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"Diversity, equity, and inclusion is important to us and a priority in our leadership," said Chris Carter at a November Livermore City Council meeting. He is executive director of the Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center (LVPAC) and his words surprised me.
Any good done by LVPAC is overshadowed by its board members’ harmful lawsuits.
The LVPAC Board of Directors includes Joan Seppala and Jean King, who helped fund a campaign against affordable housing in Livermore and are now paralyzing it in court.
In September, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled that their group Save Livermore Downtown was required to post a $500,000 bond because their lawsuit is in bad faith or merely "for the purpose of delaying or thwarting low-income housing."
Not only is California suffering from a housing shortage but affordable housing is a matter of racial justice. "These decades of structural racism created tremendous racial disparities in housing and homelessness," wrote Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in an open letter on the coalition's website.
"African Americans represent 13% of the general population but are 40% of people experiencing homelessness and more than 50% of homeless families with children. Black families are 26% of all extremely low-income renters," according to Yentel.
Livermore is a predominantly white city and it will continue to be as long as people like LVPAC board members Seppala and King block affordable housing. Not only are they keeping out people of color but also excluding those who work in retail, hospitality, wineries, breweries and our schools as well as any youth burdened with student debt.
If their lawsuit delays Eden Housing's 130-unit affordable housing development through 2022, the project will lose $14.4 million in A1 funding, to say nothing of the harm caused by denying families a place to live for another year. LVPAC board members are responsible for lawsuits anathema to "diversity, equity and inclusion."
I can only judge these board members by their legal actions as I have never met any of them in person. How they behave day-to-day is not the subject of this article and inconsequential compared to their litigation’s outsized impact.
If our community were only being harmed by the money of rich LVPAC board members, that would be bad enough but Seppala also extracts wealth from readers of her newspaper, The Independent, to pay for her spurious lawsuits.
First, she printed deceptive statements about the downtown affordable housing project, then she collected money to block it. Seppala impoverishes Livermore in more ways than one.
I have mentioned lawsuits in plural. LVPAC board members are also litigating against a solar farm that would be built north of Livermore. The proposed project matches the type of green energy facility with battery storage called for by Gov. Gavin Newsom in a July 2021 proclamation.
Delaying solar harms the youth, of course, but also disproportionately impacts people of color whose neighborhoods are often located near oil refineries, such as in Hayward and Richmond. This is called environmental racism.
The so-called group Friends of Livermore argued against solar on Earth Day. Really. They stated, "The public need for solar is overstated or doesn’t exist" during an Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting. A few months later, California would begin to burn in another wildfire season. This group that opposed solar is funded in large part by Seppala and King.
LVPAC is led by hypocrites. To truly serve its community, all board members contributing to these lawsuits must resign. Or, those board members must withdraw their litigation which is racist, iniquitous and exclusive.
Editor's Note: Alan Marling is a projection activist and Livermore resident.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to LVPAC board members as executives. The article has been updated.
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