Blogging Bayport Alameda

January 6, 2009

No Chirack O’Barkley

Filed under: Alameda, Alameda Point, City Council — Tags: , , — Lauren Do @ 7:18 am

[updated below 2:46 p.m.]

Continuing on the post from yesterday.   There’s more?   Yes, there’s more to be said about the ad and the subsequent press release that went out about the ad buy.   First though, a friend emailed me this link to this Saturday Night Live skit about John McCain endorsing his campaign ads.   The ad is eerily prescient for this new “hard hitting” ad about Alameda Point, SunCal, and the City of Alameda in general.   I would say the Save Our City Alameda ad is most like the one in the skit about Barack Obama and Charles Barkley:

“Excuse me, are those facts accurate?”

“Yes, the Senator does play basketball, Charles Barkley also plays.  Charles Barkley lost money in Vegas.”

“Can’t argue fact…”

While the facts (or in the SOCA case, some of the facts) may be correct, linking the facts all together and then saying that because all these facts can be linked together in this 30 second ad clearly it must be true is simply ridiculous.  Add to it the omimous voice over, guess they couldn’t get the sarcastic sounding dude, and voila!  You can have makings of a self-created doomsday sceanrio.    It will be interesting to see which City Council folks (ahem) bite on this issue and decide to carry water for this group.

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January 5, 2009

An Inconvenient Truth

Filed under: Alameda, Alameda Point, City Council, Development — Tags: , , — Lauren Do @ 7:00 am

Well, what can you say, I guess deceptive tv ads are always part of a political campaign process and since SunCal kicked it off with political polling to test different messages, Action Alameda, er I mean Save Our City Alameda, has decided to respond with a limited tv ad buy that is chock full of scary, self-important voice overs, bolded font with key words highlighted in different colors.  Seriously, the only thing it is missing is ominous background music which probably cost too much to get the clearance rights for.  

Nothing is really lost by not seeing the spot itself, it’s simply the following slides with the faux-Movie guy voice.  The only thing missing was the requisite, “in a world where [fill in the blank here]…”

slide1

First of all, Alameda is nowhere near bankruptcy, let alone on the “verge” of it.   Honestly, if you are going to make contentions like that, at least back it up with some facts.  Certainly you can’t do it on a 30 second ad buy, but at least put it on your website.

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December 30, 2008

Happy early New Year!

Filed under: Alameda, Warm Fuzzies — Lauren Do @ 7:00 am

Nothing new till next year, but until then I assume most folks are making resolutions for the New Year?

Me?  I’m not so in to the resolution thing, sure I could do the usual spiel: lose weight, volunteer more, save money, but I would just be lying to myself that I would actually do those things because I made some sort of list on an arbitrary day.

So instead of a resolution, I wanted to give a big thanks out to everyone out there for reading and commenting here on my little space on the big Internets.    I am continually surprised and awed by the commitment that folks on all sides of the political spectrum have for this town.  And I am continually humbled by the number of readers and commenters to this blog.

Thank you for making this blog a continuing dialogue on all things Alameda.

Happy New Year!

December 29, 2008

Greening of Alameda Point

Filed under: Alameda, Alameda Point, City Council — Tags: , — Lauren Do @ 7:00 am

Happy Holidays everyone!

Back to business, first up this “commentary” from the Alameda Sunprompted me to write a little bit.  In general, I have a healthy amount of respect for folks like Dennis Green who have been around, done much, and seen a lot during their time in Alameda.   But apparently Dennis Green has decided that rather than go out and do the research around the issues that he has decided to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard about) he would instead rely on someone else’s information to keep him in the loop.  

While I won’t get into the whole name dropping thing (Bukowski! Barry! Cowan! Sherratt!) that he tends to do in every single one of his essays, I did want to address this part:

…Latest word is that the U.S. Navy, fed up with the city’s machinations, has decided to transfer as much of the property as possible to sibling federal agencies, such as the Veterans Administration, which might build a hospital out there…

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December 23, 2008

I’d rather be…

Filed under: Alameda, Alameda Point — Tags: — Lauren Do @ 7:00 am

I haven’t read the Alameda Point Master Plan yet.   I skimmed it and from what I could tell from a quick glance through, it looks very similar to the draft development concept, only some sections are better fleshed out.    There will be a public hearing in front of the City Council, sitting as the ARRA, in early January.   I expect that there will be talk about public land trusts and the same old same old about why couldn’t SunCal develop a Measure A compliant plan.   There will be the requisite revelatory statement about, “Alameda is an island!” as though that person is the first person to have recognized that fact.  The historic preservation folks will be out to decry that SunCal still hasn’t saved enough “historic” buildings.    But even so, probably few people will have read 25% of the text in that Master Plan document, which is why they probably loaded it up with so many graphics and photos.

