Pandering politicians

Some choice examples of pandering from Oakland City Council candidates:

Rebecca Kaplan begs Daily Kos readers to elect her outright on June 3rd so that she can spend the next five months campaigning for Obama instead of herself:

Please help me, help us!  If I win on June 3rd, I will be well positioned to be able to spend the rest of my time between June and November helping to make sure that Barack Obama is the next president of the United States.  (If no city council candidate receives 50% + 1 vote in June, then the top two run-off in November).

Mario Juarez has a fundraiser at a downtown “coffee shop.”

Mario Juarez has promised to open at least 10 MMJ outlets in Oakland and wants to implement more fully the Oakland Cannabis regulation and revenue ordinance (65% of vote). If you want more clubs in Oakland, this is your chance to make it happen. Suggested minimum donation of $20. 

Sean Sullivan is promising new dog parks and a West Oakland grocery store if elected. For some reason that feels different.

No mayor, no budget

Just when you though Mayor Dellums couldn’t get any worse, here comes this Thursday’s special budget meeting (PDF). Normally, the mayor submits a budget to be modified by the City Council. Last year, Mayor Dellums’ budget was released to much fanfare, accompanied by (handy) glossy brochures. This year, however, as the city enters a budget deficit, Mayor Dellums has failed to even submit a budget proposal (PDF) for the decidedly unsexy mid-year adjustment.

I try not to be part of the Dellums-bashing crowd (anymore), but this is just shocking. He’s been carefully creating the impression that he’s actually around, by suppressing his travel schedule and flying in and out of town for visible meetings. But to abandon the budget is simply beyond the pale.

In related news, the Chronicle notes today that the same group who recruited Dellums also recruited Mario Juarez to run for City Council against Ignacio de la Fuente. Good job, guys!

Elections, endorsements, and ideology - oh my!

As the elections come closer, voters are deluged with mailers and get many calls from politicians and volunteers seeking their support. Candidates and their literature trumpet endorsements, which the organizations issuing find very important. Endorsements are thought to be representative of the various interests that make up the endorsing groups. Curiously, the County Central Democrat Committee, Alameda County Sierra Club, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Central Labor Council had strikingly similar endorsements: Rebecca Kaplan for at-large, Jane Brunner and Nancy Nadel for reelection, and against Ignacio de la Fuente and Reid for their own reelections. Given the supposed influence of incumbents, particularly the Council President, it’s unexpected that supposedly establishment organizations are joining many issue-oriented or simply rebellious voices to produce what can be termed a slate.

All of these endorsements are contradictory. Let’s look at blogger bete noire Nancy Nadel and her endorsements, which she trumpeted in a recent colorful mailer. She has the endorsement of the Bay Guardian, which looked like she wrote it (no journalist could be out-of-it enough to believe she’s a hard worker). The Guardian, as a supposedly youthful voice, consistently stands up for artists and musicians. Yet Nancy Nadel called the cops on the Art Murmur, shut down a dancehall concert and attempted to kick artists out of live/work in industrial West Oakland. Without mentioning her Gen X competitor, homeless shelter director Sean Sullivan, the Guardian stood on the wrong side of their carefully-cultivated generation gap. This also goes for the East Bay Young Democrats.

The Sierra Club’s endorsements were also bizarre, and not just regarding District 3. Nadel is attempting to limit transit-oriented development in the DTO, held up the City Council’s endorsement of the more environmentally-friendly Altamont Pass bullet-train route, and is nowhere on Bus Rapid Transit (and stood by idly as the Broadway Shopper Shuttle was ended in 2003). She did author the plastic bag ordinance but it was struck down in court, which isn’t very impressive. Ignacio de la Fuente has been an outspoken voice on transit and transit-oriented development, and he and Larry Reid have been the city’s most successful creators of new urban open space. Jane Brunner is also nowhere on transit, considers Transit-Oriented Development to be only government-sponsored mid-rise developments immediately adjacent to BART stations, and I can’t think of anything she’s done that seems very green.

