Park and Ride…Where?

I imagine that the majority of folks don’t watch City Council meetings, probably even fewer folks watch the Planning Board meetings, and an even smaller proportion watches Transportation Commission meetings.   I however, watch them all, well listen to them all.   During the last TC meeting, the commissioners were given, I believe, a first look at the proposed Park and Ride lot for the West End.   This is proposed for an empty lot right at the entrance to the Posey tube.  In fact, I remember when this was proposed by Councilmember Frank Matarrese during the Council Referrals portion one meeting and thinking that was a pretty rotten location for a Park and Ride in the first place.

I don’t have anything against Park and Ride lots, I think they can be useful in the right location, but that plot is just not the right location.   The whole point of a Park and Ride is so that folks can, ostensibly, park their car and ride the bus (or catch a casual carpool) to work and then ride the bus home.   Here’s the problem, on the return trip home it is nearly impossible for the rider to get back to his or her car without walking way out of their way or the buses rerouting around Mariner Square Loop rather than heading directly up Webster as is their normal route.   As the Park and Ride would look to mainly serve commuters to San Francisco the primary buses their patrons would need would be the O, W, and possibly the 51 if they are heading to Bart instead.  Not one of these buses currently stop where the Park and Ride is located and while it may be possible for these three buses to pick up passengers going into the Posey Tube, the return trip home is much more tricky.   I can’t foresee that AC Transit would tack on an additional 5 - 10 minutes to its run time to serve this one 61 space Park and Ride lot.

Surreal Slums

Carol Lloyd, whose column in the Chronicle: Surreal Estate, I enjoy occassionally, is yet the next person to jump on the Suburbs into Slums conversation.  The twist is that she has added information about Richard Florida’s “knowledge workers” which I have been meaning to read up more about, both his information and the criticism of his theories.   But anyway, highlights:

…These fabled super cities, Richard Florida contends in his new book, “Who’s Your City,” are attracting an increasingly disproportionate number of educated, creative knowledge workers who fuel the economy. In turn, these folks are keeping housing prices relatively high despite recurring appearances of the R-word on our front pages.

…

“Over the last few decades we’ve structurally overinvested in fringe real estate,” explains Christopher Leinberger…

Last fall, Leinberger published “The Option of Urbanism,” a book about the changing sociology of the built environment. Like Florida, he sees the growing attraction to urban living as a matter of critical importance.

…

When asked if the edge suburbs are turning into slums, Florida concurs with Leinberger’s ominous vision, “Yes, they are already well on their way,” he says. “The knowledge workers can’t afford the time cost, they can’t afford the commuting time.”

Giving up the Golf

Taking a bit of a break from all the school talk, this article was in the New York Times a while back, with the news that folks simply are not golfing as much as they used to.  Highlights:

…Over the past decade, the leisure activity most closely associated with corporate success in America has been in a kind of recession.

The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million, according to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

More troubling to golf boosters, the number of people who play 25 times a year or more fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000, a loss of about a third.

The industry now counts its core players as those who golf eight or more times a year. That number, too, has fallen, but more slowly: to 15 million in 2006 from 17.7 million in 2000, according to the National Golf Foundation.

A video is worth a 1000 words

Sometimes I think that when it comes to the education of our kids — and yes I say OUR kids even though my child is not yet of school going age because I feel it’s the responsibility of the community as a whole to educate children — it may be good for adults to stop talking (or writing) — yours truly included — long enough to hear what the kids have to say about their education.   During this whole process I have been so impressed with the student leaders from Encinal and Alameda High Schools (to Kevis, rereading my post, I was trying to make a point that the most visible student leaders that have pushed themselves into the fray have been those kids from Encinal and Alameda High, not that ACLC or even BASE kids didn’t participate in the rally itself).

And so I offer to you all a chance to hear them speak themselves, we already have a taste from Ian Merrifield from Encinal High School who I think holds to record as the first poster to this blog under 19.  Hurray!   While some will argue that our youth are young and impressionable and may have been “sold” a line of thinking, I would say that young people these days are a lot savvier than us old folks would believe them to be.   Simply because we may have been naive at 17 or 18, doesn’t mean these young people don’t get it, nor should we doubt their abilities to think critically simply because they disagree with our own personal positions. 

From Light Generation who filmed the Board Meeting at Chipman, the Protest Rally, and the meeting with Jack O’Connell, three videos with the words of our kids about the impact of the state budget on their futures. 

Charters, cuts, budgets

Long post ahead, you’ve been warned! 

As reported by Eve Pearlman (video!), on Friday the State Superintendent, Jack O’Connell, came for a visit to Alameda to meet with student leaders regarding the issue of budget cuts.   The student leaders from Encinal and Alameda High Schools were articulate and well spoken as usual, even putting Jack O’Connell is a position of endorsing the Parcel Tax right there and then.  But of course, since he won’t be paying for it, it was probably easy for him to say that he would, but I digress. 

