Mayor Thao Blames Oakland A’s For Howard Terminal Infrastructure Cost / Subsidy That City Calculated – Vlog

Mayor Thao Blames Oakland A’s For Howard Terminal Infrastructure Cost / Subsidy That City Calculated – Vlog

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YouTube video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-QEKquXFug

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Mayor Thao Blames Oakland A’s For Howard Terminal Infrastructure Cost / Subsidy That City Calculated

. A vlog by the YouTube channel named in the video’s upper left corner and serves as the original blog post for this content.

Mayor Thao Blames Oakland A’s For Howard Terminal Infrastructure Cost / Subsidy That City Calculated

Well, here we go again with Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s latest version of “Blame the A’s and John Fisher for something that The City of Oakland was supposed to do”. This time, Mayor Thao was caught red-handed by this vlogger after reviewing tweets shared by NBC Bay Area’s Raj Mathai.

Here’s the text of the one Raj posted 14 hours ago:

Actually, what Mayor Thao said is not only not true, it’s a complete misrepresentation of what the City of Oakland actually wrote in the July 1, 2021 Report by Oakland City Interim Assistant Administrator Betsy Lake and for Oakland City Administrator Ed Reiskin that was presented to the Oakland City Council (that Mayor Thao herself sat on when she was District 4 Oakland Councilmember representing Oakland Hills / Montclair).

Oakland Interim CAO Lake’s July 1st 2021 Oakland City Council Agenda Report Key Document

That document, which this vlogger saved on file on the online file-sharing platform Scribd, was presented as a Oakland City Council “Agenda Report” and was the result of a “Study Session on the Waterfront Ballpark District at Howard Terminal” for July 7th, and can be found today at this link, where one must scroll down to see it: https://ift.tt/6Ezfxgm, or go directly to this link: https://ift.tt/1dBtZxH

The Agenda Report starts with a recommendation that:

Staff Recommends That The City Council Conduct A Study Session And Receive An Informational Report As Follows: (A) Conduct A Study Session On The Proposed Non- Binding Terms Of A Development Agreement With The Athletics Investment Group LLC D/B/A The Oakland Athletics, A California Limited Liability Company, Including Terms For, But Not Limited To, A Potential Infrastructure Financing District, Affordable Housing, And Non-Relocation, Relating To The Proposed Project; And (B) Receive An Informational Report On The Proposed Oakland Waterfront Ballpark District Project To Be Developed On The Property Known As The Howard Terminal At The Port Of Oakland (Project), Including But Not Limited To The Following: (1) Port Of Oakland’s And City’s Project Decision Responsibilities, Including The City-Port Regulatory Framework; (2) Project Approvals And Timelines; (3) Community Benefits; (4) Analysis Of Environmental Toxic Contaminants At Project Site And Anticipated Remediation Process; And (5) Potential Impacts To Nearby Maritime Industry And Port-Related And Non-Port Related Jobs.

https://cao-94612.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/07.07.21-CEDC-21-0515-Howard-Terminal-Waterfront-Project-REPORT.pdf

In other words, what you’re about to see was to be part of the never-written final development agreement.

If you go there, or just watch this livestream, you will see that the document was dated, stamped, and signed for approval by City Administrator Reiskin.

Now, if you scroll down to page 8, the sub-heading reads “IFD – Staff Recommendation”. That’s significant because the City of Oakland’s Betsy Lake used the previous section called “IFD – Oakland A’s Proposal” blasting the A’s idea of an off-site (not on Howard Terminal land) EIFD (Ms. Lake consistently uses the wrong term and calls it an IFD, when California law allows for an EIFD, because it includes tax increment financing. She summarizes that “recurring net General Fund revenue would be reduced “ if a second EIFD were established. (Obviously, Ms. Lake never heard of something the Oakland Redevelopment Agency was an expert in, and called “pass-through” tax money arrangements to the Oakland General Fund, from a tax increment financing zone.) But that gets us to Ms. Lake’s “IFD – Staff Recommendation”.

Betsy wrote:

“Development of the Howard Terminal site requires significant investment in infrastructure, both on- and off-site, as shown in Table 2, below:” Then, Ms. Lake presented a table that looked like this:

Onsite Infrastructure: $194,400,000
Grade Separated Crossings: $147,100,000
Offsite Transportation Improvements: $138,600,000
Bay Trail Extension &Parks (18.3 acres): $132,600,000
Total Infrastructure and Open Space Costs: $612,700,000

So, the July 1st report explained that the Howard Terminal Infrastructure Costs were $612,700,000. While Mayor Thao said “$611 million” (and I think she was fed that information by someone who listened to me, and then said “Zennie said $611 million” because that number is close, but not the actual City of Oakland estimate. Why would Sheng utter my number and not the City of Oakland’s $612,700,000 actual estimate?

One thing’s for sure: it did not come from the A’s.  It’s also clear that Mayor Thao didn’t know the information about Howard Terminal, either.

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Zennie62Blog.com : this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a YouTube channel. When the video is “liked” by Zennie62 YouTube, then it is automatically uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Zennie62Blog.com site and Zennie62-created and owned social media pages. The overall objective here, on top of our is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours – is the use of the existing YouTube social graph on any subject in the World. Now, news is reported with a smartphone and also by promoting current content on YouTube: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary, or having a camera crew to shoot what is already on YouTube. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.

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