City leaders applauded groundbreaking on a new parking garage at the Richmond BART station during a Tuesday morning ceremony.

“I envision people parking cars in clean, safe spots, hopping on BART or Amtrak and saving gas money,” Mayor Gayle McLaughlin told a small crowd. “We in Richmond are focusing on the shift away from fossil fuels.”

The new parking garage is scheduled to be completed by early 2012, and will consist of six levels and 764 parking spaces. Meanwhile, a section of existing parking lot on the west side of the station between 15^th and 16^th streets will close beginning August 16, while parking on the east side of the station will remain open, according to BART’s website.

McLaughlin, who will campaign for re-election this year in part on her green development and transportation agenda, touted the development as part of a larger trend. “We are clearly changing our image here in Richmond,” she said.

Other speakers included Randy Iwasaki, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Agency; Maria Viramontes, councilmember; a representative of Congressman George Miller; Joel Keller, BART board member; and Otheree Christian of the Iron Triangle Neighborhood Council.

Men in hardhats stood waiting for the festivities to end so they could get back to work on the hulking blue equipment, which already sat in the parking lot where the garage will be built.

The project is led by Richmond Community Redevelopment Agency as part of their transit village project at the Richmond BART Station, which first brought mass transit into the city in the early 1970s.

The $25 million project is also funded with money from a variety of city, county, state and federal sources.

The parking structure is envisioned as a replacement for parking spaces on the east side of the BART Station, where a mix of retail, commercial and residential construction will comprise a new Richmond Transit Village, according to BART.

Construction on the parking structure creates about 200 jobs.

Reporting was provided by Rob Gunnison.

Editor’s Note: This story, video and photos were produced by Robert Rogers and Guilherme Kfouri as part of News21, a national journalism initiative led by 12 of America’s leading research universities, including UC Berkeley.

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He was free, again. But Anthony Woods’ days outside the walls would be numbered.

Three months after being imprisoned for missing parole appointments and failing drug tests, a corrections bus scooped him up from San Quentin State Prison and dumped him a few blocks from his mother’s home in Richmond, just off Cutting Boulevard. He looked down as he walked at first, watching one foot step in front of the other. It didn’t take long to slip.

“I remember thinking ‘Don’t look up, just go straight home,’” Woods said. But on the walk from bus stop to mom’s house, he couldn’t elude his long time tormenter: crack cocaine.

“I had a few bucks. It was burning a hole in my pocket,” Woods said. “This is a neighborhood that’s infested.” He shook his head. “I can’t walk two blocks without the opportunity being there.”

Woods has two felonies on his record stemming from an armed robbery in the early 1980s. He’s been on parole ever since. First released in 1986, Woods has been in and out of California prisons at least 17 times according to prison records, mostly for dirty drug tests, missed appointments and “technical violations” of his parole.

Woods is just one of a group – tens of thousands strong – of ex-convicts paroled in California every year. They often face bleak prospects for employment and debilitating drug addictions. About 400 reside in Richmond, a city long plagued by crime.

More than 70 percent of the time, they prove unable to comply with the terms of their parole.

“A lot of our ongoing crime is committed by folks who are recidivists,” said Richmond Police Chief Chris Magnus. “Budget cuts for important programs inside prisons mean that inmates land on our streets often worse off than they were when they went in.”

Last year, more than 66,000 paroled felons in California were returned to custody without being convicted of a crime. The violations that land them back in prison include failing drug tests and missed appointments with parole agents.

Woods has been on parole for more than 20 years.

“They go in, they spend on average about two months, they continue to get released, they’re out about an average of four to six months, they’re back in,” said Joan Petersilia, a law professor at Stanford. “Prisoners on the inside refer to this as ‘doing life on the installment plan.’”

The number of parolees returning the streets is on the rise, thanks to the state’s attempt to reduce prison overcrowding. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitiation (CDCR) is working to reduce its population to comply with a ruling last year by a three-judge federal panel, which decided that overcrowding in state prisons contributes to unconstitutional conditions.

State law SB3×18, which took effect in January, released parolees convicted of non-violent crimes from traditional parole supervision. The new law aims to lower the costs of imprisoning and supervising convicts who pose little threat.

As part of the reform, parole agents are handling reduced caseloads while thousands of gang members and other felons have been put on electronic tracking devices as an alternative to incarceration.

“It’s estimated that about 10,000 people who would have gone to prison last year will not go to prison this year,” Petersilia said.

Meanwhile, those who do go to prison continue to face lengthy sentences, Petersilia said.

Before the mid-1970s, prison sentences were indeterminate, Petersilia said, so inmates could be released earlier than their original sentence if they completed vocational or academic classes in addition to good behavior. Now, sentencing reforms have resulted in “determinant” sentences, Petersilia said, which has resulted in inmates receiving guaranteed release dates, despite cuts in rehabilitation programs leaving them ill-prepared to return to society.

Woods, with his robbery convictions from the early 1980s, still qualifies as a two-striker and as a parolee who could pose a threat. Due to his ongoing “technical violations” and misdemeanors like shoplifting, Woods is still on parole more than two decades after his original crimes.

Recidivism has been a major driver of skyrocketing corrections costs, which gobble up about 11 percent of the state budget, or roughly $8 billion — more than the state spends on higher education. The state spends about $49,500 per year to house each prisoner, Petersilia said.

Stanford professor Joan Petersilia, one of the state's foremost experts on parole.

