The Wall

Tomorrow night, the school board will be discussing the short-term kindergarten enrollment policy issue (G-1 Revision of Enrollment Policy AR 5116.1 Inf/60). This issue has raised a lot of concern in the Edison district, but appears to not have caught too much fire around the rest of the district.
Mike McMahon’s most excellent website has many […]

Surrender

The guvernator signed SB976 yesterday, mandating, with the help of our local State Senator (Perata), and our local State representative (Swanson), that the state put together a plan to take over the Alameda ferry system within the next year.
The Guv and friends (Perata and the Alameda City Council) will be at the Alameda Ferry Terminal […]

Moving Forward

On Monday, the Planning Board unanimously adopted a meeting format for the Measure A forum, yes you read that appropriately, unanimously. (Patrick Lynch was absent).
The meeting was extraordinary as there were no speakers in opposition to the forum, the Measure A Ad Hoc Committee Appellant Members (MAAHCAM) did not even show up, much to the […]

More Than This

On February 23, 2007, California State Senator Torlakson whose district covers much of Contra Costa County, introduced Senate Bill 976 (SB976), a rather innocuous amendment to the California Government Code #66540.20 which spells out the authorities of the existing San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority (WTA). This bill was supported heavily by Senator Don […]

Chat-anooga Choo-Choo

When CalTrans and the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) decided to close the rail spur along embarcadero in Oakland, no public input (or city input) was taken. They just decided to do it. 
Thanks to the work of city leaders in both Oakland and Alameda (Tam, Matarrese, Johnson, de la Fuente, Wan, Kurita, and many others) community […]

Paul’s Boutique

Traditionally, I shy away from getting involved in discussions on SD&R that are on-going on someone else’s. It seems a little cheesy to try and drive traffic to ones own site by posting links to another persons site.
But, (as Pee Wee Herman said “Everyone I know has a big but“), in this case, I can’t […]

Don’t Pay the Ferryman

I sat in the back of the Council Chambers on Tuesday night, confident that what actually transpired on the issues of the ferries (voted to hold a meeting, accept the staff recommendations and work on the problem in the clean up language) and Alameda Municipal Code changes (approve them) would transpire. 
I left a little unsatisfied, […]

Ferry Cross the Mersey

At to night’s meeting (10/2/07), the city council will discuss Alameda’s ferry system, the main impetus for this discussion is the city’s Short Range Transit Plan, which is a well written document that must be submitted to the MTC every three years. 
More interesting/important is a discussion about the state legislature’s plan to effectively seize control […]