San Francisco renters get set to join mandatory composting effort

SAN FRANCISCO - With just 17 days to go before the nation's first mandatory composting law goes into effect here, most of the eye-rolling is over.

Now that the "only in San Francisco" reaction has died down, city workers are hustling to get the ubiquitous green and blue bins out to thousands of apartment houses and commercial buildings.

The city that likes to be on the cutting edge of governmental and social policy decided in June to bring mandatory food scrap composting to this already green community. When the program is launched Oct. 21, it will be the first of its kind in the nation.

But perhaps the biggest and most overlooked aspect of the new law will be its impact on the occupants of the 220,000-odd apartment units who have not previously had a chance to participate in the city's aggressive voluntary recycling programs.

The new law says those apartment dwellers - along with occupants of large commercial buildings - will all now be a part of mandatory recycling efforts.

"Right now our big push is to get the (compost) bins out to the apartment resident population," said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the Department of the Environment, which oversees San Francisco recycling.

"Individual apartment dwellers are calling us every day saying they've heard of the new law and really want to participate. They're telling us that they are putting pressure on their landlords and property managers to get signed up for the program," he said.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said he has been buoyed by the response.

"Where previously many apartment buildings did not offer the full range of recycling services, the Universal Recycling and Composting ordinance assures that all residents and businesses have equal access to the program," Newsom said in a statement. "The city already recycles 72 percent of its waste material, and we expect this number to go even higher as more people have access to the blue and green carts."

Many cities already have mandatory recycling laws. But what's getting attention is that a major American city is now moving to collect food waste in order to make compost for local farming operations.

The food scraps will first be hauled by 18-wheelers to composting facilities in Vacaville and Dixon. From there, the material will be turned into compost and sold to Northern California wine-grape and vegetable growers. By using the city's rich - some say four-course - compost, the farmers say they enjoy larger, healthier harvests while using smaller amounts of petroleum-based fertilizers.

Officials add that the composting operation not only will reduce the amount of material going to landfills but also will curb the city's contribution to global warming.

With food scraps turned into compost and then used on crops, the material cannot create methane as it would if sent to a conventional landfill. Methane is one of four principal greenhouse gases that scientists say are contributing to the global warming crisis.

Blumenfeld said phones at his office are ringing off the hook. Department workers and volunteers are delivering as many as 100 new sets of composting bins a day to residents and tenants at locations across the city.

He noted that going to mandatory recycling - and adding in the food scrap/composting element - was the only way for the city to exceed its current 72 percent voluntary recycling rate. The city generates approximately 2.1 million tons of waste each year.

Most criticisms about the plan have been focused on how the city will enforce the new composting law.

Robert Reed, a spokesman for Recology Inc., the company that collects and hauls San Francisco's recyclables and compostables, says the plan is to employ a combination of community outreach, cajoling and hand-holding.

And, yes, the truly recalcitrant will face more counseling by the city, letters and then fines to ensure compliance.

For single-family residences and small businesses, the maximum fine could be $100. For apartment buildings with five or more units and commercial buildings, non-compliance could cost as much as $1,000 a citation.

But Reed says his company and the city don't want to turn into "compost cops."

"That's not what we're about. Sure, our drivers will be the ones who see whether folks are complying or not, but their first goal is to work with people - to get them to understand why this program is worthy of their support and cooperation," Reed said.

According to one 48-year-old San Franciscan who has an apartment in the city's Sunset District, the program should be received with open arms by her fellow tenants.

"We've been separating food scraps on a voluntary basis for quite a while now. But my friends who live in larger buildings haven't had this option," said Arlynne Camire. "By going to a mandatory basis, the landlords of these buildings won't be able to drag their feet anymore. I think you'll find a majority of tenants solidly behind this."

Waste management authorities elsewhere say they will be keeping an eye on the San Francisco program.

"Seeing a city's food waste practically eliminated from its waste stream is a very exciting thing. We applaud San Francisco for taking this on," said Kyle Pogue, a spokesman for the state Integrated Waste Management Board in Sacramento. "We suspect that this program will be a model which other cities in California and other states in the nation will soon be following."

