It’s a mixed blessing to get a letter from the government that says your house is worth less than it used to be. Nobody wants a reminder about depreciating home values, but on the other hand, you’ll pay less in property taxes, which are based on the county’s assessment of your home’s worth.

This July, the owners of more than 110,000 properties were sent a letter telling them that appraisers at the Alameda County Assessor’s office judged their properties to be worth less than they were last year. That decision slashed $2.9 billion from the collective value of properties in Alameda County and lowers the value of nearly one quarter of the county’s roughly 440,000 properties. It will be applied to tax bills issued later this year to be paid next year.

Oakland, the city with the highest net property value in the county, lost $1.3 billion, down 3 percent from 2009, as calculated excluding tax-exempted properties.

It’s the second fiscal year in a row that the county halted its normal routine of gradually increasing the value of most properties, a standard real estate philosophy. During the 2009-10 fiscal year, Alameda County lowered the valuation of almost 99,000 properties, according to Russ Hall, chief deputy assessor for the county.

Hall explained the county’s 50 real estate appraisers concentrated on properties that were purchased—and were subsequently reassessed—during a period when prices were rising rapidly. “Pretty much most of these fall in a time period where their assessment period happened since January 1, 2001,” Hall said.

It’s no simple task to standardize the process of valuing properties en masse. For approximately the last 30 years, counties figured out how much to tax houses by resetting the value of each property at the time of purchase, pegging the value to the purchase price. The most accurate market-rate assessment of a house, the theory goes, is the price someone agreed to pay for it.

For all the other properties—the ones that weren’t bought recently—the government tacks on a bit of value every year, something a little over 1 percent. The precise percentage differs geographically, because of various fees and bonded debt. “In general, property values increase, most years, about 2 percent a year,” Hall said of Alameda County.

But figuring out how calibrate home values after a real estate boom and bust is difficult. “Those guys have a hard problem,” said John Quigley, an economics professor at UC Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy. He said that the county has to make “a good faith attempt” to reconcile prices assessed in boom times with today’s market, because the law requires it. But with 50 appraisers and 440,000 properties to assess in a shaky market, the process could be difficult to get right.

There’s no generic algorithm for a widespread downward reassessment, particularly in a market like Oakland, where property values vary block-to-block, and neighbors who bought comparable properties ten years apart from each other pay wildly different taxes.

“It’s an imperfect system to say the least,” Quigley said, but he gave the county assessor credit for being preemptive rather than waiting for property owners to fight unfairly high taxes. “It’s clear they’re trying to responsive,” he said.

Hall couldn’t define exactly how the county’s appraisers figured out how to calculate the home values, saying they make independent decisions. “We gather all the information we can, present the properties in our review segments, in ordered fashion, to appraisers generally familiar with the neighborhoods we’re reviewing,” he said.

Because the county’s lost billions in property value, fewer tax dollars will come in from property taxes next year, as they did last year. These property taxes get shuffled around to several parties, like the county itself and the state of California, which uses the money for schools.

As a result of the drop in property values, officials expect that the county’s general fund will only collect approximately $290 million in secured and unsecured property taxes next year. That’s down almost 2.5 percent from the previous year’s—approximately $298 million—and almost 9 percent lower than what was collected the year before that, about $319 million. Those declines mean less cash in city coffers.

“We have taken a hit because of the assessed value has decreased,” said Cheryl Taylor, director of the City of Oakland Budget Office.

For Oakland, it means the city government will count on about $125 million in property tax revenue next year, a downgrade from the originally budgeted $130 million, according to a report issued by the city in April. The city took in almost $130 million this year and a little more than $134 million last year, according to the same report.

Declining revenues from property taxes are only part a widespread financial crisis here. Oakland’s also taking in less cash from hotel taxes and utility consumption tax, because people are traveling less and using less electricity. They’re also shopping less, cutting into city revenue from parking meters and sales tax, particularly related to auto sales, according to Taylor.­­

Transfer tax revenue, collected when properties are sold, has also plummeted. Taylor said the city would bring in around $70 million in transfer tax during boom years. “Now, I think we’re probably lucky to get $25 million,” she said.

For homeowners wondering why the county has decided to reassess so many properties now, Hall points out they have no choice. “We do as the law bids assessors to do,” he said. “There’s ample evidence that property values have declined,” he said, adding that because home sales are down, the appraisal staff have enough time on their hands to take on such a major project.

Reassessing properties downward preemptively, before homeowners start complaining about their taxes, also has the beneficial side effect of reducing the number of assessment appeals that the county has to process, and owners have been appealing their tax bills a lot lately.

“Normally we get around 2,500, maybe 3,000 appeals,” said Crystal Graff, clerk of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. Last year Alameda received more than 11,800 assessment appeals from property owners who thought the county had it wrong, she said. In 2008 the clerk’s office received more than 11,500 appeals, more than doubly 2007’s count of approximately 4,500, according to figures provided by Graff.

Even after the assessor lowers a property value, the owner can still appeal. The county sends every owner a notice in July explaining what to expect during the next tax cycle, regardless of whether or not the county thinks a property’s changed in value. Owners have until September 15 to appeal.

“If we didn’t send these notices out, people might not be able to file their appeals in time,” Hall said. “Not every county sends out these notices to every taxpayer.”

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Heavy winds carried the scents of marinated meats and roasted garlic, with a slight hint of propane. Dogs of all sizes trampled on peoples’ feet as they weaved their owners through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Despite the noise around them, children napped in strollers with sunshades, guarding them from the sudden spurts of heat on an otherwise perfect Saturday.

Oakland is encouraging gluttony this weekend as the city hosts two festivals, flooding the streets with thousands of locals and out-of-towners eagerly waiting to sample the various treats.

The three-day Eat Real Festival at Jack London Square focuses on cooking healthy, affordable meals with sustainable local ingredients, while the 23rd annual Oakland Chinatown Streetfest, a two-day event on Saturday and Sunday, showcases traditional Chinese delicacies with a cultural backdrop of performers and informational booths. Groups of people have been trekking the traffic-ridden six blocks to get from one festival to the other.

“It think the festival is a good thing,” said Jenny Ong, executive director of the Chinatown chamber, as she watched satisfied business owners packing up their booths at the Chinatown StreetFest late Saturday afternoon, only to set up again early Sunday morning. “It’s to promote the economic vitality of Chinatown, to celebrate the local Asian culture.” Ong said nearly 100,000 people have so far attended the event over the weekend.

Susan Coss, director of Eat Real, estimated that by the end of Sunday, the same number of people will have passed through during the three-day festivities just overlooking the waterfront at Jack London Square.

