At the beginning of this debacle, a majority of our City Council members were clearly in favor of SunCal’s development plan for Alameda Point. They should have put a Measure A exemption, which is the only thing we really need to be voting for or against, on the ballot. But in a supreme display of cowardice (who wants to touch the third rail of Alameda politics?), the council passed this responsibility on to SunCal. And then they acted surprised when the for-profit developer larded a development agreement onto the ballot that would basically cover their own butts, at a potentially steep cost to the city.

Since SunCal decided to go to the ballot, Alameda voters have been caught in the middle of an epic ping pong match between the developer and city staff. Faced with a wealth of conflicting (and often inaccurate) information, many people who are genuinely concerned about the future of this Island are unsure how they should vote. But here’s a dirty little secret: It doesn’t matter. Because ultimately, the city can do an end run around any decision we make.

How can they do that? If voters say yes to Measure B, we will have a Measure A exemption for the Point on the books and a land plan, plus a development agreement that no one can credibly argue is good for the city. But SunCal may never get the chance to exercise them. If the city and SunCal don’t strike a development deal for the base by July 20, the city could send the developer packing. And city leaders may already be preparing for this outcome: the Interim City Manager told SunCal in November that the city could work directly with the Navy on a Plan B. One scenario Gallant outlined includes offering long-term leases for existing Point tenants, which she said could pay for the infrastructure repairs that have so far played a major role in stalling the former Naval base’s redevelopment. And three members of the council have been taking field trips to other redeveloped military bases to see what else we could be doing with our own.

But even if voters say no to Measure B on February 2, the plan could proceed intact if city leaders decide they want it. The city’s existing agreement to negotiate with SunCal allows the developer to submit its development plan directly to the city’s planning department to be considered like any other development project, and in the face of mounting evidence that their ballot initiative will fail, the developer exercised that option on January 14. It’s the same land plan that’s on the ballot. And in a letter to the city, SunCal’s Pat Keliher said he thinks his company could build it using an affordable housing ordinance that was just placed on the city’s books.

SunCal’s decision to put its plan on the ballot could cost the company $1 million when all is said and done. Meanwhile, we’ll pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of being made to feel like we have a vote on how this decision gets made.

So what’s a good citizen to do? Personally, I’m reserving my vote for November, when we choose a new mayor and fill some City Council seats with some fresh bodies. I’ll be looking for candidates who are willing and able to exercise the leadership our current crop of dais-sitters hasn’t. I don’t see the point of making a decision that my elected leaders are unwilling – or unable – to carry out.

Apparently, the folks over at The Huffington Post feel that frustration too, and they’re seizing on it by mounting a campaign to get people to take their money out of the big banks and move it to local, community banks. They’ve started a campaign called Move Your Money and set up a website to help people find their own local banks. So far, they’ve got about 1,200 people saying they’ll make the switch.

Local banks are chiming in, too: The Independent Community Bankers of America, a group that represents 5,000 of the roughly 8,000 community banks in the U.S., has launched an “End Too Big to Fail” campaign that aims to direct Congressional and other efforts to regulate banks to the big guys, instead of enacting broad-based efforts that will include all banks big and small. (They want the bigger banks broken up, like Ma Bell.)

When I set up the banking for The Island, I seriously considered going to our local credit union or bank. I think it’s important to do as much as possible to support folks locally, and there are a number of benefits to banking here. But swayed by what I perceived as the stability and convenience of banking with a larger institution (ATMs everywhere!), I signed on the dotted line with a national bank.

But every time I came down to Park Street I’d walk past the Bank of Alameda, and often, I’d see Dawna Dowdell in the window. Dawna volunteers her time and immeasurable energy to more local institutions than I can count. She’s a good person who I would trust with many things, including my money. And apparently, a lot of folks I know agree. Because sometimes, I’d see them in line, being greeted by Dawna and others in the bank, through that very same window.

That personal attention, that connection, is just one of the benefits offered by community banks, according to Steve Andrews, the Bank of Alameda’s chief executive officer.

Andrews was the bank’s founding CEO when a list of local noteworthies opened it, in 1998, after Alameda’s former local bank was bought out by a national institution and that homey local connection was severed. He said community banks like his offer a friendly local face and a commitment to community – personally and financially – that the big guys just don’t.

But more than that, they are often the institutions that finance small local businesses (and we’ve got more than a few of those here): According to the Independent Community Bankers of America, for whom Andrews serves as the vice chairman for Congressional affairs, community banks make 31 percent of all small business loans under $1 million, compared to 22 percent from the big banks – even though they hold a much smaller fraction of banks’ total assets.

“People bank with us because they feel potentially more welcome. They see their peers are in there. They know the bank is engaging the community,” Andrews said. “That business model has worked well for us. We’re really part of the fabric of the community.”