This post was also published in The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, Oct. 4. Read it here.

LGBT anti-bullying effort in Alameda under fire

A small East Bay school district's effort to protect children of nontraditional families from being bullied has sparked a lawsuit from an out-of-town Christian legal group and a campaign to recall three school board members.

On one side are parents who believe the Alameda Unified School District board's decision to authorize a lesson in the so-called Caring Schools Community Curriculum violates their rights to teach their children about sexuality issues on their own terms and will indoctrinate their children into what they call the homosexual lifestyle.

On the other are parents who believe the curriculum's Lesson 9 is vital for preventing children with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered parents from being bullied or harassed while attending school in the 10,000-student district.

The board's decision in May followed several standing-room-only hearings and touched off an effort to recall trustees Tracy Jensen, Ron Mooney and Nielsen Tam, who voted for the lesson. Trustees Trish Spencer and Mike McMahon opposed it.

"Basically, these board members decided that they didn't want to do what the people of Alameda who elected them wanted to be done, and that was to strike down Lesson 9," Alameda parent Adam Wooten, one of the 10 city residents to sign the original recall notice, told a local online news site shortly after the effort was announced. "If they don't want to do what we elected them to do, then why should they remain in office?"

District administrators have said the board's decision stemmed from concern that teachers of kindergarten through fifth grade had no lesson plan ready if they encountered LGBT-oriented intimidation.

Alameda educators have also said repeatedly that because the lesson is not about sex or sexuality, state law prevents them from granting parents the right to remove their children from school whenever the lesson is being taught.

The opt-out issue is what prompted the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute, a nonprofit conservative Christian law firm, to file a lawsuit over the lesson. Because of that suit, district Superintendent Kirstin Vital said late last week she could not comment on the controversy.

But the institute's chief counsel, Kevin Snider, argues that because the district is broaching the issue of helping kids from LGBT and nontraditional families who face campus bullying, the lesson is a de facto endorsement of that lifestyle. Snider says that, just like any sex education class in California, parents should be able to opt out or remove their child from attending that class if it runs counter to their religious or moral beliefs.

Moreover, Snider said, a state Public Records Act request filed by the group shows that most bullying on Alameda school campuses involves racial tensions and opposite-sex sexual harassment, not sexual orientation.

"Parents do not support LGBT indoctrination that fails to address the main causes of bullying and harassment in the district and intentionally omits children belonging to the other five protected classes," Snider said in a statement. He was referring to the protected classes of race and ethnicity, gender, disability, nationality and religion.

"It is their right to remove their children from this highly controversial program, and we intend to vigorously defend that right," Snider's statement added.

Proponents circulating the recall petition are part of a larger local parent group called SERVE, or Seeking Equity and Respect for all Viewpoints in Education. They have until December to collect some 8,600 signatures of local voters to qualify the recall for the ballot, officials said.

SERVE representatives did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment for this report.

Jensen, one of the targets of the recall, has subsequently appeared on the Fox News Channel to speak on the controversy. She says she has no misgivings about her vote supporting the lesson, adding that while no student with an LGBT background has yet to formally complain of being bullied, research indicates it's just a matter of time.

The curriculum was created to assist teachers in reacting to incidents of bullying of all students from all classes, protected or not, she said.

"People at SERVE and PJI are intentionally 'sexualizing' this issue," Jensen said. "To do that is intellectually dishonest, and they know it.

"This isn't about sex or trying to indoctrinate anyone into doing anything. It's about the district giving its teachers a tool to deal with a difficult and very real problem."

John Knox White, a civic activist whose children attend Alameda schools, agrees with Jensen. He's created an anti-recall petition that he says has more than 2,300 signatures both online and on paper. Knox White says he's not surprised by that reaction, given that more than two-thirds of Alameda voters opposed last year's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

"I created the petition," Knox White said, "because I believed that the organizers of the recall do not represent the compassionate and respectful community of Alameda. ... It says, 'No, the recall is not who we are.'"

A version of this report was published in The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009. View it here.

California's high-speed rail project sparks fear among some on the SF Peninsula

Voters warmly embraced Proposition 1A and the idea of bringing a bullet train system to the traffic-choked Golden State last November.

