This PAC has a philanthropic resume and an earned reputation for local (and at times villainous) influence
Death isn’t (typically) first-rate. One’s final resting place, however, can be.
Using a 47-acre parcel of unincorporated North Livermore prairie, the Monte Vista Memorial Investing Group plans to supply the East Bay with a much-needed, 21st-century cemetery.
Looking to accommodate the community’s medley of cultures and religions, Monte Vista Memorial Gardens will furnish dedicated burial sites for both Jewish and non-denominational deceased. For good measure, the developers also intend to include such after-life procedures as cremation and human composting, known as Terramation, which California will allow beginning in 2027.
Memorial Gardens, approved by Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors in August 2023, would be the county’s first new cemetery in nearly 40 years.
As pastoral a scene for the departed as it may be, one local political action committee (PAC) is suing the county in response to its approval. This PAC — a general-purpose committee formed with the objective of making and receiving politically motivated contributions — is known as The Friends of Livermore. It knows these practices well. And, in keeping with the uniquely American tradition of PACs, they do it all in relative ambiguity.
Cloaked in enigma and postured as philanthropy, harbingers of residential regress as they are, the Friends of Livermore (FOL), took aim at the cemetery development. Another attempt at thwarting infrastructure development. In September of 2023, the FOL filed a lawsuit with the Alameda County Superior Court alleging the proposed cemetery is 45 acres too big and outside the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) established with a 2,000-ballot measure to protect open space in East County.
“Mortuaries and funeral event centers,” FOL said in a statement to The Independent, “are urban uses that must be located inside the UGB.”
For a PAC that’s said to have terminated in 2017, per the Fair Political Practices Commission, Friends of Livermore endures quietly and primarily subsists on the contributions of two long-lived local gentry.
These days, it’s an unremarkable idea that secret hands exist behind organizations, establishments, and municipalities. Movers and shakers pulling strings are expected in the landscapes of business and politics. To allude that such hands are typically wrinkled, white, male and attached to recipients of generational wealth is similarly unexceptional.
The Friends of Livermore’s foremost financiers are two wealthy, white women. Joan Seppala and Jean King (plus a few of Seppala’s relatives, predominantly her husband, Lynn) provide about 90% of contributions received by the Friends of Livermore and its revolving rack of seasonal pseudonyms: Take Back Livermore, Citizens for a Livermore Central Park, Save Livermore Downtown and Move Eden Housing, to name a few. Their PAC-related subsidies are implications that FOL is a handful of individuals with narrow special interests, attempting to further them.
Seppala, with her husband, Lynn, is the proprietor of The Independent, a Livermore-based publisher that produces a newspaper and a magazine serving readers in the Tri-Valley with a listed circulation of 25,000 for each publication.
THE INDEPENDENT is owned by co-founders of the Friends of Livermore and members of the PAC use the newspaper as a vehicle for their endorsements and agendas. (Photo by Olivia Fitts/ The Express)
“They believe they know what’s best for the community,” said Alan Marling, a California-based projection artist and activist. “Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t.”
“I’ve projected a few times that they’re plutocrats.”
Marling projects artwork and politically-minded messages onto public walls across the Bay Area. He’s projected blood on the marquee at the Boeing headquarters in Pleasanton, #Ceasefire onto San Francisco City Hall, and “the C-word is Capitalism” on a large wall on West Grand Avenue in Oakland. He’s also projected about FOL, calling them plutocrats.
But during a mid-fall interview with Marling, the conversation’s backdrop was a wall on the corner of First and Maple Streets. He was projecting for Livermore Pride and, written in light, the wall read “LGTB+ History Month, Celebrate at Bankhead, Saturday: 12-3.”
Marling submitted multiple “Letters To The Editor” to various local papers — all of which expressed concern about, or outright condemned, the “Friends.” Outspoken by occupation, Marling was particularly vocal in The Independent. And Seppala’s local weekly published it.
Mentions of the Friends of Livermore in The Independent aren’t unique to Alan Marling.
The paper has, historically, provided Friends of Livermore members with a means of propagation.
Friends of Livermore Chairman Leland “Lee” Younker, who is also the Vice Chair of the Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center, wrote to The Independent twice during the election season of 2016.
The first letter was an introduction of sorts — a declaration of endorsements. In it, Younker explains that the Friends of Livermore PAC was established in 2005, formed to “prevent urban sprawl, preserve open space, and protect the Urban Growth Boundary.” He continued, expressing on behalf of FOL their support of then-city council candidates Bob Coomber and Bob Carling. The Independent endorsed Coomber and Carling that year, “for many reasons, including their willingness to listen to residents, not special interests.”