The Central Labor Council endorsed Nadel for the first time, and declined to endorse Ignacio even though he is vice-president of a union, author of Oakland’s Living Wage and Local Hire ordinances, and reportedly did very well in their interview. The Alameda County Democratic Party declined to endorse incumbent de la Fuente, and gave Green-turned-Democrat Rebecca Kaplan the endorsement over longtime elected Democrats Clinton Killian and Kerry Hammill. The teachers’ union, Green Party, and ACORN also followed the slate, though without an interview process.

The Central Democratic Committee endorsements can be partly explained because the current committeemembers were elected when Dellums was elected mayor, so were part of his slate and therefore enemies of Ignacio. But Nadel has always voted for Ignacio for Council President, and Sean Sullivan had an early endorser in Desley Brooks (and is endorsed by Kathy Neal of the DCCC and Mario Juarez’s campaign). The Sierra Club didn’t give Sullivan an interview, explaining that they routinely endorse incumbents they’ve worked with before. But they had an interview in D5. Many of the Guardian’s endorsements were entirely out-to-lunch, but they certainly got the memo Brunner and Nadel should be reelected, Ignacio and Reid unseated, and Kaplan elected. If internal Council President politics don’t explain it, and it doesn’t fit with the agendas of the endorsing groups, what else is left?

Misplaced ideology is the common thread that links this slate. Though most Council business is conducted unanimously, and there is a strong consensus in Oakland over the general outlines of the future of the city, there have been a few policies that have split the Council and possibly the electorate. The main issue is Inclusionary Zoning, which the Council deadlocked on way back in October 2006. Mario Juarez, despite being a realtor and former ally of Ignacio de la Fuente, now supports a 25% mandatory set-aside. Nancy Nadel (and Jean Quan who is campaigning for her) keeps trying to bring up IZ, to little apparent success, and she also said last week people should vote for Rebecca Kaplan because she supports IZ (though I don’t really get that impression).

Beyond IZ, many of these groups are made up of non-Oaklanders (like the DCCC, East Bay Young Democrats, the Guardian, and the Sierra Club) or are dominated by the public-employee unions (the OEA teachers’ union, the County Central Labor Council, and arguably ACORN because they get a lot of help from EBASE). The unions want compliant councilmembers, and out-of-towners are easily swayed by ideology and abstract issues like IZ and don’t know anything about blight and food access.

I agree with the “slate” choices regarding the reelection of the four sitting Councilmembers. At least, I agree that Ignacio de la Fuente and Larry Reid stand for something different than Jane Brunner and Nancy Nadel. I outlined above how many of the endorsements, particularly the East Bay Young Democrats and Sierra Club, are counter to what the groups ostensibly represent. This election is a particularly good example of why it’s important for voters to make informed judgments for themselves. An environmentalist could mistakenly think that the Sierra Club’s endorsements have something to do with a politician’s ideas and track record on the environment, or a hipster could assume the East Bay Young Democrats are a proxy for forward-thinking and youth-friendly leadership. That would be entirely wrong.

From national to local, in the news

Alright, it doesn’t take top bloggers like V-Smoothe and Becks to shame me into posting more. I’m just pleased to be part of the conversation. This blog is FutureOakland: every day Oaklanders make decisions that shape the future. Therefore, the future is the present. Here are some recent news articles, from all over the country, that relate to the ongoing formation of Oakland’s future.

With New York State rejecting $354m of federal matching funds for congestion pricing and transit upgrades, other cities are getting into the mix. Chicago has proposed an amibitious BRT network, and Los Angeles is angling for more money to supplement their record-breaking public investments in transit. Meanwhile, Berkeley residents seek to put all traffic and transit improvements to public vote, to block a regional project that goes only about a mile into Berkeley.

Finally, someone who is already on the City Council (besides Ignacio, of course) talks about the need to implement policing strategies and technologies now commonplace in other large cities! SF’s new crime czar is singing the same tune. It seems like elections bring out the best in politicians, except when they don’t.

Nancy Nadel revealed at the HarriOak / Adam’s Point / WOBO candidates’ forum that Fresh & Easy, contrary to her assertion late last year, will not be coming to West Oakland’s Acorn Shopping Center (they will open a store in the Eastmont Mall). She noted approvingly that Fresh & Easy was rejected by EBALDC, their putative landlord, over wages. “Do we want a grocery store that won’t pay a living wage?” she asked rhetorically. A Better Oakland cites the wage difference that torpedoed the grocery store, which focuses on low-priced but organic goods, at $0.39/hour.

