The obsession of Livermore’s rich native newspaper writer with stopping a much-needed, voter-supported inexpensive housing and business improvement challenge as soon as once more dominates town’s native elections.
In the course of the previous 4 years, Joan Seppala, the octogenarian founder and writer of The Unbiased, an area weekly newspaper, her relations and her allies have spent greater than $1.4 million on unsuccessful poll measures and candidate campaigns to attempt to cease the challenge, and unknown sums on a parallel, and to this point equally futile, effort within the courts.
Now Seppala allies have opened one other expensive entrance within the struggle to cease the challenge by making an attempt to elect sympathetic candidates to the Livermore Metropolis Council. Voters shouldn’t be sucked in by the deceptive marketing campaign materials flooding their mailboxes.
As a substitute, they need to elect John Marchand as mayor, Evan Branning for the District 1 Metropolis Council seat and Mel Chiong for the District 2 seat. These are the candidates who help the downtown challenge that the neighborhood and voters have already endorsed — and who’re bored with town having to struggle mindless litigation.
The plan for the 8.2-acre downtown web site features a resort, 130 items of inexpensive housing, parking, a science heart, a small theater, retail area and park open area. The plan was developed over a years-long public course of that concerned in depth neighborhood enter and session with consultants.
Exasperation
Marchand, Branning and Chiong are as exasperated as we’re by the endless political and authorized assault on the downtown challenge by the deep-pocketed newspaper proprietor and her allies — an assault that diverts consideration from different crucial points, reminiscent of the present Common Plan replace, public security, funding for infrastructure upkeep, defending the area’s treasured wine business, offering enough housing for metropolis employees and making certain that Livermore is welcoming to various populations.
Marchand served as mayor from 2011-20 after which needed to take a two-year break because of the metropolis’s term-limit guidelines. He’s now eligible to run once more. It’s a very good factor as a result of his successor, Bob Woerner, didn’t search reelection on account of well being points.
Branning is a highschool instructor and member of the Planning Fee. Chiong is the proprietor of a small journey company and a member of the Common Plan Advisory Committee. The three are well-versed and articulate about metropolis points.
In distinction, Marchand’s mayoral opponent, retired cop Mony Nop, sides with Seppala’s opposition to constructing the inexpensive housing within the deliberate location and helps her legally questionable try to drive yet one more citywide vote on the challenge.
Carol Wahrer, Branning’s opponent in District 1, and Ben Barrientos, working in opposition to Chiong in District 2, declined to take part in our endorsement interviews. However at a Livermore Valley Chamber of Commerce candidate discussion board, Wahrer mentioned the downtown location is the incorrect place for the inexpensive housing.
Barrientos has been a part of Seppala’s effort to redo the downtown challenge and transfer the inexpensive housing throughout the road to land that’s at the moment not obtainable with out utilizing eminent area — a transfer that will successfully restart the whole planning course of and topic town to litigation.
Poll and authorized assaults
Paradoxically, the downtown plan was accredited in July 2019 by a unanimous Metropolis Council whose members one in every of Seppala’s political motion committees had in prior years spent a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} to assist elect. However as soon as on the council, they wouldn’t do her bidding.
So Seppala and her allies collected signatures to drive a vote in March 2020 on a poll measure difficult the council’s approval of the resort improvement settlement. The measure bought trounced when two-thirds of voters supported Measure P, upholding the council approval.
Seeing how badly they’d misplaced, the Seppala group withdrew an initiative that they’d already certified for the November 2020 poll that, if handed, would have overturned the whole downtown plan and substituted their imaginative and prescient, which has at all times been fuzzy on particulars.
However the group wasn’t completed. After the Metropolis Council in 2021 accredited nonprofit Eden Housing’s plan for the downtown web site, Seppala’s group sued on environmental grounds and misplaced on the trial court docket.
An appellate court docket is scheduled to listen to the case in November. California Legal professional Common Rob Bonta has filed a quick on behalf of town and Eden. In the meantime, the delay has value Eden a few of the tax-advantaged financing it had lined up, forcing the group to attend till the litigation is resolved earlier than reapplying.
Then in Could 2022, the Metropolis Council licensed sale of the land to Eden Housing. Seppala’s group paid signature gatherers to flow into a referendum petition to attempt to overturn the sale — despite the fact that town legal professional had decided that the council motion was administrative and never topic to a referendum.
When town clerk understandably refused to course of the petition or confirm the signatures submitted in July, the group sued, making an attempt to drive processing of the petition and looking for a keep to dam the sale to Eden. A Superior Court docket decide and an appellate court docket refused to grant a keep, and the sale went via in September. A trial on the deserves of the lawsuit is scheduled for November.
Deceptive marketing campaign
For every effort to dam the challenge, Seppala and her allies function underneath a distinct group. They’ve fashioned committees known as Associates of Livermore, Residents for a Livermore Central Park, Shield the Central Park Vote, Transfer Eden Housing and Save Livermore Downtown.
Whereas they purport to be grassroots efforts, the teams have spent greater than $330,000 up to now 4 years for skilled signature gathering for his or her poll measures, in response to analysis and evaluation by Woerner, the present mayor. Greater than $900,000 of the teams’ $1.4 million-plus in funding has come from Seppala, her husband, her sister and different relations. One other $340,000 has come from Jeanette King, who, like Seppala, is a member of the board of the Livermore Valley Performing Arts Middle, which runs the Bankhead Theater downtown.
For the Nov. 8 election, members of the Seppala group have fashioned Take Again Livermore. The officers for the group are the identical as these for one of many prior teams. Marketing campaign filings don’t but reveal the supply of Take Again Livermore’s cash, however they present that, up to now, the group has spent greater than $125,000 supporting Nop, Wahrer and Barrientos, and opposing Marchand, Branning and Chiong.
One of many mailers from the group misleadingly accuses Marchand, Branning and Chiong of making an attempt to dam a public vote on the Metropolis Council choice to promote land to Eden for inexpensive housing. The mailer doesn’t point out that town legal professional had dominated that the council motion couldn’t be subjected to a referendum vote. The mailer additionally doesn’t point out {that a} decide has denied Transfer Eden Housing’s try to dam the sale, saying that it had not proven it’s more likely to prevail on its lawsuit claiming a public vote could be permissible.
The underside line is that Seppala and her allies are spending huge sums on poll measures, candidate campaigns and court docket actions making an attempt to cease the downtown challenge. We’re witnessing a manipulative powerplay by a small, well-funded group that wishes to manage Livermore politics. Voters shouldn’t stand for it. They need to elect Marchand, Branning and Chiong.