And truth be told, for the services I needed they weren’t any more expensive than the big guys – or any less convenient.

Andrews admits that banks like his didn’t survive the nation’s banking crisis unscathed: The risky lending practices and other financial hijinks that tanked big banks have impacted the value of real estate banks like the Bank of Alameda have lent on, and that, in turn, has impacted our local bank’s bottom line. And these have been tough times for the small businesses local banks like ours have lent to.

And yet … I never really connected with my Big Bank. Its legions of ATMs went unused by me, because I never did any banking off-Island. Being able to deposit my checks sans envelopes and slips was cool (though the bank’s photo-enhanced debit card I really could have done without). The bank rejected me, via form letter, for a credit card I had never actually asked for in the first place. And there was no one here in town I could call and talk to about any of this.

As the year ended, my supply of starter checks dwindled to two. And I realized I had a decision to make. I went online to see what it would cost to order new checks from my bank, something I had not done even after nearly a year as a customer.

And then I went to see Dawna Dowdell.

I am now proud to say The Island is a customer of the Bank of Alameda, and that I am ending my relationship with that Big Bank. I am heartened to know that I can be part of something way bigger than me, something that is at the same time so inherently local. And yes, I got those checks.

For the next few minutes, Watson clearly and respectfully offered her disagreement with Towne Centre’s plan to bring the store to Alameda to the members of the City Council and the audience assembled in the room.

If only we had an Iris Watson right now.

Our Island is facing its biggest issue in a generation, the redevelopment of the former Naval Air Station Alameda. The issues around the redevelopment are complex, and the ramifications of any development or lack thereof are huge. We need to critically examine SunCal’s proposal and any viable alternatives, and we need someone who can honestly and respectfully outline any concerns.

What we have instead is Save Our City! Alameda, which launched an all-out assault on the plan this week based on a conflation of facts and outright misinformation, with the offer of a nice-sounding but largely undeveloped idea to turn the site into another Presidio as an alternative to SunCal’s development plan.

The irony here is that some of the group’s concerns, in this writer’s view, are legitimate. The tradeoff of financing public improvements to the site with future property tax dollars, for example, is highly worthy of scrutiny.

But the group’s campaign of “truthiness” (“The city is going bankrupt!” Not true. “SunCal wants a $700 million bailout!” Also not true) does little to further genuine discussion of those issues, and much to obscure a host of other legitimate concerns with the plan, including whether the rampant contamination at the site can be safely abated and whether SunCal’s transportation plan is doable in an era when funding for transit is being cut, rather than enhanced, and how or if this project can ultimately pencil our for SunCal and the city.

And its spokesman’s approach of attacking anyone who dares question him (“Carpetbaggers!” “Clones!”) halts honest discussion even of his own concerns.

So I call on everyone who has an interest in this important issue to be honest. And civil. And I credit many of the folks who raised their concerns at last night’s public hearing on the plan for doing just that, including some of the signatories to the SOCA cause. The future quality of our life and the lives of those who follow us here will depend a great deal on finding a productive use for Alameda Point, whatever it turns out to be.

The reasons they gave were compelling: Businesses that were the subject of repeat calls due to stuck elevators their owners failed to repair, or a laundromat that got repeat calls because its lint traps weren’t properly cleaned out, are costing the city money it can ill afford to let.

But the council’s solution is far too broad: Start charging everyone, including residents, for making non-emergency calls to the Fire Department. And I fear the consequences for someone who decides not to call the Fire Department when they should have because they’re not sure if they’ll be charged could end up being tragic.

No one wants our police and firefighters to be used as elevator repairmen, plumbers or locksmiths. But the numbers submitted to the council by the Fire Department show that they, at least, really aren’t. Last year, fewer than 2 percent of the 6,000 or so calls the department got were non-emergency calls.

The circumstances under which something gets tagged a non-emergency call are so vague that they could prompt people who can ill afford a $420 bill from the city to forgo calling in an actual emergency. For example, if someone’s basement floods and there’s a water heater that needs to be shut off, it’s an emergency call. But if no such hazard exists, expect a bill. Is it fair to expect people to remember the difference? And do we really want people to think twice about calling for help under these circumstances?

To top it off, the amount of money this change would generate, if the city abides by the mayor’s suggestion to charge non-emergency callers for an hour of the Fire Department’s time, wouldn’t even cover two weeks of overtime there (the original proposal, for a half hour of time, would cover less than a week). So what has the the city accomplished, other than teaching a handful of errant businesses a lesson – at the potential expense of others’ safety?

