Bits and pieces, again

Sometimes there are just lots of little bits of news, not big enough for an entire post, but not insignificant enough not to share.

Yesterday, Susan Davis posted this bit of great news on Twitter:

Good news: #Alameda teachers no longer seeking impasse; district & union to bargain again 2/8. Fingers crossed! http://t.co/lZ2iJmHO

— Susan E. Davis (@Susan_E_Davis) February 5, 2013

Which means that, hopefully, everyone can be on their best behavior and work together to finalize a contract.   As I wrote in this post, the District and AEA weren’t that far apart, number wise, but of course the District’s proposal was contingent on teachers buying into the Professional Learning Communities to get the annual $1000 stipend during the two year pilot.

In other school related news, Ruby Bridges Elementary did not meet its fundraising goal via the gospel show which would help send 100 Fifth graders to sleep away Science Camp.   It fell a lot short of the needed dollars, so if you have a few bucks you can spare to help out, you can give the Ruby Bridges campus a call at 510.748.4006 to see how you can help.

Replace you

When all the dust settled from November’s election and Stewart Chen was appointed to fill out Rob Bonta’s term, there was a vacancy on the Hospital Board that — unlike the City Council — is filled by the Hospital Board and not handed to the third place finisher in the election.    The application period has ended and there are four candidate for the Hospital Board to consider:

• Lynn Bratchett
• Shubha Fanse
• Terrie Kurrasch
• Tracy Jensen

That’s a wrap-up

For some reason, I didn’t feel nearly as invested in this election as I did two years ago.   It felt like there was so much more at stake two years ago, this year it just seemed like any which way the election went, it wouldn’t be THAT bad if any of the candidates won this time around.   This year the City Council race was kind of “meh” and even though the outcome was pretty much as my gut anticipated — although I expected Jane Sullwold to do much much better than what actually happened — Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft ran a nearly pitch perfect campaign.    She had collected nearly all the important endorsements, but she also had a good ground game and it showed in the outcome.

Tony Daysog ran a lean campaign but in the end the combination of name recognition and the door-to-door campaign put him over candidates that had a lot more money.   Name recognition was probably the biggest asset in Tony Daysog’s corner.   If Beverly Johnson had stayed in the race, it’s pretty much a gimme that she would have won, probably beating out Tony Daysog, but perhaps not Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft.

In the end I think Stewart Chen lost the campaign for himself because with the amount of money raised and the type of endorsements he had, he should have easily won over Tony Daysog.   I think the endorsement scuffle might have lost him some key votes and in the end, it doesn’t appear that the addition of the AEA endorsement was much help on election day.

Reading the tea leaves

Much like the “Bronco Bamma” girl, I’m really quite “done” with this whole election.  Between the national and local elections, next Tuesday can’t come fast enough.   While I’m not quite at the point of shedding tears quite yet, my stomach lining can’t take any more of the stress.  But I just wanted to point out that, if you haven’t had quite enough about election stuff and you still haven’t quite done enough research yet, I’ve been keeping my election roundup page quite updated.

And in the grand tradition of trying to read the tea leaves, my election Brain Heart Gut predictions.   I can’t recall if I did this for 2010, but my 2008 guesses were right on City Council wise, but I was way off on my School Board predictions.  So for those new to the Brain, Heart, Gut game, you make predictions based on who you logically think will win (Brain), who you want to win (Heart), and who you believe will win (Gut):

Who I’m voting for: Hospital Board and City Council

As promised — and given that absentee ballots have already gone out — my election recommendations!

First, the sort of lighter stuff out of the way:

Vote YES on A1, because the Oakland Zoo is a regional jewel dammit.   Have you seen those Sun Bears and their habitat?  It is awesome.  Did you read about how the Oakland Zoo saved four tigers that were living in some crazy personal zoo in Texas?  That’s the kind of stuff you’ll be supporting.

