A's Stadium San Jose vs. Oakland update: SJ Council approves Gen Plan

ALERT! A's Stadium San Jose vs. Oakland update.

A quick follow-up on yesterday's post regarding opposition to the San Jose effort to build a stadium for the Oakland A's (Athletics): the San Jose City Council passed it's much discussed amendment to its General Plan.

What that means is more housing where industrial property is currently situated, and more urban costs and less tax increment revenue generation from a tax base that some San Joseans feel has already suffered a "death by a thousand cuts."

This decision is a major blow to the city's ability to afford a stadium for the Oakland A's. That is, of course, assuming San Jose withstands a court challenge from both the San Francisco Giants and The City of San Francisco, as well as The City of Oakland.

Stay tuned.

A's Stadium has opposition in San Jose: Better Sense San Jose

Over all of the talk about an Oakland A's baseball stadium in San Jose instead of Oakland, the San Jose Murky News failed to mention the organized opponents in the form of Better Sense San Jose.  

Better Sense San Jose describes itself as:

a community based all volunteer organization founded to promote open and transparent government, and sensible, prioritized spending in the City of San Jose.

It has a simple position on the Lew Wolff proposal, stating that San Jose can't afford it, and that it's a "poor economic deal" for the city and a lousy investment. Here are the reasons Better Sense San Jose gives:

- land purchases and infrastructure improvements for a stadium will cost San Jose an estimated $100M in present value initially, plus a loss of roughly $1M a year from foregone property taxes.
- the net ROI (Return on Investment) for San Jose is 2% or less, while the Redevelopment Agency bonds supplying the capital cost 5% or more per year. A bad deal.
- a stadium will create just 138 new, seasonal, mostly low wage jobs at stadium; with $100M in public costs for the stadium, the cost for the 138 new stadium jobs is almost $725,000 per job. That's a terrible value.
- a stadium will not by itself create new businesses, and will not increase property values (according to San Jose Neighborhood Economic Impacts of the Proposed San Jose Stadium.

While this blogger would quibble with the stadium jobs estimates, the point is, there's an organized opposition to it.  The website is just part of their efforts to kill the proposal, but some members claim the San Jose City Council is trying to ram it down the collective throats of the people of the city.

There's also opposition to the stadium from the perspective of those who say San Jose's redevelopment tax increment revenue production ability is being harmed by "tax base erosion," which is caused when industrial land uses are converted to residential uses.

In fact, there's a meeting tonight on that issue at 7:30 PM, according to San Jose District 6 Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio, who calls it Tax Base Erosion Night in his blog, San Jose Inside. The SJ 6 Council Dude says that San Jose's suffering a "death of a thousand cuts" with so many requests to change land use to fit residential plans.

That includes A's Owner / Manager Lew Wolff's proposal to convert industrial land to housing in the case of land owned by something called iStar Financial, a commercial mortgage Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) that's not doing well, with $3.5 billion in non-performing assets it reports.

Wolff tried, and failed, to get San Jose to pay him for a soccer stadium, but the City Council balked at the land use.  But from SJ 6 Council Dude Oliverio, it looks like the proposals coming back to them, but with a baseball stadium instead of soccer.

This is what Oliverio wrote:

iStar-

was proposed as a conversion from industrial to housing so as to give a higher land value and therefore money to the developer to pay for soccer stadium however that did not go forward since it is not really appropriate. However I would not be surprised if it resurfaced

This is why Oakland must makes sure it has all hands on deck, and that its baseball effort has a clear leader in the form of the Mayor of Oakland.   San Jose has three major problems in the pursuit of an A's stadium: the Major League Agreement being against them and for Oakland, the opposition, and the San Francisco Giants.

(Oh. If I see one more article in either the San Jose Murky or the San Francisco Chron that fails to mention the Giants fan base in San Jose, I'll scream.)

Got an issue?  Don't get stadium and baseball business dynamics?  Ask this blogger and play his game.

