Voters Say NO to Dog Walking Foe

Tater likes to hang out in the East Bay. photo © 2020 Caitlin Hibma

Defeated Parks Board Candidate Fought Off-leash Recreation in Bay Area

Only one race in this year’s elections had East Bay voters out on the median strip near Costco in Richmond waving signs for their preferred candidates - and, surprisingly, it wasn’t the presidential race. Instead, the commotion was about the Ward 1 seat on the board of directors of the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD).

The EBRPD, which operates 73 parks across Contra Costa and Alameda Counties, is overseen by seven directors. The Ward 1 director’s purview includes popular parks in both counties, including Tilden, Wildcat Canyon, Point Pinole, Point Isabel, and Albany Beach. The Albany Bulb, currently owned by the city of Albany, is also expected to become part of Ward 1 eventually. 

The two Ward 1 candidates could not have been more different, as the East Bay Times emphasized when it endorsed Elizabeth Echols over Norman La Force. 

Echols has had a long career in public service, and in January 2020, the EBRPD board unanimously appointed her to complete the term of the late Whitney Dotson, who had retired early from the board before his death. 

Sunset over Hoffman Bay, photo © 2020 Mary Barnsdale

As a new director, Echols soon earned the appreciation of many park users when she fought to reopen Point Isabel after its shelter-in-place closure and later helped lift the temporary, pandemic-related restrictions on off-leash dog walking throughout the EBRPD. When Echols ran for election to the board this fall, every sitting EBRPD director, as well as the park district’s union, backed her. 

Echols’s opponent was Norman La Force, a retired trial lawyer and longtime Sierra Club activist. His accomplishments include blocking development of shoreline areas to preserve them as open space, but he is also famously abrasive and litigious. In addition, he has often opposed active recreation in the parks. Kayakers, cyclists, kiteboarders, and campers have all tangled with La Force, but it was his outrageous claim that he had doubled the size of the Point Isabel Dog Park that may have undermined his prospects for election.

In the early 2000s, when Eastshore State Park was being established, the North Point Isabel landfill was slated to become part of the future park. People had been using both North Point Isabel and adjacent Point Isabel seamlessly since the mid-1980s so officially making them one park made sense. 

Unfortunately, the plan proposed by the local Sierra Club chapter, Citizens for East Shore Parks, Golden Gate Audubon Society, and Save the Bay eliminated off-leash dog walking on North Point Isabel. This effort, led by La Force, would have reduced existing off-leash recreation from about 50 acres to 23 acres. Park users pushed back, submitting 20,000 signatures to the park planners. Park users won. 

When La Force boasted during his campaign that he had “doubled the Point Isabel Dog Park,” the effect on dog walking advocates was electrifying. It’s one thing to be against recreational dog walking; it’s another to take credit for something you tried to take away from people.  

La Force surrogates argued that, because he had helped establish what is now  McLaughlin Eastshore State Park, he could also take credit for off-leash recreation on North Point Isabel – even though he had fought against it. They claimed, falsely, that it  was actually La Force who had proposed that North Point Isabel remain off-leash. His website added a page on recreation that declared, “I do not oppose off leash dogs in the parks.” That statement was soon removed, superseded by more oblique language about parks working for both dogs and wildlife.

Ironically, La Force’s relentless opposition to off-leash dogs in parks around the Bay Area has often been one of his bragging points. The years-long tussle over dog walking in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area has been about whether people can keep walking dogs off-leash in the one percent of that recreation area where they have historically been allowed. La Force, as Sierra Club SF Bay Chapter Off-Leash Dog Co-coordinator, vehemently opposed that access.

Daily pack on North Point Isabel, photo © 2020 Mary Barnsdale

In the East Bay, La Force threatened in 1997 to sue Berkeley if it established an off-leash area at Cesar Chavez Park. As a leader of the Sierra Club’s local chapter, he helped pass resolutions in 2000 that included banning people with dogs from the 2.5-mile Crown Beach in Alameda. In his book about creating Eastshore State Park, he wrote that off-leash dogs could threaten habitat, wildlife, and small children. In comments to the EBRPD in 2012, he listed 18 articles about phobias and the fear of dogs. He subsequently sued the EBRPD repeatedly (albeit unsuccessfully) over the impact of dogs on Albany Beach, costing the park district hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses. He has long held that dogs must be banned from the Albany Bulb. 

It was confounding, then, when this statement appeared on La Force’s campaign website:

“I do not oppose off-leash dogs at the Albany Bulb or Beach. Any statements that I oppose such use are simply false. There is a small group of off leash dog-owners who want to walk their dogs off leash anywhere, even where it is not safe or appropriate. They have made up statements about me that are untrue. The truth is, dogs deserve to enjoy our parks, too, and I intend to ensure that they can!”

La Force supporters tried to reframe the debate as “selfish dog people versus the environment.” They said his positions, statements, and actions were all taken out of context. They alleged that he was the victim of a smear campaign. 

Truth isn’t a smear though. In fact, La Force tried to rewrite well-documented history. Park users just weren’t having it.

The local Sierra Club, Citizens for East Shore Parks, and others who stood by their man did not come out of this looking good. The Sierra Club, in particular, actively defended an elected officer who tried to mislead voters by claiming credit for a Sierra Club campaign that never existed. By contrast, Echols ran with broad community support from environmentalists, recreation enthusiasts, elected officials, political clubs, unions, EBRPD retirees, civil rights activists, and people committed to better access to the parks for underserved communities. 

In the end, East Bay residents weren’t fooled. By majorities in both counties, voters chose Director Elizabeth Echols - a friend to both parks and parks users - to shepherd Ward 1 for the next four years.