Government
As hikers crunch down the gravel pathway of the Wildcat Marsh Trail, 89 solar panels tower over a grid of wastewater treatment ponds. But over the other shoulder, coastal birds soar above the wide-open tidal marsh and pickleweed. The Wildcat Marsh Trail takes it all in in a gauntlet of manmade-meets-nature-made. Across the marsh, a factory’s steam billows at the base of the mountains. The trail feeds into the Landfill Loop trail, where trucks buzz around on Garbage Mountain pulverizing…
Donte Clark was the sixth and final poet from Richmond Artists with Talent to perform at the Madeline F. Whittlesey Community Room on Friday night. Midway through his poem, he forgot his lines. After pausing to recollect himself, and with the encouragement of the crowd, he restarted his poem, completed it and earned a standing ovation. “Every now and then I have those moments,” Clark said. “And what are you going to do in those moments? Are you going to…
A U.S. district judge told city attorneys this morning that Richmond didn’t “stand a chance of a prosecution” in enforcing its campaign disclosure laws against an anti-soda-tax group. The Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes filed a lawsuit against the city to prevent it from enforcing a law that would require the group to devote one-third of any mailer’s campaign disclosure section to the words “major funding from out-of-city-contributors.” Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that the ordinance did not apply to…
The results of the state’s high school exit exams, released near the end of August, show that students in the West Contra Costa County School District lag behind the state average in combined English and math scores. On the English Language Arts part of the test, 58 percent of Kennedy High seniors, 66 percent of Richmond High seniors, and 72 percent of De Anza seniors passed. On the math part, 51 percent of Kennedy seniors, 61 percent of Richmond seniors…
Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Richmond Bay Campus will focus on biosciences that affect energy production, environment, and human health scientists from the lab and the University of California said Thursday. The scientists explained the highlights of research projects to come for an audience of more than 100 people at the Memorial Auditorium. Research proposals included a range of topics, from local rainwater catchment and filtration systems to biofuel development. Jay Keasling, a professor of chemical and biomolecular…
Five months after a jury cleared Richmond Police Chief Chris Magnus of racial discrimination allegations, the case is now set to reappear in federal court in November. The plaintiffs — seven prominent African-American police officers — originally filed a suit in 2007 that alleged that Magnus discriminated by race when choosing officers for promotion. In April a jury cleared the chief, deputy chief and city of any wrongdoing. But immediately after the verdict, plaintiff’s attorney Stephan Jaffe said that his…
Contra Costa officials announced at an emotionally-charged meeting Thursday morning that they would postpone a decision to build more jail beds and instead look into alternative solutions to reduce prison populations, a move that was applauded by Richmond residents, nonprofits, faith leaders, and government groups. Buses drove Richmond leaders and residents to the meeting at the county probation department in Martinez early Thursday morning. At the meeting, public attendants held signs stating “Invest in people, not prisons” and “Stop honoring…
Nathan Eberly walks less than a mile to work from his Marina Bay condo. He rarely requires a car. But if he needs to drive on a weekend, he goes online and within two minutes, reserves the same Honda Civic Hybrid to take him to the farmers’ market or down to San Jose on business. Eberly, 23, is among more than a thousand Richmond residents and businesses that are increasingly using the city’s “Easy Go Richmond” program. The sustainable transportation…
[Editor’s note: this story has been corrected from a previous version to note that the the ordinance requires the text reading “major funding from out-of-city contributors” to take up one-third of the disclosure section of the front page of a mailer. The disclosure section itself takes up one-quarter of the front page.] An anti-soda tax lobbying group will argue in federal court tomorrow that the city cannot force it to disclose its financial contributions on campaign mailings. The Community Coalition…