Marcia Levenson treasures her Williard neighborhood and the apartment she has rented for two decades in the area. Because she’s living with a chronic disease, Levenson’s only income is disability payments. Her Section 8 voucher allows her to stay in the neighborhood and limits her share of the rent to 30 percent of her income. -more-

While two rejected proposals for the Oakland Unified School District administrative properties substantially meet several district “baseline expectations and intentions,” the winning proposal by TerraMark/UrbanAmerica does not, an analysis by the Daily Planet has found. -more-

Though an angry Rick Caruso said early Tuesday that he’s pulled the plug on his plans for a $300 million Albany waterfront mall, project foes say they expect him back. -more-

Users of People’s Park met with UC Berkeley officials on Thursday for a park walk-through and discussion of some upcoming projects. -more-

The Berkeley City Council dealt with three development issues Tuesday: a citizen appeal of housing-retail project at 1201 San Pablo Ave., a proposal to charge developers in-lieu fees rather than requiring inclusionary units and the second reading of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. -more-

Not many disabled people chose to stand up in public and talk about their handicaps. But that’s what Ben Rivers did at the City Council meeting Tuesday. -more-

In describing a tear’s journey from a cheek to the Long Beach Harbor, one Berkeley man sealed his fate as an inductee into the hall of literary infamy. -more-

The sergeant in charge of Berkeley’s drug evidence room copped a plea earlier this year, admitting he stole drug evidence in his charge. -more-

On Wednesday, UC Berkeley unions plan to rally against what they call “drastic changes” in the parking fees for disabled employees, carpool permits, and Bear passes that the university has unilaterally imposed upon their employees. -more-

Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), an Oakland-based environmental health and justice non-profit, has served Pacific Steel Casting with a federal lawsuit, the organization announced Wednesday. -more-

Denise Fore, maintenance director of Redwood Gardens, a senior housing complex near Clark Kerr Campus that is home to around 200 senior citizens, said this week that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will renew their subsidies for the Redwood Gardens complex. -more-

Berkeley’s phantom paintballer is at it again, and police are asking for the public’s help in nailing the serial splatterer. -more-

A Richmond police pursuit ended near the Claremont Hotel Tuesday night but not before a helicopter search and prowling patrol cars alarmed nearby residents. -more-

Norma Harrison, a communist and active member of the Peace and Freedom Party, has announced a bid for school board. -more-

The embattled Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) has a new acting manager, Housing Department Director Stephen Barton announced Thursday. -more-

While foes of the upscale mall planned for the Albany shoreline have apparently won one battle before the City Council, there’s another struggle in the courts. -more-

Porch arson -more-

Three days after one Berkeley institution closed its doors on Telegraph Avenue another won overwhelming approval to open. -more-

A multi-year, $1.65-million contract for city office supplies will go to Office Depot, pending approval by the City Council tonight (Tuesday). -more-

With Oakland education leaders traveling to Sacramento this week to lobby for a return to local control of the Oakland Unified School District, OUSD documents reveal that the real power over the future direction of Oakland’s public schools may lie with private foundations. -more-

State officials have ordered a popular after-school tutoring program to leave Richmond’s contaminated Campus Bay after officials and citizens spotted children playing in a toxic off-limits area. -more-

Berkeley Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Max Anderson are proposing amendments to the city’s condominium conversion ordinance that would prevent condo conversion for 20 years from the date a landlord has quit the rental business for that particular property and would prevent condo conversion for 10 years from the time the owner has enacted an owner move-in eviction. -more-

In an effort to keep people with a variety of income levels in Berkeley, the city instituted its “inclusionary” housing ordinance in 1986, which mandates that developers reserve one-fifth of new housing units for people earning 80 percent of area median income. -more-

Following a Sunday afternoon town hall meeting at Redwood Gardens that attracted 61 Berkeley residents in search of a “progressive” candidate to take on District 8 incumbent Gordon Wozniak in November, a vote of attendees supported Jason Overman, a city rent board commissioner and UC Berkeley student. -more-

A dozen residents have appealed plans for a five-story, mixed-use building on San Pablo Avenue, a project once described by a neighbor as “bursting at the seams.” -more-

As the city prepares to fund one planning process in South Berkeley, the county and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) are launching another on Thursday night. -more-

It seems simplistic, but let’s just go over it one more time. Until the time of the First World War, it was an accepted shared belief, at least among the “civilized” (European-influenced) countries that deliberately killing non-combatants (“civilians”) was an immoral way to conduct a war, even a “just” war. This is a topic that necessarily requires quotation marks, since even supposedly shared beliefs are questioned by some. -more-

Warm-pool users met over the weekend to organize themselves to converge on today’s (Tuesday) City Council meeting to support Dona Spring’s proposal to put a measure on the November ballot to fund the pool used mostly by disabled and elderly people. -more-

RADKIDS -more-

Forget the fireworks, the chase is on again—turn on your TV to find out the latest casualties of your monthly police high-speed chase. Although never having been personally impacted by this very American institution, I have long considered it the grossest, most damning hallmark of this nation. -more-

