June 1-7 Oakland Political & Community Events

Monday, June 1st – Port Commission Hearing on Oakland Airport Connector Funding

On Monday the Port Commission will vote on taking the first step on funding the OAC to the tune of $44 million. You can read all about this issue in my post about this hearing. The meeting starts at 3:30 pm and will be [...]

Oakland Airport Connector now in the hands of the Port Commission

UPDATE: There’s an excellent column about this issue in Saturday’s Contra Costa Times.
A couple weeks ago, the BART board made a terrible decision by approving the wasteful overhead Oakland Airport Connector (OAC). As dto510 wrote, quoting Director Radulovich, they mortgaged the system for “blingfrastructure.” But the OAC is still not a done deal because several [...]

A budget blog worth following

In April, Jean Quan unveiled her Oakland budget blog, and I must admit that I was pretty excited about it. In the past, the only way I’ve been able to follow the budget is via A Better Oakland, which is great, but there’s no way V Smoothe can cover everything. So I hoped that Oakland’s [...]

AC Transit could learn a thing or two from the new Burning Man bus route

Today, the AC Transit board is meeting to discuss declaring a fiscal emergency so that they can cut service without going through a lengthy EIR process. And as V Smoothe explained, there are going to be some serious cuts made to keep the agency solvent. But as bus service deteriorates in Oakland, bus service is [...]

Join Oaklanders to protest the Supreme Court ruling on Prop 8

The California Supreme Court ruling on Proposition 8 was just announced. In a 6-1 ruling, they upheld Proposition 8. On the bright side, they unanimously voted to uphold the 18,000 existing marriages, including those that were married nearly one year ago at Oakland City Hall. This was how I felt on the night those marriages [...]

May 25-31 Oakland Political & Community Events

Tuesday, May 26th – Walk Oakland Bike Oakland Monthly Meeting
Did you know that Oakland has a Bicycle Master Plan? Well, it does. Recently updated and approved in December, 2007, the Oakland BMP serves as the citywide, long-range policy document for promoting bicycling as a viable means of transportation and recreation in Oakland. Join Jason [...]

What happened? And what’s next?

My girlfriend’s graduating from UC Berkeley tomorrow so I’ll be busy with family and friends for the next few days and posting will be light here. I wanted to tie up some loose ends before the weekend though.
So now that the not-so-special election is over and all the meaningful initiatives went down, I know a [...]

Rediscovering Downtown Oakland: Sweet Treats

With California and Oakland facing daunting budget crises, sometimes it’s necessary to step back and just enjoy life. And sometimes that’s as easy as heading downtown to grab a sweet treat.
Ice Cream at the Sweet Booth – 9th between Franklin and Webster

Last month, during the crazy heat wave, I complained on Facebook that there was [...]

Remember to vote, and then start thinking about the other special election

I hope you’ll join me in voting down all the state ballot initiatives today, but as soon as you do that, it will be time to start thinking about the next election. That’s right, on July 21st, Oakland will be holding its own special election to deal with our local budget crisis. (Wasn’t this supposed [...]

BART Director James Fang again chooses bling over cheaper & more sensible technology

So you might have thought that BART directors couldn’t shock me anymore. After approving the half billion airport connector blingfrastructure that robs funds from BART operations and capital projects, they couldn’t do anything worse, right?
Wrong.
Today, Matier and Ross wrote the most maddening piece about BART Vice President James Fang’s ridiculous proposal to use cell phones [...]