Although this is only its second year, the Eat Real has attracted a substantial following of businesses wanting to showcase their culinary capabilities. Nearly 200 vendors—including street food trucks, restaurants, and information booths—participated at each event. Each one added their own touch to the gluttonous experience.

Anna Ming, co-owner of Gerard’s Paella, spent nearly two and a half hours combining a cornucopia of ingredients for the catering business’ most popular item—chicken and seafood paella, made with chicken, Ecuadorian white shrimp, mussels, rice, saffron and smoked paprika, roasted red bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, green beans, lemons, and garbanzo beans. The dish is made entirely with organic ingredients, unless requested otherwise. Ming, and fellow co-owner Gerard Nebesky, find themselves slaving over the paella pans year-round.

“We travel coast-to-coast making paellas,” said Ming. “We’re all over the place. We cook almost seven days a week.” Aside from a lull in business during the months of January through March, Ming and Nebesky, alongside two other chefs, are sometimes booked for up to four events in a single day. But the cooking isn’t the only daunting task for the four-person crew. Each of the custom-made paella pans they travel with is about as big as a queen-sized bed.

Another vendor specializing in catered events was Global Soul Street Eats, owned by Jessica Phadungsilp and Christina Aviles. Only four months into the business, both have already established a following, with customers leaving the booth shouting praises about their jambalaya. As of midday Saturday, nearly half of the pre-prepared 60-gallon batch of jambalaya was already settling in the stomachs of a few hundred happy festival-goers.

Aviles said she spends an hour and a half constantly stirring the concoction of orzo, tomatoes, all-natural sausage, organic chicken, tomato paste, and the “holy trinity” of garlic, onions, and celery. “It’s slowly stewed with lots of love.”

Adding to the global food experience was Soul Cocina, a San Francisco-based restaurant. Co-owner and chef Roger Feely provided more than just his bhel puri, a rice dish mixed with diced vegetables. He let people witness the special way in which the dish’s sauce of garden mint chutney is prepared, using a bike-powered blender A young man was happily pedaling the blue one-wheeled bike, watching the blender—that sat atop the wheel, between the handlebars—form the forest green chutney paste.

“We didn’t want to use any kind of electricity,” said Feely, as he worked alongside his wife and co-owner, Desiree. “Everything is 100 percent handmade.” In addition to the homemade chutney, the dish had Indian puffed rice, fried lentils, cilantro, green chilies, boiled potatoes, and yellow, red, and green heirloom tomatoes. As he doled out the remnants of one batch, Feely scurried to the back table in the tent, determined not to keep his customers waiting. After eyeing the measurements of each ingredient, which were all raw—with the exception of the rice, lentils and potatoes—Feely tossed together the colorful vegan creation.

Katie McKinstry, a mechanical engineer from Oakland, was just as impressed with the food as she was the bike-powered blender. “I like the combination of the mint with the crunchy aspect of the puffed rice,” she said. “It tastes like summer.”

In nearby Chinatown, grills ran strong as thick cuts of meat were slapped onto the grill and served on skewers, buns and paper plates. Though the primary language was Cantonese, evident by the chatter of thousands of locals, people didn’t need to know the language to understand what good food was.

At Saigon BBQ, based in San Francisco, owners Helen Nguyen and her husband Khoi Xa served up their signature barbecue sticks, which were finely cut pieces of chicken slathered in their homemade barbecue sauce. They even offered sugar cane juice, made fresh using two-foot long pieces of sugar cane stems and running them under a large steel rolling pin, forcing the sweet liquid out and flattening the stems until they resembled torn corn husks.

Across the way, Happy Dumplings served up its own rendition of the kebob, adding a spicy kick. The husband-and-wife team of James Kerson and Shuhui Jiang sprinkled a medley of spices on their cumin-based lamb kebobs. Also on the menu were the restaurant’s signature item of water fried buns (shui jin bao), available in chive and pork, and cabbage and pork, and vegetarian—with freshly chopped carrots, tofu, pickled vegetables, mushrooms, and ginger. Kerson prides himself in being able to make the pastries on demand.

Attending the festival for another year, 13-year-old Kenny Yu, of Alameda, stopped by Happy Dumplings with his father, in search of something to munch on as he strolled through the rest of the fair.

“It’s quite good,” he managed to say, while nodding and tearing the tender lamb meat off of the two skewers in his hand.

Though the Jack London Square and Chinatown food trucks will be gone by Monday morning, there’s nothing to worry about; they’ll be back on the streets at their usual locations. And anyone craving for a dish from the restaurants that labored under small tents and over portable grills can now enjoy the same food—trading in the picnic benches and paper plates for a booth and tablecloth service.

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes “good eggs” and knowing the source of your meat.

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In one corner of Oakland’s second Eat Real Festival, the annual Jack London Square celebration of locally produced food, the very scrappiest of the sustainability enthusiasts challenged the public to take the movement home. And they didn’t mean starting an herb garden.

Instead, these local farmers and butchers paraded out animals, both alive and not, urging consumers to look their food in the face.

“Your great-grandmother probably went out and killed a chicken for dinner every night,” said Novella Carpenter, author of the food memoir Farm City, who was selling produce at the festival and talked about her chicken culling demonstration — that’s humane slaughtering and cleaning — scheduled for Sunday. “What we do is get people in touch with their meat,” Carpenter said. “The demonstration is to empower people, but it’s also to remind people of our heritage.”

Chickens, goats and bees all made an appearance Saturday, as did many of the local food movement’s best-known personalities. For those who want to get in touch but aren’t quite at Carpenter’s level, David Budworth was on hand with a lower-key alternative. Budworth, aka Dave the Butcher, chatted with a crowd of 300 to 400 people about the evils of factory farming while he and his colleagues from Avedano’s Holly Park Market butchered a goat.

On a stage in the festival’s “Urban Homesteading” section, Budworth suspended the newly dead, skinned animal from an anchor-shaped hook attached to metal scaffolding. He deftly broke it down into sections and explained each step, all the while encouraging the crowd to move away from mass-produced “boneless, skinless, chicken breasts” and try something different from their local butcher — like goat.

“A lot Americans don’t eat goat, even though it’s lean and protein-rich,” he said, and placed his hands on the animal’s hindquarters. “And they won’t eat tongue, for example, but they’ll eat this,” Budworth said. “It’s a lot of mental stuff people need to work through.”

