All Out-Speak Out Against Privatization Of Laney College By New A's Stadium

A's Billionaire Owner, CharterPrivatizer and Union Buster John Fisher Wants Laney College Land And His Supporters Using Financial Crisis To Push Sale And Privatization

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/SF-police-union-wants-a-city-vote-on-Tasers-for-12390285.php

Peralta problems: The Peralta Community College District, which owns the land in Oakland where the A’s want to build their new ballpark, is facing some tough financial times.

The district’s financial reserves have shrunk by more than $12.7 million since 2015, leaving it with only $7.7 million in savings. That amounts to 5 percent of Peralta’s operating budget, the bare minimum of what the state considers prudent for community colleges.

Peralta Chancellor Jowel Laguerre blamed the situation on rising pension and medical insurance costs and $5 million in uncollected student fees.

The Peralta Federation of Teachers, however, said it was “deeply skeptical” of that explanation. The union lays part of the blame on “administrative overspending and feckless budgeting.” It points to district records showing that central office spending for the four-college district jumped $8.8 million after Laguerre became chancellor in July 2015, to $57.5 million.

Privately, teachers have told us they they fear that the school’s need for money could propel the Peralta Board of Trustees into a lease deal with the A’s, who want to build their ballpark next to Laney College. The team is promising to help the district generate revenue for repairs at Laney and other campus improvements.

Both the union and Associated Students of Laney College recently voted against the district entering into a deal with the A’s.

Last month, Laguerre approved a $25,000 contract for union heavyweight and former Oakland Deputy Mayor Sharon Cornu to help the district weigh the pluses and minuses of a stadium deal.

Laguerre and Peralta board President Julina Bonilla were attending a retreat Tuesday on the budget and other issues, and could not be reached for comment.

12/12 All Out-Speak Out Against Privatization Of Laney College and the Attack On Public Education In The Bay Area and California
ALL OUT to Demand An End To Privatization/Corporatization of Education

Tuesday December 12, 2017 6PM
Peralta Community College Board Office
333 E. 8th St.
Oakland, CA

Peralta Community College District in Oakland, California
On December 12, the Peralta Board of Trustees will be discussing their decision to cancel negotiations with the John Fisher and the A’s who wanted to privatize land at Laney College for a new stadium and more gentrification in Oakland. Laney faculty, staff and community members will be speaking out about the need not only to fight privatization but to fully fund Laney and the Peralta District Community Colleges. The trustees were faced with a mass protest being organized by the Peralta Federation of Teachers and Community opponents of the sale of Laney land to the A’s owned by billionaire John Fisher who also owns and runs KIPP and Rocketship Charter Schools.
They are inviting supporters of the fight against privatization to also speak out as well.

A's Ballpark Plans Left in Limbo After Peralta Site Falls Through “It’s Not The A’s College"

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/As-Ballpark-Plans-Left-in-Limbo-After-Peralta-Site-Falls-Through-462349983.html

By Joe Stiglich and Robert Handa

The Oakland A’s expressed shock Wednesday morning after their plans to build a new ballpark near downtown Oakland were dashed.
The governing board of the Peralta Community College District, which owns the land near Laney College where the A’s wanted to build, voted in a closed-session meeting Tuesday to stop talks with the team.
New Wildfire Hobbles Major LA Freeway, Threatens Famed Getty Center
“We are shocked by Peralta’s decision to not move forward,” a team statement said. “All we wanted to do was enter into a conversation about how to make this work for all of Oakland, Laney, and the Peralta Community College District. We are disappointed that we will not have that opportunity.”

A coalition of students, faculty and community members from Laney College confront Chancellor Jowel Laguerre on Wednesday. (Dec. 6, 2017)
Photo credit: NBC Bay Area

