Last week, Alameda’s new Interim City Manager, Ann-Marie Gallant, let the city employee unions know that next Wednesday (May 6), she will be announcing significant staff cuts. Whether this will include the much murmured department consolidation (Police/Fire, Planning/Development Services, Cats/Dogs) remains to be seen.
Apparently someone else watched the SOC!A video about Alameda Point and realized that all their photos showing open space at Alameda Point were in locations that SunCal’s Master Plan has slated for Open Space, making the point of the video a bit pointless (pun intended).
On Tuesday night, Frank Matarrese told me that he’s now a supporter of the Alameda Point Ballot measure (and that his acknowledging this to some people has already lead to being accused of being paid by SunCal.
It seems that there is a small group of people who are upset at the Alameda Point signature gatherers not standing on street corners yelling, “will you sign this initiative to put measure a for the whole city on the ballot thereby ruining our small-town community.” It was surprising to hear who is acknowledging that this is the case.
Anyone who has picked up this weeks issue of the Alameda Sun can see why the editorializing that passes for journalism at the paper has finally reached such heights that the “esteemed” Don Roberts praised them on Friday for their “journalistic integrity.” Seriously, can you get any lower than that? What is this “journalistic integrity?” Must be they wrote something Don agrees with, because there was absolutely zero journalism happening.
Why has the response to concerns about asbestos at the FISC Hospital fire been so slow? Two weeks to issue a statement? Even more troubling is the narrative, coming from top city officials, that asbestos testing was done on the air. So far, the facts do not seem to bear this out.
Anyone else notice that in the recent discussion on traffic reduction not one of the proffered explanations was that we tore down housing and therefore there was less traffic?
Parking is one of the big drivers of auto-use (more specifically ample free parking) and yet it has a large cost in terms of money used to provide it. But there’s a larger cost to the community and environment that comes in the form of wasted space, bad design, and a disconnectedness of people to the others around them.
Whenever concern is raised about the traffic generated by a future Alameda Point development. Those screaming “stop” rely on the false premise that not building at Alameda Point will remove all traffic impacts to Alamedans.
With the discussion of Alameda Point heating back up, I checked out this recent interview with UC Berkeley Professor Robert Cervero and thought it highlighted a lot of the issues being discussed around Alameda Point.
Alameda news and opinion
Mindfulness in the face of challenge.