A local blogger invents a pro-Dellums argument out of thin air: because the mayor was in Capetown, South Africa roughly around the same time as a shipment of arms bound for Zimbabwe was turned away from a Durban, South Africa, port, he must have been instrumental in keeping those arms out of Mugabe’s hands! I often piece together superficially unrelated news stories to create a narrative, but I hope they’re a bit more persuasive.

Los Angeles is paying attention to what transit users and pedestrians desire and installing eye-catching, well-located and comfortable street furniture as part of a “Community Living Room” initiative. Apparently the idea started in Oakland, but I certainly haven’t seen anything like that here. Maybe it’s because I live in D3.

Washington, DC became the first US city to implement a citywide bike-sharing program, funded by advertisers (in this case, Clear Channel Outdoor, headquartered in Oakland). Too bad Oakland’s proposed downtown zoning precludes billboards. The proposed zoning would also ban storage, which has been making a comeback lately as an asset class in the form of develop-and-hold REITs, for reasons including the Smart Growth trend toward real-estate downsizing, which creates new storage needs.

Beserkeley announced the results of a city-funded study. It confirmed that, yes, Virginia, there are many artists in West Berkeley, at least according to what they consider art. Though computer-based design doesn’t count according to Berkeley’s strict zoning, yoga studios do, so clearly nothing should be developed in order to protect valuable artists of the “expressive” variety.

San Francisco is relaxing height limits in the lower-rise parts of their city center. A marked contrast to proposals presented by Oakland’s city staff under the direction of Dan Lindheim. Not all of Oakland’s planners seem to be on-message, though.

Sacramento leaders including Governor Schwarzenegger and President Pro-Tem Perata are suggesting expanding the state’s sales tax to services. This could be a great boon to Oakland, because competitive goods are often sold outside the city but services are usually consumed nearby. For example, a woman might buy a pair of fashionable stiletto sandals in San Francisco, but will get her pedicures in Oakland (and the heels will be repaired here as well).

Scraperbikes are cool.

And everyone’s favorite rag the Berkeley Daily Planet goes weekly, starting tomorrow. I will endeavor to be somewhat more constant in my own writing, as well. Thanks for the encouragement!

 

Berkeley: Downzoning for affordable housing?

A few days ago I received an alarming email from Friends of BRT:

Transportation and land use are intimately linked. The combination of better public transportation and transit-oriented development is the Bay Area’s best hope for reducing the pollution, congestion, and related problems associated with the region’s over-dependence on the private automobile. Yet, instead of leading the way, Berkeley, in the form of a relatively small group of activist neighbors, is fighting the trend vigorously.

This Tuesday, April 22, the Berkeley City Council will vote on a proposal that would significantly downzone the major transportation corridors. Essentially that proposal is exactly the same as Measure P, which 80 percent of Berkeley’s voters defeated in 2002.

I followed Berkeley’s protracted zoning-by-committee Downtown Plan process and always check the Berkeley Daily Planet, which seems to be that city’s only news source, but had never heard of any downzoning effort. Why would the Berkeley Daily refrain from applauding neighbors’ efforts to keep newcomers out with restrictive land-use policies? Then I remembered an ongoing and rather odd discussion of a density bonus that comes to the Berkeley City Council today:

Two different versions of a proposed municipal density bonus are on the council’s agenda, one recommended by the Planning Commission and the other by the city planning staff.

The regulations would govern the size and shape of multi-story mixed-use housing projects of the sort now being built along the city’s major traffic arteries.

The commission is urging the city to pass an ordinance that will take effect before the June 3 general election to offset the possible impacts of Proposition 98.

In Oakland, there has been a little discussion of density bonuses, which are available to developers who include price-restricted (”affordable”) units in residential projects by state law. The density bonus functions as a voluntary Inclusionary Zoning program, similar to Los Angeles or Massachusetts though much less used (one project in Temescal is applying for it; I don’t know of any other use of this ten-year-old law in Oakland). Desley Brooks specifically directed the Blue Ribbon Commission to look at density bonuses as they attempted to draft an affordable-housing ordinance, but of course the commission did not, and IZ advocates ignore the density bonuses that would be consequence of their proposal. As a result, few people understand that once cities adopt mandatory IZ regulations, they lose some control over development, which prevents municipalities from adopting IZ just to discourage development.

