Government
Richmond City Councilmember-elect Gary Bell was still in the hospital Wednesday with what may be a case of viral meningitis.
The City Council returned to business – with the meeting going into the next morning and the occasional spat between councilmembers — at its first post-election meeting Tuesday night. Before the meeting started, audience members were told to wait outside while fire and police officials responded to a carbon monoxide leak in the council chambers building. Richmond Fire Marshal Terry Harris said that the Fire Department responded to a call by a person who complained of the smell of gas…
Richmond City Councilmember Tom Butt makes no bones about the fact that he keeps a menagerie on the 5 acres that surround his property in Point Richmond. For a decade, Butt has shared anecdotes, sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, about his various goats, sheep, dogs and bees on “Tom Butt’s e-forum,” an electronic forum where he also posts articles about more pressing matters of concern to his constituents, such as preserving historic railroad crossings and investigating the Chevron fire. Perusing these…
When the official returns came in on Wednesday morning, Richmond voters had decided that after the most expensive campaign in city history, what they wanted was familiar faces. Incumbents Nat Bates and Tom Butt were re-elected to the City Council, and Gary Bell, who will return to the dais after an eight-year hiatus, will take the seat vacated by retiring Councilmember Jeff Ritterman. The city’s proposed tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, Measure N, was defeated. Money was a major talking point…
Chevron will replace all piping in the damaged sections of the Richmond refinery with chrome alloy, the company said in a letter Wednesday to the city of Richmond and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The move comes six weeks after Chevron announced that it believed the Aug. 6 fire may have occurred because of thinning and corrosion in a piping component that may have had low silicon content. “Before the restart of the crude unit, Chevron will complete…
On the day after the election, as folks were picking themselves up after a night spent celebrating or grieving, Nutiva CEO John Roulac, a major financial supporter of the failed genetically-modified-food-labeling Prop. 37, was putting his best GMO-free foot forward. “Obviously, I would have loved to have won, but 47 percent is respectable and demonstrates that 47 percent of Californians want the right to know what’s in their food,” Roulac said, referring to the 4.3 million Californians who voted yes…
Contra Costa voters generally sided with the rest of California Tuesday night, voting in favor of successful measures to harshen penalties against human traffickers and soften the Three Strikes law, while rejecting a genetically engineered food labeling bill and a proposition that would limit campaign contributions from unions and corporations.
West County voters came out strong for education Tuesday — both on a local and state level. Measure E, Measure G and Prop 30 passed. Todd Groves and Randy Enos will join the West Contra Costa School Board.
In a hotly contested City Council election, with millions of dollars at play and a recent push into the national spotlight, Richmond voters have elected Nat Bates, Tom Butt and Gary Bell to the three open seats on the council dais. The two RPA candidates, Eduardo Martinez and Marilyn Langlois, finished just outside the top three, with Martinez trailing Bell for the final council spot by 600 votes. The return of Bell after an eight-year hiatus and reelection of incumbents…