It’s not fair and I think you’re really mean

On Friday after much brouhaha from the anti-Measure A (parcel tax) campaign folks, threatening protests and picket lines at the League of Women Voters campaign forum about the parcel tax, Alameda SOS the pro Measure A campaign decided that they would pull out of the LWV campaign forum as well.

Susan Davis covered the sequence of events on In Alameda, highlights:

The whole controversy started last weekend, when the League sent out a notice describing the event to both Alameda SOS and CAMA. In it, the League detailed the format: a 30-minute presentation on the school district’s finances by the district’s chief financial officer, Robert Shemwell, then presentations by both sides.

Representatives of CAMA took offense at the format and immediately fired off a press release claiming the forum was “biased” and “unfair,” because the LWV was giving proponents extra time by allowing Shemwell to “advocate” for the tax. If the League didn’t give opponents extra time, CAMA secretary Leland Traiman threatened in the release, “we will drop out of the forum, and instead picket the forum and hand out leaflets at the entrance.”

Wiki wiki whack

Yesterday, John Knox White posted on In Alameda a letter from Acting City Attorney Donna Mooney that was sent to various Alameda residents who have been upset about what took place at the City Council’s Special Meeting on December 28th.

Of course, what hasn’t helped has been the Alameda Sun’s “news” analysis on the subject which appears to have been written before the actual meetings took place and therefore largely analyzed the issue in a complete vacuum.   Also the “news analysis” opted to be light on actual news and heavy on analysis which bordered on wild conjecture.  But let’s put that to the side for now.

So there’s a group of folks who understand the plain language of the Brown Act and City Charter so well that they don’t need no stinkin’ lawyers to tell them what the legal interpretation of the plain language actually is.   In fact one person opined that since the City Charter was written in the “early 1900s” and , wait a second, let me just repost what was written since my nutshelling simply won’t do it proper justice:

Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall

According to reports (I haven’t watched yet) about Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, the whole discussion around the Chuck Corica Golf Course was a mess.   Essentially Kemper Sports — without allowing anyone to view their proposal ahead of time — announced that there were two options and only one of the two involved them actually putting up any of their capital to help improve the Golf Course.

The two options were — as mentioned before — that they would cut the existing 36 holes to 27 holes and take the whole long term lease option.   They would then spend $5 million to reconfigure the site which would then be three nine-hole courses.

If the City Council insisted that Chuck Corica remain the 36 holes, well then Kemper has said that they would then only be interested in managing the golf course, like they are currently doing.

Then of course, the choice is yours

Monday’s Planning Board was a really good one, for the Planning Board discussion alone.   Okay, mostly for Planning Board member Art Autorino’s comments regarding the Alameda Point Going Forward process.

Brief digression, has everyone completed the Alameda Point Going Forward online workbook yet?   I just completed it yesterday, not because I’m not interested in what’s going on at Alameda Point or that I don’t have any opinions, but because it’s one of those things that you put on the back burner for other more pressing life details.   Like a Kindergarten Roundup packet.  I guess what lit a fire was the reminder that City Staff was going to close out the community input on February 1st, so you have until then to submit your suggestions.   And no submitting more than once.   That means if you went to a meeting (or several) don’t complete another online survey to try to unduly influence the outcome.   Honor system people.

Tee totaler

Tonight, the City Council will have a Special Meeting with various legal items on its closed session agenda.   But what I want to concentrate on is the agenda item about the Golf Complex which will supposedly will reach some form of resolution after months and months of negotiations between the former Interim City Manager, Ann Marie Gallant, and Kemper Sports.

First the good news.   Even though back when negotiations were first open there were about five different scenarios that were still on the table, including having Kemper continue to run the Mif Albright, Kemper Sports has whittled their proposal down to two scenarios, both assuming that the Mif Albright will be run as a non profit.

Getting your money’s worth

On Friday afternoon, Mike McMahon emailed out a great link which detailed the Center for American Progress’ recent effort to spark a discussion about “education productivity” aka bang for your tax dollars aka how effective are YOUR schools.   The data is presented as a Return on Investment which most people should understand.    To facilitate people understanding the information they used a red through green scale — the greener the more effective the school district.

Turns out — which most AUSD supporters would probably be able to tell you already — AUSD is very effective (aka dark green) and has a high return on investment for its investors (aka Alameda taxpayers):

Researching the net

Yesterday,  I was poking around the Alameda Healthcare District Board of Directors aka Hospital Board website, not because I had any aching desire to watch the Board Meeting — I honestly would not recommend it, no offense to anyone on the Board, but they are fairly dry — but because I was going to watch it anyway based on some reports about what actually went down at the last meeting on January 10.   I think I am the 8th person to have watched this video, that’s pretty sad.

Speaker easy

Tuesday night’s City Council meeting was refreshing in the completely opposite tone to the first City Council meeting of the year that was taken with regard to the one big agenda item that came in the form of a Council Referral by Doug deHaan.

But before I get to that, let me just point out that when a member of the public forces the Council to pull an item off the consent calendar so that they can comment on it, if Doug deHaan has to correct you on your perception of what the actual issue is and that your basic grasp of the facts is wrong, then you know you’re in trouble, since the issue has been covered previously.

Anyway, one of the big items was, of course the whole rehash of the placing Ann Marie Gallant on paid administrative leave.  It was big in that it had the most public speakers.   Thank you to the speakers who kept their comments short and sweet!

Clique clack

Michele Ellson at the Island had a really great editorial on MLK, Jr. Day about the state of the political dialogue in the City of Alameda. One of the responses she received was from newest Hospital Board member Elliott Gorelick who, on one hand in response to Michele asking how to break the cycle and “get to a place where we may disagree, but we can still respect everyone’s commitment to making Alameda a good place?” responds that people should have “condemn[ed]“ those that make personal attacks. He pointed to his own situation when incumbent Leah Williams, who ultimately lost the election, filed complaints with various agencies about the ultimate ballot designation that was selected, which she felt “misled” voters. He felt that people should have come out saying how “disgusting” her actions were.

I guess by folks not writing blog posts condemning Leah Williams equaled a “culture of arrogance” where people not in the clique are “ignored and criticized” and that action is as bad as any four-letter word.

On the other hand, he then points out that Michele E. not writing about all of the dirty details equaled a “reporter’s assessment of how relevant it was.”

You take the high road and I’ll take the low

Over the weekend, Carolyn Jones over at the SF Chronicle covered the story that broke in late December about Teresa (Terri) Highsmith and her newest job with the City of Barstow as their Interim City Manager via a contract with Colantuono and Levin.

What was enlightening about this story was that Carolyn Jones actually managed to get Terri Highsmith to talk on the record about her true intention.  So far she had been fairly tight lipped up until this interview.   While some folks believed that Terri Highsmith had actually quit her job as City Attorney of Alameda in order to take the interim position in Barstow.  Turns out that was not the case.  Highlights from the Chronicle article:

In Barstow, where she will be paid by the hour, her pay is officially confidential because she’s working for a private firm, Colantuono & Levin, that contracts with the city to provide legal services. But, according to Barstow’s 2011 budget, the city plans to spend $160,000 on city attorney services.

Highsmith, 55, a resident of Clayton, said that nothing in her contract with Alameda prevents her from working for two cities. Her contract, she said, allows her to work 10 hours a month, on her own time, on other jobs.