San Leandro Focus

This message was posted on NextDoor by San Leandro resident Aaron Bukofzer: "This coming Monday, February 5th, the San Leandro City Council will be holding a meeting at which they will be discussing a process for updating and improving the Zoning Code. Many of us from the community believe that we now have an opportunity to close some of the loopholes created by the prior Zoning Code amendments in 2016. We want to make sure that future development is of an appropriate scale that complies with the intent of the 2016 amendments that were enacted with substantial public input. To that end, we've met with with members of the City Council in recent weeks. Also, on Jan 8th, we attended the City Council meeting and raised three issues during the public comments section. Evan Adams spoke about ambiguities in the General Plan that could be interpreted as saying that all P-zoned properties should be consider "Downtown mixed use". Evan pointed out the absurdity of th...

Despite a booming local economy, a $5 million general fund surplus when I left office, and overseeing the Yes on Measure HH campaign that resulted in a $10 million boast in sales tax revenue in fiscal year 2015-16, the City of San Leandro is now running multi-million dollar deficits with no end in sight.  How could this occur? Exploding employee pension costs is the prime reason. Employee salary and benefit costs jumped $7 million from fiscal year 2016-17 to the current fiscal year. Mayor Cutter and City Council needed to continue to make progress on employee pension costs in labor negotiations and didn’t. These photos are from San Leandro Finance Director David Baum’s presentation at the city planning retreat on January 20, 2018.  Here is a link to presentation powerpoint . Here is an article on the San Leandro budget deficit from the San Leandro Times : City Budget Forecast:  In the Red San Leandro Times, February 1, 2018 The City of San L...

This Saturday, January 20th, the San Leandro City Council is holding its annual planning session at the San Leandro Senior Community Center, located at 13909 East 14th Street, from 8:30 a.m. until approximately 2:00 p.m. The meeting will include opportunities for public comments and questions. Why is this meeting important? For two reasons: (1) the City Finance Director provides a multi-year forecast on the city budget and (2) the City Council sets goals and priorities for our local government for the coming year and beyond. If we want to influence what issues our local elected officials should address, Saturday is the time to speak up. In addition, the budget update is extremely important. Neighboring cities have reported that despite rising revenues they expect to run deficits in the coming years due to continuing increases in pension and retiree health care costs. San Leandro has been running a budget surplus the past several years. That all may be about to change...

I sent the following message to the Mayor and City Council today concerning the need for independent appraisal prior to the sale of any City owned properties, including property along the San Leandro shoreline for the proposed Cal Coast development: I see the City Council has several properties under discussion for transfer/sale in closed session agenda today. 3.A. Closed session pursuant to California Government Code section 54956.8: CONFERENCE WITH REAL PROPERTY NEGOTIATORS Property: Alameda County APN 075 0209 001 00 Agency negotiator: Cynthia Battenberg, Community Development Director Negotiating parties: Wells Fargo Bank Under negotiation: Price and Terms of Payment City of San Leandro 3.B. CONFERENCE WITH REAL PROPERTY NEGOTIATORS Properties: Alameda County APNs 079A 0475 009 04, 079A 0590 001 07, 079A 0590 001 05, 079A 0590 003 00, 079A 0590 002 00, 079A 0590 004 00, 080G 0900 004 01 Agency negotiator: Cynthia Battenberg, Community Development Director...