It appears that Berkeley’s planning staff is adept at using the state’s density bonus to move projects past a skeptical Zoning Adjustments Board and Planning Commission hearings dominated by outraged NIMBYs. Having caught on to the ruse, the ZAB has been for some time asking for an ordinance that allows them to limit development further. Much like Jane Brunner tried to pass a poorly-thought-out IZ ordinance before Prop 90 came to a vote in late 2006, it appears the Berkeley City Council is sufficiently cowed by the spectre of Prop 98, and will radically downzone their transit corridors in order to assure that Berkeley’s future development includes price-restricted units, and that there will be few of them.

In related news, it appears that State Senate candidate Loni Hancock (former “progressive” Mayor of Berkeley, current Assemblymember, wife of Tom “I stole the newspaper” Bates) is carrying some significant legislation to further placate NIMBYs who love affordable housing in theory. According to the Planet (I couldn’t find this bill), Hancock has introduced a bill that would exempt cities with IZ from the statewide Density Bonus without forcing them to create their own bonuses, thereby encouraging cities to pass the sort of IZ ordinances a recent pro-IZ study found to be the least effective: mandatory, unfunded policies without planning concessions. Politicians like Loni Hancock, Tom Bates and, in Oakland, Jane Brunner and Nancy Nadel advance a damaging anti-growth agenda under the auspices of providing more affordable housing, and inevitably their targets are transit corridors and other places that make growth smart. BRT proponents and other environmentalists are wise to connect the dots.

Nadel takes credit for downtown zoning proposal

At last night’s League of Women Voters’ debate, Nancy Nadel (who was generally bested by Sean Sullivan during the forty-five minute exchange) asserted that “what I’m proposing for zoning downtown” would harmonize economic and environmental development by concentrating high-rise development on Broadway adjacent to BART. I’m glad that she finally owned up to writing the downtown zoning proposal, which staff presented with a very frustrating lack of vision or analysis. I had suspected Ms. Nadel wrote the zoning, since a senior project planner told me that “political interference from certain city councilmembers” has been behind some of the staff’s dafter zoning proposals. Councilmember Nadel’s staff was responsible for transmitting the “public input” from the first two meetings to the strategic planners (raising objections from NIMBYs). By raising the DTO zoning proposal as evidence of her leadership on economic and environmental development, in this election season closer scrutiny of the proposal is warranted.*

First, let’s look at the main selling point of the zoning: that it would maximize density on Broadway while keeping skyscrapers away from the lake. The justification is that BART is on Broadway (and that it’s popular).

There are several problems with this. Foremost, people do not need to be within one block of BART to use it - the highest-height area clings very closely to Broadway. Also, as people who actually use transit often point out to our allegedly pro-transit leaders, more people ride the bus than take BART. Between walking, bicycling, the bus and our other transit opportunities (the ferry and train station in JLS). All of downtown is appropriate for highest-density development, from a transportation perspective, and if anything, we should prioritize bus commuters over BART commuters because they’re more likely to be Oaklanders.

Furthermore, the zoning’s tower-and-base form restrictions and the lot-size and setback minimums make development on Broadway more difficult because it’s largely built-up. Most available lots are small and wedged between other structures. And, as V-Smoothe pointed out, the office skyscrapers we just approved with great fanfare would not be allowed.

Finally, restricting high-rise development to Broadway goes against two immutable forces: the market and the earth. The residential market doesn’t like Broadway. The two condo projects having the most trouble are both right on Broadway. A high-rise has been entitled at 17th and Broadway for four years, and no residential construction firm will buy the rights (there is one drool-inducing condo on Broadway as well) And in terms of geology and construction, developers have been saying recently that building right on the BART tracks is difficult and expensive, and impossible directly on top of stations.