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December 22, 2008

Someone else’s dime

Filed under: Alameda, Alameda Point — Tags: — Lauren Do @ 7:42 am

While the idea of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) may be on the back burner for now for Alameda Point and SunCal, another Bay Area city is seriously looking into the possibility of introducing PRT to connect the city to various business centers, transportation hubs, hotels, and of course, the airport. But it’s mostly just to connect the airport.

Yes, San Jose, is seriously looking into PRT. From KGO (video!):

…[Laura Stuchinksy sustainability officer for San Jose's Department of Transportation] and other city officials are considering the idea of having such a public pod system link the Mineta San Jose International Airport with area businesses, hotels and other nearby transit options, like Caltrain, BART and the VTA Light Rail.

…

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December 19, 2008

With them came another invader…more cruel and vicious than any they had fought…the Carpetbagger

Filed under: Alameda, School — Tags: , , — Lauren Do @ 7:00 am

On Wednesday (catch it before it disappears) Alameda Daily News posted a self-congratulatory letter from Action Alameda with an interesting, and yes, ironic closing:

…These are just some of the reasons we insist on a 3rd-party forensic audit of the City of Alameda’s books. And we remind Alameda residents that they would do well to be critical of the party line touted by City Hall and echoed by the online carpetbagging bloggers and pay more attention to their fellow citizen whistle-blowers. Your pocket books will thank you.*

Putting aside the spin that Action Alameda (royal “we” being used since only one person cops to actually being a member of the organization these days) has been trying to put forward about being mocked because they uncovered a pot of money that belonged to AUSD in the coffers of the City (cliff notes for those that are confused, the school district and the city government are two separate entities).    Action Alameda was — because these things are archived — critiqued for going around and asserting that somehow the school district neglected to properly file annual reports regarding the money.   Back then Action Alameda was congratulating  itself for showing that AUSD was a shoddily run organziation that they couldn’t even get their act together to file the necessary reports required.   Now, Action Alameda is patting itself on the back for finally getting the money into the right hands — for the good of the children.  

Notwithstanding the selective memory of Action Alameda as to what they were asserting back then, I do believe their persistence around this issue was one of the motivating factors for the school district to finally request the money from the City.  So a tip of the hat for a job well done. 

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December 18, 2008

Stimulating

Filed under: Alameda, Alameda Landing, Alameda Point, Business, City Council, Development, Public Resources, Transportation — Lauren Do @ 7:00 am

As mentioned by Michele Ellson on The Island (doh! foiled again!), Alameda City staff has put together a wish list of items to send to Santa Congress.   According to the staff report the US Conference of Mayors  is advocating that the majority of any money from a federal economic stimulus package go directly to local governments (e.g. cities and counties) to be used to directly stimulate the local economies rather than wait for it to trickle down through the state bureaucracy.

The US Conference of Mayors website has a listing of all cities that have created wish lists (and submitted them to the USCOM).   What I wanted to see, but was missing from the City’s staff report was an estimate of how many jobs each project would create, which should be one of the main components of a stimulus pacakage.   Big disclaimer though, there currently is not a stimulus package that has been passed through both houses just yet, but earlier this week Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi estimated that the stimulus package would be the in $500 - 600 billion range.   Yes, that’s right BILLION. 

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December 17, 2008

Point [measure] a to point b[light]

Filed under: Alameda, Measure A — Tags: — Lauren Do @ 7:00 am

Measure A — love it or hate it or be apathetic to it as I think most people are — it certainly does bring out a viseceral reaction in people.   While I thought that my post that focused on blight was perfectly clear, apparently it was not.   

So let me break it down for those who are confused by the progression of the conversation, or even by the initial post itself.   The post starts with a referenceto John Oldham’s buried comment which I thought brought up a good point about two distinct issues that happened to be combined into one comment: (1) Measure A and (2) blight. 

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December 16, 2008

The best of you

Filed under: Alameda, School — Lauren Do @ 7:00 am

Okay, so I’m not going to even pretend that I understand very much about football in general.  I watch football occasionally with the husband if I absolutely have to, but I do enjoy Super Bowl football, as it’s only once a year and we make it an event and there are good commercials and periodically really good half time shows, but I digress.

And, coming from a small town in the midwest, my first experience ever with football was at a Friday Night football game where the whole town had turned out to root for our local high school team, the Redskins.   While I didn’t understand the concept of the game and wouldn’t until I was much older, I do understand the passion that folks have for their local football teams.   So many congratulations to the Encinal Jets for winning their division, but boo on the California Interscholastic Federation for not selecting Encinal to play in the “State Football Championship Bowl Games Presented by Farmers” aka the Farmers Bowl (if that’s not what they call it, they should).

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