Later, Budworth talked about the recently invigorated local food movement. “People are moving away from the whole 24/7 Safeway thing that was so popular in the ’70s,” he said. “People have been wanting to source more locally in the last few years.”

Budworth is happy to help, whether by butchering meat for his clients or teaching them to do it themselves. Avedano’s offers monthly classes that teach basic knife and butchery skills, that Budworth says “will help people break free of their fear of this.”

For the less carnivorous animal enthusiast, Eat Real provided ample information on rearing chickens for eggs, goats for milk, and on beekeeping. Ken Kirkland and Mario Klip manned an impressive booth designed to walk the urban farmer through each step of housing backyard chickens. Kirkland, owner of Woolly Egg Ranch, provided a vast selection of the birds, which customers were able to purchase on the spot.

Kirkland’s chickens put the red hen that graced barnyards of yore to shame — today’s urban farmer has gone designer. These “heritage birds” come in a variety of colors and sizes, sport froufrou plumage, and cost $15-$30 a pop. According to Kirkland, the more familiar White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds are bred for mass egg production and can range from difficult to downright mean. “The heritage birds breeds are not as productive but are better backyard birds,” he said. “And the eggs they produce are better than store-bought eggs. They’re all different colors: green, champagne, speckled, brown, and pink.”

Naturally, these couture chickens need couture housing, and that’s where Klip comes in. As the owner of a small business called Holland Hen Houses, Klip says his motivation was to give the urban farmer an alternative to the unsightly chicken coop. In 2009, Klip started selling his “attractive, European cottage-style, locally-made hen houses” to the public, and thus far, he said, business is booming.

“Chickens are very popular, especially in this area,” Kilp said. “I read somewhere recently that it’s the fastest growing hobby in the U.S.” And though he’s doing business stateside, the Netherlands-born Klip paid homage to his homeland by naming different cottage models after Dutch cities and artists — “Utretch,” “Amsterdam” and “Rembrandt,” among others.

Once you’ve purchased your chickens and made them a home, one looming question remains: What next? Heidi Kooy, who lives in Excelsior with her husband, two children, two goats, two chickens, a dog, a cat and a rabbit, has the answer. At her “Backyard Chickens 101” presentation, Kooy addressed everything from vaccination to chicken feed, and she was frank about the downsides.

“You have to do some pretty gruesome things,” she said. “I’ve had to stick my hand up a chicken’s backside. But it’s not that bad, really!” Kooy also addressed the legality of backyard farming. “You can only legally keep two chickens in San Francisco, but the city is on a complaint basis,” she said. “They’ll only bother you if someone complains about noise or smell. So, the key is being on good terms with your neighbors.”

Frankie and Jeannie Morrow, who gave Eat Real’s presentation on goat milking, said they’re on such good terms with their neighbors that many of them help care for the couple’s six goats in exchange for milk. Why? “It’s the closest thing to human milk,” Frankie Morrow said of goat milk’s health benefits. “It’s easier to digest, and it makes it easier to digest other food, too.” The Morrows also make goat cheese and ice cream, but say the rewards of goat ownership extend far beyond food. “Because goats have been with us since the dawn of time, we’re really comfortable around them and they are really comfortable around us,” Frankie Morrow said. “We think of our goats as pets. Each one has a distinct personality.”

Marina Shoup, Vice President of the San Francisco Beekeepers Association, added “escape” to the list of benefits urban animal rearing provides. “It slows me down,” she said. “I get to pay attention to forces greater than my own.” That tone of deference was palpable in the language and attitude of every Eat Real vendor and presenter, especially the ones working with living creatures. Responsible animal ownership set the tone for the day, as did a focus on proper care, preparation and respect. Heidi Kooy put it plainly, “If you’re not sure about this, don’t do it,” she said. Or, if it’s just the final product that appeals, start with a trip to your neighborhood butcher shop.

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes “good eggs” and encourages a weekend of street fair gluttony.

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After weeks of threatening the closure of seven Oakland childhood development centers, the Oakland Unified School District announced Friday that five of the seven centers will remain open until at least the end of December.

The decision to maintain operations at the five centers came after district staff identified $2.1 million in unspent, unrestricted funds from last year’s budget.

“After June 30, we begin closing the books for the fiscal year,” said Troy Flint, OUSD director of public relations. “This usually takes several months to complete, but we expedited the process in order to find money to support early childhood education.”

Childhood development centers provide free early education and afterschool care to Oakland preschoolers and students in grades K-3. These centers came under fire in May, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed massive budget cuts to early childhood education across the state. To date, the school district’s total funding has been cut by $110 million this year.

According to Flint, Jefferson, Manzanita, Piedmont Avenue, Hintil Kuu Ca and Sequoia childhood development centers will continue normal operation through the end of the calendar year. Santa Fe and Golden Gate are still slated to close the afternoon of Tuesday, Aug. 31.

“In order to keep the maximum number of sites open, we had to close two that were, basically, draining funds from the overall pot,” said Flint.

Enrollments at Santa Fe and Golden Gate are the smallest of the seven childhood development centers. Flint said the less than 100 students currently served at Santa Fe and Golden Gate will be transferred to other locations in the district. Nearly 800 students would have been forced out were all seven centers to close. Currently, there are 31 childhood development centers in the district. Staff at Santa Fe and Golden Gate have been both reassigned and laid off.

Beginning on Wednesday, students from the Santa Fe center will receive care at Santa Fe Elementary School, while those currently at Golden Gate will be transferred to other sites. As of Friday, Flint was not able to confirm where Golden Gate students would be transferred and how that would be determined. However, he advised that staff at Golden Gate will be able to offer that information to parents on Monday and Tuesday.

While Friday’s news came as a victory for some, many said they were disheartened by the closure of the two centers. “I really don’t want my center to close,” said Macie Malachi, mother of a six-year-old Golden Gate student. “It’s very convenient for me. I know the teachers, and I don’t worry at all while I’m at work.”

Malachi, who lives in walking distance of Golden Gate, is concerned about her son traveling from school to the center. “The staff at Golden Gate walked him from his school to the center,” said Malachi. “I don’t know where I am going to send him at this point.”

Maria Mosley, single mother of two boys who attend Golden Gate, expressed similar sentiments. Mosley’s children, who are five and seven, also take advantage of Golden Gate staff walking them from their school to the center.

“This area is drug turf. I know, when my kids are here, they’re safe. I don’t know what I’m going to do when the center closes,” said Mosley.

Since the district initially announced plans to close the childhood development centers in June, community members have rallied together to support the maintenance of these facilities. Local organizations, such as the Oakland Education Association, Oakland Parents Together and By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), have led many of these efforts. On Friday afternoon, BAMN staged a small sit-in at the Golden Gate Childhood Development Center in response to the closing.

