Editors’ Note:  The following are comments from the community on the proposed StopWaste ordinance.  Note that revisions to the proposal were posted on June 14.  View the revisions here.

Nancy Lehrkind

I think this [PCA Inconsistency and Confusion Article] is a good and fair analysis which points out a large area (and potentially larger) of applicability of this Proposed Ordinance to residential re-landscaping projects in Piedmont. I would also take issue with many of the “Findings” which are stated as reasons why this Proposed Ordinance is needed. In particular, Finding Number 3 does not apply to Piedmont (It “finds” that we in Piedmont are responsible for 5.4% of the Alameda County landfill containing gardening debris.). We have actually taken extraordinary steps to ensure that we, as a community, are practicing green recycling of our gardening debris. In addition, I personally am very shocked that our town Council can be openly bribed to pass legislation. I have received offers of up to $11,000 to pay the City to NOT pass this law. Is this really the way we operate here? Really? I think those of us who care about any aspect of this proposed legislation or its process should show up Monday night to register his/her protest.

Garrett Keating

The applicability of the Proposed Ordinance to re-landscaping projects is very likely less than that of new developments. To apply, re- landscaping needs to be 2500 sq ft of an existing 5000 sq ft of irrigated landscape of a commercial, multi-family or public property in conjunction with a building application. The number of commercial and multi-family properties that even have 5000 sq ft to re-landscape is probably zero. Public projects of this size and nature seem rare in Piedmont. Take the recent Tea House as an example – that was a building project yet does not meet the sq area requirements. Likewise, the Ronada-Ramona triangle or Linda Tot lot would not be affected by the ordinance. Civic projects that exceed $100000 are already subject to the city’s Civic Bay Friendly Ordinance so it seems the public provisions of this ordinance will apply in very few circumstances.  > Click to read more…

Council’s Opportunity to Address Unfunded $40 million liability –

A Member of the Piedmont 2011 Municipal Tax Review Committee submits a letter responding to “Piedmontage” in the May 30, 2012 edition of the Piedmont Post:

Contrary to the misleading view expressed in the “Piedmontage” editorial, vital City services need not be reduced as there are sufficient opportunities to reduce cost in a reasonable, fair and orderly fashion particularly in the cost of employee fringe benefits (primarily health benefits for current and retired employees and contributions to employee retirement plans).  > Click to read more…

Piedmont youth soccer players don’t have to lose practice time – 

The following letter was published as a Viewpoint in the Piedmont Post (6/6/12) in response to a letter published on 5/30/12 by Mark Landheer, past president of the Piedmont Youth Soccer Club (PYSC).

Speaking for myself and not for the Friends of Moraga Canyon (FOMC), I offer the following rebuttal in response to Mark Landheer’s letter of May 30, “The Legacy of FOMC.”

1. The number of kids in PYSC will not necessarily be restricted without the large field at Blair Park. Alameda Point with two fields provided only half the required 3-hour practice time per week for the 330 that play competitive soccer. Existing fields in Piedmont provided the other half.  Piedmont Recreation Facilities Organization’s (PRFO)Steve Schiller said (9/28/11) that one new large field at Blair Park would replace the two large fields at Alameda Point by doubling up; that is, two teams would practice simultaneously on one field. That being the case, doubling up on the existing fields in Piedmont would equally well resolve the lack of field space for the 330 youths displaced at Alameda Point, at least temporarily. There would be no need to turn away any youngster. Moreover, I have visited several alternate soccer fields outside of Piedmont. The field at Laney College in particular was unquestionably available. So, in fact, there are other possibilities for the 330 youths. Roughly 20 percent of these players live outside of Piedmont.

2. Blair Park clearly has the potential to be enjoyed not only by dog walkers but also by many other residents of all ages for passive recreation as a complement to Coaches Field and as an attractive gateway to the City. The East Bay Regional Park District has allocated $507,325 of Measure WW bond funds to Piedmont precisely for the purpose of improving this and other city parks. Cost to the City is not a problem.

3. In the November 9, 2011 Piedmont Post, Lance Hanf, then treasurer of the PYSC, calculated air pollution from the round trips needed for soccer practice at Alameda Point. However, Lance miscalculated the number of trips, assumed an excessive driving distance, and omitted the net difference between round trips to Alameda Point and Blair Park. As a result, his numbers for reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, etc., were greatly exaggerated. Be that as it may, the PYSC at any time could have rented a bus to make just three round trips per night during the 11-week practice season instead of the 60 per night by auto, which would have radically reduced the negative impacts associated with travel to fields outside of the city.

