Oakland – In Insight Terminal Solutions Bombshell 1 , Oakland News Now proved that the in 2012, The City of Oakland was working with California Capital Group Managing Partner Phil Tagami in building a bulk
Patrick “Pat” Cashman
terminal that would handle coal, among other commodities. That ran counter to the City of Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker’s stated claim that the first time the City of Oakland knew that coal was to be handled by the planned Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal was in 2015.
Now, Oakland News Now has evidence that the City of Oakland itself called for coal to be the target commodity transported by the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT).
Patrick “Pat” Cashman, who was mentioned in “Insight Terminal Solutions Bombshell 1” as being for some time an economic development specialist working for the City of Oakland (and in the interest of full-disclosure a friend of this blogger who hired me to work for the City of Oakland in 1987), wrote an email to Mr. Tagami that, in effect, points to the City of Oakland as a proponent of shipping coal through the Insight Terminal Solutions OBOT.
Documents provided to Zennie62Media reveal that in that email dated March 22, 2012, Mr. Cashman notified CCIG and Phil Tagami that the City of Oakland had contracted with the Tioga Group to, “vet the OBOT from a market/functional point of view…
1.”Tioga’s scope of work was to, “provide a very broad, but not deep analysis, for the purpose of isolating factors that are a threat to the success of (the Insight Terminal Solutions / CCIG) OBOT and OGRE and which may require additional analysis. Tioga’s scope is to do this without creating new data or analyses but with the corporation of the CCIG team as protected by a Non-Disclosure Agreement.”
Oakland OBOT Covered Commodity Rail Cars
2. The Tioga report is significant because it outlined several important facts:
• That coal from Utah was a very likely commodity to come through Oakland because of geography and rail yard design.
• That an anchor commodity with enough volume over an extended duration was absolutely crucial to the success of the project.
• Tioga estimated OBOT had a one in ten chance of success because of the competitive nature of the west Coast commodity terminals.
On April 22, 2012 Mr. Nieman emailed Mr. Cashman a, “draft of an early version” of the Tioga report. On May 9, 2012 Mr. Nieman emailed CCIG and cc’d Mr. Cashman a list of questions he needed answered by the CCIG team re OBOT/OGRE3. CCIG’s preliminary answers were conveyed to Mr. Cashman on May 18, 2012.
While there is clear communication and documentation that the City of Oakland did indeed enter into contract with the Tioga Group and the Tioga Group produced a draft report and submitted said report to the City of Oakland, specifically to Mr. Cashman on April 22, 2012, my sources (who do not wish to be named but have given supporting documentation to this blogger) explain that when Mr. Tagami filed a lawsuit agains the City of Oakland’s Coal Ban in 2017, sources explain that Mr. Cashman repeatedly denied the existence of said contract and report between 2012 and 2016.
For example, in an email dated June 30, 2016 to Assistant City Administrator Claudia Cappio from Pat Cashman, Mr. Cashman says, “the City did not enter into the contract with Tioga and no analysis was ever performed.”
Mr. Cashman claims that the contract was not entered to and therefore the analyses by the Tioga group was not performed because CCIG, “would not cooperate with Tioga, without first entering into a Confidentiality Agreement that was unacceptable to Tioga.”
On April 4, 2012 Mr. Nieman of the Tioga group emailed the above referenced signed confidentiality agreement, that Mr. Cashman later claims Tioga had a problem with and therefore was never signed to CCIG’s attorneys.
City of Oakland Withheld Final Tioga Report From Phil Tagami and CCIG Until Fall 2016
Reportedly, despite several requests, the City of Oakland withheld the Tioga report from CCIG from April 2012 when the City first received the draft report from the Tioga group and September 2016. The report was finally given to CCIG by Mr. Doug Cole of the City of Oakland in September 2016, documentation only after CCIG spoke directly with Mr. Steve Nieman of the Tioga group and Mr. Nieman confirmed the reports existence.
In an email dated September 23, 2016, Mr. Nieman forwarded his April 19th, 2012 draft report to Doug Cole at Mr. Tagami’s request because Mr. Nieman did not feel comfortable providing the report to CCIG himself, since the report was completed at the request and under contract with the City of Oakland, where Pat Cashman was project manager. Mr. Cole then forwarded the Tioga report to Mr. Mark McClure of CCIG on September 27, 2016.
Due to the City of Oakland’s repeated denial of the existence of the Tioga Group report and their continued lack of desire to cooperate with Insight Terminal Solutions / CCIG’s repeated requests to provide documentation and communication regarding the report, on May 5, 2017 CCIG filed a subpoena to produce documents, information, or objects, or to permit inspection of premises in a civil action.
In a deposition of Pat Cashman on August 28, 2017, Cashman affirms the existence of a draft report by the Tioga Group in regards to (the Insight Terminal Solutions / CCIG) OBOT and that a confidentiality agreement was in fact signed by the Tioga Group, despite his email to Ms. Cappio on June 30, 2016 saying that a confidentiality agreement was not signed.
All of this happened as the City of Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area Media crafted a cover narrative that it was Phil Tagami who was “bringing coal to Oakland”, when it was the City of Oakland itself, in the form of economic development specialists Pat Cashman and Doug Cole, who played lead roles in the formation of idea of shipping coal as a bulk commodity through Oakland, and as far back as 2011.
