Comment Archives
Re: “Lanesplitter Workers Quit in Protest”
Sheesh. You make it sound like there's jobs all over the place. Did you ever think that people are working as much as they can, trying to support their families? Workers need to be paid enough to at least survive. And why wouldn't a food-handling establishment want their workers on health insurance right away?
Re: “Lanesplitter Workers Quit in Protest”
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Re: “Lanesplitter Workers Quit in Protest”
This comment was removed because it violates our policy against anonymous comments. It will be reposted if the commenter chooses to use his or her real name.
Re: “Lanesplitter Workers Quit in Protest”
This sounds a lot like people expecting more from their part-time job than is realistic. If these former employees went to Domino's making pizzas of dough powder A and pizza sauce B -would they be better off? If so, then go fill out an application. Honestly, and this is coming from someone who started working at 15 and did so all through school, I don't expect a pizzeria to provide what these former employees expect it to. I worked hourly in retail and restaurants until my last year in college and, wow, I had some bad, bad bosses. One boss was so mental I quit right in the middle of my rush hour shift -no one called the newspaper over it. As a professional I still have had to change jobs because my bosses were nightmares. I feel for these people, and then I totally don't.
Re: “Lanesplitter Workers Quit in Protest”
Correction: Ms. Fox-Hodess is Berkeley unit chair of the UC Student Workers' Union, which covers academic student employees at all UC campuses. As a Riverside union member, I'm proud to see my local in solidarity with these workers.
Re: “Former Oakland Blight Official Admits to Breaking Law”
Bob, what is the statute of limitations on the City taking further action against Renwick? My understanding is that the City did not even file the complaint with the FPPC, a private citizen did.
Santanna wrote the City's response to the Grand Jury report, that was post Dellums, saying she was going to get to the bottom of this etc.
Re: “No More Cops Without More Cuts”
Couple of things- if you want to see details of Oakland's city budget that are easily understandable for the first time check out http:openbudgetoakland.org - a new site to help you see and discuss Oakland's spending!
Secondly, I can't speak with legal certainty, but I've worked under contract w Tony Smith since he arrived and he has been perhaps the most trustworthy, genuine senior official I've known in Oakland. Feel free to suggest unsubstantiated theories about why he is going, but be willing to admit you slandered him if it never pans out that anything else is up- and I'll admit I was wrong about him also if something is fishy, but he's a guy a I would trust over most in public service and that's rare and awesome. He's no saint, but he's legit.
Re: “In Search of East Bay Tea Parties”
I doubt seriously whether EBE would ever print "the truth" about a group that stands up for the Constitution and fights unfair taxation
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Do you think the City of Oakland should expend $25.6 million of scarce affordable housing funds for two parcels of land that are unsuitable for housing, so Oakland Harbor Partners (OHP), who have been unable to come up with the $18 million to purchase the Oak to Ninth property from the Port, can purchase it by May 1? Come and speak out at the Community & Economic Development meeting tomorrow, Tue. 4/23 at 1:30 pm in Hearing Rm 1 in City Hall.
Re: “Monday Must Reads: ALCO Sheriff to Stop Patrolling Oakland Streets; Gov. Brown OK’s $25.6 Million in Redevelopment Funds for Oak to Ninth”
The Tribune made it clear that the unemployment stat was for the Oakland Metropolitan Area, that includes a bunch of East Bay cities besides Oakland. Just as it means anywhere else in the country, the rate does not count people who have dropped out of the workforce; given up looking. There is an estimated number for that "true" unemployment rate for our area but probably not for just Oakland. There is no way that the "true" unemployment rate for the poor sections of Oakland is anything under 25% or that it has improved much in the last two years.
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Naomi,
The Chron had more this morning on Oak to Ninth and the redevelopment funds:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/ar…
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Joyce,
I agree that Oak to Ninth is not smart growth -- in fact, the above article states exactly that. As such, I don't think developments such as this one should be exempt from CEQA.
Re: “The Port's Debt Problems Will Slow Army Base Project”
communitydemocracyproject.org
we are striving to bring accountability to the budgeting process!