More than seven in 10 parolees return to prison within three years in California, the nation’s worst rate, according to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office.

“A major part of what determines whether a parolee will be successful or not is employment,” said Theodore Pacheco, a parole agent who has worked specifically with Woods’ case. “We show them the vocational, educational and drug treatment opportunities available to them when they get out.”

Woods says he has no special skills and hasn’t held a steady job since he worked as a grocery clerk in the late 1990s. His lengthy criminal record scares off potential employers, he said.

In July, Pacheco remanded Woods to custody barely a month after his release, claiming that he had missed several appointments and tested positive for drugs. Woods spent more than two weeks in custody, including a trip back to San Quentin State Prison for just a few days, where he said he went through a familiar battery of intake processes.

Stories like Woods’ are a big part of California’s corrections crisis, said Barry Krisberg, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice. “We’re just recycling people over and over and over through this system,” Krisberg said. “And a lot of them for fairly minor offenses, who continue to have drug problems or whatever, and we lock them up for 90 days, which costs a lot of money and does not advance public safety.”

According to CDCR records, of 84,882 paroled felons who were returned to prison last year, 66,261 were returned for violating conditions of their parole, not for committing new crimes.

“This makes no sense,” Petersilia said. “Unfortunately we don’t have the political will to change it because there will be a parolee … now out on parole and they’ll miss an appointment or test positive and we won’t send them back to prison and they’ll murder someone.”

The California Rehabilitation Oversight Board (C-ROB) issued a report in March warning that cuts to already stripped-down educational and vocational programs in state prisons jeopardize efforts to reduce prison populations. “The recent budget cut to inmate programming may well mean that the hope for reduction in recidivism will not be achieved any time soon. Without some reduction in the parole return rate it seems likely that California will be unable to get control of the inmate population crisis,” the report read.

Woods supports his habit by doing odd jobs around the community.

Recidivism wasn’t always an intractable problem. In 1980, only about one of four parolees ended up back in prison, a ratio that has more than doubled. A 2003 report from the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state oversight agency, brought California corrections’ recidivism problem to the fore when it showed that most parolees were returned to prison for technical violations, memorably calling the system a “billion-dollar failure.”

Back in Richmond, Woods has little hope that any reform may affect him. He said he is resigned to a life of cycling in and out of prison. The reason? He has no illusions about ceasing his use of crack cocaine.

“I don’t see how I’ll ever quit,” he said, rolling a small, glass crack pipe between his thumb and forefinger, adding that he wishes he could stop.

Moments later, he’s ambling off to a liquor store on the corner near his mother’s home. Within minutes, he scores $8 worth of crack cocaine – a small bag with two BB-sized rocks pressed into a handshake – some of which he quickly loads into his pipe.

He takes refuge in a nearby park. He squats behind some weathered bleachers, which shelter him from a mild breeze.

He reasons that because he smoked crack on the day of his release, he would already “test dirty” if required by parole to submit urine. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said, lowering the glass pipe into the orange flame of his cigarette lighter. “If they want to send me back, what can I do?”

This story originally published on UC Berkeley’s News21 site.

Despite pleas from the owners and patrons of Richmond’s medical marijuana dispensaries, the city council decided Monday during a special, closed session to continue with court cases aimed at shutting down the city’s pot clubs.

Each of the city’s eight dispensaries have been faced with cease-and-desist orders from city prosecutors, who say that because Richmond doesn’t currently have rules on the books to govern or properly zone pot dispensaries, the shops are operating without permits, and therefore illegally.

The city council passed a first draft of an ordinance last week that will eventually set the framework for legally obtaining a license to sell medical marijuana within city limits; however that likely won’t be finalized until September at the earliest, and wouldn’t go into effect until November or December.

Once the city’s new ordinance takes effect, Richmond will be limited to only three dispensaries. New shops can only be opened in commercially zoned parts of town, and managers and shopkeepers will have to submit to a criminal background check before the city can issue them a marijuana business license. Berkeley and Oakland already have similar limits on medical cannabis shops in place.

Dispensary managers and owners had asked for the council to put off its litigation against them until the new laws go into effect. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin suggested during last week’s last regular council meeting that city prosecutors could ease off the dispensaries until the new marijuana ordinance becomes law. The council’s special meeting Monday was solely devoted to discussing whether to drop the court cases. However it appears McLaughlin didn’t have enough support on the council Monday to officially change the city’s stance.

When reached for comment, Councilman Jim Rogers, who has pushed for stricter oversight of the dispensaries, declined to elaborate on the council’s decision, citing that the conversation took place in closed session.

But the council’s unchanged position came as no surprise to Rebecca Vasquez, the director of the marijuana dispensary Holistic Healing Collective in Point Richmond. “Everybody knew the answer already,” Vasquez said of the special closed-session meeting. “It was a waste of time. [The council] should have just taken their vacation already.”

Vasquez, who came to Richmond from Sacramento to start her shop, said she is shutting down the collective, but plans to re-open elsewhere. “I wouldn’t want to be in this city,” she said. “It’s not good for a business. People told me not to go to Richmond, and that’s what I get for coming here. I thought it would be different.”

The legality of Richmond’s medical marijuana dispensaries has come under fire over the last year or so, as the city witnessed a sudden influx in new pot businesses. Of the eight dispensaries that have been served with the cease-and-desist orders, at least five opened within the last 12 months.

