Courtesy title

Updated to add information about The Island of Alameda closing shop (scroll to the end)

Of course in the days of Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and breaking news nothing stays fresh for long.   Seriously, I literally just commuted home and had dinner and had missed Tweeting immediately about the officialness of John Russo being offered the City Manager job.   You can see the details of the contract here.   Big numbers are, of course, base salary among other things.   He is being offered $215K as a base salary, with $10K increases every year if his performance “meets expectations” or better every year.   The contract starts June of this year and ends in 2016.  He’ll also be getting $15K every year in a 457 deferred compensation plan in addition to the standard PERS benefits, health benefits, etc.

To compare, Debra Kurita’s base salary was $195K, Lisa Goldman as Acting City Manager recently got a bit of a raise to compensate her on the additional work she was taking on, it was in the $200Ks, but I can’t find the agenda item right now, and Ann Marie Gallant’s base salary was $250K.   But more on this next week, because that’s not what this post is about…

Apparently in addition to not really understanding what “fair use” is, our media type people don’t understand what “courtesy photo” means either.   Although, brief digression, on the subject of fighting for your right to party, if you haven’t seen the extended cut of the Beastie Boys Fight for your Right revisted, it’s totally worth watching for the Will Farrell cowbell cameo alone.

Anyway, in the Alameda Sun yesterday on the front page there was a story about the former Alameda firefighter who a jury awarded damages to for, I’m guessing because the article is unclear, wrongful termination? discrimination?  it’s unclear from the actual article itself.   Essentially the article is about the history of the case, judge granting summary judgment to dismiss, summary judgment granted, appeal, appeal granted, jury trial, and now the result.   Puzzlingly, the only photo that the Alameda Sun decided to run was that of another firefighter, not the one who sued.  Granted, the other firefighter did play a role which led to the suing Firefighter’s dismissal, if any photo would be of interest it would be that of the guy who just won almost $700K in damages and attorney fees.

Dig a little deeper

Did anyone notice that the salary list compiled by City Treasurer Kevin Kennedy included compensation for elected officials as well?  No?   Yeah, me either.    I think once people got into normal salary range most people just stopped looking.

It wasn’t until a commenter on The Island mentioned the Council pay as listed in the new Bay Area News Group database.   Of course, there was also this story which mentioned that Medical/Dental/Vision benefits are a huge perk for part-time elected officials like ours.  Highlights:

Government compensation data acquired by the Bay Area News Group, which includes this newspaper, show that hundreds of part-time elected officials — and in many cases family members — received full-time health care benefits in 2010 courtesy of taxpayers, costing many cash-strapped agencies tens of thousands of dollars.

…

According to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in four private employers offers health benefits to part-time employees. But in local government, it’s a different story.

Ferry fables

On Monday night, public speaker and commenter here, Karen Bey, reminded me that I wanted to write about the whole moving the ferry terminal issue in the Alameda Point Going Forward process.    There seemed to be a bit of push back, based on the Going Forward summary, resistance to moving the ferry terminal from its current location to the Seaplane Lagoon.   From page 27 of the summary report:

Many questioned the transportation benefits and overall costs associated with relocating the Main Street Ferry Terminal to the Seaplane Lagoon, and bifurcating the existing AOFS to establish separate Alameda Point/San Francisco and Oakland/San Francisco ferry services. Overall, the plan to relocate the ferry terminal and bifurcate the ferry service did not receive strong support. While the concept of a consolidated transit center was acceptable, responders were uncertain that including the ferry terminal as part of the center would result in a significant additional reduction in commute trips to/from Alameda Point. In addition, concerns about the need to offset the loss in Oakland ridership with the Alameda Point/San Francisco service, as well as to ensure a financially viable and separate Oakland/San Francisco ferry service were raised. Many felt the Oakland connection is very important to preserve. Others, however, felt that it was important to relocate the terminal, and still others suggesting providing for both terminals. The costs and benefits of moving the terminal or maintaining the existing terminal will need to be carefully considered by the community in the next phase of the planning for Alameda Point.

Organizational failures fail

Has anyone been reading Denise Lai’s blog “Raising Hell for Good”?  While I won’t go over the disconnect that between the “About” statement and the resulting content, I did want to talk about the most recent post which goes after the whipping boy of the hour, the Fire Department.   Look, I have a lot of critiques about the Fire Department as well, but I find it disingenous for people to talk about “organizational failures” without defining or explaining what those organizational failures are.

So, Denise L. writes a whole post and titles it “Organizational Failures” and specifically hones in on the Alameda Fire Department.  (I’ve screen capped a portion of it and it is at the end of this post), she writes:

Organizational failures are supposed to be rare events. But they seem to be commonplace here in Alameda. Why is that?

The city government. The healthcare district and our hospital. The fire department. The stories are not that much different. And they seem to have a lot in common: substantive organizational failure.

I’m as interested as the next person to understand what those “organizational failures” are, but at no point are they enumerated in the post.  It is unclear if the organizational failures include the entire structure of the Fire Department, the health benefits, post retirement benefits, sleeping arrangements,  uniform color, or a combination of all of the above.

