Politics
On Tuesday, BART settled a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the mother of Oscar Grant for $1.3 million. Grant was shot and killed by former BART officer Johannes Mehserle on a train platform New Year’s Day 2009.
On Tuesday night the Oakland City Council once again postponed a vote to adopt a biennial budget, pushing the decision back until this Thursday, hours before the new fiscal year begins on July 1. With the divergence between councilmembers on the each others’ budget proposals, the timely adoption of a budget resolution remains uncertain.
With a debate over the city budget looming this evening, there’s one item that won’t be factored into it—how to come up with $40 million to save Oakland’s redevelopment agency.
Just a few days before Oakland limps into the new fiscal year, the city now has six budget proposals. Last Friday, three budget scenarios, in addition to the three previously issued by Mayor Jean Quan in April, were introduced by three factions of the city council.
On Sunday, the Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant met at Humanist Hall in Oakland to share ideas for advancing their overarching goal of preventing police abuse in their communities, and to discuss the group’s successes and failures.
The City of Oakland can impose a preliminary gang injunction in Oakland’s Fruitvale district, a judge ruled Friday afternoon in downtown Oakland.
On Thursday BART directors postponed the discussion of a demonstration project that would allow trains to run one hour later on Friday nights. Under the proposed six-month tryout plan, which was presented to the BART board of directors on April 28, the last trains on Friday night would depart at 1 a.m. instead of 12 a.m., extending the service for all 44 stations for one hour.
A new bill authored by Oakland State Assemblyman Sandre Swanson could lift the ban preventing former drug offenders from receiving food stamps. “It is the right thing to do,” Swanson said, adding that California invests millions of dollars supporting prisoners that are released, only to find them returning within a couple of years.
More than 200 people showed up to Tuesday night’s Oakland City Council meeting at City Hall in downtown Oakland, only to find that all budget-related items were removed from the meeting agenda at the last minute.