So what is CEQA, anyway?

So I was on vacay last week when the Oak to Ninth CEQA lawsuit ruling was in the news, so I didn’t really have a chance to talk about it here. Sadly, looking around, it seems that there still hasn’t really been any clear or informative coverage of what actually happened. Over the next week, I hope to post some blogs about the decision and related issues.

I think that to have a clear picture of what is going on here, one really needs to have a good understanding of what CEQA is. Of course, some of my readers I’m sure know way more about CEQA than they’d probably like to, but for most people, I think that CEQA and EIR are terms that just get thrown around a lot. It can be confusing. So I’m going to start out today with a some background. Read more

More on the Oak to Ninth Referendum

So JDAT has his own take on the Oak to Ninth Referendum committee’s decision drop their suit. Unsurprisingly, he’s much more sympathetic to their whining than I am: Read more

League of Women Voters believes they have a constitutionally protected right to lie

The Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee officially withdraws their lawsuit against the City today. Throughout the process, the Referendum Committee has tried to cloud the issue, ignoring accusations that they failed to comply with the laws governing referendums (by hiring out of town signature gatherers, by failing to provide a complete or accurate version of the ordinance they were referending, and by lying to residents in order to obtain signatures), and claiming instead that the City is simply afraid of the project coming to a public vote. Read more

Oak to Ninth lawsuit dropped!

The Oakland City Council approved the 3100 unit Oak to Ninth development in July of last year. A month later, a coalition made up of the Oakland Heritage Alliance, the League of Women Voters, the Sierra Club, and several other groups submitted 25,000 signatures to bring the project to a vote before the entire city. On September 7th, 2006, Oakland City Attorney John Russo directed the City Clerk to invalidate their petition because the group had failed to comply with state laws governing referendums. The future of referendum has been tied up in court for the last year. Russo announced today that the referendum committee has agreed to drop their suit over his decision to invalidate the petition. Read more

Oak to Ninth: Read all about it

I wrote a story about the Oak to Ninth project for Novometro this week. The history of the project is long, although fairly straightforward once you lay it all out, certainly much more so than opponents would have you believe. While researching the story, I spent an inhuman amount of time pouring over the Oak to Ninth referendum committee’s complaints, most of which completely misrepresent the project and paint an alternate-reality picture of the planning process it went through.

And the whole time I was doing it, I just couldn’t stop thinking about Mark Trail. I like Mark Trail, partly because I enjoy nature, but mostly because I think Mark’s job as a writer who gets to beat people up a lot sounds kind of fun. For the most part, the fact that the plotlines are often outlandish and nonsensical doesn’t bother me. (Example: the current storyline. I really just don’t understand why they can’t just move the damn duck and her nest to somewhere else that isn’t scheduled to be turned into a shopping mall.)

But occasionally Jack Elrod’s storylines cross the line into such absurdism that I couldn’t possibly hope to suspend my disbelief. Such was the case with one recent saga involving a pair of corrupt county commissioners and their elaborate scheme to deceive their constituents into voting for a new airport on property they own by hiring their hunting guide to release birds around the existing airport. Seriously. Look: Read more

Notes from the initial Emerald Views public meeting

I don’t really watch TV, I so can’t say for sure, but I imagine that there are very few shows currently airing that provide better entertainment than a public meeting. Whether it’s a City Council hearing or a the first chance to address the developer of a controversial condo project, public comment periods are certain to generate far more laughs than Everybody Loves Raymond, or whatever it is the kids are watching these days.

Neither Pat Kernighan nor Nancy Nadel was present on Tuesday night, which was somewhat surprising considering that the tower is highly relevant to their Lake Merritt Zoning Study. A cynical person might even see the “study” as a thinly veiled attempt to thwart the project. Read more

Please, people! Learn to use language properly. Otherwise, you’re just lying.

The Grand Lake Guardian is back after what seems like a several month hiatus (and to think I felt bad about neglecting my little blog for 3 weeks!). One of their three new posts is a lengthy rehashing of the endless half-truths and distortions of the Oak to 9th Referendum Committee.

I’m pretty busy at the moment, but I’m hoping that later in the week I’ll be able to find time to address the myriad innaccuracies in Ms. Drake’s story. For now, I just want to point out one thing that drives me absolutely insane. From the GLG: Read more