El Cerrito
With three open seats on the five-member El Cerrito City Council, the Nov. 5 election offers residents a rare opportunity to shape the city’s future. Mayor Tessa Rudnick will not be running for reelection after one term on the council. Councilmember Paul Fadelli is also not running, after serving two terms, leaving Lisa Motoyama as the sole incumbent. Also running are Lauren Dodge, a design researcher and landscaper; Courtney Helion, an art conservator; William Ktsanes, an educator; and Rebecca Saltzman,…
El Cerrito Principal Malcolm Norrington was at the center of a student walkout this week, after a letter surfaced in which Norrington apparently reported to the California Interscholastic Federation that the school would forfeit six football games because of ineligible players. The student protest also was in response to the West Contra Costa Unified School District’s decision to place the team’s head coach, Jacob Rincon, on administrative leave in September. The district has not said why it suspended Rincon –…
For some who go to a bookstore, it’s mostly to browse or to quickly pick up that bestseller that a friend told them to check out. For book lovers, though, a bookstore is more. It is a place to escape whatever is going on, to get lost in a world that for a short time is better than their reality. Even if they don’t leave the store with anything, it still provided the safe haven they needed. This is a…
Tensions over the Israel-Hamas War have surfaced in many communities across the country, including El Cerrito, which has made two arrests for hate crimes against Jewish people since the violence began on Oct. 7. In the latest arrest, a Hayward man was charged in Contra Costa County with three hate-crime-related felonies stemming from a January attack on Jewish demonstrators that included allegedly shoving a woman and taking the Israeli flag that was draped around her neck, and grabbing an Israeli…
As class ends for the day at Fred T. Korematsu Middle School in El Cerrito, students stream through the gates, blinking into the sun. They board buses, climb into cars, or sit on the cement blocks that line the campus. Many of them crouch over their phones. Some of these students are being bullied or harassed through social media apps. Korematsu’s principal, Matthew Burnham, has been on a crusade to shut down bullying accounts on Instagram for years. So far,…
A high-density housing development of more than 700 homes, nearly half of them deemed affordable, is in the works in El Cerrito on land owned by BART. The city received a $20 million state grant in October to propel the progress it has made on the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan, which was adopted in 2014 to meet community housing needs. The plan, updated in 2019, would put houses on land by the El Cerrito Plaza BART station that is…
In 1897, Isaburu Adachi left Gifu, Japan, for California at the age of 25. Eight years later, Isaburo managed to buy five acres of land in El Cerrito. That land turned into 12 greenhouses before the first world war broke out. The Adachi Florist and Nursery survived into the 21st century, closing its last nursery five years ago. Isaburo’s granddaughter Wendy Adachi wanted to honor her family’s legacy — and that of the other Japanese Americans who opened nurseries in…
Residents are no longer allowed to comment on Zoom during El Cerrito City Council meetings, after an ugly incident last month in which a group spewing hate speech took over the public comment session. El Cerrito Mayor Pro Tem Tessa Rudnick, who is Jewish, described the hateful rhetoric that erupted during the session in an opinion piece in The Jewish News of Northern California, noting that it included a depiction of pedophilia and remarks denying the Holocaust. She said a…
Claudia Vela studies at the El Cerrito Library every morning. The 38-year-old graphic design student at Berkeley City College has a 1-year-old son — the library gives her a quiet place to get her work done. But Vela wishes the library, which opens at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, opened earlier. “I get a lot more done here,” she said. Vela may get her wish under the Contra Costa County Library’s plan to keep libraries open for 56 hours…