Consistently inconsistent

I’ve been following the discussion around the RHNA allocations sort of tangentially. Meaning I’m not really listening or watching the conversations just sort of following along when people who are watching the meetings tweet about what’s going on. This is a really good thread to get caught up on what happened at the October 15th meeting:

The timeline is full of presidential town hall tweets; mute them all, imo

there's real drama afoot tonight at the Association of Bay Area Governments

that's right, folks, it's time for another #rhnamtg!

— Aaron 🥑🚈🌲🏀 (@aceckhouse) October 16, 2020

I did catch that some of the Contra Costa county leaders were upset about their allocations and were/are pushing for an alternate methodology which would take the weight off of cities in that county and push it anywhere but there. So, naturally, Trish Spencer decided that we, in Alameda, should support the CoCo County methodology:

Former Mayor of Alameda likes how Contra Costa County is fighting housing and urges Alameda to join forces—but she didn't read closely enough to see outer CC County wants to shift RHNA allocation to the inner Bay Area. What a mean-spirited & zero-sum game—not even played well. pic.twitter.com/2BakTAqUe9

— Drew Dara-Abrams (@drewdaraabrams) October 22, 2020

The best people

Look, I’m not the best proofreader out there, I often don’t proofread my own posts. But I’m also not running for political office either. So when I say that maybe candidates should hire someone to proof read their stuff, I’m not saying that it should be me who they hire, but I work very inexpensively. *coughdonutscough*

This fundraising email went out from Amos White’s campaign to an unknown list. I know the list is unknown and weird because my husband received the email and he never signs up for campaign related emails.

But anyway, here’s the funny part of the email. In the place where you enter the information of who that email is from the Amos White campaign misspelled the name of former City Councilmember Frank Matarrese.

Who has endorsed him.

Who is allowing him to use his name in a campaign email.

Who is Amos White’s “Honorary Campaign Chair.”

This is truly brown M&M territory here.

When you send out a campaign email from a prominent supporter and you spell their name wrong. #alamtg pic.twitter.com/3ew0gh8CGz

— Lauren Do (@laurendo) October 16, 2020

Walk of shame

This is some shady stuff that Gig Codiga is trying to pull with his latest mailers which, I’m assuming, was sent to every voter with a 94502 area code. But first, because this was already flogged by Tony Daysog, this was a letter sent out by city staffer Andrew Thomas:

Crime presentation

A lot of the reasons why there has been the sentiment that “crime is rising” when the data simply doesn’t bear out probably has a lot to do with why we thought in mid to late 2017 that there was a lot of crime: social media. But this time the social media blitz is coming directly from the Police department itself.

First, yesterday Vice Mayor John Knox White posted a huge crime update on his website, excerpt:

In Alameda there are a number of ever-changing narratives around recent increases in crime that don’t hold up to scrutiny. There are two aspects of crime and enforcement that create the snapshot. Crime reports and clearances. On both measures, Alameda is doing ok. The crime rate is down and clearance rates are up. This means that there are fewer crimes being committed AND we are catching more of the people committing them (again, kudos to Alameda’s detectives).

May 2020 saw a spike in Part 1 crimes as Alameda and the county started to open up a little with the Pandemic. This mirrored what the Alameda’s police department reports as increases throughout the County and region.

Since that time, Part 1 crimes have dropped every month and in September are sixth lowest than any time in almost three years. August and September have been below our annual average

What has risen though is the number of social media posts by the Alameda Police Department’s account which specifically reference crime.

Rushing roulette

There was a delightful flurry of activity on Friday afternoon that had nothing to do with Measure Z or with the City Council race. It had to do with the School Board and not even the School Board election but the School Board itself.

Lemme recap some of the backstory here for those who don’t have kids in AUSD or don’t really care about public schools in Alameda. Earlier in the year the School Board right around the time we all went into COVID hibernation mode (mid March) the School Board decided to move forward with a subcommittee to create a policy around Boardmember conduct. I’ll add here that I find nothing wrong with crafting policy around Boardmember conduct. It’s important and there should be clear expectations and the ability to censure any elected official for actions that are outside of the outlined and vetted expectations. And this is one of the reasons why, if you also agree to that, you should be voting yes on Measure AA which does that on the City Council level.

