Late last year, Pacific Steel Casting, the country’s fourth largest steel foundry, fired 200 workers. The reason: Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a workplace audit on the company, and could not verify that they could legally work in the US
In the chambers of the City Council, there are rules. There are procedures to be followed – motions, amendments, voting, establishing a quorum. These are Rosenberg’s Rules of Order, a simplified version of parliamentary procedure that governs how the Richmond City Council conducts its meetings. In the early morning hours of the council’s final meeting of the year, Rosenberg’s Rules were questioned and debated en route to approving three medical marijuana collectives to operate within the city. Medical marijuana became…
The City Council voted Tuesday to remove a question about criminal convictions from city employment applications, saying the yes/no “box” was an onerous requirement for ex-convicts. Question 14, displayed prominently on the first page of all applications for city jobs, asks: “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” Opponents of the question have long felt that it dissuades potential applicants with a criminal record from applying, making it difficult for them to obtain employment and contributing to the already…
Aboard the only surviving cargo ship produced in Richmond’s Kaiser Shipyards during WWII, the community gathered on Veterans Day to celebrate those that served their country. The ship is newly restored, and functions as a WWII museum. Check out the video to hear the stories of Richmond residents who lived through the wartime effort.
In the food packaging business, polystyrene has become a four-letter word, but the food industry simply doesn’t have a cost-effective, eco-friendly answer to the plastic that Dow Chemical introduced to Americans in the early 1940s. In 2007, Richmond business owner Allen King thought he had the answer.
A local housing attorney painted a disheartening picture of racial discrimination in Richmond at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, making a case that potential African American renters routinely received rental terms and conditions that were less favorable than their Caucasian counterparts.
The slow crawl of representative democracy was on full display Tuesday as the City Council debated a Personnel Board election held earlier in the month, in which some votes weren’t counted. The time-sucking agenda item caused Councilmember Nat Bates to say “let’s move on and go home,” as the discussion topped the hour and a half mark. The whole affair centered on the decision by City Clerk Diane Holmes to invalidate ballots submitted by some city employees in the Department…
Ryan Wartena has designed what he calls an energy computer, although he routinely refers to it by different names — home micro utility, demand response device, a suite of tools. It’s the size of a small refrigerator. The device is essentially a battery for solar power, storing energy collected from solar panels for use later. Solar, Wartena says, is a “use it or lose it” commodity — if the generated power is not used in real time, it’s gone. He…
The City Council voted 4-3 Tuesday to allow an increase in the number of medical marijuana collectives operating in Richmond from three to four. Councilmember Jeff Ritterman summed up the majority council opinion, saying he didn’t “see that much of a downside” going from three to four collectives. Ritterman, along with Councilmembers Nat Bates, Corky Booze and Jim Rogers, rejected the notion that the increase posed additional risks. Rogers added that allowing four collectives to operate did not mean that…
Grand plans for a casino in the city of Richmond have died since both city residents and the City Council voted against building a sprawling shoreline casino at Point Molate in the last year. Yet amidst the anti-casino sentiment, a similar plan in unincorporated North Richmond remains a quiet possibility. Called the Sugar Bowl, the casino would house close to 2,000 slot machines, 55 table games, a dedicated poker room with 16 tables, and an exclusive “high rollers” room. At…
North Richmond’s share of landfill mitigation funding for 2012-2013 is likely to be doled out in proportions roughly similar to previous years, the mitigation committee suggested in a meeting last Friday. County leaders offered an early glimpse at an expenditure plan that would provide the incorporated and unincorporated areas of the community with an estimated $1.13 million over two years. The North Richmond Waste and Recovery Mitigation Fee Joint Expenditure Planning Committee administers these funds, and the Friday meeting was…
The City Council narrowly failed to pass an ordinance Tuesday that would have required the three medical marijuana collectives in Richmond to purchase their marijuana from suppliers that either grow their crop outside without the use of artificial light, or indoors with solar-powered light.
The Richmond Oilers lost to the Mt. Eden Monarchs in a dramatic contest that was undecided until late in the game. An effective Oilers aerial attack couldn’t keep pace with the Monarchs’ unyielding ground game, losing 34-29 in a nail biter. The running game was so effective that the Monarchs didn’t attempt a single pass the entire first half. Richmond got off to a promising start as Oiler Quarterback Daniel Esparza connected with Isaiah Brown for a 35-yard strike and…