Town Square Discussion at MAC Meeting Raises More Questions

Governance
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“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” – Thomas Pynchon

Tuesday night’s Castro Valley MAC Meeting left us with more questions than answers. I will try to list many of these questions here, going from more general questions on governance to specific questions on the proposed plans. We will be following this up with more detailed posts as we move forward on developing plans for a town square in Castro Valley.

Governance and TransparencyCastro Valley MAC Meeting raises more questions

  • As much as we appreciate meeting the developer David Greensfelder of Greensfelder Commercial Real Estate, why wasn’t he listed as one of the speakers under item III. on the agenda? This only listed Eileen Dalton and Peter Rosen as speakers.
  • Why was David Greensfelder allowed to engage in Q&A with the community, but Peter Rosen was not?
  • Had any of the MAC members met Greensfelder before Tuesday’s meeting?
  • What details of the proposed development were new to the MAC members at the meeting?
  • One MAC member implied that we would have known what was going on if we had been at previous MAC meetings. I have tried to verify this.  Unfortunately, there are no minutes available of previous General Purpose MAC meetings. According to the agendas, the Daughtrey’s building and/or redevelopment was discussed on these dates:
    • March 18, 2013: “Discussion of Mural on the Daughtrey’s Building”
    • February 5, 2013: “Redevelopment Projects Report”
    • October 15, 2012: “Daughtrey’s Building Update”
    • September 17, 2012: “Update on the Dissolution of the Redevelopment Agency”
    • July 16, 2012: “Update on the Dissolution of the Redevelopment Agency”

    It has been, at a minimum, 11 months since any mention of the Daughtrey’s Building on the MAC agenda, and a full year since any mention of redevelopment. And Mike has already covered the handling of the Daughtrey’s building by the Oversight Board.

Finances

  • MAC Chairman Marc Crawford threw around a $4 million figure at the meeting. Where does that number come from?
  • Is the County really about to take a loss of nearly $2 million on the sale of the building?
  • Even if the $4 million figure is accurate, shouldn’t it be compared to the $2 million loss on the sale of the building?
  • What is the estimated sales tax revenue from development of the building, assuming an occupancy rate comparable to other sites along Castro Valley Blvd, and how does it compare to the increase in sales tax revenue of businesses downtown once a town square is built?  (Okay, this is not merely an existential question, but one that we can tackle as a team!)

Details on the Daughtrey’s Building Proposed Development

  • The developer and the MAC members indicated their interest in a restaurant in that space, but they also acknowledged the space is too big for a restaurant. What would be the cost of renovating that building to become a mixed-use building, including restaurant space?
  • Given that BevMo is now located in Oakland, San Leandro, Fremont, Dublin, and San Ramon, are they really still interested in Castro Valley?
  • What sort of say will the residents of Castro Valley have in the development of the building going forward?

Did you also walk away from the MAC meeting with more questions than answers? Leave a comment here, or give us a holler on Twitter or Facebook!

Actually Rebecca, it is really easy to contact the MAC. They are people in our community who you can just call or email to set up meetings to discuss things 1:1. Why not actually ask those questions and post the answers? If you if you aren’t satisfied with the answers, keep asking questions. The MAC is not some secret group scheming to keep facts from the public. In fact, the MAC is held to the Brown Act:
http://ag.ca.gov/publications/2003_Intro_BrownAct.pdf

It is the opinion of Alameda County Council that posting on any social media or public website on any topic that may or will come before the MAC in the future would be a violation of the Brown Act.
Asking questions of or positing theories about the actions of the MAC without simply asking is lazy.

Nina, I thought that the whole purpose of the MAC meetings was to address these issues in front of the community. I know that there are conversations happening behind the scenes, but I think it’s more transparent and useful to have these conversations at the meetings, rather than with individual members one-on-one.

I am not accusing the MAC of any grand conspiracies; I am just pointing out my dissatisfaction with Tuesday’s meeting.

I admit I do not see how the Brown Act is relevant here. I am not asking the MAC members to talk about the Daughtrey Building on twitter; I am simply pointing out that the issues surrounding the Daughtrey Building and redevelopment have been under the radar.

YEAH! I’ve got more questions.

1. Why is a group of all volunteer members of the community being asked to present to the MAC “to define what the community would like to see happen in the space; assess that list and determine what is feasible given the size and location; determine what it would take to accomplish that, including projected costs for development, razing the building, buying the parcel back , landscaping, lighting, amenities, on-going maintenance costs and funding mechanisms”?

2. Was this same requirement made of developer David Greensfelder? If not, why not? If so, where’s the report?

3. The development deal between developer David Greensfelder & the county was quoted as being 92% done. If that’s the case, why has the developer only now come before the MAC? What does “92% done” mean, anyway?

4. Developer David Greensfelder does not live in Castro Valley. Why are the citizen activist of Castro Valley, who must live with the future of that building, seemingly being held to a different burden of proof for the town square idea than the developer who was allowed to get all the way to 92%?

