Monday, April 13th – East Bay Young Dems Meeting: Props to the Props?
Tuesday, April 14th – Budget Town Hall
This will be the first of three budget town halls the City is hosting throughout Oakland in the next few weeks to get feedback from residents on the budget and budget cuts. V Smoothe wrote some background info on the budget, and I couldn’t agree more with her take on these town halls: “Go to the town halls and go to the budget meetings and tell them what your priorities are. If you don’t, I guarantee, somebody else will, and you can take a wild guess who’s more likely to get what they want.” This town hall will be held from 6:30-8pm at East Oakland Multipurpose Senior Center, 9255 Edes Avenue (at Jones).
Wednesday, April 15th – Planning Commission Hearing on Central Business District Zoning
The Oakland Planning Commission is scheduled to make recommendations on new height limits, allowed uses, and building design criteria for downtown and surrounding neighborhoods this Wednesday. It seems that this zoning process for the Central Business District has been going on forever, and dto510 arued a few months ago that the continuing delays have been deletirious for downtown. If you’re interested in speaking on this issue, you should take a look at the staff report and the proposed height limit map. Also, for some extensive background on this process, head over to A Better Oakland. The meeting is at 8pm at Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, in Hearing Room 1.
Saturday, April 18th – Earth Day Cleanup Events Citywide
On Saturday, clean up events will be held throughout Oakland. Unfortunately, the City’s Earth Day website leaves something to be desired – you have to download an excel sheet to find all the locations! Fortunately, City Homestead has a great listing of some of the main events and Desley Brooks is promoting the event she’s hosting via Facebook. Join Oakland community members from 9am-12pm to help beautify Oakland.
Sunday, April 19th – Earth Day Cleanup and Community Gathering at Mosswood Park
Can’t make it to an Earth Day event on Saturday? No problem – my friend (and Peralt Community College Trustee), Abel Guillen is hosting a cleanup and community gathering at Mosswood Park. Come on out on Sunday afternoon to clean and green Mosswood Park! There will be refreshments, food and music. Bring a frisbee to toss, gloves and gardening tools (if you have some) or a bring some beats to bump and a friend! All ages welcome. Pizza generously provided by Lanesplitter’s Pizza. The event will run from noon-5pm at Mosswood Park, at Broadway and West MacArthur Streets. You can RSVP on Facebook.
Living in the O 
Once again an awesome list of ways to get involved with improving the community.
Another local Earth Day event of note is the volunteer efforts to rehabilitate 25 homes and 8 facilities for seniors/disabled by Rebuilding Together Oakland — http://www.rtoakland.org/.
I’ve been assigned to help out with a home in East Oakland. Hopefully, the supervisors there are really good, since I am much better with a keyboard than paintbrush.