General
Throwing rocks and shouting loudly are effective ways to be a good neighbor — to overconfident coyotes. While the wild canines and humans have been sharing habitat for a very long time, a spate of incidents involving aggressive coyotes over the past year and a half has prompted a new educational campaign by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in partnership with local agencies in Contra Costa County. The program, called Wildlife Watch, relies on trained volunteers to spread…
In 2019, after eight years as an English teacher at Richmond High School, Rebekah Ponce-Larsen was excited to start a new job as a librarian at Lovonya DeJean Middle School. Being a librarian, she thought, would give her an opportunity to work with kids but in a different way. “I have more time to get to know individual students sometimes than teachers do,” she said. It’s through that personal relationship with students that Ponce-Larsen has transformed the library at DeJean,…
Bolo Quesada was 13 when his older brothers inspired him to get his first pair of gold grillz. “It used to be a specific type of person that had grillz,” Quesada, who is now in his early 30s, says. “It went from the dope boys to now the average kid getting them.” Grillz, the dental jewelry typically made of gold and encrusted with diamonds or other gems, has exploded in popularity. And grillz shops have popped up across the country,…
Shortly after the start of the school year, education consultant Mary Bacon encouraged about three dozen parents and guardians in the West Contra Costa Unified School District to engage teachers and schools to improve the educational outcomes for African American students across the district. “We don’t have the luxury anymore to drop our kids off and say we’ve found the right school district, or this is the right school and the right classroom, and then not check on them again…
On any given day in Richmond, 16,200 people go hungry. To bring awareness to food insecurity issues, this month the California Association of Food Banks launched a new statewide anti-hunger initiative called Everyone to the Table. The interactive public engagement campaign encompasses print, social media, radio, online, and TV and can already be seen on billboards across the state and on digital platforms like Instagram and Facebook. The social media format allows people to take part in advocacy through graphics…
With more than a year to go until the election, the Richmond mayoral race already promises a tense and tight competition. Buoyed by a premature endorsement from the Richmond Progressive Alliance, Councilmember Eduardo Martinez has already set up a campaign finance committee, public records show. In a race that will determine his political survival, Martinez braces for a potential challenge from Vice Mayor Demnlus Johnson III, who told Richmond Confidential he is considering a run. Councilmember Nat Bates, who is…
In an e-forum blast Tuesday, Richmond Mayor Tom Butt said a nearly two-year investigation into allegations against him has concluded after finding no evidence of wrongdoing. “Read it and weep,” Butt said when introducing the letter, which was addressed to him and the City Council, from the city attorney. Marked “confidential,” it outlines the investigation’s origins and findings. Multiple complaints were filed by a city employee, according to the letter, accusing Butt of abuse of power and conflict of interest….
Charlene Cornelious was seriously considering putting in her 30-day notice. It was July 2021, and Cornelious, a longtime Richmond resident, was worried she wasn’t going to be able to pull together the $960 she needed to pay her rent. Her Crohn’s disease had flared up again earlier that month, causing abdominal pain and diarrhea and forcing her to take time off from her job as a nurse’s assistant in San Pablo. But being home meant her only source of income…
What 9-year-old Ashbey Asuncion was looking forward to the most after getting her COVID-19 vaccination, was going outside without wearing a mask and teaching her younger brother how to do a cartwheel. She and her brother, Avery, 6, got their first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic in Nystrom Elementary School in Richmond on Tuesday, one of the first Contra Costa Health Services’ clinics open to children ages 5 to 11. Health Services has partnered with a…