Government
Chevron will present its case for a $58 million tax refund before an appeals board on Monday, as the company seeks to prove that it overpaid property taxes on its Richmond refinery between 2007 and 2009. Chevron believes the county has overvalued its Richmond refinery by nearly $2 billion per year.
If the company succeeds in its appeal, it would create a “brutal situation” for the county and cities, Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said.
When Joshua Genser purchased 10 acres of industrial land on Richmond’s north shore in 1999, he had a vision: A Silicon-Valley-like park, complete with palm trees, gleaming glass, and a shoreline where employees and the public would take in views of the San Pablo Bay. Genser wasn’t alone. Other parties bought land in the area that year, too. Joe and Heidi Shekou (JHS) purchased 14 acres on the same industrial subdivision. The Murray family bought 55 acres next door. Some…
Richmond resident Marilyn Langlois, who is also Gayle McLaughlin’s mayoral aide, returned from Haiti a few weeks ago, her first visit to the impoverished country since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck in early 2010.
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.