Last December, the city issued a moratorium on new dispensaries. Sometime this spring, dispensary owners say, the city began issuing the cease-and-desist orders, while the council began pondering official regulations on the cash-heavy businesses.

At one point, the council agreed on a draft of a pot ordinance that would allow for an unlimited number of dispensaries in town, with fewer restrictions on where they could operate. However a backlash of opposition to the ordinance—including a widely circulated e-mail from Police Chief Chris Magnus that was critical of the draft ordinance—led to a dramatic revision of the rules, with the three-dispensary cap inserted along with a host of other changes.

The revised draft will undergo a second vote, scheduled for the third week of September, before going into effect. City residents will also vote on a ballot measure this November asking whether the city should impose a 5 percent sales tax on all marijuana sales.

In a meeting that was longer on simmering frustrations than new ideas, about 40 people gathered Wednesday for the first of three planned workshops to discuss alternatives to a controversial plan to build a hotel and Indian casino at Point Molate on Richmond’s northern shoreline.

The meeting was hosted by Design, Community and Environment, a Berkeley-based company that has been hired to gather alternative development ideas for the Point Molate site. The company will ultimately vet and present any feasible ideas to the Richmond City Council, which in turn will have the option of requesting that those ideas be included in an Environmental Impact Review and studied further.

However many of the city residents who gathered for the meeting, which was hosted in the basement of the city council chambers, voiced their disapproval with the criteria by which DCE will judge new ideas, arguing that in addition to fiscal feasibility, new ideas should be assessed on the basis of their environmental credentials and value to the greater public, among others.

“This is a rigged [process],” said Richmond resident Michael Beer, who argued that other developers have been shut out of the bidding process. “You’re just pretending to look at these [new ideas].”

David Early, the president of DCE, stressed that his company, although it is being contracted by Upstream, the developers of the current Point Molate plan, will judge any new ideas on their own merits and without prejudice.

Members of the group Citizens for a Sustainable Point Molate handed out fliers before Wednesday’s meeting that called the workshops “a sham.”

“The timing of these workshops reflects Upstream’s desire to go through the motions of soliciting ‘public input’ on their casino-driven project,” the flier says. “The Environmental Impact Report and Environmental Impact Statement are already under review.”

The first draft of Upstream’s EIR currently includes a preferred project plan – including housing units, an Indian-run casino, hotel and convention center – plus five other options, ranging from a no-casino plan to a plan that would include no construction whatsoever. City Council will not consider a final draft of the EIR until it has received a report on alternative ideas from DCE. That report should be presented sometime in either December or January.

Don Gosney, who previously served on a blue-ribbon committee to study closing the old Navy fuel depot at Point Molate that shuttered in the mid-1990s, said Wednesday that he supports the hotel-and-casino plan currently on the table – a preference that appeared to put him in the minority at Wednesday’s meeting.

“The project has to be an engine for economic progress,” he said. “I like the project that’s being proposed. I don’t see it as the ruination of our world, as so many people here have suggested.”

After Wednesday’s meeting, Early said he had no idea how many ideas his company expects to receive.

“This is a unique project,” he said. “I admire what the city council has done. Even though we’re six years in, they’re not afraid to open up to new ideas and even take steps back. So there are very few precedents.”

Anyone interested in submitting an idea for developing Point Molate can upload a proposal online at www.ci.richmond.ca.us/pointmolate. The deadline for submissions is Sept. 15, which will be preceded by a second public meeting to discuss the ideas Sept. 8.

Starting next July, sewer rates for residents within the Richmond Municipal Sewer District will go up 5 percent annually until July 2014. The rate increase will affect about half of Richmond residents, including more than 16,000 single-family residential units and approximately 2,000 multifamily residential units and 2,000 commercial units.

The rate fees for the Richmond Municipal Sewer District started climbing in 2000 and haven’t stopped ever since. In 2000, the annual fee for a single unit residence was $195. Today it is $506. With the fee increase it will be $633 in the year 2014.

Chad Davisson, city of Richmond’s wastewater manager, said that the city needed to increase the rates because the sewer system is so old. Richmond’s Water Pollution Control Plant at 601 Canal Boulevard was built in 1953 and the pipes are 60 to 90 years old. Much of the city’s infrastructure is at the end of its service life; that’s the cause of sewer spills into the bay, he said.

According Davisson, in 2009 there were 22 spills—a total of nearly 2.2 million gallons. So far in 2010 there have been 36 spills, a total of 12.3 million gallons.

Davisson said that the rate increases since 1999 have been to pay for projects to fix the Richmond Municipal Sewer District plant and the city’s sewer collection system. Since 1999, the city has spent approximately $51 million on different projects related to the upgrade of the collection system, plant or its administration. At least $11 million of that has been spent on plant improvements.

Richmond’s Water Pollution Control Plant at 601 Canal Boulevard was built in 1953. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

The upcoming rate increase, however, will help to fix only the collection system, not the plant, said Davisson. The increase is to pay a $30 million bond to rebuild the infrastructure. The upgrades are mandated as part of a 2006 settlement between the city of Richmond and Baykeeper, a nonprofit environmental watchdog based in San Francisco. In 2006, Baykeeper filed a lawsuit stating that the City of Richmond had been spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the bay every year. The city agreed to reduce spills 90 percent by the year 2014.

Davisson said that having an old collection system that needs to be fixed is a problem that affects many Bay Area cities. “Discovery Bay, San Carlos, Vacaville are raising their sewer rates,” he said, citing a few examples.