Steve, I think question number 2 could be answered with a California Public Records Act request!

So, this type of post is enormously frustrating for me. I am legally bound by the Brown Act to not comment on anything that might ever come before us. The legal rational being that any public outlet for comment can be an avenue of communicating predisposition on a vote.
We can and do answer these kinds of questions, but cannot do so here.
Imagine the tables turned and somone were to publicly write a piece about the job you are doing with questions posed that you are legally forbidden to respond to. I think you’d be pretty aggravated.
Please ask these questions to us directly. I have nothing to hide and detest opacity in the public process as much as anyone.

Matt, the intention of this post was to kick-start discussion and brainstorming by the Castro Valley community, so that we can refine our thoughts and plans moving forward. It was not the intent of this post to demand immediate answers, here and now, by MAC members. I apologize if it came across like that, and I will be more careful in my wording in the future.

In the short term, I realize that you may see inaccuracies on our blog, or questions that may have obvious answers to you (and that yet you cannot respond to directly). However, I will bet that I am not the only person who walked out of Tuesday’s meeting with these questions. This post is a chance for Castro Valley citizens to find each other and figure it all out.

Long-term, I think it is to the benefit of everyone for everyday citizens to have these sorts of discussions publicly. Heck, the #oakmtg people (a loosely-organized group of people who attend Oakland City Council meetings and live-tweet and discuss them) are hosting a mayoral debate in 2014.

I’m glad some of the folks from the MAC fell like they have something to respond to. We are all held accountable to do a good job at work, your position includes having to answer to the public. The questions posed here illustrate the severe disconnect between the community and the county departments who manage CV. No one is saying you have done your job poorly. We are saying that we have questions as stakeholders and we are taking advantage of technology to increase public engagement- something we also wish local govt would do

Thanks, Woody! I think it often feels like citizens and politicians are talking past each other — and that situation is certainly not limited to politics! Going forward, I think one of our hopes with this blog is that we can improve the lines of communication in both directions.

Ok – how about a you tube video chat thingie (yes / thingie)? Members can only discuss this stuff at an official meeting? Hard to believe – this isn’t jury duty nor secrets. Let’s get responses now!

My email inbox is still empty. My phone isn’t ringing. Nate’s community liaison hasn’t heard a peep. If you want answers to these questions, ask and then fill in the blanks here. These are fair questions, but the longer the article sits, the more it looks like yellow journalism rather than an actual inquiry.
It is just silly that people are talking about making freedom of information requests on these things. It’s like making a freedom of information request to get your zip code when you could just ask the post office. Almost all of these are easily answered questions. A few phone calls or emails and you’d have your answers and could post a very informative article.
Call, email, corner me at the farmer’s market today (looks like the rain is letting up). If you don’t know who to call or ask, I can help.
The point of print journalism is to truthfully inform the public. The end goal isn’t asking questions. That is just part part A. You’ve got a good start, but you’re only half way there. Keep going! The public deserves it.

Matt, I didn’t realize we had a ticking clock in the background. The mission of this blog is advocacy and engagement, not journalism. Not that we won’t strive for accuracy, but we are trying to be open with the broader Castro Valley community in forming our questions and solutions.

I am sure that phone calls and emails to MAC members and county staff are forthcoming. Once we hone down exactly what we are looking for, that is.

Hi Rebecca,
I’m Bob Swanson I have lived in the unincorporated area since 1965 and in CV since 1973. I have a wonderful job right here in CV working for Supervisor Nate Miley. One of the things that I do is find out answers to questions that our constituents want answers too. But beware sometimes folks don’t like the answers and most times they do.

Give me a call 670-5718. I will arrange a meeting so you can interview the individuals who are the most likely to know the answers to your questions or can find out. That way as suggested above, you can then print the answers and help us get information out to the public.

More broadly, Supervisors Miley and Chan have recently finished a series of meetings through the “Eden Area Livability Initiative” (EALI) process. Hundreds of people attended, asked a plethora of questions and received answers. We have videoed the Final meeting called a Charrette. Here is a link:

I will be happy to work with you. Please give me a call.
Bob Swanson

Bob, thank you for commenting! Please think of these questions here as a rough draft — we are hashing out our thoughts out loud, and getting input from the broader community, before going back to the MAC and the county.

As for the EALI, myself and many of the people affiliated with this blog attended the Charrette in November and the Blue Ribbon Steering Committee meeting in January. I think you’ll find that many of the Castro Valley residents who attended the Charrette in November heard about it from one of us. Going forward, I have personally signed up for the Economic Development working group, and others among us are in the Agriculture and Environment, Governance, Public Safety, and Education working groups (and were in them over the previous year, as well). I suspect that once each working group has had its first meeting, we will have more questions — or maybe fewer ones! Or maybe different ones! It’s all an evolving process.

One of the reasons we started this blog is to help make local politics less confusing and intimidating to the average citizen. I am very glad that you reached out to us here, and I am sure we will be following up with you in the near future.

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