A coalition made up of students, faculty and community members marched on the district office Wednesday and demanded a meeting with the district chancellor. Chancellor Jowel Laguerre responded, saying the district wanted to step back and evaluate options with the community.
"Why don’t we bring everything together, all of our assets, and compile our assets and our needs and then reach out to potential partners," Laguerre said. "Whatever we do in the future, we are going to make with our internal communities."
When asked if the district was planning to sell the land to a private corporation at any point in the next 10 years, Laguerre said no.
The new development leaves the long-term future of the franchise up in the air, with the A’s seemingly left to search out other locations to build in Oakland if they go that route at all. They are currently on a 10-year lease to play at the Coliseum that runs through the 2025 season.
On Sept. 12, the team announced the Peralta site as their choice on which to build their new ballpark, news that was more than a decade in the making as the A’s were forced to scrap plans for a stadium in both Fremont and San Jose over the years. Just two weeks ago, the A’s announced the hiring of a design team for the ballpark and the surrounding “ballpark village” they planned to build. Their plan was to begin building in 2021 with the idea of moving into the new stadium for the start of the 2023 season.
They chose the Peralta site — located across the street from Laney and just off of Interstate 880 — over two others in Oakland, Howard Terminal and the current Coliseum site. But from the get-go, their decision faced steep opposition.
Faculty and student groups at Laney raised concerns about how the ballpark, and the traffic it would bring to the area, would affect the student population. Community groups were worried about the possible displacement of local businesses and residents, including the nearby Chinatown district. Environmental groups raised concerns about how construction of a ballpark would impact wildlife in the nearby estuary.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf openly preferred the Howard Terminal location, a waterfront site at the Port of Oakland, though that site presented its own well-documented road blocks to completing a ballpark project.
What’s the A’s next step? That’s the big question. The logical speculation is whether they revisit as an option the Coliseum site, which they have called home since moving to Oakland in 1968. It always has represented the easiest, and some would argue, the best location on which to build anywhere in the city. Environmental impact reports already have been completed at the Coliseum, and there’s terrific BART and freeway access.
The downside, in the A’s point of view, is that the Coliseum doesn’t offer the vibrancy of an urban area that team president Dave Kaval craves for a location to build.

A’s, Laney College stadium site faced long odds from the start-Billionaire Charter Union Buster Privatizer & A's Owner Fisher Wants To Land To Sell Team For Profit

A’s, Laney College stadium site faced long odds from the start

http://www.sfgate.com/sports/ostler/article/A-s-Laney-College-stadium-site-faced-long-odds-12411534.php
By Scott Ostler Updated 6:51 pm, Wednesday, December 6, 2017


Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle
Buy PhotoCars on Interstate 880 drive past the Peralta Colleges headquarters on Friday, Nov. 10, 2017, in Oakland, Calif. The Oakland A's are proposing a new stadium at the Peralta Community College District headquarters near Laney College.













The Howard Terminal site, near Jack London Square? The one preferred by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf? Bad climate, access problems, and deep-pockets opposition from the owner of a nearby steel yard.
The most important thing is that Laney is kaput for now. The A’s talked about opening there in 2023, but that estimate was laughable from the start in light of the hurdles.
Squeezing a ballpark into those 15 acres would have been like Shaquille O’Neal shoehorning his feet into Schaaf’s shoes
“It’s just inappropriate to put (an A’s ballpark) in that neighborhood,” said a source with experience in Oakland’s stadium politics who requested anonymity because of concerns over future business dealings in that realm. “It’s not comparable to what the Giants did. That was essentially an industrial neighborhood they went to. There were no neighbors, except rats, and no freeway-ramp changes needed.”
The Laney site would have had to overcome strong neighborhood objections to traffic, noise, gentrification, light pollution, and having a colossal crowd magnet dropped into that quaint corner of the city. Lawyers were lining up to represent the residents.
Still, the A’s issued a statement Wednesday following the announcement that the college district’s board of trustees had ordered the end of ballpark discussions.
“We are shocked by Peralta’s decision to not move forward,” the statement said. “All we wanted to do was enter into a conversation about how to make this work for all of Oakland, Laney, & the Peralta Community College District. We are disappointed that we will not have that opportunity.”
The team declined further comment.

Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle
Buildings line the Peralta Community College District offices, one of the sites under consideration for a new Oakland Athletics stadium, on Sunday, May 28, 2017, in Oakland, Calif.
The 2023 timeline was absurd. The environmental-impact studies alone, one expert told me, would have taken three to seven years to complete.
In past interviews with The Chronicle, A’s officials have disputed the timeline and whether or not freeway changes would be necessary.
“You know how the funding (for freeway projects) works, right?” the source said. “The state puts up so much, the feds put up so much. Matching funds. There has to be an appropriations bill, it has to be authorized, signed. In this political climate in Washington, that’s not going to be easy.”
At the Coliseum, new development might require freeway-ramp upgrades, but Caltrans already owns that land and has all the work permits, no further environmental-impact reports required. Much easier, much cheaper.
What’s wrong with the Coliseum? With the Third and Oak site?
The latter was shot down by Wolff when he was the team’s ballpark-finder.
Wolff, who wanted to move the team to San Jose, eventually was pushed out as minority owner, in part or whole because he persuaded Fisher to tacitly back San Jose’s lawsuit against MLB for blocking the A’s move there, a suit that threatened MLB’s precious antitrust exemption.
That lawsuit might have played a major factor in MLB and angry team owners phasing out the A’s annual revenue-sharing windfall of $30 million or so over four years. That tidy annual payday was pure gold for Fisher, and with that dwindling, he might be motivated to sell the team.
I believe that Fisher is trying to get a stadium plan locked into place in order to make the team more attractive to sell.
The A’s also declined to comment on a possible sale of the team.There is no evidence that the reclusive Fisher ever had an interest in the A’s as anything but a cash cow. With the team solidly in the black every year, the A’s payroll has ranked near the bottom of baseball for years, leading to a constant roster turnover and, for the past three seasons, last-place finishes. Meanwhile, the team goes up in value because it’s a Major League Baseball franchise.
If Fisher decides to sell, there would be no shortage of prospective buyers, assuming a semi-sane asking price. Warriors owner Joe Lacob has expressed interest in buying the A’s and keeping them in Oakland. Another name sure to pop up is Larry Ellison, who struck out in his attempt to buy the Warriors.
Now that the Laney fantasyland ballpark has collided with reality, maybe Fisher’s crew will focus on a site that has a chance.
Transferring the A’s to another city is not a realistic option. Oakland, considered a city on the upswing, is home to the A’s and will remain home.
Exactly what neighborhood the team will wind up in, and who will own the A’s, those are the big questions now.
Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler [at] sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler

A’s thought they had a deal. They didn’t reckon on Laney’s faculty union
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-s-thought-they-had-a-deal-They-didn-t-12411544.php
By Matier & RossDecember 6, 2017 Updated: December 6, 2017 9:28pm
Photo: Michael Macor, The ChronicleStudents and faculty members of Laney College join with community activists, and nearby resident Katy Bell, (right) on Wednesday as they march to the Peralta Community College District offices to demand a meeting with Chancellor Jowel Laguerre over the A’s ballpark plan.
The Oakland A’s had 6 million reasons to think their stadium deal near Laney College was going forward.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that officials of the Peralta Community College District told the team that $6 million was their price for kick-starting the planning process for putting a 35,000-seat ballpark on district land.


The A’s said OK — and then found out that when it came to the elected Peralta board, the ones with the real clout were faculty members. And they were loudly opposed to a stadium next door to Laney.

Team officials said they were shocked when the Peralta board declared Wednesday that it didn’t want Chancellor Jowel Laguerre moving forward with ballpark talks. The A’s don’t have a backup plan — the team concluded in the course of a year and a half of considering various sites that the 15-acre parcel owned by Peralta was the only place in Oakland where a privately financed ballpark could work.

With the Warriors heading across the bay and the Raiders across the Nevada state line, there’s pressure on Mayor Libby Schaaf not to let the A’s leave. But although she said Wednesday she was “more determined than ever” to help the A’s find a suitable ballpark site, she’s made it clear she won’t support using public money to do it.

From the get-go, in fact, the Peralta plan got a cool reception from both City Hall and the community college district.

Schaaf preferred that the A’s move to Howard Terminal near Jack London Square, a site the team thinks has numerous accessibility and other problems. She said she was generally supportive of the Laney College site, but that it was up to the A’s to convince Peralta’s leadership and mistrustful community stakeholders that it could work.


The City Council was no more enthusiastic. Some members said the A’s should build a ballpark at the Coliseum site. Others stayed neutral.

Even Peralta’s Laguerre, just two years on the job as chancellor and facing criticism from faculty and staff over his handling of district finances, was skittish from the start. Soon after the A’s approached him over the summer, he told us he was “personally praying” for the team to choose a different site.

“I’m afraid of the aggravation we may create for ourselves and then nothing happens,” Laguerre said.

