Blogging Bayport Alameda

If you had suspected this was coming you’re probably not surprised by this post. I told folks that when writing this blog stopped being fun, I would just stop. I don’t know when it stopped being fun, maybe when I realized that I was getting too old to be outraged all the time. It’s much easier to write from a place of being passionate about something than just casually interested.

But I just want to use this space to say thank you to everyone who has ever read this blog, commented and/or and spent any portion of the last 18 years with me. It’s been amazing to share space with so many people for just a slice of my day, nearly every day, for nearly two decades of my life.

I’ll still be around on social media mostly Facebook and Threads, you can connect with me there. I’ll still be watching my city meetings for the drama, reading agendas and staff reports for the information, and wondering who is behind so, so many PRA requests I just won’t be sharing those thoughts with you all on this platform anymore. 

And I know I’ve already said it but I can’t say it loud enough or heartily enough, I really appreciate each and every person who has hung out with me on this site. Thank you.

I was looking at the Alameda Museum presentation for next Tuesday and, for the first time, it really seems like the Alameda Museum is hitting its stride and trying to be more inclusive and technology forward. I mean, if you go into the museum there’s a lot of chinaware in there which makes it feel, in certain sections, like it’s more of a china museum rather than a historic museum. But anyway they’ve digitize their catalogues and have started creating online archives which is pretty huge for an organization which was, for a long time, supposed to be the official archival place for all things historic Alameda but was limited to only folks who had the time to make a trip to the museum and dive into the old storages.

Anyway, it’s good to see the positive work being done but I did find it funny that in retelling how they’ve been of service to the community they omitted that they assisted an opponent to the Wellness Center in research:

The full blueprints are not uploaded to the online archive yet, just two pages in case you were wondering.

In other Wellness Center news, looks like someone is trying to figure out how they missed the news of one of the McKay buildings getting demolished and have put in a PRA to find those records,

I’m not quite sure what they intend to do with the information and what they think they’ll find but sometimes it’s really hard to let go of your old hobbies even when you make new years’ resolutions to find new ones.

The big takeaway from the presentation from AUSD staff regarding the budget is that if the new parcel tax does not pass it will be grim out there for AUSD and we’ll be fighting over which limbs to cut off in order to stay within the budget.

I didn’t include the District level cutback slide because (no offense) most people aren’t moved by that as a reason to vote for a parcel tax. It’s the easiest messaging for most sides when we start talking about budget cuts.

At last week’s City Council meeting there was a memo with the annual audit for our license plate reader explosion that happened in 2023. In eight months (because the majority of the fixed readers were installed in April) the combined fixed and mobile ALPR scanned 38,684,296 license plates which were probably yours and mine many many times.

So on to the goodish news, of those 38.6 million recordings of license plates there have been some successes as APD is defining it. According to the memo the technology led to the “gather[ing] of digital evidence” in 482 unique stolen vehicle cases which means that 0.00125% hit rate. And given that the equipment cost the city around $145K, this means that each digital evidence gathering cost the city around $301 per successful license plate match which actually seems pretty reasonable.

According to the memo ALPR has been “directly attributed to the recovery of 47 vehicles” which, I guess if you’re one of the 47 vehicles which were recovered that would be great but it required scanning 38.6 million license plates to manage that. I wonder what the recovery rate of stolen vehicles was for APR before the ALPR technology. That would be a more meaningful comparison.

Anyway, APR says they have been asked by other agencies to share data and they’ve denied many requests from police agencies outside the local area. They have shared data with San Pablo PD, Emeryville PD, EBRPD Police, AlCo Sherriff’s Office, and San Leandro PD which makes a lot of sense since borders are porous and they’d probably have a lot of overlap in their cases.

Today starts finals weeks for AUSD kids and, for those of us with college bound seniors, you’re probably navigating helping them manage their stress levels as those college apps deadlines come to a close at the end of this month.

So I’m cutting out until next year. But, one ask, if anyone has access to an old mini cassette player, let me know. I have a tape I’m trying to play but don’t have access to one any longer. I thought I could find one of those old regular size cassette tapes you put the mini cassette tape in it to play the little cassette tape but apparently those aren’t being sold anymore either. So just thought I’d throw that out there in case anyone has one so I can play this one tape and get it into an electronic format I’d be grateful.

While looking for that I also ran across an article about how VHS tapes are making a small comeback for a niche audience which means that my hoarding of video tapes plus my VHS players may come in handy one day.

Happy Holidays folks.

Last night the City sent out a press release announcing that it had finally settled with Mario Gonzalez’s family. From the press release:

The City of Alameda, through its membership in the California Joint Powers Risk Management Authority (CJPRMA), reached two separate settlements: the first would pay $11 million to the estate/son of Mario Gonzalez, and the second would pay $350,000 to Mario Gonzalez’s mother, following Mr. Gonzalez’s death in police custody on April 19, 2021. Consistent with the City’s CJPRMA membership, the settlement, once finalized, will be funded by CJPRMA, which worked with the City to manage the litigation and controls the settlement funds.

While money is cold comfort to the family for the loss of a beloved member, hopefully that money can provide some stability for the family, financially, after years of uncertainty.

Typically when I see agenda items around the approval of an arts program in Alameda I generally pass over it because it’s one of those feel good items that everyone wants to support to say that they are a supporter of the arts. Specifically there’s an item on the City Council’s agenda to approve an ENA with Radium. Radium is, of course, the arts program which is bringing programming to Alameda Point in the converted shipping containers near the new waterfront park. This is the testing ground to see if a performing arts space is built on that same location if it will be successful and the ENA will give Radium time to start the negotiation process and with an ENA they can start securing financing which they would not be able to do without the ENA in hand. These sorts of projects you would think that everyone would be behind but not for some residents of Alameda Point. And by “some residents” I’m really just talking about one who has now established themselves as the newest City of Alameda gadfly while also benefitting from the City of Alameda’s largesse. 