But since the election, life for the California High-Speed Rail Authority has been anything but easy.

Ten months later, with the glow of the initiative's remarkable electoral success beginning to fade, authority board members and staff are finding the actual process of preparing to build the $40 billion, 800-mile system is far more difficult than selling the dream of the sleek, fast trains.

With $9.9 billion in bond sales authorized by voters, the authority has suffered fits and starts as it begins to identify and study the paths where the trains will actually run.

Observers say the authority's somewhat flat-footed efforts in explaining how the system will work have allowed its critics and the "not-in-my-backyard" contingent to largely overshadow the community discussion to date.

Already, communities along certain proposed train routes – fearing their towns will be adversely affected – have complained that the authority often acts in an arrogant and commanding manner.

Residents in certain cities along the legs of the system are just now beginning to express their concerns. But those voices pale in comparison to the chorus of criticism coming from the San Francisco Peninsula area.

Jeffrey Barker, a CHSRA deputy director, acknowledged some of the recent communication difficulties.

"What this tells me is that we haven't done a good enough job in reaching out to them," Barker said. "It tells me we need to step up our efforts in terms of educating the public of what can and cannot be built."

Most importantly, Barker said, the system's environmental impact studies and reviews are still being conducted. Once those studies are completed, the best and most optimal solutions for the environment, the community and the rail system will be selected.

Yoriko Kishimoto, chair of the so-called Peninsula Cities Consortium, an organization representing the cities of Atherton, Belmont, Burlingame, Menlo Park, Palo Alto and Redwood City, said she agrees with Barker's self-assessment.

"Just because most of us supported Prop. 1A last year doesn't mean that we're willing to give away the store, and it doesn't mean that we will allow this project to diminish the quality of life in our cities," said Kishimoto, a member of the Palo Alto City Council and an announced candidate for the 21st Assembly District in 2010.

She added that some of the authority's board members have acted "arrogantly" in response to community criticisms.

The $9.9 billion bond sale Californians authorized when they approved the proposition last fall is designed to kick-start a massive public-private partnership to build the statewide rail system.

Laboring in relative anonymity since its creation in 1996, the CHSRA promises to eventually whisk travelers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in about 2.5 hours with a fare under $75.

While the sleek blue-and-yellow electric trains would travel at a modest 125 mph through the peninsula and other more congested areas, they are designed to travel as fast as 220 mph in straight, flat areas.

The main area of controversy has centered on the so-called "alignment" or paths the CHSRA system would take leaving its San Francisco terminus.

One route has the trains traversing eastward over the Altamont Pass to get to the Central Valley.

The other goes south down the peninsula and over the valley via the Pacheco Pass. The latter path was selected because it would cause the least amount of damage to the environment, federal railroad and environmental officials said.

But the selection of the peninsula-Pacheco Pass route immediately set off howls of protests by local residents and city officials in the consortium.

Fueling this were fears that some of the authority's planned elevated tracks along the Caltrain right of way would physically divide the communities.

The authority has also come under legal fire. One lawsuit by the cities Atherton and Menlo Park sought to overturn the selection of the peninsula-Pacheco Pass route. Another, filed by a Menlo Park man, seeks to block any construction until right-of-way issues with the Union Pacific Railroad on tracks south of San Jose are resolved.

The project's up- and downsides have also stimulated an unusual amount of resident interest, Kishimoto noted.

Forums, scoping sessions and workshops have repeatedly attracted standing-room-only crowds. One "teach-in" event held earlier this month drew more than 250 attendees, she said.

Kishimoto said she appreciated the authority's efforts to smooth local feathers by recently agreeing to adopt a so-called "Context Sensitive Solutions" approach to its planning efforts on the peninsula.

CSS is a well known design and decision-making technique sought by the consortium that forces all parties to carefully balance the need to efficiently and safely move – in this case – high speed trains with other issues such as quality of life, the environment and historic preservation.

Authority board member Quentin L. Kopp said he welcomes spirited civil public discussion of the CHSRA and its mission.

