If you read Mayor Santos’ message below, he is basically stating that the public is not smart enough to understand the “complexity” of city redevelopment funds; so how they’re determined, spent and who they’re given to, should be controlled by the city council and city attorney–behind closed doors.  Additionally, he acknowledges there’s a “tremendous expense” of just setting up the agreements, but “it’s unavoidable.”

Tony:
“Bottom line is I cannot get the public to understand uses of RDA funds because of its complexity. In fact, this is reason we need Counsel to tell us how to use the funds and allow the Attorney to put together all agreements ;this is a tremendous expense, but unavoidable.”

Additionally, Mayor Santos states that funds “aren’t given away to developers,” just after he has stated the city HAS ALREADY BUDGETED THE $9.3 MILLION for BRIDGE housing for the San Leandro Crossings project. Just who does he think BRIDGE housing and Westlake are? They are certainly not entities of city government, they are private organizations who are developing the San Leandro Crossings project–although with their power and influence over the city council, they tend to act like they’re an official part of San Leandro city government. Please also note that the Mayor avoids my direct request for information on how city redevelopment funds have been spent to date.

My apologies for the rough formatting of this post as it is unedited email correspondence.

By the way, here’s a really good white paper with the truth about city development funds and how they negatively impact a town:
http://www.missionviejoca.org/pdfs/rug_2004.pdf

This project sucks at the government teat already – as it is slated to get $24 million in Prop 1C funds; most of which goes towards the capex costs necessitated by the project. And while Prop 1C funds sound like magical pool of free money; city redevelopment funds are most certainly not. The $9.3 million BRIDGE has requested would require the city to take out a $9.3 million bond against future property taxes – taking these future property taxes out of circulation for police, fire protection and libraries.

To me, it’s always bad idea to give public property tax money private developers. But now that San Leandro’s budget is $11 million in the red, and we’re facing cuts in police, library closings, and the elimination of school crossing guards, it’s absolutely unconscionable that our city council would even consider it.

The city council doesn’t want the public to know that $9.3 million city redevelopment funds required by this project. This factoid has been strangely absent from BRIDGE’s PowerPoint presentations about the project; and the amount is never mentioned by BRIDGE, developers nor council.

While there has been a small, vocal group of supporters/beneficiaries for this project; I’ve presented the council a petition with 350 signatures against it, and the Estudillo Homeowners Association, which represents 1,200 homeowners in San Leandro, has also officially come out against it. I can only hope city officials come to their senses.

Council member Joyce Starosciak personally wants to hold Kaiser up because she doesn’t think there should be apartments on this site as the developer has proposed, but would rather have a luxury hotel. 

Apartments on this site would make total sense – the developer envisons a self-sustainable village with retail, grocery and healthcare.  For young professionals, and especially those working at Kaiser, this would be an ideal place to live.  Not many people are in the market for a luxury hotel when visiting a sick relative in the hospital, and there are already many hotels within a few miles of this site.

Approximately 1/3 of San Leandreans are Kaiser members – this project would be such a boon to San Leandro’s citizens and our local economy, yet Ms. Starosciak and other city officials are willing to hold it up or jeapordize it completely for personal petty whims.  Yet these same officials are apt to support the Crossings project no matter the cost. 

It makes one wonder, are our city officials just plain stupid, or was there a payoff?  I’m beginning to think realtors in nearby cities are in collusion with San Leandro City council to intentionally drive this town into the ground; and unfortunately, it seems to be working…

Additionally, BRIDGE has asked for $9.3 million in city redevelopment funds to subsidize 23% of the $41 million building costs for the affordable housing building. In theory redevelopment funds are to improve “blighted or unimproved” areas. How can there be blight or lack of improvement in an area where there never was anything to begin with? Also, city officials have made the argument for the economic viability of the Crossings’ market-rate rental housing by pointing out how much the newly constructed condos on Hayes street have sold for. Doesn’t that directly contradict the argument that this is a “blighted” area?

Last year, the city of Oakland came up with a proposal to use their city redevelopment funds to hire more police officers for blighted (e.g., high crime) areas. And given San Leandro’s budget shortfall and the prospect of police personnel cuts, this is exactly what we should be doing if we have $9 million in redevelopment funds lying around. 

I just can’t fathom how our city officials don’t want to use redevelopment funds for more cops; yet they want to go ahead with the ill-conceived San Leandro Crossings project at any cost.

Unlike the San Leandro Crossings meetings hosted by developers; this two hour meeting was entirely a question and answer session, and testimonials for against the Crossings were strongly discouraged – however a couple of proponents of the project stated that they were for it.

When asked about the Crossing’s impact to already overcrowded public schools, and specifically Wilson and McKinley; Mayor Santos and Bill Stephens felt it was negligible as the developer on projected a total of 80 kids total for the 300 proposed units. Santos argued that this was in line with the natural population growth of the town. Additionally, Stephens stated that developer fees were $2.97 per square foot (approximately $900,000 for the entire project); but that “Level 2” funds could be mandated by the city had the school board performed a study – and apparently the school board had been remiss in doing this study. Mayor Tony Santos stated that the city council “had not heard anything from the school board regarding the impact of San Leandro Crossings on schools” as well.

