Under the influence

We haven’t had a good petition in a long time circulating around some Alameda issue and there is nothing that Alamedans like better than to pull out the old petition to attempt to gain traction and support around their own personal pet issue.  The latest comes from Denise Lai who has made it her own personal cause to get Alameda out of the Fire business by outsourcing the Fire Department to Alameda County.

As a side note, I don’t have a preference one way or the other, if someone can make a strong argument that service would not diminish, response time would be the same or better, and it could be done cheaper, I wouldn’t be opposed to consolidation under the Alameda County umbrella.   However, Denise Lai’s arguments aren’t going to do it.

Here is a screen shot of the petition:

Clean up clean up everybody clean up

I posted a comment yesterday but wanted to highlight the fact that the City will be having a press conference today about the no-cost conveyance of Alameda Point to the City of Alameda.   The conference is scheduled for today at 1:30 p.m. at St. George Spirits at Alameda Point.   The lushes among you all will probably know where that is (insert wink here) but for those that do not it’s 2601 Monarch Street.  A bunch of muckety mucks are scheduled to be there along with some Navy type folks, should be an event where everyone is generally positive and giddy.

There was a question on In Alameda yesterday about the state of the environmental clean up at Alameda Point as well as some back and forth in yesterday’s comments.   While commenter “vigi” attempted to chalk up Alameda Point as too dirty to develop on, commenter “notadave” clarified that:

…The “sites 9 and 19″ quoted by vig make up a whopping 5 acres of the total development potential of over 700 acres at Alameda Point. The two sites contain an old paint building and a hazardous waste storage facility. Soil contamination was found to be lower than comparison samples from non contaminated soils. ground water contamination was found to be above target levels for some contaminants, but decreasing over time, indicating no new sources of contamination.

A detailed analysis of the proposed action is at http://alamedapointinfo.com/sites/default/files/Proposed_Plan_OU2A_Alameda_Point_1.pdf

No cost? No way!

Buried under the ARRA agenda for the October 5th meeting and — amazingly enough — has not been headline news yet is the news that the Department of Defense has agreed to a no-cost conveyance of Alameda Point to the City of Alameda.

Let me let that sink in a bit.

Remember, Alameda Point has previously come with a price tag of $108 million for the land.  Plus an additional $75K for housing units above the 1,800 unit cap.

Now, the cost is $0.  As long as the City stays below the housing cap.

I have to appraise you like I should, redux

Yesterday, John Knox White posted a very common sense blog about the Mif Albright land swap and why the City needed to apply the brakes on reviewing the new negotiated Memorandum of Agreement with Ron Cowan/Harbor Bay Realty and instead get a second appraisal on the two properties in question.

The original assessment appeared to be based on some assumptions about both properties that one could surmise would lead to one parcel being overvalued and the other undervalued.   Of course with the appraisals completely out of whack, this leaves the city in a disadvantaged negotiating position with Harbor Bay Realty, since the only appraisal available would leave one to believe that the cost of the two are nearly identical.

I know that Golf Commission President, Jane Sullwold, has been all over this issue of the appraisals since they were first released.

Imitating art

So, I was going to write about the new Staff Report about the Mif Land Swap, but I had forgotten that tonight was the Planning Board meeting and I had wanted to write about the Public Art agenda item.  Also, FYI, the Mif Land Swap EIR agenda item for the Planning Board has been continued to October 10, so if you were going to head down there to speak, don’t because they aren’t going to be hearing the item tonight.

On the agenda for tonight is a Public Art Proposal and according to the staff report because the Public Art Commission doesn’t have a quorum, they can’t review the proposal, so the Planning Board gets to do it.

A tale of two cities

A few miscellaneous things before the weekend, a preview of things to come though, there is a new staff report regarding newer terms for the Mif Albright land swap that was presented at the Golf Commission the other night.  But more on that on Monday.

A recent news article on the race for Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s concludes that Albany residents (Albanians? Albaniers?  Albanites?) are saying “pass” to LBNL moving into the Golden Gate Fields plot:

Albany residents packed Monday’s City Council meeting and told the council to drop any work on the proposed second campus for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at Golden Gate Fields.

…

Some of the residents have been against the proposed development from the beginning. Others originally expressed support for the concept. The main complaints have been the apparent failure of the proposal to conform to the Voices to Vision plan for the property, which required that 75 percent of any development be open space; lack of interaction with property owner The Stronach Group; and a timetable for decision-making that is too tight for the community to be able to give any meaningful input.

The transported

In the last Hospital Board packet there was a letter from the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency which noted that Alameda Hospital had been added back to the list of approved hospitals for stroke patient transport.  If you will recall, back in November-ish of last year, Alameda Hospital was taken off the approved transport list because it was not a Stroke Care Center as certified by the Joint Commission.

Alameda Hospital has been going through the process of getting certified and is nearly there — I believe they are on the site visit part of the process.   But at a certain point, for the County’s purposes, this is sufficient for them to consider Alameda Hospital as a certified stroke center.

A case of you and you

A few updates in the employee lawsuit against the City of Alameda.   In the case of former Fire Chief David Kapler (HG11570933) if you will remember the case against the individually named defendants (Councilmember Lena Tam, former Interim City Manager Ann Marie Gallant, and former City Manager Debra Kurita) was dismissed by the judge in July.   Right now the case is in a kind of holding pattern because the City’s attorneys have elected to file an appeal to have the judge rule on the anti-SLAPP portion of the initial part of their filing for the dismissed defendants.

Basically until that portion is complete, the remainder of the case — against the City — will be on hold.

On Monday the City also filed a response to Ann Marie Gallant’s lawsuit against the City.  Ironically enough, the lawyer who successfully managed to dismiss Ann Marie Gallant from the Kapler case is also defending the City of Alameda against Ann Marie Gallant’s case.

Ask and ye shall receive: the Alameda Vigilante files

Commenter Alameda Vigilante/vigi/not mayberry/etc. alleged a while ago that the City of Alameda paid “close to” $1 million to the law firm of Meyers Nave in legal fees.  From Alameda Vigilante’s comment:

Meyers-Nave has been paid close to a million bucks for services to Alameda, I believe. I’ll leave it to you to check my math from the CC bills & warrants on record. 2nd Request. Still waiting for Do to check the facts.  Meyers-Nave provided the atty, Ed H., who provided a paid opinion when AMG was canned, but he is not a judge, so that was kind of a waste of $$$.

So, I put in a request for all invoices paid to Meyers Nave from July 2010 to July 2011 and I had assumed that I was not the first person to request these, but surprisingly I was given how definitive Alameda Vigilante seemed to be about the amount of money paid to Meyers Nave.   While my request was for July 2010 to July 2011, I only received invoices that started in January 2011, so I double checked and it was confirmed that there were no invoices that predated the January 2011 invoice during my requested period.

Busting five knots, wind whipping out my coat

File this one under debatable newsworthiness, last Monday or sometime over the last weekend, I’m too lazy to go back and check, David Howard over on the Action Alameda blog posted this about City Manager John Russo’s Facebook status.   To quickly provide some context, apparently John Russo along with the City Council went on a boat tour of the Estuary.

Evidently someone who has access to John Russo’s Facebook status page determined that there was something outrageous about John Russo’s status and quickly sent it to David Howard who also deemed it newsworthy and posted immediately about it.