But Kopp, a former state lawmaker and retired Superior Court judge who has been largely credited with leading Prop. 1A's victory, says he has grown tired of some critics, who he believes will say and do anything to stop the ambitious transportation project.

Kopp pointed to the "myth" that peninsula cities will face nothing but "Berlin Wall"-like conditions when the CHSRA's tracks are finally installed.

"Sure, there will be some areas with vertical walls, but there will also be instances where we will depress roadways underneath the tracks. In other cases, we will need to build streets so that they span over our tracks. And yet in other places we will have to lift the tracks over streets," Kopp said. "The reality is that our public outreach and public education efforts are in my estimation about 10 months behind where they should be. We need to catch up and quickly."

One effort to help the CHSRA catch up on that front recently crashed and burned when authority board members killed the awarding of a $9 million public relations contract to a Sacramento-based firm.

Board members said they lacked sufficient information on the finalists, including a staff-recommended firm with close ties to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The board subsequently ordered its staff to start the contract process over from scratch – a decision that will delay the arrival of additional public affairs help to the authority by months.

This story was jointly published by The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009. You may also read it here.

Will Oakland City Council derail half-billion dollar Oakland Airport Connector project?

When the Bay Area Rapid Transit District's Oakland Airport Connector project was first conceived 20-plus years ago, the idea was to build a gleaming, elevated tramway that would whisk air travelers from BART's Coliseum Station to the Oakland Airport's main terminal in mere minutes.

No fuss, no muss – and the family car stays in the garage.

In 2000, when interest in the project began to pick up steam, the estimated $132 million price tag for the 3.2-mile people-mover didn't seem all that bad.

That was then.

Nine years later, critics of the OAC (Oakland Airport Connector) say what once was a modest proposal has morphed into a massive runaway train of a project that BART officials admit would cost the district an estimated half-billion dollars and maybe more.

Those critics, led in large part by an Oakland-based public transit advocacy organization called TransForm, say not only has the OAC's overall price rocketed out of control, but few if any of the original project benefits promised by BART remain in the current design specifications.

TransForm's John Knox White says, for instance, that the OAC was supposed to have a top speed of 45 mph. Now it's about 27 mph. He added that over the years, its projected ridership and job-creation numbers have steadily declined.

Knox White said that what was once a system designed to "seamlessly" whisk an air traveler from the Coliseum Station to the airport terminal lobby is now a micro transit system that would take passengers only as far as the western end of the airport's hourly and short-term parking lot.

BART passengers, he says, would have to carry bags downstairs and across a busy intersection to enter the airport terminal.

He notes that the OAC's fares, once quite reasonable at $4 for a round-trip ticket in 2000, would now cost passengers $12.

"BART's attitude is, 'This is the project. We're going to build it no matter what the cost. We are done talking about it,' " Knox White said during a recent interview.

Indeed, a clear majority of the transit district's nine board members recently named four sets of "prequalified" corporations or corporate partnerships to be invited to submit bids on the project. BART officials say they hope to name the winning bidder by the end of the year.

But even as the connector – which would run along an elevated gateway down busy Hegenberger Road – appears to be on the verge of getting a final green light, some dissatisfied members of the Oakland City Council say they hope to derail the project in favor of a much cheaper bus alternative that TransForm is promoting.

Nancy Nadel, chairwoman of the Oakland City Council's public works committee, said she and members of her committee believe the OAC must be stopped.

Council colleague Rebecca Kaplan agreed, calling the OAC one of the greatest boondoggles she's encountered.

"We have to convince them that this proposal is out of control and represents an extremely poor use of public funds. I believe they will bankrupt themselves if they proceed," Kaplan said.

Whether the city continues its participation in the OAC project may depend on what happens at a Sept. 15 meeting of the Oakland council's public works committee.

Kaplan said that, depending on what they hear, the committee may vote to recommend that the full council withdraw the city's support, reversing its initial endorsement of the project in 2001.

"(The council) endorsed the project when it was going to cost $132 million and when it had two stops planned. … Now we're looking at a project costing almost 10 times that amount and which has no intermediate stops," she said.

Both councilwomen say they prefer TransForm's alternative proposal, dubbed "RapidBART."

