Another bite

I’m pretty sure Trish Spencer gets the majority of her Council Referral ideas from Alameda Citizens Task Force so it’s weird that she attached a letter to only one of her three Referrals on the agenda tonight. The “oh no we shouldn’t be holding police officers accountable” agenda item we’ve already discussed. But there’s the absolutely hilarious one which asks that the City Council endorse the failed Our Neighborhood Voices campaign’s transformation into “CA Cities for Local Control” efforts to stop the effects of state legislation locally and return cities to its original state of not having to build anything where at least one person in the city doesn’t want it.

This is the framing of CA Cities for Local Control, now remember, I don’t think there have been any SB 9 (lot split) applications in Alameda even though it was being framed as the doom of nice cities everywhere.

What they mean by an “attack on Cities ability to manage their own land-use and zoning” is, oh the State is no longer going to turn a blind eye as we deny every single housing project under the absurdest pretense in order to shirk our duty to provide housing for Californians. Remember there was a prominent Alameda who was one of the largest funders to the Our Neighborhood Voices campaign, so big in comparison to all other funders that she had to be identified, by name, on the campaign literature. So this NIMBY campaign has some homegrown roots.

And there’s ya girl sitting atop a list of elected officials who also want to stymie housing production, I mean, “local control” which is populated by a disproportionate number of Republican considering, you know, it’s California.

Interesting that Tony Daysog has yet to sign up for this list. Maybe it’s his congressional aspirations holding him back from revealing himself to be full NIMBY at this time, who knows.

Oh and then there’s this Referral which wants to bring back, essentially, unlimited speaking time again for Consent items on the agenda which, please no. It’s bad enough that consent items which are normal business-y items can be pulled en masse. I remember one meeting where one Councilmember pulled nearly all the consent items and literally NO regular business was conducted that night. That’s not right. Just because some Councilpeople want to use the second reading of an item as another bite at the apple to try to tank normal business does not mean that desire should be accommodated. Th rules are very simple. If you, member of the public, want to speak on a consent item, put in a speaker slip on the item. You will be called, the item will be pulled. Here’s how Trish Spencer or someone from Alameda Citizens Task Force framed this:

And these are 5-J, 5-K, and 5-L:

Just so we’re clear, the Legislative agenda had a full public hearing on April 4.

The Bay 37 consent item was the final passage, which means it had a full hearing both at the Planning Board and the City Council already.

Webster St BIA was heard on April 18 which was also when Park St BIA was heard with time for the public to speak their full two minutes on each item separately.

And the CDBG item was heard at the Social Services Human Relations Board in December 2022 and earlier this year by the City Council.

So, essentially, this agenda item is for people telling on themselves that they don’t pay attention to any other Board or Commission or any of the regular agenda items until it gets to the consent calendar where they want to cry foul that they hadn’t been given a chance to provide public comment because they deserve mind reading and hand holding from city staff.