I love election season
Okay, that’s a lie. I hate election season. It’s exhausting trying to find time to cover all these races and forums and then just the normal stuff going on in Oakland, plus trying to squeeze in time to volunteer, and of course do my real work. I’m overwhelmed - I just realized yesterday that I haven’t read the comics in weeks - I’ve been trudging through life with no idea of what Mark Trail is up to! And we all know that’s no way to live. Anyway, I mention all this because I want to apologize if you’ve sent me an e-mail and I haven’t responded. I am not ignoring you on purpose, I’m just really behind. And I am sorry, and I will try to catch up on the backlog as soon as possible. My poor best friend is getting married in like two months and I’m supposed to be planning her bachelorette party, and even she hasn’t heard from me in two weeks, so please don’t take my failure to respond personally.
But even though election season means I’m really busy, and even though it starts to get incredibly boring after a while, hearing people say the same things over and over again, I do sort of love it a little bit because it puts politicians on their best behavior. Nancy Nadel has never been so polite and responsive to her constituents, and Jane Brunner all of a sudden wants more police! At the Downtown Lake Merritt candidate forum last night, Nadel even said that she had just that day called Safeway and Trader Joe’s about coming to West Oakland (they’re not interested). Sure, it may have taken weeks of her getting hammered on the grocery store problem at like every campaign appearance to put in that bare minimum effort, and it’s been more than a year now since Eugene Market closed, but hey, at least she finally picked up the phone! It almost makes you wish they had to run for re-election more often.
By the way, if there’s anything election related you’d like to see coverage of here, whether it’s a particular issue or a certain race (several e-mails have expressed interest in school board), please either leave a comment about it or send me an e-mail. I’m not promising I’ll get to everything, but I know there really isn’t much media coverage of these elections at all, and I do want people to be informed.
UPDATE: Now I feel bad. I wrote this really quickly as I was distracted with work and didn’t edit it before I posted, and I did want to apologize to people for not responding to e-mails, but it does seem, reading it now, really whiny. Anyway, I didn’t mean to come off that way. I love my blog, even if election season can be somewhat tiring at times.
I attended the Nadel/Hodge/Sullivan event last night where Nadel said that her colleagues on the council refer to her as (consider her to be) the “conscience of the council”. I have never heard anyone refer to her in this way, and was interested in whether anyone had heard a council member or other politico use this phrase when speaking of Ms. Nadel.
can we just be honest, neither Safeway nor TJ or any other grocery store is coming to West Oakland until it lightens up a bit.
Some years ago I lived in DC. There was a grocery store in every quadrant including SW, which had a full size Safeway serving a total of 100 people.
Hang in there, V, and thanks for all of the coverage! Where can we find more about the D3 gathering Wednesday until you have a chance to write about it? I had to work, so couldn’t be there.
Thanks for the kind words. I’ll have video and recap of Wednesday’s forum up this weekend. Until then, I’m not sure of any other places with information about the debate. There was some discussion of what went on in the comments on this post. There is an article about the District 3 race in today’s Chronicle.
No, there will be no grocery stores in West Oakland until the CRIME lightens up a bit. And I’m not just talking about violent crime. I include graffiti, public urination, everything that makes a place aesthetically unacceptable. If people want better services and retail, it would help to not destroy your natural habitat. Even animals know better than to destroy their natural habitat. Of course, it would also help to have a people who actually believe in capitalism.
from the mayor on down, one is hard pressed to find someone in oakland who believes in capitalism. this city is a bunch of progressives and socialist who either need to step aside or realize that capitalism is not evil and actually works
MJH
Whether or not her colleagues think she’s the “conscience”, somehow or another she’s only managed to get two other Council Members to endorse her. Ignacio has five. If Reid or Brunner had anything resembling a comprehensive campaign site, I’m sure they’d have more than two endorsements from the Council listed.
On a completely different note: I just learned that you can’t bring a dog to a park in Oakland. Can somebody please explain how the hell that happened. In Boston, NYC, SF, hell, EVERYWHERE, you can bring a dog to a park. There are poopscoop and leash laws, but usually that’s it. What the hell is wrong with us?
Dear lordy lordy:
Did anybody read the COMMENTS on Chris Hereria’s article in the chron? Ouch!
THE ANTIQUATED NO-DOG RULE: Actually, no-one has any idea why the rule was put on the books — it was so old that the ordinance was passed in the days of pre-computers, retyped and updoaded when other ancient ordinances were done likewise in the 90’s.
Not even mythic farily tales, urban legend, nada can give any background for the arcane rule in a town that has more households with dogs than kids. Now why would a childless person rush out to buy a new high price condo in City that is so blatantly non-friendly to dogs?
SPEAKING OF CHIP JOHNSON’S COLUMN: How many of you out there are waiting for the next shoe to drop? Oakland has thousands of new empty units. They are starting to be sent to the auction block (google: Jade Meritage) So, no transfer taxes to float the budget, just like Vallejo.
There will only be a slight delay before Oakland’s House of Cards collapses. The City has a few year’s worth of cushion — it’s pretty broadly accepted that it has siphoning off the DD Bond Measure money to plug the plethora of holes. The City has no intention of implementing “Deliberate Deception” aka “Dumb and Dumberer” as it is fondly called.
See comments from EBW on the Brooklyn blog — second posting:
http://brooklynavenue.blogspot.com/2008/04/improving-our-community.html
When all is said and done, the City will have collected almost 200 million dollars from us to do projects it knows are impossible (i.e. the mythic channel widening and deepening — “sailing “from Oakland Straight to China”) or have no intention of doing (i.e. the 12th St re-design — no finished engineering plans 5 years after the bond measure passed.)
Aside from the worthy restoration of Studio One, all the City has to show for all the extra taxes it has collected is tree stumps and a hollowed out boathouse for a business owner who still hasn’t signed a lease.
The City cries big crocodile tears and pulls out its pockets to demonstrate that its running out of money for DD….and is trying to slither the ADD assessment renewal passed us despite the fact we have less gardeners now than when the tax never existed.
And 80% THAT will be going to the General Fund, not to the parks.
I am reminded of that line from the Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…”
Not only does Nadel need to be shown the door, everybody running for re-election should too. The level of corruption is disturbing.
This happened on their watch.
they all sit vacant and are starting to be sold at Auction (case in point “The Jade” of the Mertiage Companay, who eventually walked away from the Mondo Condo loan in Adams Point)….I
Sorry about that last mysterious paragraph…should have deleted it. I am writing missives on the fly.
My bad.
But now that it floats there — mocking me — an eternal cyber chastisement for not taking the proper time to edit — here is the url describing the JADEMeritage condo auction. It’s entitled:
“Another Condo Auction.”
http://sfbay.redfin.com/blog/2008/04/another_oakland_condo_auction.html
This is their second go ’round at the auction block. On another string for a blog mentioned in that article says it sold 40 at its first auction (out of a 200 unit building). Not sure how many are up for auction this time around.