Government
Luis Moreno brought his 17-year-old stepdaughter to Doctors Medical Center last Monday after she missed two days of school due to flu symptoms. She is not a Richmond resident—she lives in Pinole—but Doctor’s Medical Center is the closest emergency room. And she is uninsured. Like her, nearly a quarter of the patients Doctors Medical Center sees every day are uninsured and an additional 30 percent are underinsured, meaning that Medicare or MediCal covers a portion—but not all—of their hospital costs,…
After running out of time to officially declare the council seat left by Gary Bell as vacant at last week’s city council meeting, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin announced a special meeting to be held this Thursday at City Hall to discuss the issue. The time for the meeting has not been specified yet. “This process is very important and I look forward to getting it started by way of establishing some dates for the process to begin to move forward,” McLaughlin…
A meeting that began with warm sentiments as the city council praised Salute restaurant owner Menbre Akililu for her Thanksgiving Day meal giveaway for the homeless quickly spiraled into arguing, showmanship and—at the very end—confusion. As the time ticked down for the meeting—which according to city bylaws officially ends at 11 pm, unless a majority of the councilmembers vote to extend the session—Mayor Gayle McLaughlin expressed concern that they might not get to her last agenda item: officially announcing a…
In the wake of recent mass shootings—including one in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which took 26 lives, and one in late July at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, which left 12 dead—an East Bay politician is pushing for new state restrictions on the sale of ammunition in California. The move has received widespread support from city and school officials in cities like Oakland and Richmond, which struggle with high rates of violent crime.
What should the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) take into account as it begins the environmental review for its new Richmond Bay Campus? Wildlife and birds? Noise pollution and new traffic? These are question for Richmond residents, who have until February 4 to make suggestions. Last January, LBNL chose Richmond as the preferred site for its second campus, which will consolidate several bioscience facilities now scattered throughout the region. Richmond aggressively sought the lab–which city officials hope will be an…
An empty chair sat on the dais of Richmond City Hall Tuesday night during the inauguration of re-elected councilmembers Tom Butt and Nat Bates. Outpourings of well wishes for its intended occupant, Gary Bell—who won the November race but is in a medically induced coma following a bacterial sinus infection—dominated public speeches and the hushed conversations in the gallery.
Political differences were—mostly—set aside Tuesday night during the celebratory swearing-in of re-elected city council members Nat Bates and Tom Butt. But beneath the congratulatory speeches for Bates and Butt, and the appreciative acknowledgments of outgoing councilmember Jeff Ritterman, were concerns for councilmember-elect Gary Bell and worries about the council’s potential make-up now that Bell’s seat is formally vacant. Bell was hospitalized in early November and underwent two neurosurgeries for complications caused by a bacterial sinus infection, his family wrote in a…
When Oakland resident Debi Mason set out to prevent mortgage associates from the Bank of America from foreclosing on her sister Patricia’s Maxwell Park home in 2007, she had only a few friends, neighbors and advocacy groups to help fend off the foreclosure. But last week, Mason, along with thousands of homeowners in Bay Area cities like Oakland and Richmond that have been profoundly effected by foreclosures and the ensuing blight, welcomed the new Homeowner Bill of Rights, a state…
Councilmember-elect Gary Bell will not take office next week due to complications from a bacterial sinus infection, which was previously misreported in news accounts as a meningitis infection, according to a press release sent out Thursday night by Bell’s family. Next Tuesday, January 8, is the swearing in ceremony for the new councilmembers. Councilmember Nat Bates and Councilmember Tom Butt were re-elected in November—Bell won the third seat on the council with about 15 percent of the vote. This was…