the intent — according to the Mayor — was to ask John Knox White to step down from the Sunshine Task Force.

Why? you might be asking?   Because apparently in Alameda public officials decide that “guilt by association” is an absolutely appropriate reason to ask someone to step down from a City board/commission/task force.

However, apparently just getting John Knox White off the Sunshine Task Force wasn’t enough.   Oh no, this time she was going after the entire Task Force itself wanting to suspend the work of the Task Force until such time that the District Attorney has made a decision as to the whole Tam-Gate fiasco.

The importance of being earnest

So I started watching the City Council meeting aroung 7:30ish. Big mistake. They hadn’t even started the staff and SunCal presentations yet and the Mayor was talking about giving City staff 30 minutes and then giving SunCal 30 minutes. Yes an hour worth of dog and pony that would do zero to change anyone’s mind. Then when the Mayor announced that there was 60 speaker slips and they all would be given two minutes each and that point I started realizing that I needed to check what was on my Tivo before attempting to check in again.

I caught the first few minutes of staff’s presentation and I could help but note how uncomfortable Jennifer Ott looked having to give the presentation. Generally I just listen to City Council meeting so I never really look up at the people speaking, after a while you can pretty much tell who is talking by their voices. So she introduced all the staff that was part of the group and included all the consultants on the project as well. In this case all the consultants that are part of the team you can better believe that they are getting paid out of the SunCal bank account, so it was interesting that Newdorf Legal was introduced as part of the team as “special counsel” which means that more likely that not SunCal was just billed by the City of Alameda to pay for the City’s defense against SunCal. And the farce just gets more absurd.

And how the cracks begin to show

Michele Ellson covered the story about the Firefighters discussing their role in the whole Lena Tam saga.    The releasing of documents and a timeline helped put into context the allegations made about Councilmember Lena Tam with regard to the Firefighters.  For those looking at the actual documents the black bars are redactions of email addresses and phone numbers.

Let’s revisit the allegations that were made around Lena Tam’s correspondence with and about the Firefighters.  Essentially the report contends that her email was an unlawful serial meetings (p. 7) because she:

On February 25, 2010, Tam sent an email (Exhibit M) to the City
Manager and the Fire Chief David Kapler stating that Tam had received a “letter from Paramedics Plus indicating that the City [was] considering removing the EMS services from Alameda’s Fire Department.” In this email, Tam carbon-copied all the Councilmembers and stated that she did not recall a direction from Council to remove the EMS from the Fire
Department…

How many lawyers does it take to develop Alameda Point?

Tomorrow night is the day of reckoning for SunCal.   Well, it is and it isn’t.

Tomorrow the City Council sitting as the ARRA/CIC will determine whether it will take staff’s recommendation to deny the Optional Entitlement Agreement that was submitted by SunCal for Alameda Point.   That is pretty much the only — legal — option that the City has to begin to shut the door on SunCal as the Master Developer for Alameda Point.   There is no doubt that there are enough votes on the City Council right now to reject the OEA.   Mayor Beverly Johnson and Councilmembers Doug deHaan and Frank Matarrese are locks to reject the OEA without any need for whatever dog and pony show the City will put on tomorrow night.

However, rejecting the OEA tomorrow night would totally be out of character, for this City at least, when it comes to development submissions.   Look at for example the Boatworks project, which has gone back and forth and back and forth any number of times to “tweak” the project itself to better suit whatever it is that the City thinks it should actually look like.    The stalled Alameda Landing project has gone through any number of iterations (more commercial, less commercial, less residential, more residential, less retail, more retail, etc and so forth) without the City Council, or staff rather, saying “whoa wait a second now, we should just haul this puppy in front of the City Council to give a thumbs up or thumbs down before giving the developer a chance to tweak the plan based on the feedback from City staff, City Boards and Commissions, and community input.