Development
Limited staffing and budget constraints hamper Oakland’s recently reinstated problem-solving officers, Deputy Chief Eric Breshears said in a report presented to the City Council Tuesday. Breshears said the police department is optimistic about the program but has faced challenges in implementation since its reinstatement in January.
More than one hundred people, many wearing shirts with union logos printed on them, convened at the Asian Cultural Center in downtown Oakland on Saturday morning to listen to a panel discuss many of the problems encountered by immigrant laborers, particularly those who are undocumented.
In Oakland’s Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, building inspector Ed Labayog walks past a line of nearly a hundred people waiting to apply for a job with the city on his way to the street where his car is parked. Wearing a black button-up City of Oakland shirt and carrying a bag containing case files, a camera, and his lunch, he’s setting out to find blighted properties. For Labayog, seeking out trash, graffiti and signs of crumbling structures on private property is his job.
Oakland School Board members voted to send notices to 538 teachers warning of potential layoffs, renewed four charter schools, and approved the second interim budget in a marathon eight-hour meeting Wednesday night.
Long loved by East Bay residents, North Oakland’s mega-drugstore will close this summer due to plans to demolish and redevelop the shopping center where it is located. For decades this one-stop-shop has been a neighborhood institution, but now the store’s landlord has declined to renew its lease, slating it to close by the end of June.
Oakland city leaders and residents celebrate the opening of Kinsell Commons, a Habitat for Humanity and Oakland Housing Authority mixed-income housing project in East Oakland.
Oakland Unified School District may soon have to consider one of the least popular moves a school district can make: closing schools. In short, the district has room for 10,900 more students than it’s serving, and not a single extra dollar to spend on maintaining empty space.
With some passing drivers honking to express support, dozens of teachers and students rallied in front of Oakland’s Elihu M. Harris State Building on Wednesday afternoon to protest the severe budget cuts awaiting school districts if Governor Jerry Brown’s tax extension proposal fails.
Straddling the border of Oakland and Emeryville, a portion of 40th Street thick with retail stores is welcoming a new neighbor this week. Target, the nation’s second largest discount retailer after Wal-Mart, will officially open the doors of its newest store this Sunday.