For more backstory, this is in direct response to the news in late February involving School Boardmember Jennifer Williams and a DUI.

But here’s where it gets messy in the way that only this School Board can manage. After all we’re sort of back where we started with this Board composition only rather than kneecapping Jennifer Williams with plenty of time to spare — and assuring that she could not hold the title of President of the School Board which she would have been during this rotation under the old rules — it appears that the kneecapping is happening with an accelerated timeline.

Swamp thing

Apparently someone’s campaign, no one knows because no one is taking credit for it, but there is a campaign out there which is actively going after Jim Oddie and Malia Vella but not explicitly endorsing any candidate. And this campaign or PAC or whatever they are is using some interesting language to sell their case:

Grand jury report has shown Oddie and Vella misused influence in attempting to influence city manager costing Alameda $ 1 million. Why support unethical council members. Drain the swamp. Spread the word. [emphasis added]

And this strange collage that was posted on social media:

Now where have we heard that phrase before? Hmmmm…

Hmmm…

Asian persuasion

Shifting away from CRIME for just a bit, I want to talk about the Asian Pacific American Democratic Caucus of Alameda County’s candidate forum. This is one of the tightest forums ever because each candidate is given a total of five minutes to answer questions and present their case. I’m not going to talk too much about Malia Vella and Jim Oddie because they did fine in the format and answering the questions. The video is here.

As an aside, these are the formats where Malia Vella really shines and it helps that she, herself, is an API woman so she understands the issues at a level that the other candidates cannot. Jim Oddie was impressive in his answers and it’s clear that he’s come a long way from his less than stellar performance earlier in the summer.

Gig Codiga did not participate because he’s a Republican.

Safety dance

Just in case anyone thought that Alameda’s recent bout of gun violence is unique to Alameda, it’s not. According to an opinion piece in the New York Times there’s been an unexplained uptick in gun violence specifically this summer. And despite our armchair crime experts in Alameda knowing exactly why this is, aka the fault of the current City Council for talking about discussing defunding/unbundling police, experts that actually study these issues don’t really have an answer as to why, only theories.

From The NY Times:

Fluctuations in crime rates are notoriously difficult to explain. In fact, criminologists still don’t agree on what caused the major decline in crime in the United States over the past three decades, which makes accounting for this most recent spike especially difficult. Still, a few potential theories have emerged.

…

Cop talk

Just in case anyone wanted to defend the Gig Codiga dog whistle videos as a simple reaction to all the “increased crime” going on in Alameda. I’ll remind everyone that Gig Codiga was laying the ground work for LAW AND ORDER all the way back in early September on his campaign website:

Gig Codiga going for the LAW AND ORDER crowd I see #alamtg pic.twitter.com/pa28KKUvPL

— Lauren Do (@laurendo) September 2, 2020

But even as crime has reached new heights and the City Council has shrug emoji-ed your families getting axe murdered in their beds, the Alameda Police Department had time to have a sit down with the League of Women Voters and AAUW to have a chat about police issues in Alameda. If you ACTUALLY care about policing and public safety, it’s two hours that you should spend learning rather than trolling Facebook or NextDoor screaming about SO MUCH CRIMING AND NO ONE CARING.

Dirty deleter

I’m going to add this here first but I’ll revisit this forum in a future post.

Alameda Police representative LWV/AAUW panel in policing "I tell you from from a police standpoint we are not, we don't have anywhere near the crime levels that we used to have back in the early 90s." #alamtghttps://t.co/CGhW5TKbCU

— Lauren Do (@laurendo) October 9, 2020

This forum was recorded on September 22 and then uploaded on September 23. It could have been viewed by the Gig Codiga campaign prior to putting out their statements on staffing and safety. Which, again, just shows that Gig Codiga has been largely absent from following the day to day issues of Alameda but now wants to represent all Alamedans.

Because what I want to do is post this set of videos and screenshots which I captured from a Facebook post which was dirty deleted by the Gig Codiga campaign. Because everyone should have the opportunity to see what candidates are putting out that, at one point, they were super proud of.