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…

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.

SunCal never promised us a rose garden, part 1

But they did promise us a Sports Complex.

Before I get started, first off, the City has produced its Alameda Point Development Initative Election Reportas directed by the City Council.   More on that document later, it’s about 39 pages and supposedly breaks down the SunCal Initiative into easy to understand plain language bits.  I don’t want to get too in-depth about it because I have been sitting on this particular post for a while and want get to it.  

Last week, Jean Sweeney submitted a letter to Alameda Daily News that was chockful of, um, information that isn’t quite true. I don’t think she deliberately was trying to misrepresent what is in the SunCal Development Agreement, but I found some inaccuracies in her letter. The letter has since disappeared off of ADN, but it is screen capped below.

Hell no, we won’t go, etc…

Read the Specific Plan yet?   Development Agreement?  No?   Don’t worry, you’re in good company because I don’t think the folks protesting yesterday have either.   They were too busy putting together signs and putting out press releases to bother with those dirty details.  Because why bother countering with a solid campaign about why the SunCal plan sucks when you can do media grabbing things like talk about a mayoral recall in the Mayor’s last term in office?  Quick note, if you are going to use someone’s name in the press release, the least you can do is to spell her name right.  

Anyway, folks we need to help the opponents out with some nifty slogans for their signs, I heard that there were the usual yawn ones like:

• SunCal= High Rise
• The Mayor Lies
• Mayor Sells Out
• Recall Mayor
• SunCal “Fairy Tales”
• Bev Pinocchio-Jo paid for by devolopers [sic] <– sign must have been written by the same person who spelled Diane Coler-Dark as “Diane Color-Dark”, just too enamored with those “o”s I suppose, I’m an “a” person myself, apparently so was this guy.