OAC@MTC, and other news

by V Smoothe | July 22, 2009 | 1 comment

Today’s the big day! The MTC will be voting this morning on whether or not to assign $140 million to the Oakland Airport Connector. The meeting starts at 10:05. If you can’t make it down to 101 8th Street, but are just dying to know what happens, you’ve got a couple of options. One, you can listen to the meeting’s live audio stream. You can get meeting updates on Twitter, where me and dto510 will be posting the highlights.

And in other news:

This year’s Art & Soul line-up was announced yesterday. It’s so pathetic I may skip the festival entirely. I think there was more exciting music at last year’s Rockridge Street Fest. Sad.
Oakland fireman (and excellent writer) Zac Unger has a guest post up at Living in the O detailing the firefighter union’s new contract.
The Port Commission selected the AMB/CCG proposal (Phil Tagami’s team) to negotiate with for developing their portion of the Army Base. The City Council will make their decision next week.
All of Oakland’s special election ballot measures passed easily, which is a good thing, because…
…State leaders finally agreed on a budget, and, as expected…
…it robs the hell out of local government funds to close the State’s budget deficit.
But who knows how long that will last, because, of course,everyone’s going to sue to stop it, of course.
Oakland isn’t alone with its drop in crime this year. Large cities throughout the country are seeing the same trend, confusing criminologists.
Are you excited about the Census yet? Nervous? Counting everyone in the whole country is a huge challenge. Here’s a good overview of how the process works.

One Response to “OAC@MTC, and other news”

1
Rebecca Kaplan Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:19 am
Thanks for coverage on this. I’ll write more later about the substance of this discussion of the OAC, but first, a process issue: Some have asked me why Oakland City Council did not plan to receive an update and take action on this issue until the fall — and I wanted to share the video (thanks V. for uploads) which explains why….
-RK

http://vimeo.com/5350376

len raphael: Unconfirmed that MJQ laid off 100 employees today, blaming RDA court case. How much did she and the CC waste in legal fees betting against Jerry’s lawyers?

ralph: No, Livegreen, Occupy Oakland is doing plenty good. They are the poster children for the new, “This is Your Brain on Dope” Campaign.

Livegreen: They seem to b determined to shut down Oakland and little else. They’ve forgotten Wall St. I can’t help but think the Officers who were preventing them from breaking in to City Hall could have spent...

gregory mcconnell: The Occupest disrupted City Hall today. They managed to make it difficult, but not impossible, to go into City Hall. They demanded that people who accosted cops on Wednesday should be released. I was out...

livegreen: I watched the M-Y mtg last night, & it was painful. Jose is a nice guy, but he has difficulty running a meeting that gets anything done. They debated for about 1 hour whether they should discuss recommendations...

len raphael: The murder of 5 year old Gabriel Martinez. Got a call from an acquaintance who lives in East O and often gets supper at his family’s taco stand. She asked where she can sign up to help on the recall.

Ravi: I’m sure that all of those Quan diehards (“a recall would be a waste of time and too expensive”) are very gratified that this lovely and deserving woman is having such a good time. No doubt they prefer...

len raphael: JQ “”I’m actually having a lot of fun,” she said after rehashing many of the lower moments from her first year in office.” “http://www.insidebayare a.com/news/ci_19651889R...

Ravi: And regarding police reform and the crime thing, Judge Henderson could decide to put OPD under Federal jurisdiction because the terms of the NSA haven’t been fulfilled by the City Administration. Those folks in City...

len raphael: Harbinger of things to come to the City Council when they eventually have to make similar decisions. But they won’t. The Fed bankruptcy judge will do it for them.

livegreen: Yeah, but OUSD has to do something. There are way too many schools for the school population. There’s simply no choice. At least they’re willing to make the tough decisions. Unlike the City of...

len raphael: Are those school board recalls entirely over the school closing decisions? Different groups or one umbrella?

Ravi: Two recall petitions for Quan; five recall petitions for five school board members.

len raphael: City says there are now 7 concurrent recall petitions. Not clear how many are for Quan and how many for Council Members. Direct democracy at work.

Ravi: Can the Oakland City Council lead? Nope, nor can the Mayor. It’s up to the citizens, who are deeply divided and have been for a very long time.

len raphael: Oakland Local is the only on or offline general circulation media that shows understanding of the depths of our fiscal situation and understands that it’s causes precede the real estate crash. One of these...

Mkilian: Related to the Cal Supremes haircut to Oakland with respect to RDA and the immediate need for a “fiscal operations plan” is another issue put forth in Oakland’s internet newspaper, Oakland Local, is...