Last night’s Park Street Tree meeting was really invigorating (depressing as well). Below is the twitter comments at #alamtg. Before I get there, I want to share some brief thoughts now that it’s 12-hours later. The meeting was a perfect example of how public involvement, even when its contentious, is good. Disparate voices, many...
A quick post in advance of the City’s Nov. 9th meeting about the Park Street Trees. According to the arborist hired as a part of the creation of the Tree Master Plan, two-thirds of the 21 trees that were removed in the 2nd phase of the Park Street Streetscape project were rated in Good...
In what ended up being a big coincidence, I was planning on writing about issues of public notice and involvement with major Public Works projects, including the Transportation Commission, last week. Then the department managed to prove my point exceedingly well by chopping down 21 apparently healthy trees on Park Streetwithout telling anyone about...
Alameda had a rude awakening last week when on Thursday and Friday, with no real notice, the city clear cut all the trees on the south end of Park Street. It may or may not have needed to be done, but the way in which it went down was not ok, and Alamedans across...
Tonight the Planning Board will hold a public hearing on scoping for a possible EIR on the proposed reconfiguration of the City’s golf courses and land swap. Because of the Brown Act, it’s important to remember what this meeting is about:
There is a lot of information out there about the Alameda Golf/Mif Swap unfortunately much of it is pretty bad which causes the discussion to wend its way out of control and into the absurd. That said, I think the swap is a terrible idea, something I’ll write about later, but just became aware...
Mayor Gilmore and Councilmembers, At tonight’s meeting of the City Council you will hear the first reading of the draft sunshine ordinance. I want to thank staff for their hard work on this important ordinance. For the most part, their revisions make the ordinance clearer and stronger. I would like to respectfully disagree with...
Tomorrow night, the Alameda City Council will hold the first reading of the draft Sunshine Ordinance. The ordinance was originally presented to the City Council back in January and sent to city staff for comment. It returns pretty much intact. A tracked changes copy is available here. Most of the changes are just language...
So HBIA, aka Ron Cowan, has hired a consultant to produce a minute and a half video of what building sports fields in the middle of a business park looks like. The only problem is that the cheesy music gives the proposal a bucolic feel, which is less consistent with the tiny baseball fields...
On Tuesday night, during the City Council meeting to receive and discuss the tragedy that ended with the death of Raymond Zack, after 9 Alamedans stood and asked questions about (or in some cases called into question) the independent report produced by Ruben Grijalva. After the public comment was complete, Alameda City Manager, John...