Students play at the Golden Gate childhood development center on Friday. The center is expected to close its doors on Tuesday afternoon.

“Unless we have something in writing, we’re fighting to keep open every single one of the seven centers,” said Yvette Felarca, a national organizer for BAMN. “We will definitely be here until we get in writing that it’s staying open.”

Felarca, along with two other BAMN members, brought food and sleeping bags to Golden Gate just as the center was preparing to close for the weekend. Oakland police officers arrived at the center shortly thereafter and the group vacated the premises peacefully hours later.

Despite these efforts, Flint said the outpouring of concern from the community is not the reason the district sought to identify funding for early childhood education. Flint called BAMN’s sit-in on Friday “misguided” and a “disappointment.” “We didn’t need a prompt from the community,” he said prior to the sit-in. “We all agree that protecting the most vulnerable members of our community is essential.”

Flint discouraged any hope that the district will find funds in the coming days to keep the Golden Gate and Santa Fe centers open. “A great hope is that, by December, state budget will have been passed and we can revisit opening the centers,” said Flint. “For now, we are kicking the can down the road.”

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Ernesto Vilchis shows off his tongue, tripe and cow's cheek tacos.

Looking up into the small ordering window of Tacos Sinaloa’s bright orange and chrome taco truck, Ernesto Vilchis asks for a serving of marinated tongue (lengua), crispy tripe (tripas) and cow’s cheek (cabeza) tacos. As he waits for his food to be grilled to order and topped with condiments such as pickled jalapenos, radishes, lime, cilantro and hot sauce, he says that it’s food like this that reminds him of his home in Mexico.

“If an American travels to another country, they might want cupcakes or waffles,” he says. “It’s the same for us.” Menu items that aren’t often found in ordinary U.S. restaurants, with ingredients like beef brains and tongue, are what Vilchis craves when he feels homesick. “It gives me memories of my place and my family,” he says. As his tacos are handed to him through the small window, he holds up his plate to admire–three little corn tortillas covered with steaming meat and topped with green and red salsas–and says, “This is really delicious.”

Tacos Sinaloa is one of the most popular taco trucks in East Oakland; and not only does it serve up traditional Mexican tacos like tripe and cow’s cheek, it also has items for the less faint-of-heart, such as barbecue pork (al pastor), grilled chicken (pollo) and steak (carne asada). Four years ago, Tacos Sinaloa doubled its menu by opening up an exclusive seafood taco truck parked right next door to the original truck, with menu items like octopus ceviche (pulpo), shrimp tostadas (camarones) and oysters (ostras), which distinguishes it from the dozens of other taco trucks in East Oakland. It serves up bowls of seafood in a spicy red salsa and crispy tortillas topped with little pink shrimp and big hunks of green avocado.

One of the cooks in Tacos Sinaloa's seafood truck waits to take orders.

When Lupe Bueno first fired up Tacos Sinaloa in East Oakland in 1999, he had no idea how popular it would become. A thin, humble man with gray hair and a moustache, Bueno says that when he first started the business made only $50 a day. “I worked day and night,” he says, “17 or 18 hours every day during that first year.”

But, then, little by little, Sinaloa’s reputation grew. Now, his business has 12 employees, the two trucks, a big outdoor and indoor seating area where people can eat after ordering food from the trucks and a prep kitchen where prep-cooks ready some of the ingredients used in the trucks.

Unlike other food trucks in the Bay Area that rove from spot to spot being followed by Twitter and Facebook fans, Bueno has always parked in the same location—the intersection of 22nd Ave and International Blvd—renting the parcel of land where he parks, which is a former A&W drive-in. He also keeps his menu consistent with the same ingredients and recipes. “We have exclusive flavors for the food,” he says. “We have used the same recipes for years.”

Bueno moved to the U.S. in the early 1970s to work as a migrant laborer picking grapes, peaches and cherries. He is originally from Sinaloa, Mexico—a coastal state known for its seafood. Bueno first learned to cook when he moved to Oakland in the 1980s and worked at another taco truck. From there he invented his own recipes and built up a clientele that followed him when he opened Tacos Sinaloa. When he started up the seafood truck four years ago, he says that he had been thinking about it for a while.

Gavin Ames finishes up his meal.

As people line up at Bueno’s seafood truck, they rave about the quality and price of the food—tacos go for $1.25 a pop. Because there is a steady stream of people stopping by throughout the day, the ingredients stay fresh with the prep-cooks always bringing in giant tubs of freshly cut onions, cilantro and Sinaloa’s coveted spicy red salsa.

One customer, former cab driver Gavin Ames, finishes up his lunch and says that he’s had his fair share of tacos over the years. “This is by far the best taco truck in Oakland,” he says enthusiastically. “The shrimp tostada is to die for.” He calls Tacos Sinaloa a “destination taco truck” because he drives out to East Oakland for the sole purpose of eating one of Bueno’s fish burritos or shrimp tacos.

In addition to tacos, burritos, quesadillas and specialty items like the ceviche, Tacos Sinaloa also offers typical Mexican drinks like horchata—an icy drink made with rice, milk and sugar—and champurrado, a warm thick concoction made with corn flour, chocolate, cinnamon and milk.

Bueno has no plans to open a restaurant; he says he likes having the self-order trucks and spacious eating areas. But, he is looking to start another truck. “We are looking for another place, another city maybe,” he says. “I’d like to open one in Berkeley.” He plans to keep the business in the family and eventually pass it onto one of his three children.

Tacos Sinaloa takes pre-orders and host private parties. It is located on 2138 International Boulevard at 22nd Avenue and is open every day of the week.

Connect with Oakland North on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. Facebook fans voted for us to cover Tacos Sinaloa as their most recommended Oakland food truck. Read other stories in our food truck series: Jon’s Street Eats, CupKates, and Seoul on Wheels.

On a chilly and overcast Saturday evening, in a parking lot surrounded by chain link down the street from Broadway Auto Row, Hilary Schwartz beamed in satisfaction. She was standing beside a little folding table covered in breadcrumbs, and she’d sold off the last of her jars of coconut custard spread.

“They told us we would sell out, but I didn’t believe them,” she said, laughing. It was her first try at selling the Singaporean treat, a recipe she cooked up with her partner Marcia Ong after visiting Ong’s family in Singapore. By the end of the evening, she was left with just enough custard for free samples, served on thinly-sliced white toast.