The second problem with the zoning is that it brings back the 1960s use restrictions. While concentrating retail on selected corridors and requiring appropriate height and depth minimums for storefronts is great, restricting the use of those storefronts is not. V-Smoothe has already written that the proposal would ban sandwich shops, large restaurants, and arcades (and nightclubs would have to get a CUP on top of the cabaret permitting process). Additionally, banning the “General Assembly” use category would rule out Oaksterdam University and cosmetology schools, the Rock Papers Scissors Collective and union halls. Internet cafes, convenience stores, and other downtown-serving businesses would be discouraged. This is not the way to promote downtown’s economy.

The third problem is that Nancy Nadel’s zoning proposal doesn’t actually respect areas where high-rises should be limited. She said at last night’s debate that any high-rise application already submitted would be grandfathered in, so her effort to rezone downtown won’t actually help the anti-skyscraper activists currently battling two proposals. The area around the lake above 19th would be allowed to build even taller than what’s there now. Old Oakland and historic parts of Chinatown wouldn’t be restricted. I don’t approve of height limits anywhere downtown outside the historic districts, but I don’t see the logic in these height limits at all.

Downtown residents should certainly evaluate the zoning proposal at it moves through the city’s process, with one last public input meeting (the first inside the downtown planning area) scheduled for Monday April 7 at 6p at Restaurant Peony in Chinatown, and the Zoning Update Committee meeting April 16 to make recommendations.

* I so totally have an economic interest in this zoning update. So does everybody else downtown.

Council committee to determine fate of live/work

As reported by V Smoothe in NovoMetro, the CED Committee will today hear a new zoning proposal for industrial areas of Oakland. Most of the details of the zoning are uncontroversial, and the Council passed a resolution declaring industrial lands a “scarce resource” by a lopsided vote last Tuesday. But, as with all other debates over complex zoning codes, the devil is in the details. And the details of this code reveal that Oakland’s planners and Planning Commissioners are utterly divorced from reality.

The basic premise of “industrial preservation” is that a few years of residential development in industrial areas (there have been only two General Plan Amendments permitting conversions since 2003) are responsible for the decades-long decline of Oakland’s industrial base. By this logic, competition from residential developers, rather than from, say, China, is apparently the biggest hurdle facing Oakland industry. Stunningly, not a single Planning Commissioner disagreed with these assumptions, and, even in the absence of anything approaching an industrial revitalization plan, unanimously approved strict and inflexible zoning rules over industrial lands. To be determined in the future is a “checklist” of criteria, prioritizing “community benefits” over planning, to determine conversions in the future.

Embracing the broad and abstract goal of revitalizing industry, the City Council and the Planning Commission were unconcerned with the details of the measure. Two elements of the new zoning code are sharply at odds with existing land-use patterns in Oakland: the industrial lines and the live/work code. The industrial lines encompass residential neighborhoods, particularly around 24th and Adeline. Though a representative of the neighborhood has been to every public meeting on the topic, his inconvenient point that the lines are wrong has been  ignored by everyone from planning staff to the Planning Commission to his Councilmember, Nancy Nadel. Now the Council is poised to approve the zoning law, rendering his entire neighborhood of single-family homes “legally non-conforming,” ruling out infill residential development and greatly complicating simple tasks like renovating homes.

Perhaps even worse, the live/work code harshly restricts live/work in the industrial areas. The planning staff seems entirely unaware that there are already hundreds of live/work residences within the industrial zones, legal and otherwise, which would be placed in limbo. And the provisions for establishing new live/work developments are written so that all of Oakland’s current live/work developments would be excluded, including the West Oakland’s Peralta Studios and Noodle Factory.

I understand that Mayor Dellums won the election and gets to set planning policy, even though “industrial preservation” (and for that matter, a radical downzoning of downtown) was never part of his platform. But the city for years has actively encouraged artists to move into underutilized buildings in Oakland’s industrial areas. Everyone from former Mayor Brown to the mass media has praised artists and their conversions as cutting-edge and culturally vibrant. But the radical shift in planning policy embodied in “industrial preservation” is more than just yanking away the welcome mat – it raises the very real prospect of artists losing their homes.

It is simply wrong to encourage people to move to your city for a decade and then abruptly tell them that what their doing is illegal and, in Councilmember Nadel’s words, irresponsible. In fact, it is the city decision-makers and the planning staff who are irresponsible: by ignoring the reality of West Oakland’s neighborhoods and live/work projects, by reversing years of tolerance to artists, and by placing artists’ homes in sudden legal jeopardy. This willful ignorance of economic and social reality will have very real consequences to the artists and homeowners who, by a stroke of Dan Lindheim’s pen, find themselves in illegal housing.

