Tag: Martinez City Council

It’s been ten years since that DAM meeting!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, In the News, Who's saving beavers now? November 7, 2017

beaversary Ten years ago today there was no Worth A Dam, no website, and no beaver community. There were only a bunch of citizens who thought it was a bad idea for their city to kill their beavers and showed up at a meeting to tell them so. This short clip of the UK documentary Beavers Las Vegas, produced by the independent film company Middle Child Productions, shows only the barest HINT of how many passionate and persuasive comments occurred. The clip I put together isn’t very long, but you should definitely watch all the way to the end to understand why it was so successful in changing the city council’s plan.

That Dam Meeting! from Heidi Perryman on Vimeo.

A handful of very passionate folks gathered at my home right before the meeting to discuss strategy. Former city council member Bill Wainwright brought port from the local city vineyard to share for courage, and gave us lots of advice about how to pitch our message persuasively. I spent the week handing out these stamped opinion cards and I’m sure hope the city got several.

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That night, having never spoken at a public meeting before, and after barely being brave enough to call Sherri Tippie and ask for advice about relocation, I delivered the following comments:

I’m a lifelong resident of Martinez and a downtown homeowner. While I would much rather have the beavers relocated than killed, I feel the city has failed to capitalize on a remarkable opportunity and let us all down. In this case the DFG made some unique concessions and creative solutions, the Lindsay museum agreed to go above and beyond its calling, but the city of Martinez did neither.

Although it has been widely reported that the city “Tried to think of another way to manage flood risk” the evidence for this is not strong. The city Manager’s report does not even mention water-flow or leveling devices. In fact these techniques have been used successfully for years and are well researched and understood. Reports show a 93-100% satisfaction with them. There is other evidence of neglect: the hydrology report does not mention tides and describes the dam as a “concrete weir” which of course it is not. Finally, no report has looked at the likely environmental impact of removing the dam and the possible effect on new and returning species that depend on its waters: such as the famous baby otter, or the less famous but still endangered California pond turtle which has been in evidence.

If the city is determined to remove the beavers, they should be aware that successful relocation is not uncomplicated or well understood. Since the state of California does not routinely allow relocation, there are few trappers trained in its use. Hancock traps must be employed, and when misused can still result in harm or death. Snare traps can cause invisible internal injuries. Beavers have no internal temperature regulation and are there for highly vulnerable to hypothermia. Families must be caught and released together. I have spoken extensively with the nationally renowned expert in this area, Sherri Tippie, and have outlined her suggestions as well. I submit them along with reports on flow control for their review.

Many cities face these crises with technology, creativity and compassion. I wish Martinez was among them.

In the end it didn’t matter what I said. What mattered is what 50 people got up and said, and what 200 people applauded and cheered. The council sat frozen like four [Janet was in China, thank goodness] deer in headlights and we could tell we had all their attention. We knew the meeting was special while it was happening, getting more remarkable with every comment and cheer of solidarity. No one left early. And no one got tired. Nearly four hours sped by. To me it felt like a huge electrical charging station that filled me with unexpected energy for the road ahead. Remember, there was an offer on the table to ‘relocate’ the beavers, and I truly thought I might be the ONLY person to show up and disagree with that.

People sometimes assume that I somehow organized or ‘made’ that meeting. But they couldn’t be more wrong.

That meeting made me.

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All Politics is Beavers?

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions August 15, 2010

Have you heard the news about the race for the city council in Martinez? It’s an actual RACE with people that are actually NEW. I was told once by a man I very much respect that the combined time in office for our current city council (if you add up all the years one was mayor before one became a council member etc) is 50+ years. That’s what I call an old school. Well a new school year is in session and Martinez actually has real options. I thought I’d introduce you to two of my favorites today and maybe if you’re downtown for Art in the Park you can stop by and meet them for yourself. Before I do, I am reminded by Worth A Dam member Lory that the goal of Worth A Dam is to align with all beaver supporters everywhere and alienate no one. Certainly we are a broadly based group with attachments and beliefs all over the political spectrum. Worth A Dam as an organization doesn’t endorse any candidate without castor glands. Let me just say that these are two women I, Heidi Perryman, happen to like. They have been good citizens and good friends to the beavers and are smart, creative thinkers.

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{column2} Kathi McLaughlin

I first met Kathi at the final beaver subcommittee meeting in April where I presented the findings to the board at the county chambers room downtown. She came up and introduced herself and her support, asked me to think about running for council, and said that she was planning to do so after another term on the school board. Fresh from 90 days of controlling my temper on the subcommittee (well 89) and dealing with very stubborn politicians and staff I said that I would rather be eaten alive by wild dogs but a friendship was sparked.