Deb Self, the executive director of Baykeeper, agrees with Davisson that many cities have sewage leak problems. (Click here for a Google map that shows the sewage system overflows in the Bay Area.)

In fact, this year, Baykeeper sued Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, Piedmont, and the Stege Sanitary District (which serves Kensington, El Cerrito and part of the Richmond Annex) for illegal sewage spills. The nonprofit alleged that these cities are accountable for leaky sewage collection systems that inundate the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) treatment plant with massive amounts of rainwater and sewage and cause major spills in the bay. While EBMUD is responsible for wastewater treatment, it does not own, and therefore cannot repair, the cities’ collection systems.

Some residents blame Richmond’s recent sewer rate hikes on Veolia, the French multinational that contracted with the city of Richmond to take over the treatment plant in 2002. Two years later the city contracted it to run the collection system as well.

Charles Smith, a retired Richmond resident who worked for EBMUD for 25 years as a wastewater operator, is the Richmond plant’s most outspoken critic. He said that instead of contracting with Veolia, the city should have accepted EBMUD’s proposal eight years ago, which was to close the Richmond plant and build a pipeline—at no extra cost—that would take the sewage to their plant in Oakland. Smith said that if the city had contracted with EBMUD on the first place, then it wouldn’t have to charge residents to fix an obsolete plant.

Before the city approved the rate increase, Smith produced fliers claiming  “Sewer tax hikes mean big profits for Veolia at ratepayers’ expense.”

But Davisson says rate hikes are caused by the need for repairs and have nothing to do with the company’s profits. “Sewer rates increases don’t go in Veolias’s pocket,” he said. According to Davisson, Veolia’s contract with the city is a fixed fee contract and the increased fees go to pay for the projects, not to Veolia.

Davisson said that the city is considering the possibility of working with EBMUD in the future. However, based on a study by Carollo Engineers, building a pipeline from Richmond to the EBMUD plant in Oakland could cost as much as $95 million. That is more expensive than making improvements to the current treatment plant, said Davison.

EBMUD engineer Ben Horenstein, who headed the bidding for EBMUD eight years ago and is now the utility’s manager of wastewater environmental services, said that while the $95 million estimate for EBMUD to build the pipeline “seems fairly high to me,” things have changed since 2002. “I don’t know if EBMUD can replicate the proposal we made 10 years ago about not charging for the pipeline. Those are decisions that will have to be made by our board,” Horenstein said.

Horenstein said that EBMUD would have to do an engineering analysis to see whether they are even able to handle additional flows from Richmond to the EBMUD plant.

Davisson said that many other Bay Area cities are now facing similar problems with outdated infrastructure.  “This is not unique to Richmond,” he said. “The Bay Area is very old and a lot of the communities are dealing with the same issue.”

A week after throwing its support behind a medical marijuana ordinance that many saw as one of the most pot-friendly in the area, Richmond’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to scratch a number of the ordinance’s most controversial clauses. In a separate move, the council agreed to allow city voters to decide on a new pot tax.

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, along with Councilmembers Nat Bates, Jeff Ritterman and Jim Rogers, all reversed course on a number of key aspects of the pot ordinance Tuesday that they had insisted on during their July 20 meeting, agreeing instead to pass a modified ordinance that will cap the number of marijuana dispensaries in town to three, and place new restrictions on how and where such clubs can operate.

“It’s harder to shrink back than to expand [the ordinance],” McLaughlin said Tuesday in defending her about-face, explaining that last week’s first reading of the ordinance was too lax.

In a separate move later in the evening, the council voted to place a November ballot measure before city voters asking whether to charge dispensaries a 5 percent tax on all marijuana sales.

Tuesday’s move to amend the city’s medical marijuana ordinance represents a substantial beefing up of the ordinance’s original rules, which some anticipated would turn Richmond into a regional hub for pot sales.

The version of the medical marijuana ordinance that was originally passed 4-3 by the council July 20 did not place a cap on the number of dispensaries allowed within city limits. It also placed the responsibility for granting medical marijuana business licenses to the city manager’s office, and limited medical pot shops to parts of town designated as commercial zones.

All of those stipulations were amended Tuesday: The Richmond Police Department will now oversee permitting and code enforcement for the three permitted marijuana dispensaries, and marijuana clubs will now only be allowed in C-3 commercial zones like the Hilltop Mall – effectively eliminating a number of current dispensaries from consideration for one of the new licenses.

Additionally, the council made amendments Tuesday that restrict patients to purchasing a maximum of one ounce of marijuana from a dispensary per visit, and stipulated that applicants for a marijuana license be scored on a point system, which has yet to be devised.

“This is a disaster,” said John Clay, who runs Pacific Alternative Health Center, a Point Richmond-based dispensary. “The level of ignorance on the council is staggering.”

Every ordinance the council passes must go through two readings before being enacted into law. While most ordinances are approved on second reading with ease, it appears that an avalanche of public feedback swayed the council into revising the ordinance this time. Because of the breadth of Tuesday’s revisions, the newly approved ordinance will have to go through a second reading, scheduled for the third week of September. The council takes its yearly recess during August.

On his popular e-forum, Councilman Tom Butt earlier this week sent followers a letter to the city council from Police Chief Chris Magnus that asked that the council to reconsider it’s initial plans for the ordinance – particularly handing oversight of the process to the city manager’s office instead of the police. On Tuesday, McLaughlin cited Magnus’ letter as one of the reasons for changing her mind.

