On Thursday, June 26, the members of the EALI Governance Working Group met to discuss the proposed scenarios and have a straw poll to select scenarios to move forward. Staff from Alameda County and Supervisor Miley’s office had evaluated the legal, political, and economic feasibility of each scenario, as well as produced a set of flowcharts which clarified which EALI governance scenarios could co-exist.

A tenth scenario was proposed: creating a Planning Commission for the Eden Area (Ashland, Castro Valley, Cherryland, Fairview, and San Lorenzo). Its feasibility was evaluated on the fly and it was added to the list of scenarios.

Meeting participants each had up to 60 seconds to advocate for or against a scenario, and then the straw poll was conducted. Each attendee had one vote, and about 26 individuals voted.

The desire of citizens for more local control and a stronger voice in local governance was clear in the voting. The two top vote-getters were Scenario 5: One MAC for the Eden Area, with ten votes, and Scenario 3: an elected Castro Valley MAC, with nine votes.

Other options that received votes included:

• One community manager for the Eden Area (an argument made in favor of this is that it could act like a city manager of a city).
• Give Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA) powers to the Castro Valley MAC (this was the option selected by the three members of the Castro Valley MAC in attendance; the West County Board of Zoning Adjustments website may be a useful reference if you’ve never encountered a BZA)
• Have a Planning Commission for the Eden Area (this was the late addition)

There was some contentious discussion as to whether the top two options were compatible with each other. There was also some discussion of how an elected MAC would be implemented. Although it is possible for the Board of Supervisors to implement it via resolution (as per California Government Code 31010), Supervisor Miley may want to bring it to the voters, attached to a parcel tax necessary to pay for future elections for MAC members. (According to this attachment from the County, an election covering Castro Valley that is part of a state election costs between $130,000 and $200,000, while a special election costs between $400,000 and $500,000.) If a parcel tax is used to fund the elections for MAC members, this implementation would need a 2/3 vote to pass. For reference, the incorporation ballot measure from 2002 only needed a simple majority to pass.

There was also a suggestion of a structure that would merge the top two vote-getters: a MAC for each Eden Area community (or perhaps one for Castro Valley and one for the others), with one representative from each MAC serving on an Eden-wide council dealing with issues affecting the entire Eden Area.

The progress of the EALI Governance Working Group will be shared at the July EALI Joint Leadership Committee Meeting when all working groups share updates on their progress. A subset of the working group will meet with Miley’s staff between now and September to hash out the agenda of the next working group meeting.