Wah wah waaahhhhh

The other day this letter was sent out to resident anti-everything David Howard, “publisher” of Action Alameda from the City of Alameda:

Total recall, the unfortunate 2012 remake

Before I forget, tonight is the Alameda Democratic Club endorsement meeting for the City Council, 7:00 p.m. Alameda Hospital.   I’ll be taping the meeting tonight and throwing up the video on-line as soon as humanly possible if you can’t make it out to tonight’s meeting.

Normally I wouldn’t write about silly campaigns like the one spearheaded by local naysayer David Howard, but given that this non-issue is fast become an issue thanks to independent expenditure committees, it’s time for folks to say enough is enough.  Particularly because the candidates themselves have agreed to run clean campaigns.

What I’m referring to is the recall petition that should be circulating as of Friday to recall Rob Bonta.  Because, let’s be perfectly honest here, the point of the actual recall is not really to express discontent with Rob Bonta as Vice Mayor of Alameda, but it is really to torpedo his Assembly race which is sort of a gross misuse of the recall process, but nothing that isn’t fair game in the David Howard political playbook.

Will the recall proponents get their numbers?   Doubt it.  But that’s not the goal here, the goal is to punish Rob Bonta for whatever transgressions that he supposedly committed.   The thing about it is that every single item proffered as proof as necessary to rid Alameda of Rob Bonta could be attributed to at least three other members of the City Council — except for the running for higher office thing — but only Rob Bonta is being targeted.

Here it goes again

I wrote about the Committee Against Measure A’s latest lawsuit against the school district earlier in the week.    At the end of the article in the Alameda Journal it referenced a new piece to the saga that the opponents had evidence “that allegedly shows school employees used district computers and other resources to campaign for Measure A.”    It was pretty vague as to what it could possibly be given the phrasing.   But according to the Pitch Engine site where Action Alameda’s “Publisher” David Howard uploads his numerous press releases:

So, the “evidence” is apparently IP addresses from a commenter or maybe multiple commenters that posted comments to the Action Alameda website.  The smoking gun — supposedly —  is that these IPs originated from AUSD’s servers.

Mamma mia, there he goes again

So Tuesday night City Council meeting was a doozy, I started watching really late because I had a different meeting to be at, but I started in when a parade of the usual suspects that were very very angry (or very very sad) depending on who it was.    After watching a few familiar faces say essentially the same things that have been said ad nauseum about Brown Act violations and Charter violations, I ended up tweeting this:

Alameda City Council meeting public comment in two words: sour grapes

— Lauren Do (@laurendo) January 5, 2011

Fellow Alameda Tweeter Medablog asked me:

@laurendo care to elaborate on sour grapes?

— Medablog (@medablog) January 5, 2011

To which I responded:

@medablog essentially everyone who didn't vote for Bonta, Gilmore, and Tam telling them how awful they are

— Lauren Do (@laurendo) January 5, 2011

Because that essentially what it was.  A parade of folks that had not voted for Lena Tam, Rob Bonta or Marie Gilmore telling them what horrible human being they were for getting rid of the savior of all that is good about Alameda: Ann Marie Gallant.

Army of one

So I sign up for these Google alert thingies that basically tells me when something updates on the interwebs regarding anything “Alameda” related.   A lot of it’s crap, I get a lot of updates about the Raiders because their headquarters are based in Alameda and every press release or news release is from Alameda.

But it’s, in general, a fairly useful tool, and occasionally you get gems like this that come down the road.

Apparently there is this tool out there called a Pitch Engine where you “pitch” stories on the internet, according to the site it is

A dynamic blend of traditional PR and a more progressive, conversational method, our Social Media Release opens doors and engages readers with multimedia content shared via Google News and apps like Facebook, Twitter and more.

And on this pitch engine was this particular “pitch” claiming that:

David Howard, an Alameda father, is single-handedly waging a combined TV and Internet campaign against a local housing development initiative, Measure B, that will be on the Alameda ballot on February 2nd, 2010.

Rowena or Rebecca

Clearly I have not yet watched the City Council meeting yet.  I generally save that for the day after when I turn it on in the background while doing some work that allows for multitasking of that sort.   So instead, first a few feel good type notices.

First up!  CASA Alameda will be hosting a Town Hall tomorrow, 6:30 p.m. at Independence Plaza with the purpose to:

CELEBRATE the progress Alameda has made in the last year

CHALLENGE Alamedans to build on those successes and engage more of the community, and

CHAMPION some great Alamedans who have shown leadership locally and globally

Also, at the meeting will be Caitlin Grey, a Senior at Alameda High School, who was selected as one of only 16 U.S. students to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference this December in Copenhagen, Denmark.   She will be attending as the youth delegate for the Sierra Student Coalition.    However, she needs some help to offset the cost to attend the event and need to raise $2500 by December.   If you would like to help Caitlin, you can send checks made out to “Caitlin Grey” and mail them to 1422 Gibbons Drive, Alameda, CA 94501.   But she will be speaking at the Town Hall, great time to send a few ducats to help out an awesome Alameda youth.

