Help keep Oakland presentable
May 30, 2009 by V Smoothe · 10 Comments
Oakland is about to get a whole lot grimier. The City’s proposed layoffs in park maintenance and landscaping are going to decimate our ability to keep things in even the moderately clean-ish state they are now.
Help save Oakland from a State raid on our money!
May 29, 2009 by V Smoothe · 30 Comments
Yesterday was the second of the Oakland City Council’s special meetings to discuss the Mayor’s proposed budget, and they will meet again to discuss it further on on Monday at 4 (PDF).
Jennifer Ward: Disappearing Behind Them: Phasing Out Failing Small Schools
May 28, 2009 by Jennifer Ward · 8 Comments
After seeing how much attention the OUSD open thread is getting, I thought my readers might be interested in this story about the phasing out of some of OUSD’s underperforming small schools. The piece was funded by donations through Spot.Us, a Knight Foundation backed experiment in community funded reporting. Author Jennifer Ward produced an audio report on the issue, which ran originally on KALW, and also the story below, which, like all Spot.Us funded work, is published under a Creative Commons license, which allows anyone to republish the work (with attribution) for free. Enjoy. – V
Another chapter in the saga of the Kaiser Convention Center
May 27, 2009 by V Smoothe · 10 Comments
And just like in the last one, nothing happens.
A new way to waste money: Municipal ID cards for Oakland
May 26, 2009 by V Smoothe · 25 Comments
A couple of years ago, you couldn’t look at a Council agenda without being confronted with some sort of brain-dead, busybody proposal. Hours of public meeting time and thousands of words of media coverage were wasted on inanity like how long people should be able to tie up their dogs when they’re out shopping, banning plastic bags (later rescinded), declaring Oakland’s opposition to war in Iran, paying at-risk youth to stand around BART stations (never happened but now back in a modified form), and of course, how could we forget, banning smoking outside.
Open Thread
May 25, 2009 by V Smoothe · 119 Comments
Want to talk about something I haven’t covered? Do it here. You can find the previous open thread here.
Heads up, bus riders!
May 25, 2009 by V Smoothe · 59 Comments
Your service is about to get cut. A lot.
Opportunity for community art
May 23, 2009 by V Smoothe · Leave a Comment
Do you remember like three months ago when I posted about that grant the City got from the Open Circle Foundation to fund small-scale public art projects throughout the City? Well, the City is now accepting applications for that program.
Get used to that big hole on 12th Street, folks. It isn’t going anywhere.
May 21, 2009 by V Smoothe · 25 Comments
You know that giant pit in the ground on 12th and Jefferson downtown? It’s like a block away from the half-built condos at 13th and Jefferson. The space was supposed to become 601 City Center, and in theory, we still have that to look forward to…in 2017.
OUSD open thread
May 21, 2009 by V Smoothe · 97 Comments
I don’t write about the schools. But you guys obviously want to talk about them. Rather than continue the current education-related discussion on a post about police, why don’t y’all move it over here.
What’s going on with the Cleveland Cascade?
May 20, 2009 by V Smoothe · 4 Comments
Honestly, I don’t have a clue. But do know where you can find out.
Don’t forget to vote today
May 19, 2009 by V Smoothe · 6 Comments
Hey folks, I really do apologize for the light posting over the last week. It will get better very soon (hopefully starting tomorrow), I promise. I’ve been bogged down with a different project lately, which is happily nearing completion. It will perhaps shock my readers to hear that I have a tendency to get kind of obsessive about things, and while I’m working on one thing intently, I’m not very good at switching focus and accomplishing anything else. Anyway.
