The Island

Second in an occasional series When Doug deHaan got his property assessment in the mail, he knew that a heart-to-heart talk with his wife was coming. The couple was going to have to sell their home. Just 18 months earlier, DeHaan and his family had moved into a new place in the Gold Coast. And in that [...]

Like any good politician, San Francisco Assessor Phil Ting has set the state’s fiscal meltdown – and its solution – into the simplest of sound bites. “We’re in a financial catastrophe,” Ting told me a few weeks ago. His solution? Amend California’s property tax-slashing Proposition 13. And like any good advocate of a once-righteous cause, Kris Vosburgh [...]

Folks who read my earlier posts on city employees’ pay and benefits have been asking for some more specific breakdowns of the different pay and benefit items included in the totals on my spreadsheets. Well, I (the royal ‘I’ that actually means my husband) just figured out how to load the PDFs the city sent [...]

In case you missed it, this past Friday I posted a spreadsheet listing the gross pay for every employee in the City of Alameda for 2008. Well, a few naps and four additional hours of data entry later, I’ve got a new ’sheet that includes pay plus benefits. The city spent $19.3 million on medical and [...]

As part of The Island’s ongoing look at the fiscal condition of our fair Island city, I’ve obtained a list of city workers’ salaries for 2008. I just got the list yesterday so I don’t have a fancy database for you to search, but I retyped the spreadsheet from the PDF the city sent. (Eight hours [...]

So last week I did a piece comparing our city’s budget to a similar size city’s, in an effort to broaden the conversation about how our cash-strapped Island spends its dollars. I had originally intended to focus primarily on the services folks have talked about, including public safety and administration. But some interesting questions popped [...]

Redwood City occupies a 19-square-mile patch of ground in the heart of Silicon Valley. It’s just 35 miles away from Alameda as the car drives, down the 880 and across the San Mateo Bridge. But as far as the services the city supplies to its residents goes, it may as well be a world away. Lately, [...]

THE STATS Population Alameda: 75,823 Redwood City: 77,269 (Source: California Department of Finance) Square miles Alameda: 22.7 Redwood City: 19 (Source: City of Alameda Budget and Financial Plan Fiscal Year 2008-2009 and 2009-2010, City of Redwood City Adopted Budget FY 2008-2010) BUDGET (Source: City of Alameda Budget and Financial Plan Fiscal Year 2008-2009 and 2009-2010, City of Redwood City Adopted Budget FY 2008-2010) General fund budget, [...]

Throughout this holiday season, I’ve written posts about a number of worthy non-profits that need your help to thrive. But Alameda’s also got a host of great arts organizations too, and they could use your help. I’ll start with Frank Bette Center for the Arts (they did send a neat Seussian poem asking for donations, after [...]

As I’ve reported recently, the Alameda Education Foundation has fallen on hard times. Like many nonprofits, the foundation has seen a sharp drop in donations. And the group’s leaders are saying they don’t think they’ll see about $40,000 in parent payments for after-school enrichment classes that they were supposed to receive from their online payment [...]

Wedged between the old Woodstock school and the jumble of squat apartment complexes that line Atlantic Avenue is a rubble-strewn lot. It might not seem like much to folks whizzing by in their cars at the Island-high speed of 35 miles an hour. But George Phillips sees potential. Perhaps that’s no surprise: Phillips runs the Boys [...]