In addition to modifying the marijuana ordinance, the council on Tuesday voted unanimously to place a 5 percent tax on all pot sales before city voters this November. Councilman Butt, who wrote the measure, initially called for a 10 percent tax, but backed off that plan. Both Berkeley and Oakland are planning to let voters decide on similar pot taxes: Berkeley’s would tax medical marijuana sales at 2.5 percent, while Oakland’s would charge 5 percent of all marijuana receipts. Both of those cities are proposing a 10 percent tax on marijuana sold for recreational use, effective only if state voters approve Proposition 19 this November and legalize non-medical marijuana use.

Richmond’s ballot measure will contain no such distinction between medical and recreational marijuana use – rather, it taxes all pot sales equally. Marijuana dispensaries currently pay a 9.75 percent state sales tax on marijuana they sell, although most of that money goes to the state, rather than to the city.

Tuesday’s agenda also called for the council to direct city staffers to draft an ordinance that would regulate and tax large-scale marijuana farms in Richmond, similar to a move Oakland gave final approval to Tuesday. The discussion was cut short, however, when Councilwoman Ludmyrna Lopez moved to have city staff simply investigate the matter and report back for a study session in January. That motion passed 5-2, with Councilmembers Bates and Maria Viramontes opposing.

Clay, the Point Richmond dispensary operator, was clearly upset by the council’s decisions Tuesday. “We got our butts kicked,” he said as he left the chambers.

One of the most repeated pleas from the dozens of medical marijuana users and dispensers on hand Tuesday was for the council to halt the legal orders dispensaries are facing to close up shop. All eight of Richmond’s current dispensaries have been ordered to shut down for operating without a business license (which is currently impossible for a dispensary to obtain). Several representatives for the collectives suggested instead that the city agree to allow the dispensaries to stay open until the new ordinance takes effect.

The council ultimately agreed to meet next week, during the August recess, to discuss the matter in a closed-session meeting. The last time it considered the matter, the council voted 4-3 in closed session to continue its litigation against the dispensaries – although if Tuesday was any indication, nothing relating to marijuana is set in stone just yet.

Just one week after passing its first-ever ordinance regulating medical marijuana dispensaries, the City of Richmond on Tuesday will consider joining Oakland at the cutting edge of pot law.

City Councilman Tom Butt, who last week voiced the strongest opposition to the city’s new plan to grant business licenses to medical pot dispensaries, is now proposing the city craft laws to allow, regulate and tax large-scale medical marijuana growers, similar to a controversial move that neighboring Oakland is also considering.

Oakland’s City Council will vote Tuesday night on whether to allow four large growing facilities within city limits — a move that passed a first reading last week.

In addition to regulating and taxing large-scale pot growers, Butt is also recommending that city council agree to place a measure on the November 2 ballot that would set a 10 percent tax rate for medical pot shops. All new taxes must be voted on in an election.

Currently, Oakland taxes marijuana dispensaries 1.8 percent of their gross receipts, although the city may ask voters to consider a pot tax hike this November, as well. Berkeley is also considering a ballot measure that would tax medical pot at a 2.5 percent rate.

The Nov. 2 ballot will also ask state voters to decide on Measure 19, which would legalize recreational marijuana use.

“It looks like this train is not going to stop,” Butt said of the booming medical marijuana industry. “And if that’s true, I want to make sure Richmond gets all the advantages it can out of going down that route — getting as much tax money we can from these operators.

“If we’re going to do this, we ought to do it comprehensively – not just do the part with the most benefit to the dealers,” Butt added.

Ken Estes, founder of the Grandaddy Purp medical marijuana collective, speaks about his dispensary during the July 20 City Council meeting. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

Richmond’s City Council still has to pass a second reading of last week’s ordinance. The new rules allow for an unlimited number of medical pot dispensaries in town, as opposed to the initial plan to allow only three. The ordinance, which passed 4-3, does restrict pot shops to parts of town that are zoned for commercial use, and calls for a 1,500-foot buffer between any dispensary and a high school. Dispensaries must also prove their non-profit status, submit to criminal background checks of their managers, and provide adequate security and bookkeeping records.

New medical marijuana dispensaries are also subject to a public hearing process, in which neighbors have a chance to voice concerns to city staff.

It’s unclear how many large-scale marijuana-growing operations there are in Richmond, although Butt suggested that some do already exist.  Richmond is currently home to eight dispensaries, which are facing civil injunctions for operating without proper business permits. The new ordinance will not do anything to change the status of that litigation; rather, all dispensaries will have to submit to the same application process to acquire a new, proper license.

Councilmembers Nat Bates, Jim Rogers, Jeff Ritterman and Mayor Gayle McLaughlin voted in favor of the ordinance last week, while Butt, Ludmyrna Lopez and Maria Viramontes voted against it.

Should the ordinance pass a second reading, city staff would begin accepting applications for marijuana vendor permits within 30 days.

In his weekly e-mail blast, Butt forwarded his followers a letter sent from Richmond Police Chief Chris Magnus that took issue with several aspects of the new dispensary ordinance; primarily, that the city manager’s office (and not the police department, as Magnus recommends) will handle permit applications. Magnus also warned that dispensaries could prove vulnerable targets for crime, given the amount of marijuana and cash that flows in and out of the shops.