Laura Miller from Sidesaddle Kitchen next to her signs for her tartes.

Schwartz wasn’t the only one manning an empty table in this parking lot in Oakland’s rapidly-changing Uptown neighborhood. Despite mediocre weather, hundreds of hungry people turned up the East Bay’s first Underground Market, a food event somewhat akin to a farmer’s market except it’s only for members, and – more significantly – it doesn’t require vendors to have permits or to use commercial kitchens.

They ate everything in sight: steaming paella with mussels and shrimp, pulled pork, heirloom tomato salad, quail, braised skirt steak, pork buns, vegan black bean tamales, gourmet mac and cheese, and at least four different styles of cupcakes.

After signing up as a member and paying $2 to enter the lot, one could also taste an abundance of jams – including spicy jalapeño, peach vanilla bourbon, and absinthe Bing cherry – hot pizza and calzones cooked on site, unbaked goods like raw, vegan chili chocolate torte and “living food” raw cupcakes. Actual baked goods were also available: fresh bread, Florentines and other cookies, items that looked like cookies but were called bars, and things that looked like bars but were called cookies.

Iso Rabins, an aspiring chef and wild food proponent, founded the Underground Market in 2009 to promote the food creations of those who found it too difficult or too expensive to get their fare into a farmers’ market. It’s been serving foodies in San Francisco ever since, and on Saturday, it came to Oakland for the first time.

Jam samples.

Farmers’ market rules vary depending on the city, but vendors can be required to prepare foods in commercial kitchens and to secure insurance, in case someone gets sick from the food. For the Underground Market, vendors pay 10 percent of their sales to participate and have to pass food auditions.

The market’s officially a “club,” and eaters have to sign up before entering the market, so the city’s food restrictions don’t apply. Anyone can join online, for free, by agreeing that they will, as the Underground Market’s website puts it, “have the option to consume products that may have been produced in a space not inspected by the health department (we need to say that to stay out of jail).”

Oakland-based Venga Paella Catering.

Some of the vendors on Saturday have sold their wares at places that require licenses, like Fresh Bite Baking’s founders Cindy Tsai Schultz and Terry Betts, whose baked items sell at the Lafayette farmer’s market. Based in Berkeley, the bakers have a $1 million insurance policy and a health permit. But they’re small and still interested in selling Underground.

On Saturday, Betts and Tsai Schultz were serving cookies, pork buns, and a savory vegetarian “pastie,” a baked turnover from Cornish tradition. The women have started a weekly bakery box. “Instead of a CSA it’s a CSB, with two sweet and two savory items,” Betts said.

Last week’s box had baked polenta with fresh corn and mozzarella, pesto focaccia, chocolate banana bread and strawberry “not-pop” tarts. They’re planning to sell their goods out of Ashby Marketplace, a small new grocery near College Avenue.

Vegetarian pastie from Fresh Bite Baking.

Other vendors had more dramatic food, like “Pizza Hacker” Jeff Krupman, who was rapidly pulling pizzas from a homemade, portable wood-fired oven.

Really more of a modified Weber grill than a proper wood-fired oven, Krupman’s oven burns wood like a traditional pizza oven, but it’s far lighter, made of concrete that Krupman cast himself, and optimized to bake pizzas in just a few minutes. (See a video here).

Unlike the standard ovens, this one heats up quickly and can be disassembled, cooled off, and plopped into a pickup truck to be taken to catered events, markets, or the park. “I was looking into building an oven in the backyard, something portable,” Krupman said. He started reading about oven design and tinkering with ideas in about January 2009 and launched a working oven last summer. Now Krupman is working on commercializing it.

Jesper Jensen, a baker helping out with the nearby Bread Project table, was watching Krupman as he sweated by the hot oven, which itself was more of a curiosity than the pizza it was cooking. Jensen pulled out a remote thermometer and aimed it at the interior wall of the oven  — 720 Farenheit.

Also hot at the market – with the longest line – was Mission Cheese, with a special cheese melting device that toasted individual servings of raw cow’s milk raclette, right off the top of a large cheese round. Heated until it began to bubble and brown, each serving was scraped off the top onto a pile of Yukon potatoes with pickles. By the end of the night, the table had gone through about 30 pounds of cheese, according to Sarah Dvorak, Mission Cheese founder.

Melted raclette (cheese) scraped to top potatoes, prepared by Mission Cheese.

To the live tunes of Oakland-based Beat Beat Whisper, Saturday’s market featured plenty of cooks from San Francisco, but more than half were East Bay locals, with a smattering hailing from other cities, like Santa Cruz and even Los Angeles.

Julie Perez drove up from L.A. to serve moist cakes with a heavenly texture, made with aromatics like orange oil and enhanced with a little help from alcohol. “In the middle of these there’s this luscious little sweet spot where it’s been soaking in liquor and butter and sugar,” Perez said about her cakes, which she’s selling under the name Immaculate Confections.  “People love the liquor,” she said.

Also popular was a delicate, pink, strawberry-habanero salsa, called Strawberry Xibalba, made with homegrown chilies and served on vegan black bean tamales by Hella Vegan Eats, a young, West Oakland-based trio.

These three cooks, who are also roommates, are currently working on bike delivery in Oakland and regularly serve up their self-proclaimed “cruelty-free” tamales at Art Murmur. Constantly developing new recipes, the three conduct their own version of a favorite competitive cooking show on Bravo.

Hella Vegan Eats crew serving tamales, salsas, and vegan ice cream.

“We’re really inspired by Top Chef,” said Hella Vegan Eats member James Rauschenberg. He and his two roommates set challenges for each other, budgeting out their own meals, cooking, and inviting friends to come over and judge their three-way competitions.

The next East Bay market hasn’t been advertised yet, but events are posted here, as well as on Twitter here.

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If you’ve been downtown this past week, you may have noticed a big green bus driving up and down Broadway. It’s Oakland’s new shuttle, which tours between the six major downtown commercial districts and is free for the public to ride. Officially known as the “B,” this shuttle is the newest project by the city’s Community and Economic Development Agency.

“Why downtown?” asked Samee Roberts, marketing manager for the City of Oakland, during a press conference and launch of the shuttle on Thursday. “Because it’s the pulse of the city,” she said. From downtown, she explained, people can get to many of the great spots the city has to offer, including Lake Merritt, Jack London Square, Old Oakland, Chinatown, City Center and Uptown—all of the places where the “B” stops.

The "B."

City Councilmembers Nancy Nadel, Rebecca Kaplan and Patricia Kernighan were at Thursday’s launch to congratulate the team that has been working on the project since last August. “It is a good day for Oakland and for working together,” said Kaplan.