4. On safety, Moraga Avenue will continue to be unsafe for pedestrians and bicyclists as long as there are no sidewalks and no bicycle lanes (which PRFO deleted), and as long as the Piedmont Police Department does not enforce the 25-mph speed limit. The Piedmont Public Works Department is vigilant, and we can all be confident that the Monterey pines at Blair Park will not crash on Moraga Avenue.

On another of Landheer’s points, City policy has long been to provide park maintenance. It was the City Council, not the FOMC, that required PRFO to pay for all maintenance costs had Blair been built. Even so, unknown to many, ELS, the Blair Park project architect, defined a “project area” within the site that evidently limited PRFO responsibility to a portion of the park and not the entire 5.6 acres.

Three years ago, I told the City Council that Blair Park was unsuited for the large field proposed and suggested instead an improved “drive-to” public park with various amenities. My comments fell on deaf ears. Not much has changed from my point of view, but the opportunity still exists to complement Coaches Field with an attractive neighborhood park, accessible to the entire community, across the street at Blair Park.

William Blackwell, Piedmont Resident

The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Piedmont Civic Association.

An open letter expressing concern over a law dictating that private property landscaping must comply with an external agency’s changeable requirements, plus new City staff monitoring requirements.

Piedmont Landscaping Requirements To Be Controlled By Another Agency – 

I find this proposed ordinance [704] a very unreasonable intrusion by government power on how individuals choose to proceed in doing their own landscaping.  While I am “for” the environment and personally practice many forms of conservation in my own landscaping, I believe that educating people and making conservation easy for them is far preferable to making laws enforced against them.

I truly question the legal source of power in our elected City Council to pass this bill.  This is not “health and safety” or any legitimate City government interest I can find.

In Section 17.18.3 (b), the City is required to apply (whenever they are making an individual homeowner do his landscaping in compliance with this law) whatever is then the most recent version of the Bay-Friendly Landscape Guidelines, Scorecard and Checklist.    This means that our elected representatives are giving up their discretion to pass laws that govern all of us to an outside group (which is STOPWASTE.ORG).   This is absurd.  We elect these Council Members to make decisions about how to use our taxpayer money and how to best run our sweet little town.  We did not elect the people at STOPWASTE.ORG who may have some pretty radical ideas going forward about how we should be landscaping our yards. > Click to read more…

The following commentary was published by The Piedmonter and submitted to the Piedmont Civic Association:

The bad process that led to the Undergrounding debacle was made worse by the sham City “Audit” which included two members of the City Council who voted for the giveaway, then investigated themselves and accepted their own report.  The staff liaison was the City Administrator who bears the ultimate responsibility for the taxpayer loss.

City Hall had little desire for taxpayers to know why two million dollars were used for private benefit. During the Undergrounding an additional $275,000 of taxpayer money was taken for “storm drains” on Crest Road, drains that were never intended to be installed.  Rather than reclaim taxpayer funds or investigate, the City’s solution was to reclassify the theft as “street repaving.”  The City’s response to the Kurtin’s Undergrounding lawsuit was a frivolous defense that ate another $550,000.

The Undergrounding Debacle led both the LWV Task Force and 2011 Municipal Tax Review Committee  to recommend standard practices for any major project in town, including monetary risk assessment, independent construction management and contingency fees.  None of these recommendations were present Dec. 5, 2011 when four Council members voted approval of the Blair Park Project.  What was present was (1) the City Engineer’s report which found the PRFO supplied numbers lacking sufficient detail for a meaningful examination (2) a proponent project manager (3) no recommendation for contingency fees (4) Planning Commission findings that the project was ugly and deficient in all respects, and (5) an unanalyzed traffic plan that included an experimental roundabout.  This was a flawed and biased process.  Apparently as a tactical maneuver, Piedmont Recreation Facilities Organization (PRFO) has withdrawn the project because of the expected success of the Friends of Moraga Canyon (FOMC ) and pending Oakland litigation.  Residents asked that Council rescind the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) in hopes of bringing our community back together.  Instead, the Council chose to honor the PRFO intent: “The EIR may be useful if there is any future project developed at Blair Park. ” (blairpark.org)