Oakland News Coalition Against the Gang Injunctions video interview

The interview with Maisha Quint of the East Side Arts Alliance and Michael Siegel of the Law Firm of Siegel and Yee (Where his father, Dan Siegel and Oakland Council President Jane Brunner are partners), was not conducted by this blogger, but by someone named Kali Akuno who has a series of videos he calls "The Black Agenda Morning Shot."

The videos, totaling about 19 minutes of run-time, were not brought to my attention by anyone; I found them on YouTube. I've never met Maisha, and Michael I met for the first time and just after interviewing now-Mayor-Elect Jean Quan at Siegel and Lee during The Oakland Mayor's Race.

While I'm personally opposed to the idea of a "black agenda" - because I think a separatist view doesn't help the cause for diversity, and because more often than not, it's not my agenda, and I just don't like being dictated to by the masses, regardless of color - their point of view on how the Oakland Gang Injunction contributes to the overall climate of law enforcement racial profiling is worth viewing.

In the video, Michael explains that if you have a certain color of shirt and happen to be next to someone profiled as a gang member, you could be placed into a database of gang members even though you've got nothing to do with the people you happened to be standing next to. Say, at a bus stop.

Siegel and Quint also charge that the Gang Injunction Program is a way for Oakland to get Federal dollars in a poor economy.  For every person identified in the program, the City of Oakland is compensated.  Quint charges that the program is a way for Oakland City Attorney John Russo and for Jerry Brown to advance their political careers.   (That's something I'll have to ask John about, as I don't think with him that's the case at all and for a list of complex reasons. )

But that aside, the video does raise a lot of questions about the Gang Injunction Program. My question is do we really need this sort of program, as opposed to neighborhood improvement programs the Obama Administration is touting. (More on that later.)

The video is in two video parts, below:



Part II:

Attacks on Oakland Councilmember Desley Brooks unwarranted

Councilmember Brooks

A couple of bloggers on Twitter cyber-approached me in an effort to start what, from a bird's eye view looks like a smear campaign against Oakland Councilmember Desley Brooks (District Six - Central East Oakland). Both point to a 2006 San Francisco Chronicle article on her by Phil Matier, and on how she allegedly gives City of Oakland money out to friends and allies.

My Twitter response was that it's not proper form to use a 2006 issue in 2010. Moreover, there are a lot of people among the masses who dislike people "just because." Yes, it may be sport, but it's not right.

Desley may, and at times does, have a prickly nature, but when it comes to the needs of her district, there are many who swear by her. That's why she won the November election.

If the attackers have something on Desley, which I doubt, they need to make sure it's current and very substantive, not old and unsubstantive.

Education and economic development in Oakland

This short blog started with a tweet this blogger ran across, and now I can't find because I don't follow the Twitterer who issued it on Twitter.

At any rate the message of the tweet was that an education scholar Richard Rothstein, who talked at the California School Boards Association on Friday in San Francisco, made a comment that education and training could not overcome bad economic background.

There was no link to the tweet issued communicating that idea, or words to that effect, and the tweet didn't come from Richard Rothstein. Moreover it was all but impossible to find a blog post or news account of what Mr. Rothstein actually said.

But it made me think of how economic development and education officials in Oakland don't talk to each other. At all. Yet, economic development planners are supposed to be trying to bring jobs to the same neighborhoods the education officials, and here I mean teachers, work in. Why not talk with them about what the needs of the people in the neighborhood really are?

The view that this disconnect exists has been with me for some time. It came to a personal "head" when I was in a meeting at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in 1999, and the conversation turned to the "jobs / housing balance." That's the idea that jobs should be where the people lived.

But the problem, as I pointed out in the meeting, was that the MTC was pushing for biotech jobs for cities like Oakland where the people didn't have the education for the positions. Everyone at the table looked at me like I was nuts, and I looked at them like they were crazy. Since my ego's much larger than that collective, I left the meeting feeling that I'd just talked to a group of out of touch public execs. I was pretty steamed.

