Encinal coach dies of apparent heart attack
The Chronicle is reporting that Ken Babers, a girls’ basketball coach at Encinal High School, died Sunday of an apparent heart attack.
“He was just a man of absolute integrity,” Micki Singer, the school’s head varsity girls’ basketball coach, told the paper’s Will McCulloch.
Babers, 34, who worked as a property manager, served as Singer’s assistant and [...]
Growing Youth Project vies for White House Farmer spot
Alameda Point Collaborative chief Doug Biggs shot us an e-mail Monday to ask for your vote to send the collaborative’s Growing Youth Project to the White House.
A Midwestern farming family is heeding the call of Berkeley foodie author Michael Pollan to create the role of White House farmer by setting up a web page to [...]
Big garage sale fundraiser Saturday
Mielle Gonzalez’s ordeal began with a rash that lasted for months, her mother, Suzy Clement, says. Not long after she entered kindergarten, in 2007, she developed pain and weakness in her legs that became so severe she couldn’t walk up the stairs in her home, and would have to crawl to a piece of furniture [...]
My humble assessment
This past weekend, we got a letter from the county informing us that we were among the 44,000 or so lucky property owners in Alameda County getting a break on our taxes for the coming year. But my husband and I had to stop mid-end zone dance when we realized a kind of important fact: [...]
Dr. Robert Butts, 1956-2008
Sad news: Beloved Alameda pediatrician Dr. Robert Butts has died. Butts passed away Friday after a six-month struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was 52.
A native of Galesburg, Ill., Butts practiced in Alameda for over a decade and also worked at Children’s Hospital in Oakland. Friends, co-workers and patients remembered him as a man with a [...]
Rede-what now?
Last week we posted an item on the City Council’s plan to ask voters to okay an increase in the property transfer tax, and a fascinating debate over the value of the redevelopment process erupted in the comments section. (Does calling redevelopment fascinating make me a nerd? Wait, don’t answer that.) Here’s how redevelopment works: [...]
Most likely to succeed
Well folks, it looks like one thing’s a lock for the November ballot: A request from the City Council to increase the property transfer tax – paid by buyers and sellers when a home or other piece of property changes hands – from $4.50 (ed. note: It’s $5.40 – thanks Lena T) per $1,000 of [...]
Open season
Today marks the start of candidate filing season. Up for grabs are the two city council seats currently held by Doug deHaan and Marie Gilmore; three school board seats now filled by Bill Schaff (who says he’s not running again), David Forbes and Janet Gibson; city clerk (ed note: city clerk is not an elected [...]
The taxman cometh
The City Council passed a budget a few weeks ago, but there was one big piece of the process outstanding: Revenue solutions to the city’s ongoing money woes. At the end of June, a polling firm hired by the city asked 400 Alameda voters how they’d be willing to tax themselves to help fill the [...]
Staycation!
With gas approaching five bucks a gallon and all kinds of other economic fun happening this year, a lot of folks are foregoing the Hawaiian vacation in favor of what the pundits are calling a “staycation.” Meaning you skip both the airport lines and all the annoying little household chores you’ve been putting off and [...]
Goin’ to the chapel
Gay couples have booked up San Francisco’s City Hall since the California Supreme Court overturned a ban on same-sex marriage a month ago. But don’t worry about being in a pinch for a wedding spot: There are actually places you can get married right here in town. City officials announced the other night that our [...]
