On November 18, the EHOA hosted an informal forum with Mayor Tony Santos, District 1 representative Michael Gregory and District 5 representative Bill Stephens to discuss the proposed San Leandro Crossings project. About 35 people attended. Unlike the meetings hosted by developers, this twohour meeting was entirely a question-andanswer session, and testimonials for and against the Crossings were strongly discouraged. However, a few proponents of the project stated that they were for it.

When asked about the Crossings’ impact to already-overcrowded public schools, Mayor Santos and Bill Stephens felt it was negligible, as the developer only projected a total of 80 new kids across the 300 proposed units. Santos argued that this was in line with the natural population growth of the town. Stephens added that developer fees were $2.97 per square foot (approximately $900,000 for the entire project), but that “Level 2” funds could be mandated by the city had the school board performed a study – and apparently the school board had been remiss in doing so. Mayor Santos said the city council “had not heard anything from the school board regarding the impact of San Leandro Crossings on schools.”

Since the Crossings is part of the city’s Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) plan, I asked if the TOD specifically outlined future school sites or mandated how new schools would be built. The answer was no. Mayor Santos stated that future school sites had been proposed in the past, but none had been approved by the school board. Later, Santos admitted that the locations hadn’t been approved for good reason: they were either dangerously close to freeways or heavy industry and would be unsafe and or detrimental to the health and well-being of school children. Burrell Field was mentioned as a possible site, but city officials said new buildings on current school sites would be the most likely option.

City officials were asked why so much of the affordable-housing component was “frontloaded” at the beginning of the project, as 33% of the proposed units are slated to be affordable housing managed by the nonprofit BRIDGE. We were told that this was the only pragmatic thing to do in light of the burst “housing bubble,” and that this project would allow the city of San Leandro to use $24.7 million in Proposition 1C monies for infrastructure improvements. Councilmember Stephens admitted he had thought that the rental units being proposed for this project were going to be for-sale units. Many audience members agreed. Also, a few audience members worried that San Leandro’s entire TOD depended on subsidized projects rather than private sector investment, and the city council didn’t seem to disagree with this. One audience member asked why San Leandro didn’t try to encourage office-park investment around transit, and was not given a direct response.

At the end of the evening, audience members asked about the preservation of open space, to which city officials made a vague reference to “community gardens” – a new open space project off Hays Street. Audience members also asked about public safety in light of reduced policing budgets, and were not given a direct answer.

At the end of the meeting, members of “Save San Leandro!” presented city officials with a petition against the Crossings that contained about 350 signatures. The meeting was a good forum for discussing issues on everyone’s mind, but councilmembers avoided directly answering tough questions and didn’t make a convincing argument that the San Leandro Crossings project would be beneficial to the town. Visit www.sanleandrocrossings.com for more.