The councilmembers and the rest of the crowd cheered as the shuttle ambled down the street on the day of its maiden public voyage; “I love the color—a bright guacamole,” one on-looker said. When it stopped, people hopped on board to check it out. The shuttle, which feels like an updated bus, comes supplied with wheelchair restraints and color-coded maps outlining each of the six districts and 19 stops it services.

One of the city’s goals is to weave together all of these districts, making it easier for people who work downtown to get to meetings; city staff also hope the free shuttle will attract more business and shoppers to Oakland. “The economic impact of this should not go unmentioned,” said Theo Oliphant, the mayor’s director of public and private partnerships. He said that the increased shopping will help the city by increasing sales tax revenues.

This is not Oakland’s first Broadway shuttle—there was one in the late 1990’s and others before that. But the “B” is the first shuttle to have a 7 am to 7 pm schedule and run during special nighttime events in Oakland like First Fridays, when hundreds of people gather downtown to walk the streets and visit the local art galleries that stay open late, bringing prospective business to the downtown. This shuttle project is the result of a collaboration between AC Transit and the City of Oakland and was funded by a $1 million grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District along with other grants from public and private sponsors.

The Broadway Shuttle map.

For the air quality management district, the hope is that the shuttle project will give people alternatives to driving. Damian Breen, the grants manager for the air quality management district, said that the shuttles will reduce 5.5 tons of greenhouse gas annually because they will reduce the number of vehicles routinely commuting to the downtown each year by 345 cars. Forty percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, Breen said, and 70 percent of that comes from private vehicles. The “B” shuttles run on clean diesel, which is a type of fuel that has lower sulfur emissions and burns cleaner than regular diesel.

In a statement, Mayor Ron Dellums said that he envisions the shuttles to be a precursor to an electric streetcar, which he believes is possible in the next three to five years. In 2003, the city commissioned a feasibility study that focused on a streetcar system that would be a successor to Oakland’s old Key System using electric railcars and streetcars—but the plan was put aside when federal funding dried up. This year, the city unanimously voted to pick the 2003 plan back up and continue the study, using the “B” as the first step in a bigger streetcar plan for downtown Oakland.

The “B” will run along Broadway between Jack London Square and Grand Avenue from 7 am to 7 pm on weekdays. It will arrive every 10 minutes during commute hours and lunchtime and every 15 minutes the rest of the time. If demand for the shuttle is high, the city will consider expanding its hours. “If we all ride this a lot, that builds support for us to go into evenings and, who knows, even weekends,” said Roberts, as she showed off the inside of the shuttle during the launch. “These things get started through dreams.”

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Blame the Internet, Amazon.com, Comcast video on-demand, corporations, customer laziness, or the recession, but whatever the reasons, Oakland residents’ options for renting movies have shrunk drastically this year.

Four video rental stores serving North Oakland have shut down this year: two Hollywood Video stores in Oakland, as well as Videots and—despite a strong effort to save it—Reel.com, both in neighboring South Berkeley. Montclair’s Blockbuster shut its doors this year too, and more regional Blockbusters could be closing, as the chain has more than $900 million in debt, according to the Wall Street Journal.

These are only the most recent losses. In the past five years Oakland has said goodbye to countless others, including Global Video on Telegraph in the Temescal, Captain Video on Grand Avenue, Offbeat Video on MacArthur Boulevard, and Movie Express in Piedmont.

What’s left around North Oakland? Not much: Video Room on Piedmont Avenue, Silver Screen on Grand Avenue, Mega Video on Park Boulevard, and a handful of Blockbuster Videos.

“Red Box killed it more than anything,” said Stuart Skorman, who founded the original Reel.com store in 1996; Red Box provides unmanned DVD rental kiosks inside businesses like 7-11, Walgreens, Lucky and McDonalds. “That and of course Netflix,” Skorman added. “The other thing is actually Comcast, video on demand.”

Comcast started selling movies on demand three years ago through its digital cable services, and its customers download an average of 1.6 million videos per day in Northern California alone, according to Comcast spokesman Andrew Johnson. “We’ve seen that [on demand] growth continue to inch up and up,” he said, though he wouldn’t comment on specific growth numbers in the Bay Area or Oakland. The company currently offers about 12,000 titles per month. “We estimate we’ll be offering about 20,000 titles every month in 2011,” Johnson said.

Amazon.com also offers movies that can be purchased or rented online and viewed on your computer.

Meanwhile, Netflix, based in Los Gatos, California, has about 15 million subscribers, a 40 percent increase from last year, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings. In the Bay Area, 26 percent of households have Netflix accounts, according to Steve Swasey, Netflix’s vice president of corporate communications.

All of this digital media means fewer customers setting foot in actual stores, though the effects are worse for large corporations unable to cater to a local clientele. That’s what happened to Reel.com’s corporate parent, Movie Gallery.

When Hollywood Video bought Reel in 1998 for $100 million, it was the most profitable video store in the country. Then Movie Gallery bought Hollywood Video a few years ago. Unable to handle the debt load it carried from its other enterprises, Movie Gallery entered bankruptcy proceedings this year, shutting all its remaining stores last month, including Reel and the Hollywood Videos in Oakland.

The Berkeley store was still turning a profit this year, according to Skorman and Gabe Fried, who works for Stream Bank LLC, which is selling off Reel’s intellectual property, like the domain name and trademarks. Reel’s inventory is being sold by Hollywood Video.

Skorman was one of a host of Reel fans—including Berkeley city officials—who tried to keep Reel open by any means necessary, hoping to raise funds to make it into a kind of nonprofit public enterprise. That effort came close but eventually failed because of insufficient funds and time.

For Videots—and other independents—business was just too slow. Videots, a small, locally-owned store on College, had been progressively losing money last year, according to the owner, John Huffman. He decided to close the store in February. Many of its DVDs are being purchased through the Rockridge DVD Project and donated to the Oakland Public Library’s Rockridge branch.

Nearly 3,000 DVDs will go to the branch, expanding its current stock of about 4,300 films, said Patricia Lichter, the Rockridge branch manager. The project administrators will hire outside vendors to catalog the new stock, since the last rounds of budget cuts have left the library with insufficient staff. “They’re handling all that work—it would’ve overwhelmed us,” Lichter said.

Oakland’s public libraries have been seeing a significant interest in DVDs. “It’s a large part of the circulation,” said Ajoke Kokodoko, who works at the circulation desk in Oakland’s main branch.

