As parking enforcement transfers to OPD oversight, workers will have to pass new background checks

City officials are preparing to transfer Oakland’s parking enforcement unit to the Oakland Police Department. The transfer will allow the parking enforcement staff to be trained to write tickets and accident reports. But the move may create problems for some parking enforcement technicians, critics say, because they will now have to pass a more intensive background check than the one required for their initial hire.

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Navigating Oakland parking this Thanksgiving

The City of Oakland will offer free parking at meters on Thanksgiving Day, however, parking will not be free on "Black Friday." A number of private lots, including those owned by Douglas Parking, will be closed for Thanksgiving.

For anybody who drives a car, one Thanksgiving holiday perk, aside from the excess of food, is free time all day in a decent parking space. But this reward also has limits that can lead drivers to pay a heavy price. From this Thursday through Saturday, Thanksgiving Day itself is the only time visitors and residents are allowed to park for free in city-designated spots. The following day, also known as “Black Friday,” is not a parking enforcement holiday. Vehicles parked without meter payment will be ticketed.

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Council bows to protests, rolls back parking hours

Amid calls for civility and compromise, members of the Oakland City Council apologized last night for their handling of unpopular parking hikes and voted to roll back meter hours from 8:00 pm to 6:00 pm.

In a six to one vote, the council passed a rollback proposal from two weeks ago, with the recommendation that the city recoup a reported one million dollars in lost revenues though parking and other endeavors—including a crackdown on the misuse of handicapped parking permits and the sale of new billboard space.

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City Council may call emergency meeting over fees

Only nine of 50 local businesses participated in Thursday’s General Strike to protest the hike in parking fees, but some 100 local business owners and residents attended the meeting Thursday night at the Grand Lake Theater and District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan said the City Council should meet soon to reconsider the fee hikes. Kernighan…

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General Strike for Lakeshore on Thursday

The merchants on Lakeshore plan to hold a General Strike Thursday to protest the city’s parking fee hikes, which they said, are chasing away customers. “If we do not act now, many businesses will fail and our city will be much worse off,” wrote Allen Michaan, the owner of the Grand Lake Theater in a…

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Shiny new bike racks

The City of Oakland has been hard at work installing bike racks this last month in Oakland’s commercial districts, including 40th Street, Piedmont Avenue, College Avenue and the Grand/Lakeshore area. This project started when the city got rid of parking meters and so unintentionally also removed 4,300 on-street bike parking spots. To read more about…

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