Con Game
By Matt Artz
Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 8:59 am in Uncategorized.
I forgot to mention the only juicy thing at Tuesday’s council meeting: Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman going off on Union City Mayor Mark Green.
Usually it’s the other way around.
Green is perpetually annoyed with Wasserman and Fremont for opposing Green’s prized, but underfunded, Dumbarton Rail project. If it’s ever built, it would establish a rail link over the Bay from Union City to Redwood City, and secure Union City’s BART station as a Bay Area transit hub.
Wasserman never misses a chance to call it a huge waste of money. He only has eyes for extending BART to San Jose, which, to be fair, several regional transit planners also think is a big waste of money.
Anyway, Green apparently wasn’t happy that the latest countywide long-term transportation plan has designated $160 million for BART to Warm Springs ($60 million of which is part of Fremont’s share of the state funds) and nothing for Dumbarton Rail. The previous plan, which is updated every four years, had $14.8 million for Dumbarton, and Green didn’t want that cut even if the project remains on hold the designation turns out to be purely symbolic, Councilmember Bob Wieckowski reported to the council.
So a deal was reached in which Union City and Newark designated $4.4 million of their funds to the project, which will run through both cities, and BART, AC Transit and Fremont designated the rest of the $14.8 million. It essentially meant that road improvement projects at Auto Mall Parkway and Mission San Jose would be designated to get $9 million instead of $10 million in the long-term plan, Wieckowski said.
Wasserman wasn’t having it.
“This is another con game by Mark Green,” the mayor said. “This has gone on and on and on. Now he’s conned you (Wieckowski) out of $10 million.
Wieckowski responded that it was just $2 million, and that it was merely a symbolic gesture since the long-term funding plan is revised every four years.
Wasserman replied: “It’s not a symbolic gesture when you give away money.”
When Wieckowski also said that Green had called the meeting hastily, so he didn’t have time to discuss it beforehand, Wasserman replied, “That’s the way he does it; That’s the way he does it.”
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February 29th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
No surprise Newark put up money for the Dumbarton Rail Project. The city wants a train station in Area 2, a vacant former industrial parcel west of Willow Street. To get funding for a station, Newark must show 2,200 dwelling units within a half mile radius of the proposed station. Currently the city has just a bit over 700 units; making it about 1,500 units short.
A Jan 30 meeting on Area 2 showed two almost identical proposals for residential with mostly high density. Residents attending the meeting voted down the proposals citing traffic, school overcrowding and quality of life concerns. Neither Terrence Grindall nor the consultants hired by the city knew anything about adjacent Cargill bittern ponds nor the Plummer Creek mitigation site. Drawing of the proposals showed housing right up to the levee margins.
You can expect the city to misrepresent itself in the train station application for funding by stating that the public has approved a 1,500 housing development for Area 2. It’s The Newark Way
March 1st, 2008 at 8:32 am
Mayor Wasserman and the rest of the Council folded there tents and gave Mayor Green his wish. To dump Union City Bart traffic into Fremont at Paseo Padre (Hwy 84, option 2).
The obvious route was widening Docoto Road, but Mayor Green did not want that. So, why did Fremont get stuck with the traffic, politics?