Aside from the library, North Oakland has a few rental spots remaining. Silver Screen and Video Room are still open and doing steady business, taking on lost customers from Reel and Videots. In the more northern regions of Berkeley, Five Star Video and Video Maniacs are also still in business.

“I had four [former Reel customers] today, and that’s a weekday,” said Bill Wedemyer, Video Room’s manager. Squinting into the late afternoon sun outside the store, he said there’s been “quite a significant upturn” in recent weeks.

“Two years ago our losses were so great that we were forced to tighten our belts,” Wedemyer said. In 2008, the company sold off its videotapes and consolidated its business to a space one third of its former size, giving up the front window along Piedmont Avenue but staying at the same address. “Now, I think we’re in a cautious comfort zone,” he said.

Manager Bill Wedemyer gives a Video Room customer's dog a treat.

Inside the shop, the efforts to be frugal are obvious, with DVDs carefully stacked high overhead along the walls. “Every time something new comes in, something old is going to have to go out,” Wedemyer said, smiling but not really joking, before turning around to coax a customer’s shy dog to try a dog biscuit.

He said one advantage of renting at a store is the ability to “talk about movies with staff that understands and loves movies.” The shelves at Video Room are proof of the employees’ knowledge of movie lore; they’re stocked with a few new releases, but the emphasis is clearly on variety, with foreign films, staff picks, local fare, and a relatively large children’s section. Wedemyer stopped to chat with several customers while explaining the layout.

“It’s a sad tale to recognize that we’re losing community at every turn,” he said.

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Teachers searching for new jobs and parents looking for new childcare options got some last-minute good news—the seven childhood development centers slated to close last Friday due to budget cuts will remain open for another month. The Oakland Unified School District announced it was allocating $400,000 in federal stimulus money to keep the centers running through the end of August.

“The district realized there were no alternatives for the families and the children being displaced,” said Laurice Brown, whose children attend the Manzanita Early Childhood Center.  The imminent closure of the centers had so alarmed parents that a group of them had planned to hold a takeover on Monday to keep the centers open with volunteers. The district supported this idea in principle, but raised concerns that it could cause liability issues and ultimately discouraged parents from doing a takeover.

The seven childhood development centers assigned to be closed were Manzanita, Hintil, Santa Fe, Jefferson, Piedmont, Sequoia and Golden Gate. An eighth center, Parker, had already been slated for closure earlier this year.

The district initially had put the stimulus money aside for professional development for teachers said Troy Flint, the director of public relations for the OUSD. But, he said, “given the severity and harm in closing the centers, we used that $400,000 to keep those school-age childhood centers open during August.”

The seven centers offer preschool, summer and after-school programs to nearly 900 Oakland children. There are 31 such childhood development centers in total in Oakland. These centers provide childcare and early education to children in pre-K through third grade. However, the extension through the end of August will only be able to serve children in kindergarten through third grade; those children who are in pre-K have been redirected to other sites specifically for their age group. The parents of these younger children were given notification of the new sites in June.

The reason that only school-age children will be able to attend, said Flint, is that once school begins those kids can be integrated into those sites’ after-school programs. However, this fix doesn’t address before-school care. “Prior to 8 am, there’s no school supervision,” said Brown, “so parents will have to leave their children unattended.”

Flint agrees that the problem hasn’t yet been entirely resolved. “We are looking at each individual site to see what they can do negotiate early arrivals,” he said. Flint explained that the main barrier is cost. “We were placed in this spot by the governor’s decision to de-fund early childhood education and eliminate all funding for school-age children,” he said. “It’s impossible for a school district at this level to compensate with this type of loss.”

OUSD’s overall funding has been cut by $110 million this year. In May, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger began revising the state budget and proposed cutting $1.2 billion from early childhood education statewide. If his proposal goes through, 73 percent of the overall budget ($13 million) for early childhood education in Oakland will be cut, according to Flint.

With a $19 billion budget gap for the entire state, Schwarzenegger is struggling to find means to help California recover. Oakland’s state assemblymember Sandré Swanson is a member of the budget committee and is opposed to the cuts. “A mean-spirited budget game is being played up here, using children as pawns,” Swanson said. “I think on the face of it, it has to be challenged.”

Swanson said that during a recession, cutting childcare is antithetical to any strategy of recovery. “The federal government has talked about jobs being the most important accomplishment to recovery,” he said. “You cannot accomplish job opportunity without people having childcare—they go hand-in-hand.”

Flint agrees with Swanson’s stance. “The governor’s proposal in unconscionable,” Flint said. “It’s an abhorrent practice to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable individuals of society—young children and working families.” The OUSD has been working with the state legislature to fight the governor’s proposal.

Despite the extension through August, the future for the centers remains uncertain because Schwarzenegger’s proposal could still be approved. In the meantime, both the district and parents advocacy groups are exploring other options.

Parents like Laurice Brown are working with the advocacy group Oakland Parents Together, which is searching for ways to keep the centers open through alternative means by reaching out to different social organizations and churches to see if any members or groups are licensed to operate childcare facilities.

If the centers close at the end of August, some of these parents still intend to carry out their original plan and hold a protest takeover to keep the centers open using volunteers, despite the district’s rejection of the idea. “We want to be compliant as much as possible,” said Brown, “but we are still preparing for closing and will still do a takeover.”

The OUSD is urging Oakland parents to write letters to members of the state legislature, including the governor and senate and assemblymembers such as Senator Denise Ducheny, Senator Bob Dutton, Assemblymember Nancy Skinner and others, to speak out against the budget cuts.  “We are going to continue to meet to see what we can do,” said Flint, “but there are no easy answers at this time.”

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Judy Lee has already begun packing her boxes. Full of art supplies and Shel Silverstein books, the boxes sat neatly stacked near the wall of her spacious classroom at the Piedmont Avenue Early Childhood Development Center on Wednesday, a telltale sign of the center’s imminent closure.

After Friday, the doors will close indefinitely at the Piedmont center and seven other Childhood Development Centers that offer preschool, as well as summer and after school programs to some 900 Oakland children. The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is closing seven, of 31 total centers, because of a potential $13 million budget cut for early childhood education. The eighth center to be closed, Parker Childhood Development Center in the Eastmont neighborhood, is a victim of earlier budget cuts.

On top of the closures, all summer programs, and before and after school care for elementary school children will be cut throughout the district, and indeed, throughout the state.

In a desperate attempt to keep open the centers—among the few options for affordable childcare for many parents—some parents and teachers plan to hold class outside next week or even take over the centers, although the OUSD has nixed these plans because of liability and contract concerns.