“I believe that as a general governing principle, it is better to start with more stringent regulations of a new business model that has the potential to be problematic — and then determine over time if those regulations should be relaxed or otherwise modified,” Magnus wrote. “It is almost impossible to strengthen lax ordinances and laws or reform already established business practices after problems are identified.”

If the council is unable to pass the ordinance’s second reading Tuesday night, the issue will have to be put on ice for a few weeks. Tuesday marks the council’s last regular meeting before breaking for August recess.

The huge 500-kilowatt solar installation at the Bay Area Beverages building, which you can see while driving west on 580 just before the Canal Boulevard exit, is quickly becoming a landmark. This solar installation, along with 52 others in Richmond, was one of the reasons that the Northern California Solar Energy Association recently gave the city an award for installing more solar watts per capita than any other large city in California.

“I think the category that Richmond won is one of the best metrics to win,” said Adam Lenz, sustainability coordinator for the city of Richmond. “It just shows in an even playing field amongst cities, regardless of size, who is pulling their weight the most by installing renewable energy.”

Adam Lenz (left), City of Richmond Sustainability Coordinator, receives the first place watts per capita award on behalf of the City of Richmond at the Bay Area City/County Solar Award Celebration. Photo courtesy of NorCal Solar Energy Association.

Based on the 2009 Bay Area Solar Installations Report, the Northern California Solar Energy Association, on July 14th awarded prizes to Richmond and other Bay Area cities for their adoption of solar energy. Richmond won two awards in the large city category: first place in watts per capita installed and second place in total watts installed.

The report shows that the Bay Area leads California in new solar installations. Since 2007, with the launch of the California Solar Initiative, a state incentive program, the total number of systems and total megawatts installed have almost doubled and tripled, respectively, for both California and the Bay Area. According to PG&E, since 2007 Richmond has completed 94 solar installations through the California Solar Initiative.

According to the report, although California’s overall rate of photovoltaics installations remains strong, it has declined slightly since 2008, due at least in part to the economic downturn impacting California. Last year, however, the Bay Area showed remarkable growth relative to the rest of California, encompassing 61 percent of the state’s new installations and 55 percent of the total megawatts installed.

Richmond appears as a leading large city in the report with the most watts installed per capita —34.77. For total watts installed between 2008 and 2009 Richmond had increased by 399 percent. Lenz said that he was quite surprised that Richmond won the award. “In general Richmond has not necessarily had the best press when it comes to environmental issues,” he said.

San Jose won first place for total amount of solar watts installed, and Richmond won second place. “That’s amazing because we are not even the largest city in the Bay Area.  There are other cities in the Bay Area that are many times the size of Richmond, yet we, over-installed them in 2009,” said Lenz.

According to PG&E, in Richmond there were six new residential installations in 2007. In 2008 there were 18 residential installations and three non-residential. In 2009 there were 44 residential and 9 non-residential. So far in 2010 there have been 13 residential and 1 non-residential new solar installations.

Most solar installations in the state and Bay Area are residential — 93 percent — and the rest are commercial, government and from nonprofit organizations, according to the 2009 report.

But in Richmond, the large, non-residential installations generate most of the city’s solar power. “Large installations got us to the watts per capita and we got the award,” said Michele McGeoy, the Executive Director of Solar Richmond, a nonprofit that provides solar installation and training. She said that in Berkeley, which was awarded first place for the number of systems per capita, residents probably installed smaller systems.

McGeoy thinks that when businesses choose solar it is because they care about doing something that’s good for the environment. “It’s also is an economic decision because they save money over time,” she said.

The 2009 Bay Area Solar Installations Report listed several reasons for the adoption of solar power in the Bay Area: “solar-friendly utility rates, net metering, ample sun exposure, supportive local, state, and federal government programs and legislation, and a strong environmental ethic.”

For Richmond whether it’s a business, residence or non-profit the incentives include a 30 percent federal tax credit called the Solar Investment Tax Credit. At a state level, the California Solar Initiative rebates 65 cents per watt installed for residential accounts.

Several programs are also available to help those interested in installing solar systems. State-funded programs such as Smart Solar provide free third party technical assistance to Richmond residents and businesses. Rising Sun Energy Center manages two residential energy efficiency programs in Richmond: California Youth Energy Services and Green Energy Training Services. Grid Alternatives provides free and discounted solar installations to low-income families through the Single-family Affordable Solar Homes program, which is funded by the state.

The city of Richmond doesn’t yet provide any incentives, like rebates, for installing solar systems, although it does not charge residents for a permit fee for solar installations.

Solar panels at the Richmond Civic Center roof installed in 2009. Their combined output provides 131 kilowatts of power or about 15% of the Civic Center's electricity. Photo courtesy of the City of Richmond.

The city also supports programs that encourage solar energy use and installation. One of the city programs is RichmondBUILD, a green jobs training academy that started in 2007. Trainees from RichmondBUILD get skills for installing solar through training at a nonprofit/program called Solar Richmond. “Solar installation creates more local jobs,” said Lenz. “We have a history of being a blue collar city and we are transforming into a green collar city.”

Sunlight Electric, LLC, a solar company from San Francisco, hired workers trained at RichmondBUILD and Solar Richmond to install the solar system at the Bay Area Beverages building. Rob Erlichman, CEO of Sunlight Electric, said that his company wanted to support the Richmond community. “What was great about the Richmond Solar Program was that we were able to utilize a pull of solar-trained local people,” Erlichman said.