This resident doesn’t want it because views:

And a salty comment deserves an equally snarky response:

I mean this sort of pedantic correspondence must be so exhausting for staff. Like, no one gets paid enough to have to deal with this on a regular basis:

I don’t know how many ways staff needs to say “it’s not a project, they’re contractual discussion” but here we are with this nugget in the staff report. 

This ENA needs four votes to proceed. I think it has it but will be curious if there’s a vote against.

I don’t know how many of you were paying attention a few months back regarding a lease at Alameda Point. It was for a science-y type operation that already exists in Alameda but they wanted to move to a larger space. Turns out the CEO used to work for Neuralink (helped found it or something) and if Neuralink is pinging some bells of familiarity yes, it’s that one that Elon Musk is associated with and they want to put something in your brain.

Anyway, the CEO has since moved on from Neuralink and created a new company which is still in the medical sciences space but is not Neuralink. Anyway, I don’t really understand what they do, it’s cutting edge medical devices or something but it really doesn’t matter what they do because whatever it is that they do they have to test their stuff on animals and that was enough for some of the City Council to start waving some flags. Essentially there were not enough votes on the City Council to even consider moving forward with the lease (mainly because of the animal testing thing). So the City Council has kicked this topic to the Economic Development Advisory Panel to determine what it is that Alameda’s should value when it comes to leasing out Alameda Point because apparently the answer is not medical devices. I guess you leave that to the private landlords.

It’s not like there are a ton of marquee tenants out there, the biggest are, of course the boozy side of Alameda and Astra which some people didn’t want the City to allow to expand either.

FYI Exhibit 3 on the staff report is pretty great to see what building are left and under consideration here. TL;dr they’re all pretty large spaces that will need a large tenant to fill.

Here’s another good graphic from the presentation about where the buildings are and what they want to do with them

What this group will be tasked to do is to tell the City what they think the City should prioritize when it comes to filling up these spaces. Honestly I have no real opinion other than actually getting them sold/leased and then activated. Alameda Point early adopters deserve the vibrancy that was promised and so does Alameda.

Just wanted to add a short post today about something highlighted in the newsletter from the District. Encinal High’s KJTZ radio station is partnering with Laney College to produce news segments for Laney’s radio station. From the District Newsletter:

Encinal KJTZ Broadcasters Tapped to Produce News Segments for Laney College
Two seniors from Encinal Jr. Sr. High School are getting hands-on experience in broadcast journalism by participating in the Occupational Work Experience in Media Communications course at Laney College.

As part of the course, Giuliana Means and Mirabelle (Elle) Kruger produce a four-minute headline news feature for Laney’s radio station, KGPC, on weekdays throughout the school year.

Their descriptive reporting covers various topics, including the Israel-Gaza war, migration between California and Texas, and Google’s efforts to maintain account users’ security.

“I can say, without hesitation, that Elle and Giuliana have produced news features that are beyond my expectations,” said Felicia Bridges, General Manager of KGPC at Laney College, “I am impressed with the quality of their audio pieces and love the selection of news they include to broadcast. The variety is amazing, and I love how they convey their personalities while delivering the news.”

Laney College has archived all of the submissions on its website.

“Giuliana and Elle are superstars who have exciting futures in broadcasting if that is what they choose to do,” notes Kevin Gorham, EJSHS radio teacher.

You can listen to them here. I point this out because, well, sometimes I get to use this space to proudly toot my kid’s horn,

Don’t forget that tonight is the School Board meeting to appoint the new member. This should probably be the least contentious pick this body has ever had to make which is both good (because it means no fighting) and bad (because it means no fighting).

So quickly wanted to talk about the interviews on Friday for the open School Board position. Everyone showed up with the exception of Jeff Smith which is — if the application was not enough of a red flag — should be the main disqualifier. Mostly everyone stuck to the script and said they would be a team player. Some folks decided that the best option would just be to talk about themselves, others would talk about what they would do as a prospective Board member. Personally I like when people talk about what they’re going to do rather than who they are because when people tell stories about their child hood as though that is some how indicative of the person that they have become and which policies they have chosen to support as an adult it’s always eyebrow raising when you know what they have done and there’s a huge disconnect between what they’ve supported locally and what they claim they learned from their difficult childhood.

Anyway, there were some people who definitely had their hearts in the right place even though they seemed woefully under prepared for the possible rigors of the role. The phrase “bonehead English” was uttered in, what I think, was a well meaning accolade about the quality of education in Alameda 50+ years ago (maybe more like 60+?) which is now a phrase I think we’re going to incorporate into our family’s vernacular.

In the end I came away with the same feeling as when I read the applications, there are a lot of great candidates and — depending on what this Board is looking for — they have some solid choices. Even though I think that the Board should take the obvious pick of Margie Sherratt in order to hit the ground running in January, they could also elect to give the nod to someone with potential to better their chances in November by running as an incumbent. However, for the School Board incumbency is less of a thing than personal relationships or a really good resume. (see Megan Sweet as a example of running a low key campaign but having a solid education based resume that allowed people to throw enough votes her way that she came out on top)

Also, since we’re on school related subjects, don’t forget there is a Parcel Tax campaign and you can sign up here to help volunteer.

Finally, looks like Threads now has the ability to hashtag so #alamtg is back on line, I’m hoping to start live threading (whatevs) the school board meeting on Tuesday night but no promises. Just find the hashtag there.