Here are some of our favorite and most-read stories from 2014. We’ll be back in 2015!
This summer the Oakland City Council passed an ordinance lifting a citywide ban on pinball.
Latham Square opened in August as a pilot project of the city of Oakland to create a pedestrian plaza at the intersection where Uptown meets Downtown. But just six weeks into the six-month pilot project, the city opened one lane to traffic and will now open the plaza back up to two-way traffic.
Thursday evening, Oakland hosted a rare town hall meeting with Chairman Wheeler to discuss federal communications policies.
Oakland District Attorney Nancy O’Malley announced Thursday morning the launch of a billboard campaign aimed at combating human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of minors in the Bay Area.
Born completely deaf in his left ear and “hard of hearing” in his right, Antoine Hunter is the founder and director of Urban Jazz Dance Company and the President of the Bay Area Deaf Advocates.
A surveillance hub being assembled in Oakland could potentially be the largest and most comprehensive citywide surveillance system in California.
Sudo Mesh brings volunteers together to bridge the “digital divide”
Dozens of residents packed the Oakland City Council meeting to protest the planned Domain Awareness Center (DAC).
Oakland City Councilmember’s Noel Gallo’s appeal that “Every city in the U.S. has a curfew” drew boos and yelling from the packed council chambers as his controversial anti-crime strategy was roundly condemned by citizens and officials alike.
At issue: Gallo’s proposed citywide curfew from 10 pm to 6 am seven days a week and from 8:30 am to 1:30 pm on school days. It would make it illegal for youth to be in public or in businesses during those hours. Although the proposed ordinance was aimed at curbing offenses like prostitution and human trafficking, many speakers Tuesday night passionately argued against it for criminalizing all youth.
Saturday’s “unconference” at Oakland City Hall featured more than a dozen workshops ranging from the city budget, to neighborhood crime issues, to the digital divide, and open data. Over a hundred technology professionals, city staff, local citizens, and business leaders came together to discuss the often-rocky relationship between technology and local government.
The second annual CityCamp Oakland comes out of a surging tech community in Oakland and a city government looking to become a leader in civic technology. The conference was organized by OpenOakland, a civic hacking group born out of Code for America, the national non-profit that pairs young programmers with local governments.
“Urban Shield is the largest full-scale exercise in the nation,” said Sgt. J.D. Nelson, Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) public information officer. The event was created by ACSO seven years ago and has grown each year. This year, Nelson estimates that more than 5,000 people participated from across the state, country and world.
After forcing a one-day closure of the Port of Oakland over regulatory and wait-time complaints last week, independent truckers say they are pursuing negotiations with the California Air Resources Board, and have promised no further work stoppages through at least Monday, Nov. 4.
In the past year, the amount of illegally dumped junk has shot up by 34 percent, according to the Oakland Public Works Agency, which logged almost 18,000 incidents in 2012. San Francisco, which has twice the population of Oakland, had just 22,000 incidents.
Occupy Oakland marked its two-year anniversary Thursday with a celebratory gathering at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland.
Public testimonies give voice to mothers’ grief.