I broke this in April '19 before PEC investigated. Per PEC, Haydel "self-reported" violation after a news story revealed it. I'm the originator of either story, revelation or both. But what this doesn't say is Haydel's lawyer Wasserman was McElhaney's Defense Fund manager
After reviewing the facts, PEC actually voted to more than double the fine. Unclear if its because Haydel's lawyer was also McE's legal defense fund mgr. McElhaney voted yes to sell City's land to Lane to build Kaiser's new HQ [the deal later collapsed due to Covid].
I did the only reporting on this. For more than a year, I was the only reporter dedicated to covering City Hall, and this is the evidence of that. hyphenatedrepublic.com/2019/07/10/oak…
What's remarkable is how Wasserman continues not only to violate OCRA himself, but also sherpa developers thru the pitfalls of violating it w/out any sanction or even mention. The suit doesn't mention Wasserman's dual roles, which is a recurring theme with him and in plain sight.
I was actually at every City meeting on the Lane Partners deal, pleading as a resident for the City to follow OCRA and pause voting on this deal because of the violation. I was roundly ignored and even scoffed at.
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At Finance now, Director Erin Roseman: "reduced revenues and overspending in police department..."
City's revenues are trending downward from last year, the most significant being Real Estate Transfer, then Business License Tax...some are trending upward, but not enough to counteract the declines"
Current decline in RTTF is akin to what happened in great recession...after 2006 going to 2008, revenues from RTTF declined, same pattern is visible if you look at chart in 2021...steep decline in 2022 and 2023...large part of this is due to things beyond city's control.
Despite never numbering more than twenty people on the ground, the finance/real estate backed Price Recall rallies always attract a large share of media, often more than 50K protesters taking over a freeway. Ask why, and you have the answer to many of Oakland's problems.
These rallies are the only ones where I'm ever actually over on my head count. It's not even twenty, and I said two dozen earlier as a mocking joke, but they were just above one dozen.
Another w/no details about changes. It's ironic that the accusation from the recall backers is that BOS is trying to "confuse" voters, when its Velena's vacuous reporting doing that. She doesn't even get what's at issue right. nbcbayarea.com/news/local/eas…
There definitely is this weird cottage industry in sports where fans love to follow pundits that get everything wrong time n again, with Howard Terminal as the clearest example of that. None of these doofs ever knew what they were talking about, they still obviously don't.
Case in point, I believe these grant numbers are inflated & City never provided an in-print total, Regardless, they reveal dishonesty of pundits & even Thao, who claimed Oakland is "88 MM" or "100 MM" away. Assuming these numbers aren't also invented--a big if--it's nearly 200 MM
What I find interesting in all this is once the deal became impossible, Thao collaborated with local sports reporters to start throwing out numbers that can't be verified; there's no City report on any of this. They are wildly inventing it all with clear goal of conning fans
The special meeting to introduce Council President Bas' amendments for the budget has begun. That's the first item. Not likely there'd be a vote today at all on the whole budget
Bas is introducing the amendments, she says there've already been hard decisions made. Going through the list, I've already covered this in threads. Reversing the OFD brownouts, adding 2 MM in DVP; ambassadors for biz corridors; traffic safety 1 MM; 2 civ police investigators
Adding a dedicated MACRO team for Oakland libraries, a new fund to create rapid housing for homeless
Just after beginning serious negotiations, Kaval/Fisher broke them off to instead launch a pressure campaign with sports/mainstream media more than willing to help
The pressure campaign's narrative was that the A's had offered a generous package to the City on HT, but that evil Council members were blocking it. The truth was that Fisher ordered our City to pay what could be a billion dollars in offsite infrastructure.
At Public Safety, OPD recounting new IAD policy practices as a result of the Armstrong issues:
It's an absolute fact that thanks to dumbing down by corporate media for decades, no one actually understands how police are made, how an academy is created and the actual fact that the number of people who want to be police AND CAN is extremely finite.
The Oaklandside story on payments for witnesses came up during Public Safety. Not surprisingly, OPD didn't budge on it oaklandside.org/2023/06/13/oak…