Yesterday’s budget meeting via Twitter

I had hoped to write a real blog post yesterday or today, but yesterday flew by and today I woke up with a nasty cold and I can’t really focus. So you won’t get a super-excited post from me about City Attorney John Russo’s opinion, issued yesterday, that clearly states that the Council must implement [...]

Budget meeting this Thursday, no thanks to Jean Quan

Somehow I totally missed this when putting together the weekly events listing, even though I was looking for it, but there’s a special budget meeting tomorrow, Thursday, December 17th at 10am. I might have missed it because I naively thought it would be held in the evening, when working people could attend, especially after many [...]

Broadway shuttle offers environmental, economic & community benefits at no cost to the General Fund

Tomorrow’s committee meetings are going to be packed with some exciting, forward thinking transportation projects, including an update on BRT and another discussion of the citywide parking study at the Public Works Committee. But the transit item I’m most excited to will be heard before the Community & Economic Development Committee (CED) – a free [...]

Oakland Holiday Shopping Guide

UPDATE: If you’ve procrastinated a bit on holiday shopping, not to worry – I’ve put together a last-minute holiday shopping guide for Oakland.
This holiday season, there are a myriad of holiday local shopping opportunities – so many so that it might be hard to keep track of them! So I thought I’d write a brief [...]

Tonight’s Council Meeting: Mills Act, Solar Financing, Stimulus Update, and Legislative Agendas

Tonight’s Council meeting will cover a large array of issues, some of which I’ve described below.
Item 14.1: Eleven Mills Act Contract
Ignacio De La Fuente has forged an uncommon alliance with historic preservationists to propose the approval of eleven properties under the Mills Act two-year pilot program and the expansion of the Mills Act. Via the [...]

Safeway on College – The cost of doing nothing is not nothing

Last night’s Planning Commission hearing on the College Avenue Safeway went well overall. Sure, the neighbors showed up in force to try to stop the project or at least to greatly reduce the scale of the project. But it was just a scoping session so staff and commissioners repeatedly reminded them to stick to scoping [...]

Tonight’s Council Meetings: Budget, billboards, and OFCY

UPDATE: The budget workshop just ended, but you can follow the City Council meeting on Twitter #oakmtg. I finally gave in and joined Twitter, after months of being harassed, just so I could get in on the discussion there. You can find me @oaklandbecks
Tonight there will be not one but two Council meetings, and plenty [...]

November 16-22 Oakland Political & Community Events

Monday, November 16th – Oakland Local Community Meetup

Via the Facebook event: “Oakland Local is one month old! Come join us at our first community meetup in downtown Oakland–community partners, OL bloggers & reporters, people interested in being involved with OL and anyone else who wants to support us are invited to our first meetup at [...]

November 9-15 Oakland Political & Community Events

Monday, November 9th – Town Hall with Mayor Dellums and Police Chief Batts

Come hear Mayor Dellums and Chief Batts share their vision of public safety. Topics include:

Mayor Dellums — public safety strategy: PIES (Prevention, Intervention, Enforcement, Sustainability)
Chief Batts — vision for the Oakland Police Department
Crime statistics: crime is down double digits citywide,but more must be [...]

When BART reaches capacity, Oaklanders will be the first to suffer

For anyone who commutes between Oakland and San Francisco, I’m guessing this has been a bit of a chaotic week. And at some point, if not every day during the closure, you probably took BART across the Bay. And I have no doubt that it was beyond crowded in the stations and on the trains. [...]