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Wait a minute--what about the big subsidy from the city's redevelopment funds (or what's left of them) for the affordable units? Those units are not paid for by the developer, in my understanding. Has that changed? I believe the city also has to buy that land back from the developer, although it is currently owned by the public. Also, this project entails knocking down 89% of the historic Ninth Avenue Terminal, in continuous use since its construction, and potentially a valuable destination on the waterfront.
Re: “Gut Feeling: Pot Eases Crohn's Disease”
I completely agree with you Joel! I wonder who will be the first in the US?
http://www.change.org/petitions/test-the-d…
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Bob, my respected friend, you just negated the whole premise of your article, “How an Environmental Law Is Harming the Environment” in the March 13th issue. (And see my comments.) You summed it up at the end with: “Our primary environmental law should protect the environment against the greatest threat it faces — climate change — and not make it harder to implement solutions that help fight that threat.”
So it would seem to follow that any project that increases carbon emissions should be opposed.
Unlike Parker Place in Berkeley, the Oak to Ninth project will not help Oakland to “meet its climate-change goals, because it will provide much-needed urban housing near jobs and mass transit, thereby helping lessen the need for suburban sprawl and greenhouse-gas-belching commutes.” It will acerbate it!
Oak to Ninth isn’t infill development. It isn’t transit-oriented development. It is a massive 3100-unit development on an isolated site with poor accessibility adjacent to a major pollution-spieling freeway and active rail lines.
It has the worst attribute of suburban life—auto dependence. The nearest transit, Amtrak, is almost a mile away, and the Lake Merritt BART station, more than a mile, and reached across railway tracks with 75 daily trains, not a safe route for either pedestrians or bicyclists.
To help picture 3100 units consider this project in San Francisco—One Rincon Hill next to the Bay Bridge. The first of two towers has been completed; its 60 stories have 376 condos. So 3100 units would be equivalent to EIGHT such towers? Does that not seem ludicrous even as the market improves?
The so-called Community Benefits of housing for low-income families and seniors were not to come out of the developer’s pocket, but the community’s, that is, from redevelopment funds. But they went poof! Without those funds, low-income families and seniors will not have to live next to a very noisy, polluting freeway and purchase clunkers for transportation.
The Air District recommends that homes not be sited within 500 feet of a high traffic freeway. Most of the residences are less than 500 feet from I-880 and the most vulnerable population, low-income families and seniors, would have been closest to it.
CEQA lawsuits cannot, in themselves, stop a bad project. The EIR’s purpose is to layout the environmental impacts of a project so that an informed decision can be made. The Oak to Ninth EIR disclosed the horrendous traffic congestion the project would bring to the already congested two-lane access road. The cold starts and start & stop traffic would greatly worsen carbon emissions.
But the EIR for the Oak to Ninth project was completed before Jerry Brown took up the issue of greenhouse gases and required EIRs to quantify them. It would have certainly stated that the project would significantly contribute to climate change. But, even then, the city could approve the project, citing overriding considerations like, say, jobs? Possibly the same consideration will be used to push the Keystone XL pipeline—jobs!
Michael Ghielmetti, President, of Signature Properties, once admitted to me that it would be smarter to build high-density housing downtown. And yet, he has downsized one of his fully entitled projects downtown from 351 to 105 units, Parcel B of the Broadway-West Grand site. The completed housing at Broadway & Grand is being pitched as: “There is so much happening in Uptown, and Broadway Grand is at the center of it all.”
If we are serious about climate change, the high-density housing planned for Oak to Ninth belongs downtown. But, it would not be harmful if a few hundred units were built at Oak to Ninth as long as residents all drive hybrid or electric cars and have good health insurance plans.
Re: “Thursday Must Reads: Quan’s Budget Would Add More Police, Cut City Staff; Liberal Groups Vow to Defund Dems Who Voted Against Background Checks”
The Mayor's entire budget is unsustainable, not just the compensation for police and fire fighters. Her own budget staff did a very competent job of describing the depth of the City's fiscal problems and promised that the forthcoming budget would at least begin to address the massive retirement and infrastructure obligations that have been ignored for over a decade, long before the Great Recession as our Mayor likes to say, could be blamed for our money problems.