It has been a challenging year for the Berkeley Art Center. In fact, the past few years have increasingly tested our ingenuity and resilience. While we offered professionally mounted exhibitions, undertook lots of adjunct programming, presented opportunities to attend performances of music, spoken word, films and theater performances, our funding decreased. Rising costs accompanied this decline. We have been told that the oil “crisis,” brewing since the 1970s, is the reason postage, maintenance and printing costs increased. Insurance rates skyrocketed; both Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina are blamed for the rise. We watched our communications costs soar, as we increased our use of the Internet to mitigate rising postal rates. Our small staff is dedicated and offers the BAC many volunteer hours without a cost-of-living raise. -more-

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On July 11 Berkeley’s City Council by a 6-2-1 vote took the first reading on repealing the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance and reenacting it with extensive changes. Presumably it will take the second reading on July 18. This article analyzes key differences between the “old LPO” (originally adopted in 1974 and amended later in the 1970s and 1980s) and the “revised LPO” (the version that at this moment the City Council seems poised to adopt). -more-

The redistribution of wealth upward is proceeding apace in the Bush/neo-con America. What has been a lower class, is rapidly transforming into an under class, while the middle class is becoming the lower class. -more-

Once or so a year, the topic of poverty climbs on the agenda for the developed world. This past weekend it barely surfaced at the meeting of the Group of Eight in St. Petersburg, where energy policy (and the Middle East) held center stage. Poverty was a theme at last year’s G8 meeting, and it will likely come up again next year when the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Russia, Germany, France, and Italy sit down in Berlin to divvy up the global economy. -more-

Forgive me, y’all, but I am always a little skeptical when a politician announces that one of their public policy initiatives has nothing to do with politics but, then, you’ve got to find the timing of this one is a little curious, as well. -more-

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Matt, We need to reinforce the cripple walls in our 1906 one-story house. But we live in the Berkeley flats and we are worried about potential flooding. We are not that far above sea level and we don’t think that global warming is a fairy tale. -more-

It’s midsummer, more or less, and the other inhabitants of the garden are showing up in numbers. Aphids and whiteflies and thrips, oh my! The first flush in spring gave rise to another generation or two, multiplying all the way, and most of the birds have about finished raising their first and maybe second broods for the year, so fewer insects are being turned into babyfood. -more-

Are You Inside or Out? -more-

I was criticized by letter writers in the last three issues of the Daily Planet for stating that my husband Ralph is confined to a wheelchair. Brian Hill of Albany said he didn’t “mind being called crippled or lame” but “confined to a wheelchair” implied Ralph was “chained to it, with padlocks.” Ann Sieck seconded Brian’s opinion and said she, too, was “good and crippled.” Ruthanne Shpiner stated, “Language and its use or misuse is critical in forming how the public perceives everyone. Such terminology as ‘confined to a wheelchair’ is not only inaccurate, it is offensive.” -more-

One more scary invasive exotic plant has shown up in the East Bay. Susan Schwartz of Friends of Five Creeks issued a bulletin: -more-

FRIDAY, JULY 21 -more-

Two retrospectives starting today (Friday) at Pacific Film Archive will illuminate the work of actress Janet Gaynor and director Frank Borzage, both sterling talents in their day but unjustly overlooked in ours. -more-

If you’re a soccer fan still looking for a way to get the poisonous image of Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt out of your mind, the solution may have arrived in the form of a new documentary. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos tells the story of soccer’s arrival in the United States in the late 1970s, when media mogul Steve Ross set out to make the “the beautiful game” a national phenomenon. -more-

The metamorphoses of Madonna, or Elton John changing fashions and overburdening specs ... Judy Garland as Dorothy, belting out “Over The Rainbow” while absent-mindedly petting a pinwheel-headed Toto ... and just how does a paraplegic Venus De Milo line-dance to Zorba The Greek ? -more-

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Matt, We need to reinforce the cripple walls in our 1906 one-story house. But we live in the Berkeley flats and we are worried about potential flooding. We are not that far above sea level and we don’t think that global warming is a fairy tale. -more-

It’s midsummer, more or less, and the other inhabitants of the garden are showing up in numbers. Aphids and whiteflies and thrips, oh my! The first flush in spring gave rise to another generation or two, multiplying all the way, and most of the birds have about finished raising their first and maybe second broods for the year, so fewer insects are being turned into babyfood. -more-

Are You Inside or Out? -more-

FRIDAY, JULY 21 -more-

The Berkeley Alcohol Policy Advocacy Coalition was misidentified in Tuesday’s Daily Planet. While nonprofit organizations participate in the coalition, BAPAC itself is not a nonprofit organization, as stated in the article. -more-

TUESDAY, JULY 18 -more-

Now that Mozart has turned 250, you would think that not much more could be discovered about the world’s most popular and most scrutinized composer. Then, along comes Austrian musicologist Michael Lorenz to dismiss a few old and new Mozartean myths. -more-

To a Californian, there has to be something charming about an opera in which the mysterious stranger who wins the heroine’s heart is a man named Johnson from Sacramento. The Berkeley Opera makes full use of this charm in its production of Puccini’s The Girl of the Golden West, which opened Saturday, with a new English adaptation by David Scott Marley. -more-

One more scary invasive exotic plant has shown up in the East Bay. Susan Schwartz of Friends of Five Creeks issued a bulletin: -more-

TUESDAY, JULY 18 -more-