According to the Fair Political Practices Commission, of the more than $85,000 the Friends of Livermore spent during the 2016 election cycle, more than $36,000 was contributed in direct support of Carling and Coomber’s campaigns. Records show the rest went to campaign literature, ads against Carling and Coomber’s opponents and The Independent.
Younker was on the defensive for his second piece in Seppala’s paper, dated October 20, 2016. Defending the PAC’s involvement in local politics, denying the “assertion that Friends of Livermore is a handful of individuals trying to further their own narrow special interests and get their way.”
As well as being The Independent‘s founder and publisher, Seppala co-founded the Bankhead Theatre and Bothwell Arts Center. A recipient of Las Positas College’s Friend of the College Award (2014) and the Livermore Lions Club’s Citizen of the Year award (2019), Joan Seppala is a bona fide philanthropist.
Jean King is a retired computer programmer and former adjunct mathematics instructor at Las Positas College. Alongside Leland Younker and Joan Seppala, King sits on the Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center’s board of directors. She was named the 15th Assembly District’s Woman of the Year in 2009 for her environmentalism and leadership in Livermore’s arts.
‘Pillars of the Community’ is an apt designation.
“A lot of people (in Livermore) give Jean King and Joan Seppala a pass because of all the philanthropy,” Marling said. “They kind of assume that because they’ve done these things for the community, and they’ve been able to be generous, they’re always going to be right. Of course, that’s not true.”
Marling believes an example of the Friends of Livermore’s intermittent fallibility was on full display in 2021.
In April and May of that year, the Livermore Planning Commission and City Council unanimously approved the development of Eden Housing, an affordable housing project set for construction on the edge of First Street.
In response, the Friends of Livermore began to mutate, sprouting new limbs and reconfiguring its intents. Where once was its spine, an arm emerged. And the arm, pushing back at the prospect of resident diversity, called itself Save Livermore Downtown (SLD).
This new political council, gallantly committed to “preserving Livermore’s quality of life,” was suing the city by June 2021.
The Alameda Superior Court found Save Livermore Downtown’s claims that the Eden Housing project violated CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) to be “meritless” — misguided spending “brought for the purpose of delaying affordable housing.”
Alas, another limb.
EDEN HOUSING, an affordable housing development unanimously approved in 2021, still hasn’t been built, or even started, because of the Friends of Livermore’s effective influence. (Photo courtesy of Alan Marling)
By 2022, Move Eden Housing, perhaps more appropriately analogous to a cancerous mole, was established with further ambitions to delay.
Following another unsuccessful lawsuit and mounting postponement, Eden Housing was required to return a time-bound 68 million dollars worth of low-income housing tax credits — forcing the developers to start the funding application process over. For their troubles, Move Eden Housing was ordered to post a $500,000 bond to Eden Housing, Inc.
Desperate for an almost impossible nuance, interview requests were made for Ms. Seppala and Ms. King, a Friends of Livermore-related interview proposed. In (mainly) uncertain terms, the interview was not granted. The mayor was likewise unwilling to discuss the PAC.
Jean King at least provided some Friends of Livermore history for her share.
The PAC formed at an unspecified time between 2000 and 2002. Its genesis: a reaction to “threats of urban sprawl” and the development of housing outside of the then recently established Urban Growth Boundary.
During this time, Pardee Homes proposed developing what would have been the country’s largest solar community — 2,450 units of solar-powered housing. The only caveat: the development would have utilized hundreds of acres of newly protected, open space. As a sort of trade-off, Pardee offered to supply the land and funding necessary to construct a much-needed high school in North Livermore.
With the Friends of Livermore leading the fight against the initiative, most voters and city council members ultimately opposed the Pardee development.
At the time of writing this, Eden Housing has yet to start construction.
Driving past Eden in its current form — a dirt parking lot directly across the street from the new, three-quarters empty, too-expensive-for-most luxury apartments — it makes one wonder how many future Las Positas students and their families would make a home and memories in the development yet to be erected. Livermore is the kind of small town where people can stay forever, create a quality life without venturing too far. As the cost of living in the Bay Area continues its upward trend, its suburban concaves, such as Livermore, serve as a haven for those not so incredibly endowed financially. Affordable housing. A thriving local arts and entertainment scene. And, eventually, when the life lived betweens vineyard hills ends, locals could be buried in a sparkling cemetery, as nice and welcoming as the life they lived.
But such an existence, formerly all-too-common in Livermore, has become harder to grasp by virtue of the PAC money and the secret hands influencing this municipality.
As the saying goes, “With friends like these …”