”The PRFO “Gift” just keeps on giving as taxpayer cost approaches $470,000.   The Feb. 7 dramatic defeat of Measure A should have been a wake-up call to City Hall that the electorate was disgusted by biased City processes and an unneeded tax measure.  But on May 7 the Council had only high praise for PRFO, further deepening the community divide.  The bad process is not a result of ignorance, our populace is too bright.  Piedmont government is by some for themselves and calculated deception is the result.  I am not a recipient of this generosity, yet I pay the same high parcel taxes.  Until we have real community discussion and input, and a City Administrator who serves all residents equally, my only recourse is to vote down City parcel taxes.  I will not waste my money and feed elite special interests.

Rick Schiller, Piedmont resident

Editors Note:  All opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Piedmont Civic Association.

The following open letter to the community was sent to the Piedmont Civic Association and the City Council on March 16, 2011 –

Dear Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council Members:

Re: Draft Sewer Asset Management Implementation Plan (AMIP) on City Council’s April 16, 2012 Meeting Agenda

This letter contains my detailed written comments on the City Council Agenda Report and attached AMIP for the Council’s Monday, April 16, 2012 meeting. (City Council Agenda Report from Chester Nakahara, Public Works Director, “Subject: Review an advanced copy of City’s Sewer Asset Management Implementation Plan prepared in response to the EPA [sic] Stipulated Order Compliance Requirement, Section XI, Subsection 73”. (The subject Stipulated Order is not, as incorrectly stated in the agenda report, an “EPA Stipulated Order”, but it is, instead, a Stipulated Order for Preliminary Relief > Click to read more…

 Measure A Opponent Explains its Defeat –

The Measure A Sewer Surcharge Tax failed by the largest margin anyone can recall. Remarkably, no one at the City and not a single Measure A proponent has ever publicly countered the objections that led to the voters’ rejection.

> Click to read more…

Opponent of  Sewer Surcharge  (Measure A) Supports Future Good Governance and Financial Accountability:

I am grateful that Piedmonters voted down Measure A and, in doing so, posted a clear message that any future parcel tax will be a referendum on good governance, financial accountability and honesty. The Piedmont Post chose to attack me personally and disguised its editorial bias as news articles instead of using its widely read community forum to inform voters of both sides of the sewer tax issue. Instead of posting the careful investigation Tom Clark and I undertook, including direct communication with the EPA, our letters and my LWV Forum comments were grossly misstated, and neither of us was directly contacted by the Post.

I am grateful to Tom Clark, with his many years of public sector legal experience, for his invaluable contribution. MTRC member Ryan Gilbert deserves special recognition for critically looking at the complete picture and then opposing Measure A.

Perhaps our City Staff can also benefit from some of the investigation done, both by opponents and the careful piedmontcivic.org investigation into the sewer fund and related issues. Regardless of the failure of this unneeded tax, Piedmonters can be proud of continuing to do the right thing environmentally with our aggressive compliance program, due to be enacted July 15, 2012, both for EPA requirements and residential sewer lateral testing and replacement. By a 1993 EPA order, we were required to replace 48% of our mainline sewer, the leakiest sections, by 2014. By 2010 we had replaced 60%. The often heard “we are in the lead” is a reality other cities wish they could follow.

I am optimistic we can have an honest and transparent dialogue on future issues, especially those that are of financial concern. Using tax dollars judiciously means more resources for us to enjoy in this wonderful city.

Rick Schiller

Editor’s Note:  The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Piedmont Civic Association.

Throughout the history of the Sewer Fund, there has been tension between spending for sewer maintenance versus spending for sewer mains replacement (rehabilitation).  (See sewer history article.)

In 2000 the sewer tax was tripled.  The increase was to comply with a Cease and Desist Order requiring the replacement of 54% of the Piedmont sewer main in 3 phases and, eventually, replace 100% in 4 additional phases if needed.  The EPA required phases I, II, and III were completed as of 2006, representing 54% of the sewer system.  Rehabilitation work then paused for a number of years. (See chart below.)   Phase IV was not completed until 2010. > Click to read more…

Hidden Choices:  Draining the Sewer Fund to Fund General Fund Activities-

Where did the 2000 sewer tax increase go?

Replacement of Piedmont’s sewer mains has been a long-standing goal.  In 2000 the sewer tax was almost tripled to pay for mains replacement.  Where did the money go? > Click to read more…