The obsession of Livermore’s rich native newspaper writer with stopping a much-needed, voter-supported inexpensive housing and industrial growth venture as soon as once more dominates the town’s native elections.
In the course of the previous 4 years, Joan Seppala, the octogenarian founder and writer of The Unbiased, a neighborhood weekly newspaper, her family and her allies have spent greater than $1.4 million on unsuccessful poll measures and candidate campaigns to attempt to cease the venture, and unknown sums on a parallel, and to date equally futile, effort within the courts.
Now Seppala allies have opened one other expensive entrance within the struggle to cease the venture 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 venture that the group and voters have already endorsed — and who're bored with the town having to struggle mindless litigation.
The plan for the 8.2-acre downtown website features a resort, 130 models of inexpensive housing, parking, a science heart, a small theater, retail house and park open house. The plan was developed over a years-long public course of that concerned intensive group enter and session with specialists.
Exasperation
Marchand, Branning and Chiong are as exasperated as we're by the endless political and authorized assault on the downtown venture by the deep-pocketed newspaper proprietor and her allies — an assault that diverts consideration from different vital points, comparable to the present Normal Plan replace, public security, funding for infrastructure upkeep, defending the area’s treasured wine business, offering satisfactory housing for metropolis staff and making certain that Livermore is welcoming to numerous populations.
Marchand served as mayor from 2011-20 after which needed to take a two-year break as a result of metropolis’s term-limit guidelines. He’s now eligible to run once more. It’s a great factor as a result of his successor, Bob Woerner, didn't search reelection as a consequence of well being points.
Branning is a highschool trainer and member of the Planning Fee. Chiong is the proprietor of a small journey company and a member of the Normal 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 and power yet one more citywide vote on the venture.
Carol Wahrer, Branning’s opponent in District 1, and Ben Barrientos, operating 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 stated the downtown location is the fallacious place for the inexpensive housing.
Barrientos has been a part of Seppala’s effort to redo the downtown venture and transfer the inexpensive housing throughout the road to land that's at present not accessible with out utilizing eminent area — a transfer that will successfully restart the whole planning course of and topic the town to litigation.
Poll and authorized assaults
Paradoxically, the downtown plan was authorized in July 2019 by a unanimous Metropolis Council whose members certainly one of Seppala’s political motion committees had in prior years spent tons of of hundreds 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 power a vote in March 2020 on a poll measure difficult the council’s approval of the resort growth 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 all the time been fuzzy on particulars.
However the group wasn’t completed. After the Metropolis Council in 2021 authorized nonprofit Eden Housing’s plan for the downtown website, 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 Normal Rob Bonta has filed a quick on behalf of the 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 — though the town legal professional had decided that the council motion was administrative and never topic to a referendum.
When the town clerk understandably refused to course of the petition or confirm the signatures submitted in July, the group sued, making an attempt to power processing of the petition and searching for a keep to dam the sale to Eden. A Superior Courtroom decide and an appellate court docket refused to grant a keep, and the sale went by means of in September. A trial on the deserves of the lawsuit is scheduled for November.
Deceptive marketing campaign
For every effort to dam the venture, Seppala and her allies function below a distinct group. They’ve shaped committees referred to as Pals of Livermore, Residents for a Livermore Central Park, Defend 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 previously 4 years for skilled signature gathering for his or her poll measures, in keeping with 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 family. 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 shaped 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 determination to promote land to Eden for inexpensive housing. The mailer doesn’t point out that the 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 can 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 venture. 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.