Public Policy
As a growing number of Oakland residents embrace urban farming—including the raising of chickens, goats and pigs in their back yards—the city planning commission is investigating the trend’s potentially negative impacts on the surrounding community.
One year after construction began, has the controversial, $484 million Oakland Airport Connector project created the jobs it promised? “It requires a lot of physical strength and it wears on the body,” said Tiffany West, 31, of her work as a carpenter’s apprentice. Every Monday through Friday, from 7 am to 3:30 pm, West is somewhere along Hegenberger Road between the Oakland Coliseum and the airport shoveling debris, fine-grading sites for paving or building the footings for the connector’s elevated guideway.
The U.S. Positive Women’s Network (PWN), a project of Oakland-based Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Disease (WORLD), will kick off its “Count Us In!” campaign tomorrow with a march to Oakland City Hall, followed by a press conference. The campaign seeks to uphold the rights of HIV-positive women despite healthcare changes threatening to limit or eliminate many services and programs dedicated to women.
On Tuesday at the Community and Economic Development Committee meeting, Oakland City Council members and speakers from the audience criticized the city administrator’s office for not moving fast enough to fix systematic problems with the city’s much-criticized building services division.
Since Youth Alive launched its first violence prevention program 20 years, some of the crime and gun violence trends in Oakland have changed, but two things remain consistent: Young people make up a high percentage of Oakland’s homicide victims, and many are killed by someone using a firearm.
What do the Chabot Space and Science Center, PGAdesign, Red Oak Realty, The Tip Top Bike Shop, Mr. Sparkle Window Washers, and Baja Taqueria have in common? They are all “green” businesses in Oakland.
INFOGRAPHIC: How much did Occupy Oakland cost the city? And was it worth it? Using information released by the City Administrator’s Office, city budget reports and our own reporting, Oakland North reporters have created an infographic that weighs the costs of Occupy Oakland.
Once a hub of automobile commerce, Broadway Auto Row is fast becoming a cultural enclave, thanks to the gentle prodding and financial investment of an eclectic group of gallerists, restaurateurs and niche shop owners who are mixing the old (and big) with the new (and small) to create a hybrid commercial corridor that keeps money flowing through the street from day to night and back again.
Every year, more than 700 million plastic bags are given away by stores and restaurants in Alameda County, but that could all change if a ban on one-time use plastic bags is approved in January.