The city is also making other efforts to generate more renewable energy. Over the last three years, the Richmond Redevelopment Agency installed 24 solar photovoltaic systems on low-income Richmond homes as part of a low-income solar installation program. Last year the city installed solar panels on City Hall and the Richmond Memorial Auditorium. The library also has 75 kilowatts of solar installed.

This summer the city will release a request for proposal to increase solar capacity in city facilities with the goal of eventually providing 50 percent of municipal power from local, renewable energy. “We’re going to use this as an opportunity to increase our solar capacity and stimulate the local economy,” said Lenz. “We have a long way to go but we’ve made some pretty good strides in the last couple years.”

New 2009 Bay Area Solar Installations (BASI) Report Finds Bay Area Leads California in New Solar Growth

Top Large Cities for New Solar Installations (2009)

San Francisco – 1^st place Total Number of New Systems

San Jose – 1^st place Total Watts installed

Berkeley – 1^st place Systems per Capita

Richmond – 1^st place Watts per Capita

Richmond residents will get to vote on whether the City Council should approve a plan to build a casino at Point Molate, City Council decided Tuesday night. Only trouble is, the vote won’t count for anything.

The council voted 4-2 to place an “advisory” ballot measure on the November 2 statewide election ballot, asking Richmond residents whether or not they approve of a plan to build a proposed 4,000-slot Indian casino at Point Molate. An advisory measure does not carry any legal weight – rather, it serves as a public opinion poll of sorts.

The winning advisory measure, written by Councilmember Tom Butt, was approved by councilmembers Nat Bates, Jeff Ritterman, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, and Butt. Councilmembers Maria Viramontes and Jim Rogers voted ‘no,’ and Ludmyrna Lopez abstained.The motion beat out a similar measure proposed by  Viramontes. The language in the two measures was nearly identical, except that Viramontes’ proposal asked whether the city should “approve a project including a casino with shoreline and open space protections at Pt. Molate.” Butt’s proposal did not include any language related to open-space protections.

Members of the City Council listen to arguments for and against a measure to survey public opinion regarding a casino plan during Tuesday's council meeting. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

The casino is part of a larger plan for a $1.2 billion hotel resort at Point Molate being developed by Upstream Point Molate, LLC. The developers are planning to partner with the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians to operate the casino. A 2004 Land Development Agreement between the city and Upstream has been extended six times – most recently extended until April 2011 – to negotiate the terms of the plan.

Jim Levine, the project’s lead developer, sent members of the council a letter on Monday urging them to drop the advisory ballot measure entirely, arguing that voters could not make an informed choice about the plan before its final Environmental Impact Review has been finalized. The EIR is expected to be finished sometime this fall.

“We understand that opponents of the project believe they have a better chance of scoring political points by contesting the project without the facts,” Levine wrote. “Why else would they push for a project vote just ahead of the release of the EIR and prior to the conclusion of the public outreach process?”

Members of the crowd Tuesday voiced overwhelming support for the ballot measure, touting the need for community input in what has become a highly divisive issue in Richmond. John Salmon, a Napa-based executive with Upstream LLC, spoke out against the measure, but found little support from the crowd, several of whom held posters reading “Let us vote.”

Vice Mayor Ritterman said that unless residents vote overwhelmingly in one direction or another on the issue, the measure is unlikely to make much difference to policy. Ritterman, who has stated in the past that he opposes the casino plan, also said that because of the amount of money likely to be spent on advertising for the advisory measure, a vote couldn’t necessarily be considered an accurate poll of residents’ feelings.

“It all depends on how you spin [the results],” Ritterman said. “Those who’ll win will say, ‘Majority rules, so we get our way.’ My feeling is if it’s 50-50, that tells you it’s a big problem for our community – one guys feels one way, and his neighbor feels another. It’s a wedge issue that divides our community, so that’s a vote in favor of not going with [the plan to build the casino].”

In other gambling-related news, on Tuesday the council heard a proposed ordinance that would update the city’s laws relating to bingo games. The new ordinance would remove the current restriction on the number of days per week that bingo halls could host games, and updates laws pertaining to prize money, police presence and alcohol sales. All bingo games in Richmond must be conducted by nonprofit groups and for charity, and the games’ organizers must now submit to a criminal background check in order to host bingo nights.

The issue, benign as it may seem, actually stems from an incident earlier this year in which the city revoked a gaming license from the Marina Bay Bingo Club, an American Legion-sponsored club that purported to raise money for war veterans. The Legion’s post commander, Eddie Welbon, was found to have a criminal history of fraud and money laundering, leading the city to shutter the club. According to its Web site, the Marina Bay Bingo Club is still searching for a new nonprofit group to run its bingo games.

The incident caused considerable embarrassment for the city, which had made a great spectacle of the bingo hall’s grand opening in March.

The revised bingo ordinance should come back before the council for a final vote next week.

Corky Booze (left) and Jackie Thompson pose with a Perennial Purple Tree Collard, the newly minted official "green" of Richmond. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

In other news Tuesday, the council approved plans to double the funding for its popular sewer lateral grant program to $200,000. City residents can apply for a grant up to $30,000 from the city to help pay for repairs to their sewer laterals – the pipes that run under sidewalks to connect individual homes’ sewers to the city-run system.