Other solutions are being proposed, and it could serve the council well to work with those who are proposing them to craft changes that really do cut down on calls that should be made to professional tradespeople (Robb Ratto of the Park Street Business Association, for example, suggested that businesses get one freebie and then get charged for subsequent calls). Let’s consider some options and the potential consequences of this decision before it gets made.

First off, we do not control the ads that run on our site. They are fed to us through Google. Once they’re up there, we can’t delete them. And it looked to us like the pro-8 folks may have blitzed the blogs today: Several other local sites we viewed had the same ad.

Secondly, we’re feeling compelled to make clear our position on Proposition 8: We’re dead set against it.

Many people who are far more eloquent that we have made the case against this one, so we’ll point you in their direction: The No on 8 site is here, and there was a great letter to the editor in the Journal on Friday which laid out in clear and compelling terms how this is discrimination. And here’s a blog post from the guys who founded Google, who, we just remembered, donated tens of thousands of dollars to defeat this thing.

We are facing an ongoing fiscal crisis of almost Biblical proportions. We have some big choices to make about the development of Alameda Point, which encompasses a third of our little Island city. Our schools are also in desperate need of money. We’re dealing with Measure A, Measure H, Measure P. We are in the midst of a big fat identity crisis.

Each issue draws passionate people with deeply held opinions about how it should be handled. One would hope that all this energy would be directed toward producing the best solutions to our problems that we could possibly get. Instead, we often end up with small groups of people whose opinions are so entrenched that the decision making process disintegrates into slights, accusations, name-calling and worse.

This may be amusing. But it is not helping us, folks.

The problems confronting us are real, and the solutions necessary. But how to reach them if we’re expending all our energy being angry with our erstwhile opponents simply because they don’t see things our way?

Last night, the hubby and I watched the Obamad on TV, in which our possibly next President talked about how there’s just one America. Well, we think the same could be said about Alameda.
We’re a small town, an island, and the person whose opinion you don’t agree with is probably a neighbor. Maybe a friend. Definitely someone you’re going to see at the grocery store, the gym, your kid’s school. Chances are, you’ll be seeing this person around town for the next 20 or 30 or 50 years. How unpleasant do all these little moments of your life really need to be?

We need to put all of this enmity aside and focus on what really matters: Finding solutions to our collective problems, or face the consequences. Give a hug, sing kumbaya, pick up the phone and call all the people who’ll be impacted by or interested in your latest, greatest idea. Then focus. These are not problems that have easy solutions, or that can be solved by one person with one point of view. It’ll take a village, people. Or an entire Island.

To recap, the Planning Board agreed on June 23 to certify the former Island High site as a place where affordable housing could be built, the first step toward allowing Warmington to move five homes for low- and very-low income families out of Grand Marina in exchange for at least nine units of rental housing for school district employees at those income levels. Warmington’s architect subsequently floated the idea of putting as many as 36 rental units on the site, which didn’t sit too well with the neighbors.

Tonight the City Council and one of its alter egos, the Community Improvement Commission, are slated to take the next step in the process by okaying their affordable housing agreement with Warmington with the change in place – provided a whole list of other things, like getting the OK of the school district, take place.

City staff has argued for the switch, saying it would provide more affordable housing than the original plan (and Warmington is willing to pay for anything they can’t get grants for, which would save us a few bucks). And they say there’s no point creating for-sale homes for people at the lowest income levels because they won’t be able to get mortgages, and if they can, they won’t have the money to maintain the homes anyway.

To be honest, we were prepared to stomp all over these statements for their callousness alone. But the unfortunate reality is that there may be some truth to them. Even affordable housing advocates are saying that ownership can become a burden for lower-income people instead of a boon, due in large part to the costs of maintaining a home. For a variety of reasons, it’s not really the piggy bank that most of us hope our own homes will be. This is what folks were saying back in 2003. Five years down the line, we all know how much harder things have gotten.

All that said, we will admit some concern over the Pandora’s Box this agreement opens – if this is the deal we give every developer that doesn’t feel like building homes for lower-income people into their developments, then why endure the essentially false notion of an inclusionary housing ordinance?

Then again, we’re looking around and asking ourselves when the hell this thing has ever been used. Look at Bayport as an example. It’s got some homes for families with moderate incomes – or 80 percent of what is a pretty hefty area median – and then the lower-income housing is concentrated in the Breakers complex on the edge of the development.

In the meantime, the neighbors are all over this thing, and we’re hopeful that this will lead to a development that is appropriate both in scale and quality. If it happens.