Too bad the kids didn’t ask him for a pledge to deny any appeal to his office for the ACLC/NCLC/Nea Charter School, which has the potential to funnel away more than a million dollars away from the very kids that he promised to support at his meeting on Friday, making any cuts that have currently been made by the school district worthless and the school district needing to go back to the drawing board to play another round of what do we cut next.

And today, as promised by the leaders of ACLC/NCLC/Nea, they will come before the Alameda County Board of Education to appeal the decision made by our own School Board.   The final vote will not be taken until April, but the public hearing will be held today.  While some will decry the decision made by our School Board as being nitpicky and having concentrated on small problems, those folks clearly were not listening to the presentation (or read the application itself) which did not provide a comprehensive outline  for the K-5 program as required by the model charter school application.   But we should overlook that as them simply forgetting to cross a t or dot an i? 

Reading is Fundamental

Occassionally I will make pledges to myself such as:

One of these days I’m going to dust off my Baking with Julia cookbook and make crossiants!

Or perhaps:

I really should clean the range, it’s looking a little grungy.

Or:

I’m never going to watch the Don Roberts Show ever again, my stomach lining just can’t handle it.

But alas, I never pull out that Baking with Julia and my range is still filthy and I can’t stay away from DRS.  However after this latest one, I renewed my pledge which will probably be broken come next Wednesday.

Dollar for Dollar

As mentioned by David Forbes and emailed in by Susan Davis, the Bay Area Hall of Fame is offering a dollar for dollar match to raise money for the Alameda Unified School District Sports Fund.  Want to make your dollars stretch?  Donate now!

From 3:00 - 7:00 pm TODAY KNBR 680 is partnering with the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame to raise funds for high school athletic programs in AUSD.

The Hall of Fame has donated a $30,000 matching grant to AEF, specifically for high school sports. KNBR will be contacting and interviewing professional athletes that came up through our athletic programs. The challenge? To get these athletes (and everyone listening) to match that $30K — or more! Please tune in to Tom Tolbert today, after the Giant’s game, from 3:00 to 7:00 pm.

Want to be a part of the excitement? Call in to the program or donate via the AEF website (www.alamedaeducation.com). Write “High School Sports” or “KNBR” on the item line.

The Massachusettization of Alameda

I don’t know how I feel about the follow-up “My Words” in the Alameda Journal, it seems sometimes wholly out of context since the author is “refuting” items that may or may not have been published within the paper itself, which leads to confusion for the majority of readers who may not be privy to what the critiques of the piece were and therefore only know through the follow-up My Word itself which may tend to distort what the initial criticism were in the first place.   I certainly don’t know if Richard Bangert is addressing what I wrote directly or whether he is talking about conversations with other people who have expressed skeptism with his grand commercial plan, but here’s what I found troublesome about his characterization of his critics:

…I recently floated the idea of abandoning residential development and going all-commercial to alleviate the outbound traffic burden that would worsen with even the best transit. Skeptics responded by citing the commercial vacancy rates in Alameda and Pleasanton, decrying Emeryville’s economic “freak show” and asserting that residential development is the only sure financial bet…

Always be my boo

For those of you who still read Alameda Daily News, and I readily admit that I still do, you may have noticed that Don Roberts and ADN have been relatively silent about the school district budget issue, until yesterday that is, when Don R. posted a blurry photo and this “report” of what happened:

Last night’s meeting of Alameda’s School Board lasted until 1:15 a.m. At the meeting, the Board approved moving forward on an election for a $120.00 parcel tax and approved spending reductions of over $1,500,000 for 2008-2009. Among the cuts approved were closing swim centers, increasing class size and reductions for high school athletics and middle school counselors.

Alameda students left classes to attend a protest inside Kofman Auditorium which was completely packed requiring the overflow crowd to stand in the lobby and outside in front of the auditorium. Superintendent of Schools Ardella Dailey tried to speak to the students from a mike on the stage, but she was booed down by the crowd. It took the efforts of a student to calm the crowd and to allow the superintendent to complete her remarks. Student speakers and teachers got standing ovations when they spoke against the cuts…

You’ll never walkout alone

Encinal and Alameda High students have staged a massive walkout in protest over the cuts.  And where there are a bunch of angry kids taking to the streets, news media follows. 

A sampling of the coverage:

• KGO, ABC 7
• Alameda Sun (2 articles, click the separate links)
• Oakland Tribune video (courtesy of Eve P’s blog) <– a must watch!!
• SF Gate/Chronicle
• KPIX, CBS 5 (includes video!)
• SJ Mercury (looks like a AP wire)
• KTVU, Fox2
• NBC 11 and video
• KCBS
• Alameda Journal