In Perspective: What's at the Core of Mellon's Protest Against Turner's Appointment to MAC?

What was to an advisory council exploded Tuesday morning into accusations involving every public agency that touches daily life in Castro Valley.

On its face, the blow-up began when to the Castro Valley Municipal Advisory Council.

Scratching the surface even just a little reveals that behind every civic leader is a story of contention with other civic leaders, going back years and most recently centered on Castro Valley’s new blueprint for growth, which the MAC controls (in an advisory capacity), and which affects the schools, parks and water district.

Here’s what we know for sure:

• The Alameda County Board of Supervisors postponed its appointment of Turner after hearing from him and his accuser, both Castro Valley residents who ran against each other in last November’s EBMUD election.
• Mellon told the supervisors that his complaint about Turner is based on “ethics and responsibility.” Turner refuted each accusation, holding documentation in his hands as he spoke. Turner on Thursday sent Patch a copy of documentation he created and sent to the board of supervisors, also on Thursday. That PDF is attached to this story.
• Meanwhile, two MAC members told Patch they were disappointed that Patch posted Mellon’s protests in detail without researching them first. One of them, Marc Crawford, depicted Mellon’s actions as a “political vendetta.”

Beyond that, the story gets messy because the relationships between agencies and the civic leaders who serve them overlap in unpredictable ways:

There's 24 acres of property that EBMUD owns near Carlton Avenue, Stanton Avenue and Sidney Way, worth $15.5 million if sold to housing developers—but eyed by MAC as a possible park, Mellon said.

"Crawford, Turner and others expected EBMUD to give it away," Mellon said.

There's Measure Q, which would have raised $30 million for parks, recreation and protecting open space in 2006. It lost after 63 percent of the vote, just short of the 66 percent it needed and leaving open-space advocates looking for new ways to accomplish similar goals.

There's Crawford's and fellow board member Dave Sadoff's support for Turner in the election against Mellon last year, and Mellon's desire to get back at them for it, Crawford said.

"It's clear that Frank Mellon is on a political vendetta," Crawford said.

Schools Superintendent Jim Negri was not involved in the supervisors meeting. But Monday night he told MAC during a public forum that he disagrees with aspects of its blueprint for growth, which involves rezoning school property—among other public properties—in a way that would reduce input from schools and other agencies on how the property is used.

Mellon said this same issue affects EBMUD, the Castro Valley Sanitary District, the Hayward Area Recreation and Parks District and private schools including Redwood Christian School and Our Lady of Grace School. So when a MAC member—Sadoff—was named to the sanitary district board on March 3 of this year, Mellon saw it as a conflict.

Enter Matt Turner, a long-time advocate of open-space preservation and the first person to run against Mellon since Mellon's first election to the EBMUD board 17 years ago. Turner has had the backing of both Crawford and Sadoff, both of whom are MAC members already involved in open-space issues.

"The issue was not about open space," Mellon said in an interview with Patch hours after the supervisors' meeting. "It's about responsibility and ethics."

Mellon said that he observed a pattern of conduct during the EBMUD election that showed Turner is "a little bit light on being factual." 

During an interview with Patch on Monday night before Mellon's accusations became public, Turner amiably answered a reporter's questions about his background.

Asked about his occupation, Turner said, "Stay-at-home dad."

Asked about his college degree, Turner said, "None."

Only when pressed for further detail did Turner talk about his past work as a wilderness emergency medical technician, and he never mentioned the University of Utah—two details that Mellon told the board of supervisors that Turner has misrepresented on his Facebook page and campaign website.

Mellon said the Facebook page doesn't use the word "graduate," but he believes any mention of studies at the University of Utah leads people to think he's a graduate. "It's how you put the story out there," Mellon said. "The average person's going to look at that and think he's a graduate."

Mellon also questioned Turner's credentials as a wildnerness EMT.

At the supervisors' meeting Tuesday, Turner clarified the specifics, saying he has attended many different schools and that Facebook page formatting only allows one. About allegations that he failed to hand in required documents at the Registrar of Voters office, Turner said he filed them electronically and later learned that he also needed to fax a signature page.

In an interview with Patch on Wednesday, Turner said, "It was shocking to get smeared in front of the board with made-up stuff like that."

"The allegations about the EMT thing are completely false," he said. Of the Facebook education reference, he said: "There's no inentional misrepresentation at all."

Mellon, whose profession until his semi-retirement on Jan. 1 was a human resources and labor relations consultant, is a stickler for process and detail. He can cite laws, name forms by number, and describe procedures fluently and by heart. "Facts are facts," Mellon said.

Turner, meanwhile, was less rigorous during the EBMUD campaign. “He’s very persuasive, he's very charming, he’s fun to listen to, until you realize what you're listening to," Mellon said.

“People don’t know this guy has been puffing up his resume and hasn’t done his legal filing,” Mellon said.  “As I said to the board, we need to hold people to the same high standard.”

Is the Turner/Mellon dispute grounded in something deeper than conscientious attention to details, facts and deadlines?

Is the debate over open-space versus development? Is it about MAC wresting control from other agencies?

Is it about ethics? Is about one candidate’s personal style being more casual and less detail-oriented than the other’s?

The answers depend on whom you ask.