Government
The slow crawl of representative democracy was on full display Tuesday as the City Council debated a Personnel Board election held earlier in the month, in which some votes weren’t counted. The time-sucking agenda item caused Councilmember Nat Bates to say “let’s move on and go home,” as the discussion topped the hour and a half mark. The whole affair centered on the decision by City Clerk Diane Holmes to invalidate ballots submitted by some city employees in the Department…
DeVone Boggan, director of the Office of Neighborhood Safety, called 25 young men known as some of the most violent or at-risk youth in Richmond into the City Manager’s office in City Hall more than a year ago. He wanted to show them the fantastic view of the Bay Area and to make them an offer—he would take them on as ONS fellows if they were willing to take a chance on a new life. Almost all of them said…
The gunshot detection and location system is an invaluable investigative and response tool, police leaders say, but it has not been credited with nabbing any homicide suspects. Still, reduced costs and technological advances mean that the system is likely to be a long-term feature in Richmond.
When Reina Portillo was diagnosed with breast cancer and her husband, Jose Pedro Albarron Lopez, lost his job, her family, including four children and one grandchild, crammed into whatever one-bedroom apartment they could afford that month. They lived like that for years. Since July, Portillo and her family have lived in the Lillie Mae Jones Plaza, in a spacious four-bedroom apartment, with affordable rent and social services in the building. “My mom couldn’t work any more and it was only…
A couple dozen individuals gathered in the Market Square parking lot in downtown Richmond on Friday to join the “Occupy” movement that’s been sweeping the country since individuals began staking out Liberty Square in Manhattan in mid-September.
More than 750 families in the city’s low-income Iron Triangle neighborhood now have computers in their homes thanks to a two-year effort by a coalition of nonprofit agencies working to make broadband Internet access widely available there.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District, which supplies drinking water and water treatment to East Bay cities from Castro Valley to Crockett, has announced plans to lay new three-foot-wide water pipes beneath a stretch of 23rd Street. The project is part of a 10-year effort to expand capacity in the district’s pipelines and water treatment plants to meet rising demand for water. EBMUD does not plan to begin construction until 2021, but is seeking public input now. The project in…
A group organized by Richmond SPOKES director Brian Drayton, and with the backing of the city’s progressive leadership, has taken the name OccupyRICHMOND and plans to gather downtown and march to City Hall this afternoon. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said Wednesday she’ll meet them there and express her support for the “Occupy” movement, a diffuse coalition of protest groups that has gathered in public places across the country to criticize economic inequality and corporate greed. The Occupy Wall Street protests started…
The City Council decided last week to spend most of a $2 million tax settlement with Chevron on a conditional contract with transMETRO, a transportation consulting service that will help the city implement a greenhouse-gas reduction program. Although the majority of the council appeared to enthusiastically embrace the contract, an amendment added at the meeting requires transMETRO to conduct an initial study on how to serve low-income communities, and to present its findings to the council in 120 days, before…