But over time, he and his board signaled they were open to to pursuing more serious talks. And once the team announced in September that it had settled on the Laney site, the chancellor approved a $25,000 contract for union heavyweight and former Oakland Deputy Mayor Sharon Cornu to help the district weigh the pluses and minuses of a stadium land sale.

Two weeks ago, Peralta officials laid out their terms for going ahead — privately demanding that the A’s put up $6 million to cover the college district’s costs to negotiate a potential deal over the next two years. Those expenses included hiring consultants, conducting studies and doing public outreach.

A’s officials, we’re told, were taken aback by the size of the request — but also knew they had little option but to play ball. Just days ago, they responded to Laguerre and the board, agreeing to the $6 million but also laying out conditions for how the money would be spent. They included routine audits and regular meetings with the Peralta board to discuss the progress of talks.


The A’s thought everything was on track for the board’s approval of negotiations at its regular meeting next week. But with just 24 hours’ notice, Laguerre convened a closed-session board meeting Tuesday night to go over the A’s terms. When it broke up, the deal was off.

As board President Julina Bonilla explained Wednesday, a ballpark deal didn’t fit in with the district’s mission, “which is to be completely focused on our educational needs for our students and our community.”

Board member Nicky Gonzalez Yuen gave three reasons: “As a district it was really out of our scope. We didn’t have the capacity to study this carefully. Two, the likelihood of it resulting in anything that would benefit Peralta was very minimal. ... And, three, there were so many outstanding questions about the impacts on the local community.”

But behind it all was the potent opposition that had mobilized against the ballpark from faculty and staff at Laney. There’s little doubt that was on the minds of the seven board members, especially three who are up for re-election next year.

Jennifer Shanoski, president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers Local 1603, said she’s convinced that “the faculty union coming out against the stadium with an overwhelming anti-stadium vote” helped turn the tide with the board.

In the end, what the A’s were dangling in front of the Laney community — revenue from a new housing and commercial space on what is now a college parking lot, possible career opportunities for Laney students — didn’t outweigh faculty concerns about stadium noise and disruption, both during construction and once games were being played.


The faculty also sided with those who feared a new ballpark would set off a gentrification wave. Shanoski foresaw “speculators buying up land and displacing both nearby residents and residents of Chinatown, where rents are already sky-high.”

Laguerre insisted campus opposition had little to do with the decision. But he noted that a Peralta advisory group he co-chairs — and which includes the Academic Senate president — gave the college trustees a set of guidelines the other day for considering developments.

We’re told it was heavy on the district’s academic mission — not on the potential for mega-deals with pro sports teams.

“That really forced us to step back, and think whether this (ballpark deal) will serve us well,” Laguerre said.

No Stadium at Laney- Join Us Tuesday to Celebrate and Continue Saying No Stadium at Laney!
No Stadium at Laney
Date: Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 4:13 PM
Join Us Tuesday to Celebrate and Continue Saying No Stadium at Laney!



Thank YOU for defending Laney, Chinatown, and Eastlake!
Our victory on Wednesday could not have happened without you. Our overwhelming opposition to the stadium mega-development pushed the Peralta Board of Trustees to stop the deal from moving forward. It's a true testament to our organizing and our power to determine our communities' future.

Join us next Tuesday, December 12, for a community celebration. We will be celebrating outside with food, student and family friendly activities and say "THANK YOU" to the Board of Trustees for standing with us to ensure Laney, Chinatown, and Eastlake are places where working class people of color can thrive.

We especially want to recognize Laney students, faculty and staff who worked so tirelessly to defend public education, Chinatown and Eastlake community members who kept the pressure on to protect immigrant and refugee communities from intensifying displacement, environmentalists and bird watchers who are making Lake Merritt a sanctuary for ALL living creatures to enjoy and thrive for generations to come, and Indigenous communities who have always defended this land against corporate greed.

Join the Celebration!

Watch Thao and Amado's Story, What's yours?
As we celebrate at next Tuesday's Board of Trustees Meeting, we are also celebrating our lives and why this fight to say No Stadium At Laney was so critical. A's or not, ANY privatization of public education and public land will NOT be acceptable.


Join Us in Thanking the Board of Trustees
Send an email to the Peralta Board to say thank you for making the right decision and encourage them to ensure that this public land is used for public good.