The Farmer in DC

Michael Pollan, who recently came to Alameda to speak for a Library Foundation fundraiser, made a call to the President-elect (whoever that was going to be) but now President Obama, to instate a White House Farmer (much like a White House chef).   Voting ends tomorrow, but a local Alameda organization is in the running to be one of the three names presented by this group who is organizing the project.    That’s right, the Growing Youth project, a part of the Alameda Point Collborative has a shot — a long one, but a shot nonetheless — at this horserace.

So VOTE, you may have to scroll to find the Growing Youth project.  C’mon Alamed(i)ans we can do it!

Has time rewritten every line?

Okay, so I have a confession to make. I haven’t been keeping up with my Don Roberts Show watching.   I know you are all super disappointed, but it has become more and more difficult for me to find the time to watch.    And I know it’s relatively easy now that the episodes are available on-line…archive for posterity (I think?)    But someone sent me this link to one section of last week’s show with Pat Bail for those who choose not to click through:

There are some people, and we certainly saw a good number of those people, that they get vicious pleasure out of being mean and nasty and whatever.  So, you know, I certainly have my crtiticisms of our local government, I’ve had criticism of out national government as well, but I don’t think I’ve ever personally attacked anyone and called them stupid or a liar or…you know maybe a liar [Don Robert: Ha ha ha!] but certianly not viciously. [DR: uh huh.]

Ahh… Pat Bail, how soon we forget about our own personal attacks.   I guess the “vicious” is subjective though.  Let’s take a short trip down memory lane, shall we?  

Flex fluke

Last week I talked about the Transportation Master Plan which was coming up before the City Council, to briefly summarize, everyone in the City was pretty much in agreement with everything with the exception of one item in the TMP and that was the issue of street widening for the sole purpose of adding capacity for cars.   Basically staff wanted it and the Transportation Commission did not.   Staff claimed that they needed the “flexibility” in order to keep the option open to add more lanes to roads if necessary.  The City Council disagreed with City Staff all except one person.

Can you guess who?

Strangely enough, Doug deHaan stood firmly in the camp of City Staff defending their need for flexibility in order to, ostensibly, provide flexibility to future developers.

Olly Olly

Chuc Mung Nam Moi to everyone, yes, it’s the Lunar New Year for those of us who celebrate.    This year is the year of the Ox.   Hopefully the sign for this year will be reflected on the stock market as well.

Wishing you and your family a healthy and prosperous New Year!

Too close for comfort?

Francis Collins, the owner of the Boatworks property, is officially the first developer in the City of Alameda to use the Density Bonus Ordinance in order to develop his parcel of land.   The plan will be before the Planning Board tonight.    He is asking for certain concessions and incentives from the City of Alameda as allowed under the state density bonus ordinance since Alameda has yet to adopt one.

They include:

1. Waiver of development fees
2. Direct financial subsidy for building the low and very-low income units ($134K (x 20) and $184K (x29) respectively)
3. Reduction in the minimum parking requirements.

Total ellipsis of the heart

There is this punctuation thing in the English language that allows, when you are deliberately omitting text or sections of text taken from somewhere else, you to indicate to your reader that you are omitting text or sections of text.   I find this highly useful in order to provide transparency to my readers when I am quoting somebody or something.

This neat little device is called an ellipsis.  It looks like this:

…

If I were to say it outloud, “dot dot dot.”   In morse code, the three dots stand in place of the letter “S.”  The reason why we use an ellipsis, according to wikipedia is:

Oops, he did it again and again

Because once was not enough the spokesman from Save Our City Alameda/Action Alameda needs more media attention!   This time we have the trifecta of goodness to lure the unsuspecting media type folk to come to SOCA’s big shindig this Saturday.  If it’s not newsworthy, create your own buzz!

Scary language? Check!

Reference to people’s public safety? Check!

Reference to “private” and “leaked” correspondence?  Check!

Yes, the latest “news briefing” which coincidentally is happening right before the Alameda Public Affairs Forum’s big forum on Alameda Point type stuff.  (Can anyone say, Land Trust? since the Alameda Public Affairs Forum is the baby of Arthur Lipow, who is one of the leaders of SOCA) will be talking about this “leaked” email which purportedly confirmed that the City is going bankrupt.  

In Land Trust we trust

Big ups go out to Michele Ellson over at the Island who has been doing an amazing job covering — in that journalistic way — Alameda news issues.   When analyst types talk about the consolidation of media and the hit it will take on local reporting, news blogs — not to be confused with opinion blogs – will eventually need to pick up the slack for local news reporting, and that kind of reporting  happens over at the Island.  

Yesterday, Michele E. did the reporter thing to go find out more about the viability of Land Trusts.   Because, as I mentioned before, it’s easy to go around saying that you support a Land Trust and that you want a Land Trust, but figuring out how that would work is the hard part and the part that is important in order for people to sign on to.   Or, you can just sign on to it because you like the people who are behind the project and devil take the details.   Or you can just sign on to it because you don’t like the SunCal project and anything that deflects from it is good to you.  

TMP of the hat

So after the huge outcry over the street classification system update and the contention that this was all a huge ruse in order to start running buses down Grand Street, the Transportation Master Plan (TMP) is finally making its way to the City Council tonight.  It should be a rather interesting meeting tonight since I understand that the Mayor is out of town and so our newly seated Vice Mayor will be taking on the mayoral duties.   It will be one-night view into what Alameda would have been like had the Slate pulled off an upset three years ago, but I digress.

Everything appears to be on the up and up and then you find that staff, using the Planning Board as protective cover, has hijacked one key issue about street widening (not to be confused with lane widening).   Here’s the cliff notes version. 

A call to service

On this day that we celebrate the works of a great American hero and leader, the Alameda Democratic Club is answering President-Elect Obama’s call for service.  While in 1994, Congress charged the Corporation for National and Community Service to transform this day into a day where folks get out into their communities to make a change, hopefully folks in Alameda will do the same.

You can start by joining the Alameda Democratic Club along with the PTA, school faculty, community organizations, merchants gardeners and interested citizens today at 10:00 a.m. at Chipman Middle School to work on a project to develop much needed green space at Chipman Middle School.

Since you have the day off anyway…