UDPATE: With Ignacio de la Fuente telling artists and their supporters “you are right,” the CED Committee did not send the zoning ordinance to Council, and will instead discuss changing it to include live/work at their April meeting. The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and the West Oakland Commerce Association spoke in favor of moving the ordinance forward without changes.

Open space versus housing, but not the way you’d think

UPDATE: The City Council compromised at 18 units.

This evening the City Council will hear an appeal of an entitlement granted by the Planning Commission. Unusually, this appeal is coming from a developer, not NIMBYs. In question: the conversion of a motel to condos in that dingy stretch of MacArthur at the 10000 block (the staff report (PDF) contains an unsavory description the adjacent buildings). The developer received permission to convert to apartments in 2003 but never finished building them out. Now he asked for a condo map for the 19 units, but staff recommended and the Commission moved to approve only 17 units. Staff cited the zoning, since according to a strict reading of the General Plan a portion of the property extends past the strip of Urban Residential covering MacArthur. When asked for a variance to exceed the zoning formula concocted by the staff, planners pulled out an even more persnickety objection to fully converting the building to condos: that the motel did not meet open-space requirements. All six responses to the request for a density variance were answered by citing the open-space requirement (not parking). The commission recommended that one of the two surplus units be used as a “community/recreation area.”

Apartments, being for-rent, and for-sale condos are not as dissimilar as they would appear. Newly-built apartments usually secure condo-conversion permission, and “speculators” purchase condos to rent as apartments. The primary difference between the assets has to do with the federal tax code, because homeowners and REITs receive preferential tax treatment, and other landlords do not. The appeal before the Council brings up interesting questions about how planning policy should treat these kinds of housing. Since the difference is primarily financial, is it appropriate for the city to hold condos to more stringent requirements than apartments? In this case, though only 17 units were approved as apartments the extra two were to be used as a common area and as an on-site management dwelling, both required by state law for apartments but not condos. So under the prior approval, there was still an open-space deficit (18 inhabited units). Why is open-space more important for homeowners than renters? The staff report also makes a big deal of how they’re not requiring them to go through the condo conversion hoops even though the apartments for which the developer received permission in 2003 were never occupied. While I’m relieved the conversion isn’t being blocked by the ordinance, the idea that the ordinance applies to never-occupied apartments is chilling to potential apartment developers who may want the option of converting them in the future.

Because this is an adaptive reuse of a hotel, there is little leeway for the developers in terms of site use and provision of open space. The developer agreed to the city’s instructions on landscaping and arrangement of parking. As I explained above, the Planning Commission unanimously ruled that at least one of the units be used as a “community/recreation area” to meet the city’s requirement. But what is the value of indoor open-space? As I have written before, I find newly-built private open space of dubious value in a city replete with beautiful (or potentially beautiful) parks. But what possibly could be gained to the 17 other units to have two common units? The HOA fees will of course be higher to maintain these spaces. The idea that indoor open space consisting of two units is more valuable than two more families in the building is disturbing and certainly contradicts the city’s goals of responding to the housing crisis and becoming more transit-oriented and green (indoor open space is not green).

Open space requirements make no sense in this context, where the building already exists and was built as housing (albeit temporary housing). If a historic high-rise hotel downtown were converted to apartments or condos, would the city also require that some units remain vacant? Effectively, the decision by the planning commission sets a city policy that fewer housing units are more desirable than any amelioration of the city’s open-space requirements, although only for certain kinds of housing finance. The General Plan strongly encourages the conversion of seedy motels into permanent housing, and MacArthur Blvd is being studied for a Bus Rapid Transit line. Leaving empty units in this condo complex is simply bad public policy.

---

I want to thank V Smoothe and Chip Johnson for their contributions to Oakland’s blogosphere, which I am excited to rejoin. I promise to post at least once a week! This blog will focus narrowly on planning and zoning issues. I will endeavor to present these important city policies and practices in an easy-to-read fashion that is anchored in reality and the Oakland experience. For lighter fare, please check out my blog The DTO. I also read Dogtown Commoner, TransBay Blog, Oakland Goods, Living in the O, and the Grand Lake Guardian.

