The Alameda County Board of Supervisors recently approved a single-bid consulting contract to TeamCivX LLC. The contract calls for the company to provide polling and other services, presumably with the intent of placing a ballot measure on the November ballot.<\/p>\n
And that ballot measure would give the board the authority to change the county\u2019s general plan, including land use designations, without putting those changes on a ballot.<\/p>\n
Measure D, enacted in 2000, requires the public to approve changes to land use outside the urban limits of cities in Alameda County. Open space protection outside our urban growth boundaries would be lost.<\/p>\n
The board members voting for the contract (David Haubert, Nate Miley and Elisa Marquez) stated that they awarded the contract without going through the competitive bidding process, because it was too close to the filing deadline for the November ballot.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a weak excuse. The timing of elections and filing deadlines is well-known, and the board had plenty of time before now to go through the normal course of soliciting competitive bids. Instead, this begs the question as to whether the board members had a specific consultant in mind for this project, one who would slant the questions to secure an intended response.<\/p>\n
Given how contentious amending zoning ordinances is, any decisions awarding public funds needs to be completely above-board, without any hint of political favoritism. Therefore, the board should cancel the contract and re-open the contract to competitive bidding, as the law requires.<\/p>\n
If someone objects, saying that this would preclude putting a measure on the November ballot, so be it. The supervisors had time, but opted for an accelerated schedule with less oversight instead.<\/p>\n
The substance of the potential ballot measure is also troubling. Instead of placing a specific alteration to zoning use for specific areas on the ballot \u2014 say, to allow our struggling wineries to build larger or more restaurants on their properties to bring in tourist dollars \u2014 the ballot measure would simply give the board of supervisors the power to alter anything in the general plan as they see fit, without a public vote, constraining Measure D.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an end-run around the public processes that were put in place 25 years ago to protect our area\u2019s open spaces. It\u2019s similar to what the Dublin City Council did in the run-up to the 2024 election, when they put Measure II on the ballot to give themselves the power to annex property outside the city\u2019s urban limit line \u2014 specifically the Crosby family property \u2014 so they could develop it. The annexation itself wasn\u2019t on the ballot; instead, there was a misleadingly worded measure that made unsupported claims about traffic and environmental impacts. But the measure would have freed the city\u2019s hand to pursue a policy without further public review. (The measure passed, but was later overturned by a judge for failing to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.)<\/p>\n
Politicians in California have long faced extreme pressure from real estate developers to build sprawling suburbs that the state has become known for. Here in Alameda County, we took a significant step to regain control of that process, so developers would not have a free hand to build all the way out into the Central Valley.<\/p>\n
That step was Measure D. And since 2000, Measure D has done what it was supposed to, and preserved our unique character, especially here in the Tri-Valley. The fight to keep the county in that state is ongoing, and will last as long as there are political forces that would sacrifice our environment for short-term profits.<\/p>\n
So if the Board of Supervisors really wants to overturn Measure D and allow rampant development, they should just say so, so voters won\u2019t be fooled about what\u2019s at stake. If the board\u2019s intention is more limited, then the board should pursue something that doesn\u2019t open the door to a land grab.<\/p>\n
Either way, the process the board has followed needs to start over, this time with full transparency and maintain voter control of our open space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Alameda County Board of Supervisors recently approved a single-bid consulting contract to TeamCivX LLC. The contract calls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,57536,6702,7,512,75057,71393,69656,16047,94789,143,145,144,151675,151673,151674,151672],"class_list":["post-374295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-alameda-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-board-of-supervisors","tag-california","tag-central-valley","tag-david-haubert","tag-dublin-city-council","tag-elisa-marquez","tag-judge","tag-nate-miley","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-polling-and-other-services","tag-real-estate-developers","tag-specific-consultant","tag-teamcivx-llc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}