That proposal features a high-tech bus system that would run up and down Hegenberger in specially marked lanes with a series of prioritized green lights to avoid stops. TransForm officials estimate their proposal would cost the transit district between $45 million and $60 million.

BART spokesman Linton Johnson panned the TransForm alternative, adding that the majority of the district's board of directors, staff and many community leaders remain convinced that the money to be spent on the OAC would be viewed as a wise investment in the long term.

He called TransForm's bus proposal a warmed-over reiteration of the district's earlier analysis of the use of buses – an analysis that was ultimately rejected by the BART board in favor of the current OAC plan.

"I believe once the Oakland City Council sees the real numbers they will as well understand that TransForm's idea is a great deal of hype with very little substance," Johnson wrote.

Project proponents contend that the OAC people mover is the only reliable way to get riders from the Coliseum BART station to the airport in a timely and dependable manner.

They say even the most carefully computer-controlled bus system couldn't avoid delays on Hegenberger Road during heavy traffic periods and when accidents block the special bus lanes.

Connector project proponents also point out that while the district's existing "AirBART" express bus service is popular, riders at times have had to endure delays of up to 30 minutes or more due to traffic and have missed their flights as a result.

TransForm's Knox White counters that the transit district's board majority and staff have simply closed ranks around the troubled proposal and will do and say anything to make it as palatable to the public as is possible.

Knox White points to a series of BART e-mails obtained through the state Public Records Act (a set of which was independently obtained by The Bee).

In one May 8 e-mail, Tom Dunscombe, BART's Oakland Airport Connector project manager, expresses concerns about TransForm's request for the district to analyze its RapidBART bus counterproposal.

"Any information you can provide to put holes in this would be appreciated – we have some worried Board members and I need to easily discredit this (TransForm) 'paper,' " Dunscombe, who declined to return an e-mail seeking clarification, wrote to four outside project consultants. BART spokesman James Allison defended Dunscombe, but failed in a written response to explain the project manager's choice of words.

Dunscombe concludes the e-mail: "Any time you can give to this would be really helpful – another delay from the Board and we are practically dead."

This article jointly appeared in The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, Aug. 6, 2009. Read it here.

When the Big One hits and the bridges go down, who ya gonna call?

When he was running behind schedule back in the day, San Francisco Bay ferry boat Capt. Keith Stahnke used to unscrew the knobs from the tops of the throttle levers to squeeze a few more knots of speed from his engines.

Nowadays, he says, that trick wouldn't work aboard the bay's modern fleet of sleek, computer-controlled, twin-hulled catamaran vessels.

"In our newest vessels, the pilothouse looks more like an aircraft cockpit than anything else," said Stahnke. "It features joystick controls, digital gauges and readouts and has redundant fly-by-wire control technology."

A part of the Bay Area water transportation industry since 1979, Stahnke no longer commands ferry vessels: He helps manage an entire fleet of them.

He spends his days helping an obscure state-created, regional agency morph from what was purely a planning entity to a hands-on operator of vessels and a post-disaster emergency responder – one that could help San Francisco cope if a "big one" hits.

Stahnke is operations manager for the recently reconfigured San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority, or WETA .

In 2007, when the California Legislature voted to change the authority by adding an "E" (for emergency) to its name, life became very complicated for Stahnke and his colleagues at the tiny agency, which has its headquarters on Pier 9 off San Francisco's waterfront.

Their task was to form an agency that would be responsible for promoting alternative water-borne transportation and for providing the first steps toward recovery following a major earthquake or other disaster that leaves the area's network of bridges unusable.

But when you consider that an estimated 300,000 people use the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge each weekday, you quickly get an idea of how many could be left isolated if the massive span were to become impassable, as it did following 1989's Loma Prieta earthquake.

And while most laud the idea to modify the ferry system – now run by separate municipal operators – into an integrated post-disaster, stopgap transportation system, WETA officials quickly understood what a tall order they had been handed. Adding to that challenge was that the state provided no additional funding.

With only eight full-time employees and an annual operating budget of just $4.5 million, WETA Executive Director Nina Rannells said she and agency staff realized it would take time to develop a ferry fleet big enough to make a significant impact in the aftermath of a large-scale disaster.

