First look

Tonight the City Council will get a first look at the new budget for next year.  It appears from a cursory review that the budget will be balanced using a combination of cuts and fund transfers.

Here are some of the proposed cuts by department:

Happy Memorial Day!

Nothing for today, just enjoying the holiday!

See you all tomorrow!

 

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose

As part of Alameda Citizens Task Force’s letter to the City Council urging the City Council to not reimburse Councilmember Lena Tam for her legal expenses incurred during the whole “investigation” at the very end they threw in a zinger, pointing out that:

…it should be emphasized that while the District Attorney’s  Office failed to prosecute Ms. Tam, it did not fully exonerate her of any wrongdoing either.

In light of the recent lawsuit threats and lawsuits brought on by City Attorney Teresa (Terri) Highsmith and Interim City Manager Ann Marie Gallant.   I find the rhetoric that surrounds these two cases rather contradictory.   On one hand, those that believe that Terri Highsmith and Ann Marie Gallant have a legal case are content to let the courts “sort out” who is right and who is wrong.  (I’m going to go with the assumption that folks that are supportive of both women will paint any settlement as a “win”.)  On the other hand, those that are convinced of Lena Tam’s guilt in the whole “was she leaking confidential information” are not placated by the District Attorney dismissing the case because the evidence was lacking and the legal theory unsound.

Identity crisis

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the newest community group in town — Alameda Citizens Task Force (ACTF) — has been putting themselves out there, big time, by hosting forums about the budget and getting their name in the paper, etc and so forth.    They recently have put up a website with some general information about the group and an all important Mission Statement.   It’s interesting because in media coverage they are styled as a “non-partisan” group, but on their website their vision statement is:

We are a permanent watchdog group advocating for effective government and we take actions as necessary to support ACT’s mission.

The mission, if anyone is interested, is that they:

…protect the quality of life for Alamedans by:

• Promoting open government
• Advocating fiscal responsibility
• Analyzing critical comments on city issues
• Encouraging community involvement in city government

Which is an admirable mission, although the third bullet was a bit confusing.   I think what they meant to write was “Critically analyzing and commenting on city issues”, but right now it doesn’t read like that.

If you’re too school for cool

In the good news category, Alameda’s two High Schools have once again ranked on the Washington Post’s High School Challenge.  Of the 1900 schools examined by the Washington Post, Alameda High ranked 579 and Encinal High ranked 995.

Essentially the High School Challenge takes the total number of Advanced Placement (or similar) tests taken by the students at the school and divides this by the number of graduating seniors, schools are then ranked by the subsequent ratio.  Of course this is not a perfect measure for all students of how well the students are doing, but it does give a good measure of how many advanced classes are offered and taken at a given school.   After all, the school district needs to take care of students at every level and not just the struggling kids or not just the advanced kids.

Bits and pieces

I’m not an overly religious person, but I’ll admit it, at one point on Friday afternoon I did have a small twinge of  ”um, what if Harold Camping is right?”

You see, I on the  verge of purchasing tickets to see Prince on Saturday night and while typing in that ReCaptcha code I started getting nervous.    Then I realized I was being stupid and went ahead with the purchase.  Which, by the way, the concert was awesome.

But I do find it amazing that I had a brief encounter with the “what if” and I realized that all the people out there who are considerably more religious there might have been, for some, a really inner struggle with wanting to believe but also wanting to write the guy off as a nut.   Anyway, I’m starting to feel a little bit bad for fellow Alamedan Harold Camping and his followers.   SFist decided to go and snap a photo outside his home.   People protested outside his radio station.   He’s become probably the biggest punchline for this week at least.

Why must I chase the cat

Last week someone emailed in to ask about what was going on with the Alameda Animal Shelter.   There are rumors circulating that the Animal Shelter is on the chopping block and of course, a petition has been drafted to saved the Animal Shelter.

So, I reached out to Acting City Manager Lisa Goldman to understand what was behind these rumors that the Shelter might be closing.  She responded:

We have a $6.5 million budget problem for FY11-12 that is getting worse rather than better. (The problem continues in the subsequent years without major structural changes.) As I explained at the March 29 budget presentation, I have asked all departments to explore ways that they can cut their budgets by 5% and 10%. Even with 10% across the board cuts (which I think will be very difficult to achieve in one year), we will still probably have to tap into our fund balance to
balance the FY11-12 budget.

Muted tones

Wednesday night’s Webinar on Alameda Point finances was quite a doozy.   I had actually forgotten that it was going on and hadn’t intended to sign on until someone pointed out that it was happening relatively soon.  So I signed in and waited, I had about a half an hour to spare until the bedtime routine and boy was I glad that I signed in.   It literally was a complete clusterfuck for the first 15 minutes.   It was awesome in how wrong everything was going.   It was so bad, I actually tweeted what was happening and honestly could not stop laughing:

OMG I'm dying, the #Alameda's webinar is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. People have not realized their webinar panels became unmuted—
Lauren Do (@laurendo) May 19, 2011

and:

Phones ringing, computers pinging, people talking, noses blowing #hilarity—
Lauren Do (@laurendo) May 19, 2011

Lucky number seven

As mentioned by Mike McMahon, you can still ask a question to incoming City Manager John Russo over on In Alameda, he’s our Officially Speaking guest for this week.

Zennie Abraham on his City Brights blog on SFGate has a 40 minute interview with John Russo that he posted the other day.   The first part is all about Oakland and why John Russo has decided to move on from Oakland which is interesting but not necessarily topical about Alameda.   The end there are some very specific Alameda-centric questions and answers that I think folks might find worth noting.  The links will jump to direct time codes in the video that I am referring to.

When asked by Zennie Abraham what the first thing on John Russo’s agenda was when he comes to Alameda, he responded that filling all the interim positions with permanent employees in order to stabilize the City.  He points out that since 2005 Alameda has had seven City Managers, which at first I was taken aback by the number because it seemed rather inflated, but he’s not wrong:

Sticky wiki

Tonight, the City is hosting a webinar on the financial basics of Alameda Point.   You can either make your way down to City Hall to watch or sign up for the webinar.   I guess what separates this from a traditional streaming meeting is the ability for the webinar participants to ask questions if they have any.   Hopefully they’ll be putting the webinar on-line after it is complete.

I do like that City Staff is thinking outside of the box to get information out to the public.  But I think that the City in general could be doing a lot better job of  getting information out to the public and engaging the public in general.   Because while there was an okay turnout and response to the Alameda Point Going Forward process, it probably could have been a lot better.

Planetizen linked to an article from On the Commons on engaging the public in planning for future development more so that previously.   The piece was based on the premise that there simply weren’t enough people involved in the process, which is pretty common in Alameda.   The “public” that tends to get involved at community meetings, particularly around development, is fairly homogeneous, which is not at all representative of Alameda’s community as a whole.