Let’s start with the fact that this is a city that claims to be striving for a more “green” way of living (Clean and Green Fourth of July Parade, anyone?), and that a huge part of that plan is getting people out of their cars. How does kicking kids off their bikes and scooters in some of the only safe places they’ve got to ride in encourage this? Then there’s the question of the necessity of this ban. No one – not even the Police Chief, who proposed the original skateboard ban – cited a safety concern with bike riding or skating in parks. Our esteemed mayor simply believes the signs that would have to be posted in select locations advertising specific prohibitions would be too ugly. Then there’s the utter lack of a public process around this proposed ban. It was discussed as a specific ban on skateboarding on public property and evolved at eye-blinking speed into a full-blown ban on “muscular-powered vehicles,” without any real opportunity for public debate. And the council has put the item on its consent calendar for tonight, meaning it could be approved without a real public hearing. Lastly, we have to consider the wisdom of giving park supervisors the right to cite. Our neighborhood park is already run pretty much like a prison camp, complete with signs hand painted by the kids in the park program there banning cycling, scootering and climbing trees. Are these folks who really need more power?

We’re with our colleague John Knox White in hoping that the council was just in such a hurry to finalize the budget that it didn’t stop to think about this, and that it will be reconsidered at the council meeting tonight. We’re all for dealing with specific safety issues. But we think that this proposal – and not bikes in parks – is what needs to get banned. The City Council has more important issues to deal with. Let’s focus on those instead.

Okay, so I’m kidding about the celebrating part. Because if there were no Proposition 13, the school board, the Mooneys and whatever kind souls choose to help them wouldn’t have to come to you every few years to ask you for a few more bucks to help cover the school district’s bills.

Before you get all revved up, I hear what you’re saying about it being the government or the school district and they’ll always ask for more money, even without Prop 13. That’s probably true. And the proposition was put on the ballot to solve what was then a pressing problem, namely that homeowners’ property taxes were skyrocketing beyond their ability to pay. But if it didn’t exist (and we chose to instead create exemptions only for people who could not afford to pay), our schools, police, fire, library, prisons, you name it, would have more money. That’s how taxes work: You pay them, and hopefully, get services for your money on the other end.

But even the most careful husbandry of funds can’t save these things if you don’t have enough money to pay for them. So we get Ron Mooney coming to us hat in hand every few years, begging for a few shekels to keep music, sports, AP classes and reduced class sizes for our schools. And potentially, fewer library hours and rec programs, fees for ambulance service and rolling blackouts for our fire stations, based on the city budget discussions I’ve witnessed to date.

And then there’s the inequity that Proposition 13 creates. A few months ago, when running down a rumor that some prominent, older Alamedans had exempted themselves from paying the current school tax (which turned out to be untrue), I discovered just how much more I am paying in property taxes than other folks in my neighborhood. To the folks who say those of us with kids going to school should pay for that schooling: We are. And it’s not even a matter of my family being double-taxed for the same services (police, fire) that everyone in town enjoys. How about quintuple-taxed? I pay five to six times the taxes that other people here who I’d bet have the ability to pay their full load, and that’s just because I got here last.

But Californians love their Prop 13. A new poll shows that 57 percent of Californians and 64 percent of homeowners would vote for the anti-tax measure today (less than the 66.67 percent vote required to get a parcel tax passed, by the way). Maybe some of the folks who are benefiting from this huge tax break can spring for the card and a cake.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems determined to slash California’s education funding, to the tune of about $4 million for our district alone. It’s his budget plan, and not wanton spending by our district, that has put us in a place where we are going to be eliminating sports and music programs, smaller class sizes for kids in kindergarten through third grades, advanced placement classes and more. A parcel tax is basically the only option the district has to raise the money it needs to keep this from happening now. That’s why Measure H is on the ballot.

I admit that my opinion on Measure H is biased. I have a son starting kindergarten in the fall, and I want him and his baby sister to have a high-quality education. I am helping to pay for this education with my own property taxes, and I am willing to pay more to support the schools. But I admit, I cannot do it all on my own. So I’m asking for your help.

I realize that this is a tough time to ask for money. We are in the middle of a recession. Gas prices have doubled, home values are crashing, people are maybe not shopping the way they used to. But good schools are worth your money. They are a major draw for young families. Who spend decades in their communities. Contributing their time, energy and money to schools, civic organizations, friends and neighbors, local businesses. And our schools help us create new citizens who will do the same.

With his budget proposals, the governor is telling us that our schools are not a priority. Are we going to let him snatch a quality education away from our kids? I wholeheartedly agree with those who feel this ballot measure is lacking, and that we need to pursue some long-term funding solutions for our schools. But it’s what we’ve got, and what we’ve got to do now. Even a short-term funding lapse could have long-term consequences for our kids.

I believe in this community, and if you’re living here, I know you do, too. If you’ve built a business here, you do too. If you helm a civic organization, you do, too. This is a small community, an Island, and we all need each other’s support to thrive. I’m asking you to support my family this Tuesday. Please go to the polls and vote yes on Measure H.