The only lesson that the Mayor has learned from the City's fiscal mistakes of the past decade or two is not to manipulate the voters into approving a new parcel tax by threatening to close libraries and parks. That worked once before and then failed. A new scarier threat was needed this time: cut Head Start funding.
Sure like the champion of Oakland's Kid's First mandatory funding measure is really going to punish 3 and 4 year old innocents? Or that we would let that happen?
Like a "modest parcel tax" would make a dent in the structural fiscal imbalance of the City? That's a no never mind to our Mayor who learned her muni budgeting skills as head of the Council's finance committee for ten years. Her budgeting approach is best described as "budgeting by how much money you have in your checkbook."
Re: “What Richmond's Getting Right”
For the Record:
In July 2007 consultants hired by The Mentoring Center (Oakland) made recommendations to the City of Richmond city council regarding strategies most likely to generate successful impacts towards reducing the city's historical epidemic rates of gun violence;
In July 2007 the Richmond City Council chose and ratified their decision to create the Office of Neighborhood Safety, a non law enforcement investment to reducing gun violence; The ONS was "NOT" founded by the RPD, just to be clear
The ONS has 10 "full time" staff (thats all) which includes only 7 "outreach workers" for a city with a 103,000 population; and more than 200 people who might be involved in gun violence at any given time;
According to the city's finance department, the ONS is funded $1.2M from the city's general fund in 2013-14, I have heard the ONS director say that the ONS requires at minimum $3M to adequately functional considering the need and demand for what it does (ONS be proud of what you've helped to accomplish given your task with the crumbs you've been provided);
I am curious (chief magnus) how many murders has your department solved since your arrival on your white horse, I recently read somewhere that it wasnt many. How does this fact impact a sustained reduction and stoppage of gun play - folks dont feel protected and they feel that they can get away with it - because they are...(what most dont understand is that the ONS wouldnt have such a large population demanding its services if RPD closed more firearm cases);
I am one who has grown increasingly fatigued by how law enforcement in general, local politicians and irrelevant clergy and community members suck all of the air of success and credit for reductions in gun play in Richmond, and how they allow the ONS to be maligned and treated as some step child or as inconsequential in the matter (this is unacceptable people);
I am however appreciative of how the ONS without a lot of fanfare works effectively in such inconvenient circumstances, with the most dangerous individuals, in the most dangerous neighborhoods at the most dangerous times in Richmond. ONS staff never toot their own horns, they've never claimed victory (chief magnus). In fact Ive read that they give any credit to the young men that they serve for any successes achieved in reducing gun play;
Finally, everyone in the Rich needs to eventually understand this truth: How Richmond spends its time and money will determine the shape of its chickens coming home to roost. This is the most UNFRIENDLY city in the bay area to its future - our youth. There is no sustaining reductions in gun violence when the current city budget barely provides for it in real opportunities for those involved in gun violence, and where most of its other investments communicate anti-youth development, anti-kids, etc.
You need to get it right about "what Richmond is getting right"
A Concerned Richmond Resident
Re: “The Bacon-Wrapped Economy”
Has the author seen this yet?
http://givingpledge.org/
The young tech folks are just getting started...
Re: “Feds' Medical Pot Fishing Expedition Hits Mendocino Chop”
"Haag hasn't said what she is after..", Do we need two guesses? Do we need even one guess?
Lets face it, even State Attorneys have every intention to use this method, the method of the Federal practice of complete lack of transparency.
Lets assume that 'stuff' rolls downhill. We can also assume that as a measure of Appointee description, appointees are following that which engender possible continued employment under their training from the appointer and that the appointer is the avenue towards advancement to the 'show', Federal appointment purely at the Federal level such as directly at the DOJ or cross entry into other bureaucracies at the Federal level.
No one should assume that Haag or her cohorts in any State will do anything but follow ONDCP policy. The mandate. The only way towards Mj inclusion is resistance to the misguided and corrupted ONDCP policies in each State.
Vote folks, vote your butts off.