Get to the Alameda Point

Tonight, the Planning Board will be commenting on several big items, but the one of most interest will be the Alameda Point Going Forward stuff.    City Staff has condensed hundreds of workbooks from hundreds of people (some duplicated I imagine, I heard that some people — aka not me — completed multiple workbooks) into one, still largish, summary.

I’m actually really interested to see what feedback the Planning Board will give, there are some super smart people on the panel that are very thoughtful and generally can muster up comments that go beyond, “No SunCal, no way!”

Hodgepodge

A few random items for today, first it is Earth Day which means that you should be doing Earth Day type activities.   Like recycling and using non-disposable cups, things you should be doing every day anyway, but on Earth Day you can finagle a free coffee out of Starbucks if you bring a mug.

And if you have a diaper wearing baby or toddler you can head down to Tot Tank on Park Street this Saturday to participate in the Great Cloth Diaper Change where you can be a part of Guinness  World Book of Records history by setting the record for most continuous diaper changes in one day.  (Yeah, there’s a record for everything).

Speaking of keeping count, Comcast SportsNet is holding their annual All-Star Teacher Awards again, for those who keep track of these sorts of things, Alameda High School’s Alan Nakamura won in 2008.   In addition to glory and bragging rights, the winner of the All-Star Teacher award gets to bring home some much needed funds to his/her school as well.

All your base are belong to us

On Monday, there was a piece on SFGate about the state of the closed military bases in the Bay Area.   For me, it didn’t quite live up to the title of the piece which was “Ex-Navy bases in Bay Area remain stuck in limbo” which I hoped would give insight into what makes former naval bases so much more tricky to convey and turn into something useful than other military bases.  Naturally Alameda is included in the list of bases in limbo.  And interestingly enough one of the interviewees is Pat Keliher from SunCal, probably because of the recent news that SunCal has inked a deal with the Army for a transfer of land in exchange for SunCal building new facilities for the army base there.

Excerpts from the article:

The upshot is that some of the Bay Area’s most valuable properties – large undeveloped parcels, often hugging the shoreline, with breathtaking views in the urban core of the region – lie fallow more than 15 years after the Navy pulled out in a wave of military base shutdowns all over Northern California.

Kapler caper

As I mentioned yesterday in the on-going saga of “Who’s suing Alameda now?” former Fire Chief David Kapler has now joined the ranks of disgruntled people filing lawsuit against the City of Alameda.    But here is what makes his filing completely novel, it’s clear that despite being in Alameda for three-ish years David Kapler was completely out of the loop on the happenings in Alameda and despite being around for most of the investigation of Councilmember Lena Tam by former Interim City Manager Ann Marie Gallant, the filing alleges that Lena Tam and Ann Marie Gallant worked in concert to get him out of his job as fire chief.

What is amazing about this filing is that while it takes on the City of Alameda it also charges Councilmember Lena Tam, former Interim City Manager Ann Marie Gallant, and former City Manager Debra Kurita as individuals and holds them liable for any number of kitchen sink allegations designed to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.   In addition to all the legal mumbo jumbo he’s also suing for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress against the City as well as Kurita, Gallant and Tam.   He’s suing for Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress against the City and the three women as well.   And he’s suing for Defamation against the City and only Kurita and Tam.

Fight for your right to party

I figured that if I didn’t talk about the dreadful “Otaez Series” dun dun duuuhhhhh on Action Alameda “News” that someone would accuse me of ignoring the topic.   On the other hand, I hate to give prominence to something that is really a non-issue, but what made it an issue was the disproportionate reaction to it.

Let me back up for those that don’t actually read Action Alameda.  But wait, I might need to back up a bit further than that.   So back after the November election, on  election night  there was  Victory Party at Otaez, honestly I don’t know who hosted the party, but it really is secondary to the story.   At the party there were a lot of familiar faces present in the Alameda politics scene, it probably was the only party hosted at a public place as well.   So at the party someone came with a camera and snapped candid and posed shots during the course of the event.    That person posted the photos on her personal Facebook page.   Someone — let’s just say that person probably didn’t vote for Marie Gilmore for Mayor since his father was running against her — downloaded the photos and posted them on a Facebook page he created and passed the link around to non-Marie Gilmore voters.   The original owner — who had not given permission to the other person — marked the photos as “Private” and requested that the other person remove the photos, which he did.

Contracts, prefixes, and gridlock

Last Friday, John Knox White over on his City Hall Confidential column on the Island posted a really great piece on the topic of contracting and former Interim City Manager Ann Marie Gallant.   Apparently her preference for contracting with people she knows doesn’t just extend to companies that she has worked with in previous jobs in other cities, but it also extends to local folks who publicly support her and feel so passionately about her that they interrupt City Council meetings (3:35:23 on the feed) after agenda items have long concluded in order to speak about her.

According to emails between Ann Marie Gallant and former City Council candidate Eugenie Thomson, Ann Marie Gallant urged Eugenie T. to contact another potential contractor to work directly with him because she would be “safer as an independent”  she goes on to further write, “…there is work coming up, so would recommend you re-connect with Mark so he know when he gets an interview etc that you are part of the team. I have talked to [Public Works Director] Matt [Naclerio] will give you an update on Friday.”   As noted by JKW, this occurred after the submission deadline had passed.