"It is a little frustrating at times. We were given the charge of becoming an operator and an emergency responder, but we weren't given the money that you would think would come with those new responsibilities," Rannells said.

The agency first needed to detail exactly how it would make the transition. Soon after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 1093, WETA staffers began the arduous process of writing blueprints for the transition.

Out of that planning came a five-year financial road map that spells out the agency's short-term goals. By 2014, WETA leaders say, the agency should be moving as many as 500,000 more passengers a year (up from 1.2 million now) aboard an estimated 14 vessels. The fleet will be calling on at least two new multimillion-dollar terminal facilities to be built in South San Francisco's Oyster Point and in the Berkeley Marina within that five-year time period.

To pay for it all, Rannells said, the agency must depend on a patchwork of state and federal transportation grant funds, toll booth revenue, regional voter-approved transportation initiatives and other sources of money that can vacillate wildly as economic conditions and political winds change.

As is the case with many other transit systems, farebox revenue pays for well below 50 percent of the system's costs.

Among WETA's first moves was to begin the complicated process of acquiring the operations of the Vallejo Baylink and the Alameda-Oakland and Harbor Bay ferry systems.

Then it ordered four new ferry vessels. The first two, Gemini and Pisces, have been put into service. While not inexpensive – they cost about $16 million for the pair – the sleek, colorful, 118-foot-long vessels will help increase public awareness of WETA's new mission, agency officials say.

In both vessels, the captain is afforded a sweeping 360-degree view. The skipper sits in a custom-designed chair and has an array of closed-circuit cameras to assist with docking and undocking operations, and for security purposes.

Pisces and Gemini can accommodate as many as 149 passengers each in cabin seating areas that are both noise- and vibration-dampened and feature plush, wide seats.

The boats offer free Wi-Fi, 120-volt outlets to recharge laptops and carry-on storage space for 34 bicycles. Both can travel at a top speed of about 25 knots (approximately 29 mph) thanks to two 1,410-horsepower engines that run on biofuel and low-sulfur diesel fuel.

The new boats were also designed to be easy on the environment.

Authority spokeswoman Shirley Douglas said their "environment friendliness" starts with the way the two hulls are designed to slice through the water, creating a minimum amount of wake and wash in order to protect marine life. Their engines emit exhaust that is 85 percent cleaner than federal marine engine emissions standards and are 10 times cleaner than those of any other ferry boat operating on San Francisco Bay.

The other two vessels on order, with larger seating capacities, are expected to be delivered this fall.

"These new boats have been designed with the passenger experience in mind," Stahnke said. "Compared to some, it will be like going from coach to first class."

This report was also published in The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, Aug. 23. Read it here.

In low-key Alameda, a big fight brews over redevelopment of old Navy base

The first thought for many newcomers to Alameda is that they've somehow landed on the set of "The Andy Griffith Show."

But just below the surface of this tree-lined city with a small-town feel – a place famous for its strictly enforced 25 mph speed limit – lies a cauldron of politics, backbiting and shifting alliances.

In most cases, the clashes come when the town's old guard goes head to head with off-island newcomers accustomed to more plentiful shopping, services and entertainment opportunities.

These civic skirmishes have involved construction of a new main library, redevelopment of the city's largest shopping center and rehabilitation of the historic Alameda Theater. But they may ultimately be viewed as minor confrontations compared with the battle – no, the war – that some observers say is coming over the redevelopment of the 1,500- acre-plus former Alameda Naval Air Station.

At issue is whether a majority of the city's 42,233 registered voters will approve a ballot initiative to suspend a 1973 amendment to the city charter as it applies to the redevelopment of the former Navy base.

That amendment, Measure A, sharply limits housing density. It's been hailed as saving Alameda's famed "Iowa-by-the-sea" quality of life and its famed inventory of historic Victorian-era homes.

The measure was approved by island voters who wanted to stop increasing numbers of property owners who were tearing down their aging Victorians and replacing them with boxy apartment buildings.

Concerns about attacks on the charter amendment have grown over the years. Within the last few years, fearful advocates of the measure have even printed up red and white yard signs to urge their fellow Alamedans to keep the measure intact.

