ACLO up in the air?
I want to tell you about an emerging story regarding one of Alameda’s biggest cultural institutions, the Alameda Civic Light Opera. Sounds like years of bad economic times have caught up with them, resulting in the cancellation of their children’s summer camp and questions about the status of their 2010 season.
A reader checked in earlier [...]
Sales tax sadness: Just call us the Bad News Bears
The city’s latest quarterly sales tax results are out, and they are, shall we say, not good.
The reality of all those auto row closures has just about finished sinking in, to the tune of about $232,000 in lost sales tax revenue for transportation uses (cars and gas) over the same quarter last year. New car [...]
St. Joe’s requests 15 more years for development plan
Citing fundraising issues sharpened by a morose economy, the folks at the St. Josephs Community are asking the Planning Board to extend approval of their long-running expansion and improvement plans for another 15 years.
Approval of the community’s expansion plans is set to expire at the end of November, a decade after it was granted.
“The reason [...]
The next disaster
The City Council may have passed a balanced budget this year, but we’re apparently not out of the woods yet, fiscally speaking. “Now what?” you may ask. How’s about multi-million-dollar increases in the city’s pension costs?
Apparently, the investment portfolio of the state-run Public Employee Retirement System, which Alameda uses as its pension fund, has seen [...]
Today’s must-read: Bridge crisis averted!
The state Legislature has passed a budget sans an anticipated takeaway of more than $1 billion in locals’ gas tax funds (the Assembly balked at the last minute). Which means the county’s threats to leave three county-run drawbridges up at night have been stayed.
“I’m relieved and grateful for the Assembly’s actions,” Mayor Beverly Johnson told [...]
Bad fences make …
Sounds like the wack economy has cast its thousand points of darkness through a little hole in the city’s zoning code that city staff want the Planning Board to recommend closing tonight.
Apparently, the city’s rules aren’t all that specific about what kind of fences commercial property owners put up around their properties. Which could be [...]
Sign of the times?
From the you-know-it’s-getting-bad-when department: The Journal’s Peter Hegarty reported Thursday that Alameda police have caught a suspect in the June 30 robbery of the Bank of America on Park Street. His reason for allegedly committing the crime? He was hungry and he desperately needed money.
Alameda police arrested Adaski Joseph, 19, Wednesday in a converted garage [...]
UPDATED Budget news: Bleak, bleak, bleak
Updated 10:41 a.m. Wednesday, July 22
City staff is moving full steam ahead with plans to present a 24-month budget plan to the City Council for their approval on August 3, with looming indications that the state could take far more money from the city than it had previously proposed.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Monday that state [...]
The bridges of Alameda
As I reported the other day, the state’s elected leaders, in an effort to close a multi-billion-dollar budget gap, have proposed a plan to take back more than $1 billion in gas tax money that is used by cities and counties to fund road and transit improvements. I reported that the plan would cost Alameda [...]
Get a job!
Looking for local resources to help you find a new job? Look no further than the College of Alameda, which has got a One-Stop Career Center that is open to one and all. The center is located in Portable P on the outskirts of campus, and as I mentioned before, it’s open to students and [...]
Think pink!
Friday marks the start of what’s become sort of an annual event here in Alameda: The mailing o’ the pink slips to dozens of lucky teachers and administrators. And our local teachers are working to draw attention to their plight by asking everyone to wear pink.
“The state of California seems to be racing to be [...]
