3. Affordable housing

The proposal calls for the legal minimum for affordable housing in a redevelopment area. The City is subsidizing this housing — this development will use most of the City’s affordable housing money for the next 10 years. We think the developer should be required to pay a fair share of the project’s affordable-housing requirement so that the City’s limited affordable-housing funds can be used elsewhere. In addition, by subsidizing the housing in this project, the City sets a precedent — developers in future developments will expect similar subsidies.

4. School

There is no provision for a school for the children in this area. There could be over 1,000 children in the area when it is fully developed. The public schools serving the area are already overcrowded, and access to them would require children to cross a major access street, railroad tracks and the I-880 freeway.

5. Air quality

The plan calls for housing, including the affordable housing, to be developed adjacent to the I-880 freeway. There is no plan for ventilation and filtration systems that would help protect the residents from respiratory diseases.

6. Traffic relief

The traffic added from 3,100 housing units will strain already crowded roads.

7. Ninth Avenue Terminal

Oakland Heritage Alliance (OHA) has supported a plan to save at least 1/2 of the historic Ninth Avenue Terminal, creating a destination spot, giving the neighborhood a sense of place, and honoring Oakland’s maritime history. The League has supported this plan. The developer maintains that this is not feasible. We feel that they did not do an adequate analysis of the potential uses for this space.

The referendum process

The League along with other groups and individuals testified about deficiencies in Signature’s plan before the City Council, Planning Commission, and the Parks and Recreation Commission. In addition, we submitted formal comments on the Environmental Impact Report. In response, there have been only a few changes to the plan. When approved by the City Council, we felt it still had significant problems, and so joined together as the “Oak to Ninth Referendum Coalition” to gather approximately 18,700 valid signatures from Oakland voters in 30 days to take the decision of the Council to the Oakland voters.

The coalition includes the Northern Alameda County Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters of Oakland, the Green Party of Oakland, the Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM), Piedmont Avenue Neighborhood Improvement League (PANIL), Jack London District Association, East Bay Bicycle Coalition, Fifth Avenue Institute, Pamela Drake, and Oakland Heritage Alliance.

In this referendum, if enough valid signatures are gathered, the City would be required to put the development on hold until they either rescind their vote for the agreement or put the agreement to a vote of the people. Even if sufficient valid signatures have been collected, the referendum would not be in time to qualify for the November ballot, so the City would either have to call a special election, wait for the next scheduled election (June 2008), or rescind their previous approval of Signature’s project. In any of these cases, the development would be on hold.

The campaign collected approximately 25,000 signatures, which were turned in August 17^th. The Registrar of Voters is responsible for validating the signatures within 30 days. We should know by the middle of September whether we qualified the referendum for the ballot or not. In any case, 25,000 Oakland residents cared enough about the Oakland waterfront to sign a petition. We hope that this has a positive impact in some way.

[Editors’ note: There is a letter to the editors responding to this article.]