And at the exact same time Alternatives in Action will be hosting its fall open house, in case you are interested in seeing what the program is all about.  They are located at the former Woodstock Elementary site.

And speaking of school type stuff, if you have not been checking out Susan Davis’s contributions to In Alameda, you really should.  She is doing a phenomenal job.  Her latest post about inter-district students (aka kids that don’t live in Alameda) is not to be missed.    She points out that the latest offering from the crack news team over at Action Alameda —  which asserts that the East End parents should be allowing more  inter-district students of color into their schools in order to prove to people that they aren’t racists — failed to provide the tidbit that inter-district students generally only fill seats where there is capacity to add additional kids.     And in the fairly recent past, given the skirmishes over lottery vs first-come-first-serve systems, the East End has not really had the capacity to accept additional inter-district students in order to, in the words of Action Alameda, “put their children where their mouth is.”

Trauma drama

Nothing like some wild speculation about the motives of city staff to keep Alameda interesting.    By now most folks should have either read the Action Alameda “story” or been on the receiving end of some email about it.    For those that have not been on the receiving end of the many emails about this here is the nutshell version.

Trauma, the NBC show about paramedics? doctors? random people extracting others from exploding vehicles — I’m not quite sure because I don’t watch the show, films mostly in San Francisco.   You might recall how the City of San Francisco had to shell out some big bucks in order to pay for a giant tent for Oracleworld convention goers because Trauma was filming in their space.   Anyway, Trauma wanted to film a piece of some action in Alameda because they wanted to use some runway space next to the water.   Somehow some lines got crossed somewhere and apparently the purported inability to film on Alameda Point was because someone in the City wasn’t doing their job or deliberately blocking the permit.   Of course in the myriad of “news” reports, no one saw fit to ask Leslie Little, the Economic Development Director what the heck is going on.   After all, this falls under her department so it would naturally fall under her purview.

It wasn’t me

It appears that whoever hired the big guns to send a letter out to the City Attorney regarding the Alameda Point Initiative isn’t willing to come out and own it.   In fact, groups that were virtually waving the letter around the other day are now pulling a Shaggy and denying involvement with the letter.

While Peter Hegarty is reporting that:

…[Lawyer Dana] Sack is allied with Protect the Point, a community group against the SunCal plan…

Both Protect the Point and Action Alameda/Save our City Alameda are saying to Michele Ellson, “it wasn’t me”:

…Sack wouldn’t tell me who he is working for (”She asked me not to”); representatives of Action Alameda/Save Our City Alameda and Protect the Point both told me they didn’t retain him…

Seriously?

In keeping with the one word titles…

You all probably saw on Alameda Daily News the posting of a letter written to the City Attorney claiming that the Alameda Point Initiative is defective.  Or rather in the words of Don Roberts’s headline, “Fundamentally and Fatally Flawed.”  Of course given all the hoo hah over the “misrepresentations” made by the signature gatherers about the toxic clean-up, I guess I was surprised to see that the defect was over the number of square footage for the commercial and business space.   

This is the argument and reference to the supporting evidence:

…Attached hereto as Exhibit A are four pages from the Alameda Point Revitalization Initiative stating that there will be 3,182,000 square feet of commercial and business park development. Attached hereto as Exhibit B is Table 11-2 stating that there will be 2,515,000 square feet of commercial and business park development. The difference is 667,000 square feet. That is 20% of the higher number and 25% of the lower number…This is too significant and material a mistake and discrepancy to be ignored…

SunCal never promised us a rose garden, part 2

Continued from Part 1…

Jean Sweeney goes on to say in her letter to multiple editors (thanks to David B. for the Alameda Journal redirect)

Do you notice that the Alameda Point Master Plan is not one of the Applicable Rules? The Master Plan has no enforceable effect. It has big promises and pretty pictures but not enforceable.

See, here is where we get into a pure terminology issue. Just to clarify initially, the Applicable Rules that SunCal is bound by under the Development Agreement (p. 4 – 5) are:

• The City Charter of the City of Alameda on the Election Date, as modified by the Initiative Approvals…
• The General Plan of the City on the Election Date, including the new Alameda Point Community Plan and other modifications made by the Initiative Approvals…
• The Alameda Point Specific Plan…
• The Zoning Ordinance (i.e., Chapter XXX of the Alameda Municipal Code) of the City on the Election Date, as modified by the Initiative Approvals…
• All other provisions of the Alameda Municipal Code and other rules regulations, ordinances and policies of City applicable to development of the Property on the Election Date, as the same may be modified by the Initiative Approvals.