Kathi became more involved several months later when the sheetpile palooza party started. We relied on her knowledge of the Brown Act to play “spot the atrocity” as the council steamrolled a very bad idea over the voters objections. One of my favorite memories of Kathi was going to a council meeting where they had a “closed door meeting” before the regular one. She asked them to take public comment before the session and they indignantly said that they didn’t have to. She produced her Brown act book and said that it was the law and perhaps they’d like to check with the city attorney? They furrowed their collective brow, went and called the city attorney with came back sullenly to take public comment before a closed door session – which they never did before, but which is now routine. One of the things I will like best about having Kathi on the council is having someone who knows the rules.

Gay Gerlach

I met Gay through Bill Wainwright, a former council member who was {/column2}instrumental in helping me know how to advocate for the beavers. I went to her delightful home for a meeting about networking and circulating information. She is on the Parks, Rec, Marina & Library commission which is every bit as ungainly as its name suggests. Gay is the voice of reason and cool clarity at those meetings. With a background in her own successful business and success now devoted to caring occasionally for her grandchildren, she knows how to get things done and how to redirect stubborn interests. When we went to ask permission to install the tile bridge and the very fopish member pontificated that they couldn’t approve it because “there was no cultural plan for the city so he couldn’t know what art was” Gay quietly motioned the project be approved. And it was. Gay has seen the best of Martinez and is pretty much known to everyone who knows anything: her home is the site for opera fund-raises, candidate luncheons, and exciting discussion. She’s also seen the worst of Martinez: broken promises, secret backroom deals and lots of buck passing to blame the other guy. Gay knows how things work in the ‘real world’ but also knows how to appreciate the spirit of community gifts like the beavers.

I’m thinking that this years election cycle will offer some real choices. The beavers and Worth A Dam will like you whomever you vote for, but spend some time checking these two candidates and think about what they might have to offer.

In the world of beaver news we had a confirmed otter sighting last night at the secondary dam, a new tree chewed almost to falling over the water and a possible mink visitation. Three kits, GQ, visitors from Los Altos and two more converts from my Close to Home talk, all who went out to dinner in town.

Memories

heidi08 City Reports July 7, 2009

Wednesday’s city council meeting was almost of beaver vintage. It was SRO packed full of teachers and parents and city workers. A sea of orange caution t-shirts lined the first three rows of chairs and sat there ungraciously while old ladies stood at the back. In silent pauses you could hear the sound of children playing on the porch while they waited for their parents. Patient-looking women with classroom poise passed around tupperwear containers of chocolate chip cookies.

At that first body count everyone should have known how the meeting would end. A room beyond full of people willing to share cookies is a dangerous thing. The city should have just unfolded its hands and wrote out the check right then. Superindentent Rami Muth (who inherited woes she could not have possibly imagined) stood up and gave an impassioned, level, persuasive speech for the city to unclench its purse strings and help MUSD maintain the important 20-1 teacher ratio for K-3. She spoke so well the room was silent when she left the podium. A few of us clapped like it mattered and the room burst into applause.

The first speaker was an 11 year-old boy whose mom had gotten a pink slip. He bravely took the podium and started to say how important that school had been to him. He promptly burst into tears as only an 11 year old boy can. His mom came to stand with him. He finished his comments through sobs and then took his seat.

Game. Set. Match. At that moment the city should have just handed its atm card to the crowd and said, is this enough? The meeting was over, the brittle back of “withold” had been fractured by the gentle persuasion of “give”. I knew how it was going to end. (To be honest, I may have cynically wondered how that boy felt about beavers because he would be a powerful weapon if carefully used….) Still the city insisted on protocol and the meeting wore on.

I will say our City Manager, from the very get-go, seemed to know which way the wind was blowing. Before the meeting there was a deal in the works for the school to pay back a loan through turning part of one of their playgrounds into the Corp Yard for the city, (ostensibly so the then-vacated area next to the beavers could be used to make another 4 story senior center). The City Manager began by saying that the idea wasn’t possible, because of hazardous materials, etc, and looked at the council as if he had told them this before. It reminded me of the story I heard about his hiring. When asked about handling the beaver issue in Martinez he had apparently shaken his head and said knowingly, “You are never getting rid of those beavers. Better just face it”.

So how many nails is that in the city’s coffin (coffers?) SRO, cookies, crying and City Manager. There were more. The biggest came from the city workers union representative. The orange shirts were there because they objected to the city refusing to open its reserves to pay them, but agreeing to do so for the school district. They felt that the city giving up this money meant further cutting down the road. It reminded me again of the beaver subcommittee when one night their actions of allegedly ripping out the dam was up for discussion. News of the damage had hit the papers and the director was very upset about it. That night a similar sea of orange lined the back row to show solidarity.

