A group of voting rights activists—including nationally known labor leader Dolores Huerta—filed a lawsuit in Superior Court in San Francisco this week, seeking to halt the use of the Diebold paper trail electronic voting machines in California, but it is uncertain what affect it will have on electronic voting in Alameda County in the November elections and beyond. -more-

When Mayor Tom Bates ran for office against former mayor Shirley Dean four years ago, then-Planning Commission Chair Zelda Bronstein stood among his supporters. -more-

Wednesday BART services were disrupted for the second time around in two weeks when a bomb threat on a San Francisco-bound train at the 12th Street Oakland station resulted in services to all East Bay stations being cancelled for over an hour. -more-

The Willard Park tot lot will be officially reopening today (Friday) after remaining closed for two weeks in order to take care of rat infestation. -more-

Oakland teachers are one step closer to going on strike. -more-

On the agenda at Tuesday’s City Council meeting was a motion to ask the Berkeley School Board to add partial funding for a new warm pool at Berkeley High to the list of projects to be supported by the voters in a November parcel tax ballot measure. At the meeting, however, councilmembers argued that the addition could endanger the passage of the tax. -more-

The group chosen by the city to oversee development at the Ashby BART parking lot wants recruits for a task force panel to recommend projects to the city council. -more-

A $61 million project that will combine housing for the most disadvantaged, an environmental center, retail and underground parking got a set of approvals Tuesday, bringing the Oxford Plaza and David Brower Center proposed for Oxford Street and Allston Way closer to reality. The project was before both the Berkeley Redevelopment Agency and the Berkeley City Council, two bodies composed of the same elected councilmembers. -more-

Top state, county and city emergency services officials from the State of California and Alameda County met with senior officials from UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Vista College, the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) and Bayer Health care yesterday to discuss emergency preparedness coordination and communication plans in the event of a major disaster in Berkeley. -more-

When it comes to regulating local quarries, the city of Richmond is between a rock and a hard place. -more-

Faiza Al-Araji, a middle-class Iraqi woman, was able to pay her innocent son’s way out of jail last summer. That’s when she understood that she had to leave. With her husband and three sons, she went to Jordan, leaving behind the chaos and misery of the country of her birth. -more-

Though “balance” was the buzzword at Wednesday’s joint meeting between the Creeks Task Force and the Planning Commission, creeks faction wars were as heated as ever. -more-

The latest local public agency to be hit by the automated payroll blues is the Alameda County Medical Center. -more-

It’s a familiar story in Richmond. A developer wants to build expensive condos on what looks like a prime shoreline spot but there’s one catch. -more-

At the school board meeting on Wednesday, Paul Goodwin from Goodwin Simon Strategic Research presented board members and the public with the findings of the voter survey conducted to assess community support for reauthorizing the BSEP and Measure B of 2004 Special taxes which expire at the end of the 2006-07 school year. -more-

Commuters driving by Martin Luther KIng, Jr. Way and Oregon on Wednesday morning had a chance to smile and wave again, this time not at one pair of hands but thirty. -more-

The Albany City Council declined to tackle the White House Monday. -more-

Cycling bandit -more-

URBAN LEGEND -more-

In recent years, academics and consultants have emphasized the critical importance of leadership to the success of government and business enterprises. Leadership conveys an image of military daring, while management has come to be viewed as a technical subject, of interest only to those who have not yet reached positions of leadership. This attitude fits well with the interests of politicians, who are unlikely to have management experience, but may feel well qualified to offer leadership. Moreover, attacks on the failings of government bureaucracy—real or imagined—resonate with voters. -more-

I have traveled to far-off places just to visit quaint waterfronts where industrial detritus is turned into quirky outdoor art and the artists live in cohesive communities that also welcome strangers and wayfarers. In these funky enclaves, artisans, bohemians, working-class artists, students, and professionals live comfortably on the leftovers of former times-where recycle and reuse come naturally and beautifully. How does this sort of “organic” development grow and can you still find it in Oakland? You’d better look quickly before it is gentrified, calcified, and homogenized away leaving no open spaces, no gathering places, no real studios or workshops-only darkened patches of private yards. -more-

On Tuesday afternoon coming back to the East Bay from San Francisco, the BART train stopped on the tracks just before the West Oakland station, and the driver got on the intercom to let us know that we were being delayed because of an earthquake. -more-

When you’re alone and life is making you lonely you can always go—downtown. -more-

What are those curiously attractive houses whose second floor, contained within a steeply pitched main gable roof, is far larger than the first floor? Why do we see them standing in clusters of two or three in Berkeley and Oakland but rarely elsewhere? -more-

I was visiting with a client today and got into one of those if/and/or discussions that soon feels like your brain is stuck in either molasses or honey (depending on whether the job will actually pay anything). One possible course of action involved changing a faucet, which would have eliminated a broken component and almost certainly have solved a problem involving the reluctant flow of hot water. The other solution would make someone happy but seemed for all the world like the wrong thing to do. -more-

We just returned from an excursion to a friend’s new townhouse in Vacaville. I won’t riff on her lament that she can’t find bulk olives or a decent farmers’ market or bookstore there, but I will say that the landscaping scares me a bit. Scared her, too, and then some: The week before closing on the new place, Alamo Creek and its local tributaries flooded her first floor and most of her neighbors’. She got off lightly though and the seller replaced the carpet with the tile she prefers. The block still rings with repair and construction noises, and piles of ruined wallboard and household stuff persist. -more-