At Piedmont, parents and staff seem to still be in shock from the announcement that came just two weeks ago. “It’s been very hard for parents, very hard for staff because it hit us, just, bam,” said Lee, slapping her hands together softly.

In the center’s small office, Dean Brown, the secretary, and Ricki Hannah, who runs the summer program for kindergarten through third grade aged children, chatted dejectedly about the closure.

Brenda Bruner teaches the summer program at Piedmont. "It's hard," said Bruner of the center's closure. "It's such a nurturing place."

“We’ve been told to pack our stuff, so we’re packing our stuff,” said Hannah.

“I’ve been getting so many calls from parents,” said Brown. “One parent said ‘You’re giving us two weeks notice like it was a job.’” The parent told Brown she had a job, and would have to scramble to find care for her children during work hours. “She just went off,” said Brown.

As the state struggles to close a $19 billion budget gap, OUSD’s Early Childhood Education Department, which runs the centers, faces a potential 73 percent reduction in state funding—$13 million of its total $18 million annual budget. The proposed cuts are part of Governor Schwarzenegger’s revised budget proposal, released in May. The cuts would come on top of $110 million that’s already being shaved from OUSD’s overall funding.

The state budget is now being hashed out in the legislature, and funding for the childcare centers could be restored in the final budget deal. But until a compromise is met—and some say that may not happen until after the November elections—the targeted centers are closing their doors indefinitely. “At this point it would take a Hail Mary to keep the centers open,” said Troy Flint, director of public relations for OUSD.

Flint said the district has explored a number of options for keeping the childcare centers open, but none are viable within the budget and timing constraints. Unlike the state government, which has no strict deadline for passing a budget and can issue IOUs, the school district had to submit its budget to the county before the beginning of the current fiscal year, which began July 1.

OUSD has managed to keep the childcare centers running until now by shifting funds from adult education. High ranking, non-unionized staff have also taken pay cuts and furlough days to help free up money for the programs, according to Flint.

Lee—who is one of two head teachers at the Piedmont center, and has been teaching there for 21 years—is one of 39 teachers who will be out of a job come Monday. Her job could be reinstated if funding is restored to the program, but she won’t know until the governor signs his name to the budget bill. In the meantime, she’s stuck in labor limbo.

“I have to decide, well, should I apply for a job or shouldn’t I? And if I do, I have to tell my boss, ‘Well, I might leave in a few months if my job reappears,’” she said. She and other teachers who have been laid off can substitute teach in the interim, which Lee said she would likely do. Other employees will be relocated to one of the district’s 23 remaining Childhood Development Centers.

For many parents whose children attend the centers, the closures mean a rushed search for childcare. Preschool age children will have the option of attending one of the 23 Early Childhood Development Centers that escaped the cuts. But summer school, and before and after school programs for elementary school age children have been cut completely from all centers.

The playground at Piedmont will be empty come Monday.

Rose Baty, a medical assistant at Kaiser, has three elementary school age children who attend the Piedmont center, for both the summer program, and the before and after school programs that used to be offered during the school year.

“Right now, I seriously have no options,” said Baty, who usually drops off her children before going to work, and picks them up on her way home. “I’m asking my old neighbor to take care of them.” She hopes that plan will work for the rest of the summer, but when asked what she’ll do once school starts, she shrugged helplessly. “There’s no plans as of yet.”

Several miles away at the Manzanita Early Childhood Center—which is also scheduled to close on Friday—a group of some thirty parents and teachers were engaged in a desperate planning session to keep it and other centers from closing. The group Oakland Parents Together, which organized the meeting, is planning a “people’s takeover” of several of the centers come Monday, including Santa Fe in West Oakland, Manzanita in the Meadow Brook neighborhood, and Hintil Kuu Ka in the East Oakland hills. Highland Early Childhood Center, near the Oakland Coliseum, may also be included in the “takeover.”

“At any cost, we’re going to open those centers on Monday,” said Judith Namoki, education advocate for Oakland Parents Together. “We’re encouraging parents to keep bringing their kids to those centers.”

Just how the group plans to keep the centers open is still in the works. At a meeting held last week, the group voted to have parents and volunteers run the centers, and to solicit funds from the Oakland community to pay for operational costs, in order “to send a strong message of protest to the governor and the legislature,” according to the group’s manifesto.   

But the district has since rejected the idea. Flint, the OUSD spokesman, said the district explored the option but ruled it out because of liability issues. “We completely support this idea in principle and applaud the enthusiasm and commitment of the parents, but it would put us at serious risk,” Flint said.

Additionally, he said, allowing non-licensed individuals to run the centers could jeopardize the district’s state contract to operate all the Childhood Development Centers. “That would be even more harmful to the parents in the long run.”

Oakland Parents Together is trying to work around those issues, by offering to provide its own liability insurance for activities at the centers, and soliciting help from licensed teachers who are on summer vacation or who have been recently laid off. If necessary, at least one parent said she was ready to lock herself to the door of the Manzanita center on Monday to make her point.

“I’ve made a commitment, I’m going to be here no matter what,” said Laurice Brown, whose five children attend the Manzanita center. “This is going to be like a 1960s movement.”

Shirley Guevara, a teacher who was laid off two weeks ago from the Hintil Kuu Ka Childhood Development Center, said she planned to hold class outside on Monday, with the help of parents and volunteers. “We’ll have a nature school,” she said. “We’ll have balls and books, paper, pencils, crayons. We’re ready.”

Back at Piedmont, the mood was more defeated than revolutionary. While the kids took their midday nap in another room, Lee flipped somberly through papers as classical music played in the background.

“I think the saddest part of it all is that OUSD is going in the right direction in recognizing the importance of preschool and early childhood development,” Lee said, “but if the state doesn’t back you up with the money, it’s really hard.”

Lee said she planned to make cupcakes for the kids on their last day and a fruit tart for the staff. “It’s hard enough, I didn’t want to make it a big deal.”

Flint from OUSD said he hoped Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed gutting of early childhood education was a “bluff or a gambit,” as some have speculated, to try and wrest a compromise from legislators on other, less controversial parts of the budget.

“We’re hoping this downsize isn’t permanent,” said Flint, “but certainly you have to prepare for the worst.”

—

UPDATE!

The Bay Citizen reports Friday, July 30 that the district made a last minute reallocation of federal stimulus funds, and seven centers (excluding Parker) will remain open until the end of August. Read the story here: http://www.baycitizen.org/education/story/oakland-child-care-centers-remain-open/

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