On Wednesday they were a wave that couldn’t read which way the tide was turning. Instead of earning brownie points by gallantly standing up to offer their chairs to little old ladies in the back, (which would have allowed them to stand on strapping young lad display at the wall), they hunched their shoulders and ignored the entire room. Their representative got up and described how he had graduated from larger classrooms and turned out fine. With ear-splitting tone deafness he suggested that parents needed to volunteer in the classroom. (You could literally see the hair stand up on the backs of all the parents and teachers necks.) He pointed out helpfully that grades k-3 were not that important and its not like they were teaching the kids Calculus. I wanted to say sit down! Stop helping these men! Someone hand that man a cookie so his mouth is full. You are doing your union no favors.

One of our more colorful regulars called it like it was when he got up to accuse the city of playing both ends against the middle. “These guys work hard, they deserve to be compensated.” He argued. “And these teachers have important jobs and they deserve to be protected.” His accusation was hard to question, “You guys do this all the time. You make different sides fight each other. The truth is you can do this all, and you should.”

Even the obligatory public comment that questioned why a city could spent 300,000 on BEAVERS (goodness our beavers are greedy) and not on its children, wasn’t too upsetting. It, like everything, was fairly well articulated and impassioned. The Virginia Hills dismissive man who suggested that the city money should not go to the district where only half of Martinez residents are enrolled was countered by the mayor’s own admission that for years the city has paid for crossing guards in that district and never for MUSD.

It reminded me most of the beaver meeting because the community tipping point had been reached. What I mean by that is that there are regulars at city meetings, like the colorful speaker, and the city is used to lying in front of them. Then there are semi-regulars at some city meetings, of which I have unwillingly become one, and the city would prefer not to lie very much in front of them, (although they will if sheetpile is involved). And then there are those rare meetings full of people who have never been to a meeting before, who believe in their trusting hearts that the council represents their interests. The city HATES to be caught lying in front of them. And when they show up, the outcome is always predictable.

I’m reminded of Abraham Lincoln…

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

The vote was 4-1 to award the school the loan. Chocolate chip cookies all around!

Reminders

heidi08 City Reports May 21, 2009

As I sat through the unbelievably long and draining city council meeting last night I was reminded of the chilling, slow-moving, sense of helplessness that covered me like a glacier last October when the council voted to pretend to believe a lie and place sheetpile through the home of a colony of 8 beavers. Again they robustly argued with citizens and scolded their own experts for not telling the story convincingly enough, then voted unanimously to pursue the CEQA analysis for annexation of both Pacheo and Alhambra Valley.

There was dramatic bristling at my remarks but I’m not sure any one paused to consider the irony that if the city had just kept me happy 2 years ago by leaving me alone in the creek to “play” with my little beavers, I would never have been forced to see them up close and developed such a horrid mistrust. I would never have known that every single rock in their civic garden has wriggling things lurking beneath it that hiss and shrivel in the light of day. I wasn’t even involved the last time the redevelopment circus came to town and was blissfully ignorant of the special deals cut by every member of the council for large and important property owners around the town.

Sigh.

Let this be a lesson to all you city planners of nefarious deeds everywhere. Keep beaver supporters occupied and out of your way or they will learn how to make videos and talk to the media and network with their neighbors, and write letters to raise awareness and exhaustingly try to hinder your dasterdly plans at every turn.

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The Third Threat

heidi08 Beaver News, City Reports May 5, 2009

To date the beavers have endured a massive scrape of the lower floodplain, and the installation of sheet pile through their lodge, but that is not the last injury the city of Martinez intends to offer. Since October there has been an outstanding grant application to widen the creek between Escobar and Marina Vista, and to lower the road so that high waters can overflow across the street and re-enter the creek just after the Marina Vista bridge. Like the sheetpile, the plan is a long overdue opportunity seized with beaver momentum.

Here’s the problem: Their new lodge is on the remaining bank slated for removal.

Obviously the beavers needed a new home, and thank goodness they had enough foresight to sneak one on the west side of the bank. It is hidden under sparse trees whose tops were cut when the crane needed to reach over them, but it is a secure location that the beavers have learned to call “home”. If the plan is executed as outlined in the grant, it, and the few remaining trees that shade it, could be threatened.

We haven’t heard anything about the status of the grant since way back in October. I was hoping the shrinking economy would put that particular plan on a back burner for now. Yesterday our eagle scout candidate met with city staff and the city engineer to discuss the location for 18 new trees, but every single one was on the park side, none were near the lodge. This despite the fact that their own biologist, Skip Lisle, told them that the lodge needs to be shaded, and we have asked permission to plant specifically on the west bank. My guess is that they are seeing down the road the need for that bank to be removed and they want to resist planting trees in an area that is going to be demolished.

It’s not hopeless. The grand widening scheme could still take place and the beaver lodge and trees could be left in island formation in the middle of the creek. But for that to happen the city would have to have a sense of responsibility for their well-being and at least a commitment to their care, which they have resisted every step of the way without massive public pressure.

So, the honor of your presence is requested once again, at the Wednesday night city council meeting where our eagle scout candidate will present the tree planting plan to the city council. and we will specifically ask for a few trees near the lodge. Come do the right thing for your beavers.

Again.