Despite the presence of the amendment – the so-called "third rail" of Alameda politics – Irvine-based SunCal has stepped up to take what will likely end up being a million-dollar-plus swing at redeveloping the blighted, toxics-laden base on the north end of the city. Built before World War II, the base was once home to some of the Navy's mightiest aircraft carriers and some of its most famed aviators. It was decommissioned in 1997.

SunCal is proposing to build 4,346 new, mixed-density housing units on the site as well as more than 3 million square feet of commercial and retail space. SunCal also intends to build a 600 boat-slip marina and a new ferry terminal, and has earmarked 145 acres for sports, recreation and park uses.

To do all that and make it profitable, SunCal Vice President Pat Keliher says, Alameda voters must first agree to modify Measure A as it pertains to the base.

"We have placed our cards on the table. In order for our company and our partners to realize the return on the investment we're proposing to make, Measure A has be to changed," Keliher said.

Knowing the island's passion for turning local politics into proverbial blood sport, SunCal has brought in high-profile support in its efforts to get Measure A modified.

In recent months, the company has brought in Tramutola LLC of Oakland and Sam Singer Associates of San Francisco to help it shape its electoral and public relations strategies for the project.

Tramutola is known as the go-to strategy shop for municipal-level elections all across California. Singer, a master practitioner of public relations, is probably best known for its work with the San Francisco Zoo in December 2007 after a tiger escaped its enclosure and killed a teenager and injured two others.

Campaign finance records for January through June show that SunCal has spent more than $536,000 on its Alameda Point Revitalization initiative – instantly making it, officials believe, the single most expensive ballot measure in the city's 93-year incorporated history. Keliher says the initiative will likely appear on the ballot either in March or June 2010.

To date, the only formal opposition to the SunCal initiative comes from a group called Protect Our Point, which records show raised just under $10,000 for the same January-June period, spending about half that so far.

A few local activists have also organized some minor street demonstrations and prepared a few anti-SunCal cable access TV commercials.

A group calling itself Save Our City Alameda is working to persuade signers of the company's petition to have their names removed in hopes of disqualifying the initiative.

Although opinions vary, many anti-SunCal activists believe that any modification of Measure A – which limits developers to building just one housing unit per every 2,000 square feet of land – will be the first step in Alameda's demise.

They also believe the project will bring so many newcomers that the island's roads will be gridlocked and choked with emissions from idling traffic. Some activists say they want the city to bargain instead with the Navy to turn the entire base into a public trust not unlike the Presidio in San Francisco.

SunCal's first move was to confront the issue head-on – but not in the way many local observers anticipated.

Not only will SunCal ask Alamedans to modify Measure A, they will also ask voters to bless or reject the entire deal with the city within the so-called Alameda Point Revitalization initiative, a document that is 283 pages long.

"That is very shrewd," said Corey Cook, an assistant professor of political science at the University of San Francisco. "They're banking on the fact that very few voters will actually have the time or take the time to read the entire initiative, let alone understand it completely. Redevelopment projects of this scope are terribly complicated."

Charles Heath, senior strategist at Tramutola, said he expects the real fight over the initiative will be fought in Alameda's neighborhoods and precincts – not in the corridors of City Hall where opinions have already been cemented.

"We plan to make this a neighborhood-based, house-to-house, person-to-person campaign," Heath said, adding that his firm commissioned a poll of Alamedans on the proposed initiative late last year and came away pleased with the results.

While Heath declined to share the poll's exact numbers, he said the telephone survey of 500 likely city voters showed a "strong majority" in support of the initiative.

Both Cook and UC Berkeley political science professor Karen Christensen agreed that the initiative campaign may become one of the most watched development struggles in California – especially given the "not-in-my-backyard" attitudes many voters display when it comes to urban infill development proposals.

"I suspect this project and the election will be heavily observed and studied," Christensen said. "Clearly, there's a lot on the line, not only for Alameda but the entire East Bay area as well."

This story was first published in The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, Aug. 16, 2009. View the article here.

Oakland theater owner leads parking rebellion

Allen Michaan is well known in the East Bay.

