Somethin’ on some of this realest…um…stuff

So continued from yesterday’s post where during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting  Councilmember Doug deHaan had been called out on his not really offering any concrete solutions position to dealing with what ails Alameda’s budget, where he said that the Council had never “envisioned”  any of the projects identified in Measure C prior to Measure C popping up, and suggested that closing the Grand Street fire station would result in no service delays because the other two main island fire stations could cover it, or if they needed an extra fire station the City could just reopen the one on Alameda Point.

So after denying that the City had ever talked about the projects identified in Measure C prior to their being a Measure C, Doug deHaan backtracks and then contends that the amounts of money that the City attached to those projects were much much less than what is being identified in Measure C as required to build the projects.

Then he goes after the public/private partnerships implying that the private partners will be unable to make good on their portions of the agreement.   What he is really saying because the partnerships have pretty much been identified: Youth Sports, the Swimming Community, and the Alameda Museum will all be unable to fundraise enough to build their portions and that the Swimming Community will be unable to take care of the maintenance of the Aquatic Center.

Seek and hide

So you all know, and I know that campaign finance reform is not just to limit the amount of money that is spent on elections, but also to improve the disclosure around who is funding who and what.    The problem about insisting on more campaign finance reform is that if groups and candidates can’t follow rules that are currently in place and there are no repercussions for not following the rules in place, what’s the point?

But, you’ll be glad to know that last Thursday was the deadline for the second pre-election filing for the June election.   Preserve Alameda, the group supporting Measure C the sales tax initiative, duly filed their paperwork by the deadline and that document was up on the City Clerk’s database and attached here.  What you’re probably wondering is — like Doug deHaan’s wife — is who are the biggest funders.

By design

Yesterday two Tweeters pointed out how crappy the websites supporting Measure C and against Measure C really are:

@medablog Well, MilkingAlameda went WordPress, but yikes. Their logo, for starters, REALLY requires some context.. pic.twitter.com/T45FyGQ8

— Donald Wasylyk (@dlwasylyk) March 20, 2012

But what puts the anti-Measure C website over the top is the graphic that they have been using to dissuade voters from supporting Measure C.   Now, I hadn’t thought about the additional meaning behind the graphic if it was removed from the context, but now it’s really all I can think of when I see the graphic and I have to say I’m a little icked out.  I really hope they don’t intend on putting those on any lawn signs any time soon.