The land is right next to the Rosie the Riveter Visitor Center, a planned ferry terminal, and it has awesome views of the bay stretching out to San Francisco, the Bay Bridge and Oakland. In this area, city planners see the potential for making Richmond a key transit hub in the East Bay, with restaurants, businesses and high-density housing near the ferry.
So after getting pushback from the Planning Commission, Poe decided to put his proposal on the ballot. Measure N would alter the city’s general plan to accommodate his development.
“The people in Richmond want affordable single-family homes and lower-density buildings on our shoreline, which Measure N provides.” Poe said. “If Measure N passes it will also benefit Richmond by new revenue for crucial local and county services such as our schools, and will stop high-rises on the shoreline.”
To sweeten the deal, Poe has also offered up an acre of land to build housing for teachers at Amethod Public Schools, which operates 3 charter schools in Marina Bay.
Local resident Stephen Beard, who lives five minutes away from the proposed site, said he’s talked with community members who are both for and against Measure N. The specter of high-rises along the shoreline does worry some residents, he said. But Beard said he will be voting no on the project. What worries him most is Poe’s end-run around city oversight.
“I myself personally am more concerned about the precedent it would set around development and how development goes through Richmond,” Beard said. “I hope that that part of it doesn’t get lost in the whole conversation about grabbing some instant tax revenue or I don’t care cause it’s not in my neighborhood kind of thing.”
Measure O Limits City Manager Pay
Meanwhile, some see a connection between this fight over housing and the other measure on Richmond’s ballot. Mayor Butt says Measure O is purely a spite measure put on the ballot by Richard Poe to get back at the city for blocking his project.
Measure O seeks to limit the city manager’s pay. “Measure O will expose the compensation paid to high-level officials in the City of Richmond and impose a sensible limit on the compensation paid to the City Manager,” writes initiative author Fritz Kunze in defense of his measure.
Bill Lindsay, who's managed Richmond for over a decade, makes around $380,000 a year including benefits. And while that’s on the high end of city manager compensation in the East Bay, it’s not the highest. The city manager of Vallejo makes about more than $400,000 including benefits. Berkeley’s manager makes a little over $300,000.
If it passes, Measure O won’t impact Lindsay’s current contract, which lasts until 2020. But, after that, the city manager’s pay would be limited to five times the median income for the city -- or about $275,000. Mayor Butt said this would hamstring the council in its ability to hire an effective manager for Richmond.
Poe, for his part, has denied his involvement with Measure O, but campaign filings show that he and his father Robert Poe are the major donors backing it.