He's a longtime movie theater operator, entrepreneur, and antiques and fine art auctioneer. He is credited with restoring the city's Grand Lake Theatre to its original 1920s-era movie house glory.

Now you can add fiery street politician to that résumé.

To be sure, Michaan over the years has used his theater's giant marquee to trumpet his liberal political views. He's never been shy about talking politics with friends and complete strangers alike.

But in July – after the Oakland City Council voted to hike the cost of street parking, lengthen its enforcement hours and to start assertively dealing with parking scofflaws – Michaan found himself the leader of a growing city parking revolt.

Michaan insists that the new rates and enforcement practices are driving customers away and into neighboring cities like Berkeley, Alameda and Emeryville.

"I'm fighting for the survival of my business and for thousands of other Oakland businesses," Michaan said Thursday night before he conducted the second of two town hall meetings on the issue. "Since this program began, our business here at the Grand Lake is down at least 40 percent."

Prior to Thursday's meeting, Michaan and a handful of other Grand Avenue businesses shut down their operations in a symbolic protest against the new parking rates and practices.

Michaan dedicated a large of part of his theater's giant marquee to the issue:

"CLOSED TODAY TO PROTEST THE CITY COUNCIL's PARKING OUTRAGE," the red-lettered sign said.

Later, during the meeting that was attended by about 100 residents and local business owners, Michaan made it clear that the City Council, which is now in a summer legislative recess, needs to reconvene and roll back the parking changes, which officials say were designed to produce as much as $4 million in added revenue a year for the city.

"It's rescind or recall," Michaan said. "That's what this council is facing. It's their choice. These new parking regulations are killing us, and we're running out of time."

Should the City Council opt to leave the new parking rules in place, he said he would circulate petitions to have each of the eight council members removed from office.

During the at-times boisterous meeting, former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris recounted his own nightmare story about receiving, and appealing, a parking ticket in Oakland.

Harris, a former state assemblyman as well, praised the crowd for getting involved and speaking out against the parking changes.

But the one speaker that the crowd ultimately paid the most attention to – aside from Michaan – was Oakland City Councilwoman Patricia Kernighan. At first Kernighan was reluctant to leave her seat and speak, but Michaan insisted that the official who represents the city's downtown address the audience.

A contrite Kernighan agreed that she and her council colleagues may have gone too far with the new parking rules in their zeal to squeeze out more revenue for the deficit-plagued city of 420,000 residents.

Indeed, when the council approved the budget for the new fiscal, they cut about $90 million from the city's nearly $500 million spending plan.

Those cuts caused dozens of workers to be laid off and many more positions to be frozen.

"Clearly, this has hit a nerve (and) personally, I want to tell you that I get the message. I think we were doing too much too fast," Kernighan said of the council's efforts to increase revenues.

The councilwoman, who says she has received hundreds of angry e-mails on the issue, said she would at least seek to have parking enforcement hours rolled back to 6 p.m. from the current 8 p.m. Kernighan added that she is in the process of persuading her colleagues to call an emergency August council session to reconsider the parking changes. She didn't speculate when that session might be scheduled.

Michaan, however, wasn't having it.

"We won't wait until September because we can't," he said, adding that he is also planning to meet soon with legal counsel to consider the possibility of filing a class action lawsuit against the city.

Meanwhile, Oakland city officials last week – perhaps feeling the heat from the growing controversy – announced two measures to make parking in the city a little easier.

The first announcement came from Mayor Ron Dellums, who said that purchased street parking time is now "transferable" from one parking spot to another as long as time remains on the kiosk-issued dashboard receipt.

On the heels of the mayor's announcement, City Administrator Dan Lindheim said Thursday that the city, starting Monday, would extend to three hours the time that an individual can purchase from a kiosk after 5 p.m.

"Oakland's dining and nightlife scene is hot; we have dozens of new restaurants that have opened up, as well as movie theaters and shopping. We want people to be able to enjoy all that Oakland has to offer in the evening hours without running the risk of getting a parking ticket," Lindheim said in a statement.

This article also appeared in The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, Aug. 9. To view the story there, go here.