Council also unanimously passed a resolution to oppose state Proposition 23, which would suspend AB 32, a 2006 state law regulating air-pollution standards, until state unemployment figures drop below 5 percent for an entire year. AB 32, also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act, requires the state to reach 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020. Councilmembers McLaughlin, Ritterman and Butt proposed the council resolution.

In a move that drew a few chuckles, Councilman Butt also proposed a resolution naming the Perennial Purple Tree Collard as the city’s official “green.” Butt pointed to the collard’s nutritional value (it’s rich in calcium, vitamins A, B1, B2, B9 and C), close historical ties to Richmond (it was brought to Richmond from the American South most likely during the city’s WWII-era boom) and toughness as reason enough for the city to adopt it. The plant is currently the “mascot” of Urban Tilth, a non-profit group promoting urban agriculture.

The motion passed unanimously.

Tuesday’s session, which was highlighted by a packed house, lasted until nearly 2 a.m., when council members ran out of gas and voted to postpone the final two agenda items until next week.

The effect of blight on some of Richmond’s poorest neighborhoods can be hard to quantify. Vacant, decrepit and boarded-up homes surely depress home values for entire blocks around them. But the loitering, the squatting, and the drug use — it’s harder to put a number on how that affects a neighborhood.

 But now the City of Richmond says it has a number: Three-quarters of a million dollars. At least that’s how much money, in unpaid fines, the city is levying against the owners of “nuisance properties” in the form of tax liens. The property tax liens, which will be formally served August 6, are for a wide range of complaints, from having overgrown yards or too much trash piling up around the house to leaving property vacant or damaged.

 The liens are meant to serve a dual purpose: To recover city funds spent on sending crews out to do work on blighted homes, and to urge property owners, many of whom are difficult to track down, to take greater responsibility for their lots.

Code Enforcement Manager Tim Higares, pictured here last December at a foreclosed home on Fourth Street, presented City Council last week with a list of property owners that will be receiving a tax lien for past-due fines related to nuisance properties. File photo by Yuanxi Huang.

 Tim Higares, the head of the police department’s Code Enforcement division, which issues the fines, presented the City Council last week with a six-page list of property owners who will be receiving a tax lien beginning next month. The value of the liens ranges from as low as $250 to as high as $60,000. The council approved the list, allowing the city to more aggressively seek repayment for long-overdue nuisance-property fines.

 Higares said most of the unpaid fines are imposed on property owners whose homes are in such bad shape that city workers have had to come out and either work on the house or board it up. Many of the largest fines the city has issued — usually around $30,000 — are the result of $1,000-per-day penalties against homeowners until they fix up their properties. Many of the homes on Higares’ tax-lien list are in the northern tip of the Iron Triangle, bounded by the Richmond Parkway on the west, MacDonald Avenue on the south and the BART tracks to the east.

 The largest fines, however, are often directed at homes that have been repossessed by banks, Higares said. Bank-owned homes in foreclosure — a significant percentage of Richmond’s housing stock — represent some of the city’s most damaged and neglected properties.

 “The banks are the worst property managers I’ve ever encountered,” Higares said. “All we get from them are excuses. The only time we hear from them is when they have somebody who wants to buy the property, and then they’re surprised they have $30,000 in fines.”

 Homes cannot be sold until a property tax lien, or other such fines, have been repaid.

 Richmond’s foreclosure ordinance states that all homes, whether bank- or individually-owned, must be maintained and secured. In some cases, the city requests a warrant to enter a vacant home and will replace the locks, board up windows, and clear trash and debris. That bill gets sent to the property owner — often the bank — but according to Higares, is seldom paid back.

 Patrick Lynch, the director of Richmond’s Housing and Community Development division, agreed that the banks that own notes on homes in town have been a headache for city staff to deal with.

 “The banks have done a tremendous disservice to the local community,” Lynch said. “What do you think [foreclosures] do for the community? Who’s going to pay for the police to go out there, to take off the graffiti, or to board it up? They’ve made a strategic decision not to incur those costs. They push it on our side, to the city, and it means less money for positive activities. And it disproportionately affects cities like Richmond.”

 There are currently 1,426 homes in Richmond in foreclosure or in default, according to RealtyTrac.org, a popular Web site that tracks foreclosure listings — roughly 20 percent of the city’s total homes. Another 604 are up for auction by banks, the final stage of foreclosure.

 The Code Enforcement division fields between 15 and 20 calls per day complaining about blighted homes, Higares said. His office also has 37 officers who patrol the city looking out for illegal dumping, abandoned cars, and other forms of blight.

 “People complain to us about their health and their safety,” Higares said. “There could be high and dry weeds around the house they’re afraid are going to ignite, or in some of these vacant, abandoned properties, there could be squatters, pimps, prostitutes, you name it. So our job is to eliminate blight, and stabilize communities. But because of the economy, it’s becoming quite a challenging task.”

 Lynch pointed out that foreclosed homes work against the city in several ways: In addition to becoming magnets for squatting and drug use, abandoned homes don’t provide the city with tax revenue, and bring down the value of homes nearby, which ultimately means less tax money from those homes, too. Throw in the money it costs the city to maintain or patrol around abandoned properties, and you have a serious drain on the city’s resources.

 “Sometimes we feel we’re just … like we’re just trying to plug the hole in the dam,” Lynch said of dealing with Richmond’s foreclosures. “There’s all this water pushing up behind you, and you’re trying to plug it up with your finger. But at a certain point, you just run out of fingers.”