The problem is that they never talked to the people in the parts of the 'hood where jobs are needed. Look. Oakland doesn't have a near 20 percent unemployment rate for nothing. Bring biotech jobs to Oakland, and jobs open up for people who don't live here, but would be forced to commute or relocate here. That's what's happened to a degree, with many biotech jobs in Emeryville and the South Bay.

Meanwhile the people who live in Oakland, raised their kids here, and use the Oakland school system, go wanting. And their kids suffer as do the teachers. They have it the worst. In East Oakland, a friend of mine commonly tells stories of being robbed, having to spend a lot of money for her materials, and other problems.

All of this should form the template for what economic development must do in Oakland. Developers and big projects are sexy, but more often than not, they don't really change things. Nothing helps a place like East Oakland or West Oakland like the modern, environmentally-friendly version of the good old-fashioned auto plant.

Yeah, someone will chime in with the usual arguments against that, and in doing so, keep the same culture that produces our problems alive for years to come.

Oakland News: Al Davis fires-up Raider Nation, Oakland A's Hearing a success

This Oakland news is from the sports World. A YouTuber that goes by gorilla142 (subscribe!) made the rare video of Oakland Raiders Manager of The General Partner Al Davis stopping to exhort The Raider Nation to fight for the Raiders before Sunday's game against the Miami Dolphins at the Oakland Coliseum.

 From what could be understood over the voice of the Coliseum public adress voice, from some speaker source nearby, Al Davis, walking with what appeared to be a mix of fans and plain-clothed bodyguards stopped, took measure of his audience, and said "You guys are great...You wear the Silver and Black...Let me tell ya this: we're going to play our ass off today...You gotta fight with us...Pride and Poise. Will to win. And just win, baby."

That sent the crowd into a frenzy.

Unfortunately for them and Davis, the Raiders got their clocks cleaned 33 to 17.

Still, it's nice to see Mr. Davis still has the fire in the belly to win. The Raiders are up against the San Diego Chargers in San Diego; a game NFL Network analysts gave the Raiders no chance of winning. Indeed, they were so against the Raiders, Oakland may as well not show up and just give the game to the Chargers.

Just win baby!

On the subject of showing up, an estimated 200 A's fans came to Oakland's City Hall's Oakland Planning Commission meeting on an EIR (Environmental Impact Report) for the (hopefully planned) New A's Stadium.  The meeting was, by the account of the great blog Oakland North, a success (I'm still in Atlanta as this is written.)   The crowd was a mix of what the blog Swingin A's called "supporters and non-supporters."  (That's Oakland.)

On the matter of the As', San Jose Mercury News Columnist Mark Purdy goes on a funny, whining rant about how San Jose has been waiting for the right to build a stadium, and a lot of garbage about San Jose's plans that can be dashed with these words: almost 50 percent of the San Francisco Giants fan base comes from San Jose.

Mark didn't mention that.

Man, on this, I love to fight.  I just do.

Dr. Dean Edell out at KGO Radio

According to Blogger Richard Liberman, Dr. Dean Edell, the popular, long time host of The Dean Edell Show on KGO Radio 810 in the San Francisco Bay Area, has retired as a reaction to learning that his long-running show was going to be relegated to weekend, re-run status.

Richard blogs:

I'm pretty sure Dean Edell would have preferred a more amiable departure from the KGO microphone after over 30 years at 900 Front, but when his nationally-syndicated show was essentially shut down and thrown to the weekend re-run pasture, Edell announced his retirement.


More to the point, Dr. Edell felt humiliated and flustered and told Citadel and new KGO GM, Deidre Lieberman, (no relation,) to stuff it. His last show on KGO is Dec. 10.

Liberman also reports that Don Imus may be on KGO in the near future.

Personally, I hope not.

Stay tuned.