Development
After more than two decades of debate and a recent sprint for the final bits of funding, on Wednesday a group of local, state, and federal officials broke ground to mark the start of construction on BART’s long-awaited Oakland Airport Connector. A dozen local political officials donned hardhats and gathered around a mound of dirt tidily piled in a corner of the station’s parking lot; in unison, they sank the golden blades of their ceremonial shovels into the earth.
West Oakland residents, business owners and city leaders openly refer to their neighborhood as the city dump. Although the mounds of trash may not be as prevalent as it once was thirty years ago, illegal dumping is still a large problem. Every year, Waste Management, the city’s waste removal company, continues to haul away tons of trash from streets and sidewalks. Although the city has a law that fines dumpers $1,000, it’s difficult to enforce.
Grab some pizza and a pint—if J Moses Ceaser has his way, the Parkway Theater might be showing movies in Oakland again as early as next year.
The only twist: The Parkway may not be able to return to its original location.
Superintendent Tony Smith got personal while talking reform and student performance expectations Tuesday at the Oakland Unified School District’s Region 1 Teacher’s Dialogue. The meeting, which was the third in a series of teacher outreach meetings being held this month, brought roughly 25 teachers to North Oakland’s Sankofa Academy. The dialogues are supposed to give teachers a chance to understand the administration’s vision and talk directly to the superintendent.
In an effort to increase its drooping ridership, BART has declared this week “Try BART Week.” All week, the transit district will be giving away free prizes including BART passes, airline tickets, and ice cream parties to a few lucky BART customers. Over the course of the week, BART will be awarding 1,300 prizes, collectively worth over $60,000
For East Bay residents who don’t already ride BART, today may be the day to start. In a bid to win back the riders it has lost during the slumping economy of the last several years, BART has declared this week “Try BART Week,” and is offering a wide array of valuable prizes to lure riders to their trains—starting right here in Oakland.
The signature teal color of an old-school iMac stood out among a hodgepodge of items. There was a Sierra Nevada box filled with torn packaging envelopes, complete with stamps and postmarked dates. The one-man crew of 21 Grand—a downtown Oakland gallery and performance space—was purging everything that had accumulated in storage for the last decade, but the venue’s “emergency rummage sale” a couple of weeks ago wasn’t just an effort to collect a few bucks. It was to make the month’s rent.
Students and staff from Oakland Technical High School presented the school board with more than 700 signatures Wednesday night, asking the district to support tenured statistics teacher Evelyn Francisco, who faces deportation back to the Philippines if her visa is not renewed before December.
Before the state finalized its budget on Friday, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) had already made $122 million in cuts for the 2010-2011 school year, and had scheduled several child development centers for closure. Superintendant Tony Smith had called the further cuts “a possibility,” a scenario which district officials now say will be unlikely.