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The Livermore City Council voted last week to rescind a 2022 resolution authorizing the execution of an amended and restated the disposition, development and loan agreement with Eden Housing, Inc. that included language to allow the construction of and improvements to Veterans Park.
The public park was set to be built as part of the 130-unit affordable housing project planned for downtown Livermore at the southeast corner of Railroad Avenue and L Street. However, a referendum petition filed by opponents of the project, Move Eden Housing (MEH), challenged the DDLA that approved construction and improvements to the park, among other project provisions.
Members of MEH – most of whom are also affiliated with Save Livermore Downtown, which also attempted to get the project overturned – have been advocating for the Eden Housing development to be moved to a different, undetermined location and for a community park to be built on the current project site instead.
The council’s decision to rescind the approval of the DDLA will delay the park for one year, but the members of the dais reiterated a number of times during the June 24 meeting that the park’s setback does not impact the ability for the housing to move forward.
MEH’s referendum petition initially sought to overturn the DDLA in its entirety, which included a number of other modifications and additions to further facilitate the development process of the housing project; however, the issue landed in court after the city refused to process the group’s petition because the city deemed the council’s action approving the DDLA as administrative, not legislative, and therefore not eligible for a challenge by referendum.
MEH’s lawsuit against the city for not processing its petition was rejected in trial court, which led to an appeal. The appellate court determined that the approved actions in the DDLA related to Veterans Park were in fact referendable and therefore the referendum petition should be processed. The court did not find that the other provisions in the DDLA related to the housing component were referendable.
The appellate court’s findings left the city with a difficult decision to either rescind the DDLA altogether to avoid an election or move forward with bringing it to voters this November.
In a 4-1 vote, the council decided to rescind the DDLA. Councilmember Ben Barrientos was the lone dissenter.
Barrientos said in his comments during deliberations that his preference would be to place the referendum on the ballot. He noted that he was one of the people who collected signatures for the referendum petition prior to joining the council and that he would like to see it go before voters. “I think it’s simple. Let the people vote,” he said.
Mayor John Marchand, Vice Mayor Bob Carling and councilmembers Brittni Kiick and Evan Branning all shared comments in favor of supporting the staff recommendation and moving the housing forward without further delay.
Marchand and Branning both also addressed in their comments that there are project opponents who simply don’t want low-income residents living downtown for discriminatory reasons.
“When you say ‘build it elsewhere’ you’re saying ‘don’t build it — we don’t want housing downtown. We do not want our neighbors there. We want a space reserved for the wealthy, reserved only for those privileged enough to already own a home in Livermore, they can come downtown,'” Branning said. “But my students, they’re not welcome. Your restaurant workers are not welcome. The people who are providing the services that keep this city running, they’re not welcome downtown. It’s only those who are already here and that angers me,” he added before imploring MEH to “end this” and allow Livermore to become a more welcoming community.
The mayor echoed similar sentiments.
“It’s funny, one of the people that spoke tonight actually said to me that, ‘I don’t want to run into low-income people when I’m in the downtown.’ It took my breath away,” Marchand said before repeating the statement. “So in other words, it’s alright for them to serve you your food in a restaurant, it’s alright for them to teach your children in the classroom but when the sun goes down, they need to leave town. Well, Livermore is not a sundown town. We are not,” he added.
In an effort to keep the other provisions of the agreement related to the housing in tact, the council also adopted a new companion resolution to ratify, reaffirm and readopt the terms and conditions in the amended and restated DDLA with Eden Housing, Inc., other than for construction of and improvements to Veterans Park, and to acknowledge that the agreement remains in effect as of the date it was signed.
The vote took place after a roughly two-hour discussion that included 36 public speakers, majority of which spoke in favor of the entire project – housing units and park – moving forward as planned. The council said it also received over 50 emails ahead of the meeting from citizens expressing their opinions.
Attorney for MEH, Michelle Cornell-Davis of Latham & Watkins LLP, spoke on behalf of the group. In her comments, she criticized the city’s interpretation of the appellate court’s ruling, saying that the staff and city attorney were misreading the court opinion and attempting to separate the park from the housing when the two components “should not run on two separate tracks.”
She and roughly a dozen other speakers urged the council to either bring the referendum to voters or repeal the entire DDLA without the companion resolution.
While the council’s action last week ultimately means the DDLA is not headed to the general election ballot this year, Eden Housing President Linda Mandolini told Livermore Vine after the meeting that the project opponents could present additional obstacles to the housing being developed.
“I think the challenge we face now is that the proponents of the ballot initiative insist that the whole project should go to the voters and it’s very clear in California law that administrative acts are not referendable and I think that’s really going to be the debate that we engage in, probably back in court,” Mandolini said.
She added, “I appreciate that the council moved this forward, I appreciate that they did what the appeals court asked them to, which was to rescind the act that they took in ’22 and they replaced and reaffirmed the housing acts which were not referendable and hopefully we’ll get to move the project forward. But the opponents here have been clearly persistent and very deep-pocketed.”
Mandolini noted that the back-and-forth lawsuits and court hearings appear to be part of an underlying goal of the opponents to kill the project by delaying it and jeopardizing its funding. “It’s a real strategy and clearly they have the money to invest,” she said.
