When it became clear that they didn’t have the votes to stop or radically alter the project, they sought out their constitutionally protected avenue of redress under California law: a referendum. Just getting any information from the City on what was needed to set up a referendum, much less what the City had actually passed on July 18th, would prove to be very difficult. (Unlike some California cities, Oakland does not offer instructions for mounting a referendum.) They quickly became aware of the enormous task they had undertaken, but undertake it they did.

The steering committee—comprised mainly of Sierra Club, League of Women Voters, and Fifth Avenue Institute members with other dedicated individuals from a variety of groups (some of them mentioned above)—met alternately in Kate’s Crocker Highland house or the home of Charlie and Pam Weber who have lived on 5th Avenue surrounded by artisans and funky waterfront homes. (Full disclosure: in case you can’t guess, I was occasionally present.) They set to work to fan out over the city with their fat (around 72 pages long) petitions with three weeks (by law 30 days, a number of which were taken up waiting for the city clerk to give them the final documents) in which to get the 18,700 required signatures.

Kate and husband Aki were part of a cadre of very dedicated individuals who decided to put everything else aside during this short but intense period. They put in their own financial resources and suspended their income earning activities during this period. They were hopeful of getting out the word to the many Oakland folks who had only marginally heard of this giant project.

But they were gratified that when they turned in the huge pile of petitions three weeks later to the city clerk’s office, they appeared to have succeeded. They turned in 25,068 signed petitions—thousands more than was necessary. They waited in the hope that at least 18,700 of those petitions could be verified by the Clerk’s office.

The referendum would have only stopped the project until a vote could be held. At that point, they would have had another full-time task to educate voters on the problems they saw with the project and how the area might be developed to better benefit the City and fulfill the original promise implicit in the Estuary Policy Plan.

Then a shocking thing happened. City Attorney John Russo—the former District 2 city councilman, known as a friend of green initiatives and sunshine laws—called a halt to the count, casuing him to be later described as our own Katherine Harris.

[See “City Attorney Russo ‘invalidates’ Oak-to-Ninth referendum petition” and “Oak to Ninth Referendum Coalition charges ‘serious violations of the City Charter’.”]

According to James Vann (another dedicated member of the steering committee and well-known affordable-housing advocate), Mark Morodomi of Russo’s office met with them holding a copy of the developer’s letter of objections to the petition gathering process. When Vann asked him if he had read what the Council had voted and what the City Clerk had given them as the final documents, he said, “no.” (The City Attorney and the developers claimed that the petitioners had used a draft version of the ordinance which they had received from the City Clerk’s office. The City Attorney believes that the referendum committee should have waited until the City had written the final version of the ordinance to take the petitions to the public. Once again, the committee believes that the final version should have been voted on in the City council meeting.)

Russo later told me that they had found a number of problems with the petition and the gathering process. He said he learned of many of these during the legal “discovery” process and had had no choice but to halt the counting. When I asked why the attorney’s office had not assisted the citizens in filing the “correct” papers, he told me that they had not waited for the final council decision. But therein lies the crux of the disagreement over the process which will eventually be settled in court, as the committee has filed suit against the City for halting the count. The City Attorney says that the City is able to change the final plan after the vote; the committee believes that the plan that was voted on should have been the one that was “noticed” to the public in the City Council packet.

You have probably read many news accounts about the suit since then; but you might not know that the committee members have had to give up living their lives again to be engaged in the developers’ game of day-long depositions and night-long fundraising to fight the deep pockets of the well-connected. Their little citizens’ group is being outspent and outflanked in a way that clichéd Bible stories can only describe. Except that the City and its developers have not got around the law which demands that a band of astonished, irate citizens shall get a hearing of their fair demands.

It’s been 313 days since Russo halted the signature counting and the lawsuits starting piling up, but not one city council member has expressed any interest in the denial of the citizens of Oakland’s demand for redress, their right to hold a referendum and have their signatures be counted. We know over 20,000 Oaklanders were concerned enough over the process to sign a legal document demanding a public vote. Who are our representatives representing?