Familiar faces in Alameda council race
2 caught in controversy seek to keep their seats
ALAMEDA >> Two City Council members who got into hot water on allegations of trying to influence the hiring of a fire chief are seeking to keep their seats.
Incumbents Jim Oddie and Malia Vella are among the five candidates running for two open council slots during the November election.
Supporters of the two include the town’s firefighters’ union — the same union the grand jury found that Oddie and Vella had wrongly acted on behalf of. When then- City Manager Jill Keimach was hiring a fire chief, Vella and Oddie pressured her to choose the person the union wanted in the job, according to the grand jury. She declined.
Alameda’s charter states that the city manager makes hiring decisions, not the council. The grand jury determined that Vella and Oddie had violated the city charter.
Keimach quit amid the controversy in May 2018 and secured a $945,000 separation agreement with the city.
Both Oddie and Vella, who denied wrongdoing, filed claims with the city trying to recoup roughly $90,000 in legal bills that each had incurred defending themselves against the allegations.
Oddie ended up withdrawing his claim, and the City Council denied Vella’s.
Neither council member mentions the dispute with Keimach on campaign websites.
Along with Vice Mayor John Knox White, Oddie and Vella are
among the most progressive voices on the council, especially regarding tenants’ rights, making them a majority voting bloc on the five-member body.
Oddie, an attorney, was initially elected in 2014. He came in third in the 2018 race for two open seats but was appointed to fill a vacancy created when Councilwoman Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft was elected mayor.
Vella, an attorney who works for the Teamsters union, was first elected in November 2016 and had previously served on the city’s Historical Advisory Board and the Alameda Family Services Board.
Former Mayor Trish Spencer, who lost to Ashcraft in 2018, is also running in November for one of the two council spots.
A former Alameda Unified school board member, Spencer secured a surprise victory in the contest for mayor in 2014, edging out incumbent Marie Gilmore by just 129 votes, campaigning against what she described as the city’s “unfettered development.”
As mayor, Spencer was often the lone “no” vote on issues. In May 2017, she voted against changing city regulations to prohibit tenant evictions other than “just cause” ones. She said she took the position because the protections could prompt landlords to remove rentals from the market. She also is an attorney.
Political newcomer Amos White is also in the race.
White, an organizer for a local American Civil Liberties Union group and an Encinal High School Athletic Boosters board member, tried to run for the council in November 2018.
But he failed to qualify when he showed up at City Hall literally minutes before the state-mandated deadline to file election paperwork and discovered that he did not have his checkbook — and the city clerk told him she could not process a credit card because the city’s finance department had closed for the day.
Among White’s endorsers is Mali Watkins, a Black man whom Alameda police arrested in May after a witness said she was concerned for his safety because he allegedly was walking in the street and acting strangely.
Watkins told the officers that he was dancing and exercising, as he regularly did. The encounter was captured on video and prompted widespread condemnation of the police, including a sitin outside the police station where White was among the speakers.
Also making a pitch for a seat is Gig Codiga, a business executive and past president and board member of the Boys & Girls Club of Alameda. On his website, Codiga said he stands “for increased public safety, thoughtful development and neighborhood preservation.”