Since the Crossings Project had been created as part of the city’s Transit Oriented Development (TOD); I asked if the TOD specifically outlined future school sites, or if it mandated how new schools would be built. The answer was no. Additionally, Mayor Santos stated that in the past, future school sites had been proposed, but that none of them had been approved by the school board. Later, Santos admitted that the locations hadn’t been approved for good reason – they were either dangerously close to freeways or by heavy industry and would be unsafe and or detrimental to the health and well-being of school children. Burrell Field was mentioned as a possible school site; but city officials admitted that building new buildings on current school sites would most likely be the only option.

City officials were asked why so much of the affordable housing component of the TOD strategy was “front-loaded” at the beginning of the project, as 33% of the proposed units were slated to be affordable housing managed by the nonprofit, BRIDGE. We were basically told that this was the only pragmatic thing to do in light of the burst “housing bubble,” and that this project would allow the city of San Leandro to utilize the $24.7 million in Proposition 1C monies for infrastructure improvements. Additionally, council member Bill Stephens admitted he thought that the rental apartment units being proposed for this project were going to be for-sale units. Many audience members chimed in that’s what they had thought as well. A few audience members were worried that San Leandro’s entire TOD depended on subsidized projects and not private sector investment, and the city council didn’t seem to disagree with this. One audience member asked why San Leandro didn’t try to encourage private sector office-park investment around transit, and was not given a direct response.

At the end of the evening audience members asked about the preservation of open space, to which city officials made a vague reference to “community gardens” – new open space project off of Hayes Street, but unfortunately, they didn’t provide much detail. Additionally, audience members asked about public safety in light of reduced policing budgets, and were not given a direct answer either.

At the end of the meeting, members of “Save San Leandro!” presented city officials with a petition against the Crossings that contained about 350 signatures. All in all, the meeting seemed to be a good forum for discussing issues on everyone’s mind; however council members avoided directly answering tough questions, and didn’t seem to make a convincing argument that the San Leandro Crossings project would be beneficial to the town.

Almonte was the only candidate in this election to vocally oppose the San Leandro Crossings Project due to its impact on San Leandro schools.  As someone who works in affordable housing, Almonte has proven that you can be an affordable housing advocate even if you are against the San Leandro Crossings project.  In a recent San Leandro Times editorial, I stated that I would support the Crossings project if it only entailed building 100 units of affordable housing on the vacant lot adjacent to BART.

San Leandro City Council Members Michael Gregory and Bill Stephens have agreed to attend the November 18th Estudillo Estates Homeowner Meeting to defend their position supporting the San Leandro Crossings Development.  The general public is welcome to attend, especially those who live in District 1 and 5.

While previous SL Crossings meetings involved droning 1-hr presentations by the developers who dismissed community concerns, this meeting will be an opportunity to let our city representatives know how we feel about this project and how we want them to vote on it.  Additionally, members of Save San Leandro! will present our petitions against this project to Gregory and Stephens.

In this year’s school board election, a vote for Hermy Almonte is not only a vote for students, teachers, and for our community; but it is also a vote against corruption.

Hermy’s opponent Rick Richards likes to point out that he’s raised $60K for San Leandro Schools with his “Keep Music Rockin” program. And it is a great program, and does a great service to our schools. 

However, as finance chair overseeing the district’s budget, it is Richard’s job to approve large contracts with the district’s vendors.  Many of the vendors who have contracts in place with the district donate to Richard’s foundation.  In fact, if you go to the web site of his foundation http://www.keepmusicrockin.org, you’ll notice, that Ruiz & Sperow, the law firm that’s billed $500K of the district’s $880K legal fees this year, is listed.  It’s amazing that Richards hasn’t been held accountable for his obvious conflict of interest that has resulted in hundreds of thousands being wasted on money that doesn’t go to educate San Leandro’s kids.  From a cost/benefit perspective, I’d rather have a competent school board member who spends his time cutting waste to free up $800K for all school programs, instead of raising $60K for a music program that he founded.

San Leandro schools need leaders who are motivated to better our schools for the sake of their children, and all children in our community.  We don’t need people driven by ego, self-aggrandizement, future political aspirations, or obvious conflicts of interests. 

I urge you to vote for Hermy Almonte for positive change for school board.

From now until November 4 (election day), Save San Leandro! will be gathering signatures against the San Leandro Crossings Project as it’s currently proposed.  Our goal is to gather 1,000 signatures. 

After the November election, we plan to present the results of this petition to the San Leandro City Council and the San Leandro School Board; as both entities will have new members.  We also plan to present this to our state representatives, Senator Ellen Corbett, and Assembly Member Mary Hayashi – and to basically ask them to rescind the Prop 1C monies that San Leandro is slated to receive; as under the San Leandro Crossings proposal, the money is going to do the town more harm than good.

The San Leandro City Council does not truly understand the will of the community in regards to the San Leandro Crossings development and the Transit Oriented Development strategy.  While the city touts that the formation of the TOD was part of an open and public process, the advisory committee for the TOD consisted of less than 30 hand-picked city sycophants who got their post on the advisory committee via an application process.  The committee is weighted with low-income housing advocates, and *not* realtors and local business owners.  And while Congregations Organizing for Renewal’s core 20 members have been dilligent in attending every public meeting put on about the Crossings Projects and voicing their support, they are only part of one small affordable housing advocacy group; while homeowner associations reprenting taxpaying homeowners in San Leandro are starting to come out against this project in full force.  For instance, Estudillo Estates Homeowner Association represents 1,200 homes in San Leandro, and has publicly come out against this project.