To balance an $83 million general fund deficit,  the Oakland City Council passed an amended budget proposal Tuesday night  that leaves many departments’ budgets substantially smaller. The most controversial change, Council member Jean Quan noted while reading the proposal aloud, was the $13.4 million cut to the Oakland Police Department’s personnel budget.  It’s equivalent to the 10 percent cut the city requested from all departments. The police union is still in talks with the council and how the money will be…

The BART boardroom opened its doors Tuesday night and community leaders and members  said they feared  the “top to bottom” assessment by an outside consulting group was nothing more than a public relations ploy by BART. “You don’t know the facts as we know the facts,” Dr. Ramona Tascoe, an ordained minister and medical doctor practicing in Oakland, told the consultants, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives,  known as NOBLE The NOBLE assessment team of eight began their…

With 400 artists to choose from and more than a few in North Oakland, it was difficult to decide which studios to drop by on the last Saturday of this event. I didn’t want to waste my time driving around – it’s not often that you get the opportunity to chit-chat in your artist-neighbor’s living room or garden while eating cheese with toothpicks and checking out their ultra-private oeuvre. I chose to comb over a small square of the crowded…

By STEVE SALDIVAR Commuters said Friday that the BART and AC Transit increases that will go into effect on July 1 are  unfair and unaffordable. “We need to get more help from the government, not less of it,” said Mahvash Nasehi. “Most people who use BART are low income people, they can’t afford to buy cars. They’re losing their jobs and now an increase in BART? It’s just not fair,” said the Brentwood resident. Nasehi uses the BART sparingly but…