]
Tom Butt Header E-Forum
 
  E-Mail Forum – 2013  
  < RETURN  
  Richmond Pushes Forward Eminent Domain Plan
December 18, 2013
 
 


After a nearly two-week absence, I cannot say that last night’s City Council meeting was fun. We adjourned at 11:30 PM with a significant number of time-critical consent calendar items remaining, largely because Corky Booze dominated the meeting with incessant ranting and filibustering, spending as much time speaking as the rest of the Council combined.


In an interesting interchange with a Public Forum speaker, Booze asserted that he was insulted when the speaker referred to the Chinese as communists. He said that referring to those great people as such was equivalent to using the n-word. I guess the two sister city visits to China, in which Corky participated, did not include any political information about China.


According to Wikipedia, “The Communist Party of China (CPC), commonly referred to as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Although nominally it exists alongside the United Front, a coalition of governing political parties, the CPC is the only party allowed to govern the PRC. Through this position the CPC maintains a unitary government and a centralized control over the state, military, and media. The legal power of the Communist Party is guaranteed by the national constitution. The current party leader is Xi Jinping, who holds the title of General Secretary of the Central Committee.”
I wonder if Corky understood that most of the officials he hobnobbed with were communists.


Richmond pushes forward eminent domain plan
Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle
Published 11:02 pm, Tuesday, December 17, 2013
 (12-17) 23:00 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- At a crowded meeting Tuesday night, Richmond's City Council voted 4-2 to set up guidelines for its plan to use eminent domain to seize and restructure underwater mortgages to prevent foreclosures.
The move does not mean that Richmond has decided to exert eminent domain; it establishes more structure for how it might do so.
The council agreed to prioritize neighborhoods hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis and clarify that only homeowners who "opt in" and have mortgages below the $729,750 conforming loan limit would qualify. It instructed city staff members to ask banks holding targeted loans to voluntarily cut principal in line with current home values. It reiterated a call to set up a Joint Powers Authority to cooperate with other towns on eminent domain for mortgages. While other cities are exploring the idea, none has committed to it.
"The focus of this program is to stabilize neighborhoods, to fight blight, to keep homeowners in their homes," said Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, an ardent champion of the plan. She was joined by council members Jovanka Beckles, Tom Butt and Jael Myrick in passing the resolution. "This will move us another step forward."
The resolution also said eminent domain for mortgages would only be used in "exceptional circumstances when large numbers of households are underwater," McLaughlin said.
Banks and Realtors oppose the concept, saying it is unconstitutional and would drive up lending costs in the city. They've run a well-financed campaign attacking the plan, and are poised to launch a fierce court battle against it.
About 50 people, mainly supporters of the plan, weighed in during the meeting's public comment period. Audience members clapped, cheered and waved signs such as "Save our homes."
Richmond is the furthest along of any city in exploring the untested idea of using eminent domain to prevent foreclosures. In July it sent letters to banks and other entities seeking to buy 624 underwater mortgages at deep discounts to their face value. The letters threatened to invoke eminent domain to forcibly acquire the home loans, if the offers were spurned - as they have been. Under the plan, the city and its partner, private investment firm Mortgage Resolution Partners, would help homeowners refinance into smaller, more affordable mortgages.
However, the deeply divided council remains one vote short of the five-vote supermajority it needs to invoke its municipal authority of eminent domain. Vice Mayor Courtland "Corky" Boozé, Councilman Jim Rogers and Councilman Nat Bates remain vociferous in their opposition. Bates was absent from Tuesday's meeting, but had a letter read aloud in which he called the plan "ill advised" and said if the council continues to move forward, he will push to bring the idea directly to Richmond voters in 2014.
Rogers and Boozé said they fear the plan opens up the city to potentially crippling legal liabilities. Proponents said Richmond would seek court approval before utilizing eminent domain, which would negate the risk.
It is possible that eminent domain could move forward without a supermajority of the council, city attorney Bruce Goodmiller said. A simple majority vote by the council could create a Joint Powers Authority. That body, which would have a board composed of representatives from Richmond and other cities, could then proceed with eminent domain through its own supermajority vote.
Before the meeting, dozens of supporters held a spirited rally outside City Hall, punctuated by chants such as "We have the power." The group heard talks from local homeowners, union leaders, McLaughlin and Beckles. The rally concluded with an agitprop presentation of "How the Wall Street Grinch Stole our Homes" and a drum-accompanied march to the council chamber.
Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid

 

Want to receive TOM BUTT E-FORUM and other action alerts on Richmond political and community issues delivered to your email address? Email your name and email address and/or the names and email addresses of others who would like to be placed on the mailing list and the message "subscribe" to tom.butt@intres.com. Comments, arguments and corrections are welcome.  Tom Butt is a member of the Richmond City Council   when opinions and views expressed, without other attribution, in TOM BUTT E-FORUM, they are those of Tom Butt and do not reflect official views or positions of the City of Richmond or the Richmond City Council unless otherwise noted. Visit the Tom Butt website for additional information about Tom Butt's activities on the Richmond City Council: http://www.tombutt.com.  Phone 510/236-7435 or 510/237-2084. Subscription to this service is at the personal discretion of the recipient and may be terminated by responding with “unsubscribe.” It may take a few days to remove addresses from the distribution list.

This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

To the extent that content is excerpted under the fair use doctrine from other media, I urge readers to subscribe to the print versions of these media with print versions to help support professional journalism and the businesses that publish news, and I urge readers to log in to the online versions to access additional content, related content and unrelated news as well as the advertisements that support the media. I especially appreciate local sources of news that include the Contra Costa Times , the San Francisco Chronicle, Richmond Confidential and the East Bay Express.

 

 
  < RETURN