Oh oh oh, I got election…*

With the presidential primary in just a few days, many Oaklanders are turning their attention to local races. Before the official start of campaigning, the races are remarkably fluid: not only are potential candidates stealthily recruiting supporters as far away from reporters as possible, there is still substantial uncertainty over whether there will be an election at all.

Normally, the June primary features races for City Council, School Board, and state offices including Assembly, and this year, State Senate. Proposition 93 will decide whether there is a competitive State Senate primary: Senator Don Perata may fail to extend limits on his term in office, opening up what will probably be nasty battle between Berkeley Assemblymember Loni Hancock and former Oakland Assemblymember (and Alameda Country Supervisor) Wilma Chan. Ms. Chan, once considered the frontrunner, has suffered from two years out of office and out of the media spotlight, while Ms. Hancock has made very successful efforts to get herself in front of every camera rolling in Oakland, miles from her Assembly District (whose only Oakland constituency is Rockridge and part of Temescal).

Of more interest to this blog’s readers is the upcoming City Council and School Board races. Several aspiring Council candidates were discussed in Tuesday’s Berkeley Daily Planet, with Nancy Nadel’s bid for a fourth term representing Downtown and West Oakland facing stiff challenge from at least two contenders, and Henry Chang’s likely decision not to run for reelection attracting a great deal of attention. Jane Brunner’s bid for a fourth term representing North Oakland is not likely to be without competition, as her annoyed constituents beg for a candidate. Districts One and Three will probably have open School Board seats, though that second-tier race is currently flying below the media’s radar screen. But when, exactly, will Oaklanders have the chance to decide their representatives?

NovoMetro reported recently that Instant Runoff Voting, the controversial system that has been used in San Francisco since 2004 (during which time not a single incumbent has been defeated), is not ready for implementation in Oakland due to CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertifying Alameda County’s new voting machines, equipped with software for IRV. Without the new machines, the elections will go forward in June, rather than November. However, a group of Councilmembers, egged on by Oakland’s shockingly pushy and partisan League of Women Voters, is expected to attempt to force the city to use IRV anyway. Without the new machines, Instant Runoff Voting would be tabulated with paper ballots, creating significant costs to the city and delaying results for several weeks. Though the Country Registrar of Voters and the City Clerk do not see this as an option (the City Clerk told the Rules Committee late last year that “there is nothing instant” about spending weeks tabulating paper ballots with IRV’s complex ranked-choice formula), Council insiders expect several Councilmembers to argue that this is the “voters’ will.” In fact, voters were sold IRV as a faster, cheaper electoral method, so spending weeks and tens of thousands of dollars on hand-counted paper ballots is not following their intent. Most displeasingly, this raises the specter of vulnerable incumbents (like Nancy Nadel) attempting to put off their reckoning with the voters.

We’ll find out next Tuesday, when the Council is scheduled to vote on a resolution delaying IRV until the voting machines can be certified. And though I try to stay out of national politics on this blog, I can’t resist a quick pitch for my presidential candidate:

Everyone sick and tired of Dellums, rather than spend energy on a recall effort, should bide their time and vote for Hillary. A Hillary Clinton administration would more likely than not include a Secretary Dellums.

* Yes, I’m referencing an obscene Turbonegro song.

Redevelopment Review

This week saw several packed meetings in City Hall’s Hearing Room 1, including a racially-tinged discussion of the city’s contracting policies, a tussle over the Conley report from Councilmembers wanting their districts to get a slice of the pie, and an overflow crowd watching the Dellums Land Use Task Force give a presentation to the Planning Commission (the audience was there for a different item).

At the Community and Economic Development Committee, the Council was treated to the unpleasant spectacle of sharp disagreements over the city’s proposal to construct affordable housing next to Raimondi Park. The city staff and West Oakland residents supported the family-sized homeownership units aimed at households making around 60% of the Area Median Income. Several One non-profit housing developers strenuously objected, arguing that the city should somehow force the Central Station master developer to transfer a plot of land for free, and that more of the units be aimed at 100% AMI households (making up to $82k/yr), since that’s easier for them to develop.