Vote NO on Prop 32, I don’t know how this one stays out of the courts if it passes, plus it’s ridiculous.

Vote YES on Prop 37, because knowing what is going into your food empowers you to make better food choices.

Now on to the local stuff:

You asked, they didn’t answer

That’s all folks, yes it took forever to get through all the questionnaires, but I thought that each person who actually filled out the questionnaire deserved their day in the spotlight since these questionnaires tend to get all shoved on a page even though the candidates put so much time into completing them.   However, there were a few out there that did not complete the questionnaire.

Who are these slackers?

Read on…

You asked, they answered: Leland Traiman, Hospital Board candidate

1. Under what circumstances do you think the Healthcare District should be dissolved, and what process would you use to determine whether or not to pursue that course of action.

Alamedans voted to create the hospital district because they wanted emergency services on the Island. The first order of business is to ask, “Are we fulfilling that obligation?” I do not believe we are and we need to look at where the current Board is failing and assess if the problem can be fixed and, if it can be fixed, how to fix it.

Alameda Hospital should remain opened only if it can provide appropriate and safe emergency services to our citizens. The current Board has so mismanaged the hospital it is not possible to tell, at this time, if that is possible.

If the hospital closed, I would want all parcel tax money to be sequestered until the voters decided. The voters created the hospital district and it is the voters who must decide if they wanted to dissolve the hospital district and have the funds returned to the taxpayers or, if they wished to continue, at a reduced rate, to fund other emergency services to quickly transport people off of the island to surrounding hospitals. This could mean emergency helicopter services or other solutions arrived at in consultation with the county and other hospitals.

Crowdsourcing a Hospital Board questionnaire

As with the two other elected boards (City Council and School) I want to crowdsource a questionnaire that will be both informative and entertaining. I promise this is the last one!

Much like the School Board, the Hospital Board also has two sitting incumbents vying for their current seats. How interesting this race ends up being remains to be seen. The Hospital Board is, of the three, a lesser known entity than the City Council or the School Board. Most folks rarely pay any attention to the Hospital Board except, maybe, to grumble about it around the time the parcel tax is levied.

I see the future

For those that want to keep track of the details of who is filing, who is pulling papers for all the elected offices in November, by far the best resource is Mike McMahon’s website, where he has logged in all the information here.   But if you must immediately know who has filed for City Council (or rather who has pulled papers for City Council) immediately, you can contact the City Clerk and get on her end of the day email blast to be one of the first to know which candidates have pulled so far.    If everyone who has pulled papers decides to actually run, it is going to be a really crowded field.   I anticipate a few extra filers because the Action Alameda crowd has yet to put up a candidate yet,  Leland Traiman doesn’t count because of reasons that I’ll go into below.

I’ll just note, since I’m on the topic of people running for office, that I was surprised — but not shocked — that Beverly Johnson is choosing to run again.   First because there had been talk that she wasn’t going to run, but mostly because she was recently appointed to a State position by Governor Jerry Brown:

Gov. Jerry Brown has named Councilwoman Beverly Johnson as deputy director at the state Office of Administrative Law.

Johnson, 53, a Democrat, has been a councilwoman since 2010; her term is up at the end of this year. Earlier, she was the city’s mayor from 2002 to 2010 and a councilwoman from 1998 to 2002. This position requires state Senate confirmation and the annual salary is $124,236. Brown announced the appointment on July 16.

Conflict of marginal interest

It’s been mentioned before in varying venues but I just wanted to highlight this issue because it just yet another example of the types of things that go on quasi behind the scenes in the Alameda political world.

More than a year ago, Denise Lai, who used to run the Raising Hell for Good blog but shuttered it unexpectedly late last year, filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Committee (FPPC) against Hospital Board Member Robert Deutsch, alleging that he had a conflict of interest voting on reauthorizing the annual levy of the Hospital Parcel tax because he, as a vendor of the Hospital, was voting to enrich himself.