News

A campaign season that began with the possibility of a major overhaul of the Oakland City Council’s old guard ended quietly in the status quo early Wednesday morning, as two incumbent Councilmembers avoided run-offs against what had been expected to be stiff opposition, and two others easily swamped their opponents. -more-

The champagne was flowing last night at victory parties for Nancy Skinner, elected to the State Assembly with 46.8 percent of the vote and Assemblymember Loni Hancock, elected to the State Senate with 56.5 percent of the vote. -more-

The city has closed a lot on the 1400 block of Derby Street, across the street from a day care center, because of potentially dangerous levels of arsenic. -more-

University of California service employees, working for 10 months without a contract, have scrapped plans to walk off the job for two days this week and are back at the bargaining table. -more-

Is Berkeley being railroaded? -more-

-more-

Berkeley Unified School District officials said they uncovered an athletic fundraising scam on Friday, when a resident of Glenview in Oakland called to report that a young man was going door to door saying he was raising money for the Berkeley High School baseball team to visit Maui. -more-

Berkeley resident Nathaniel Curtis Freeman, 19, who was charged with murdering Maceo Smith on Durant Avenue on May 13, did not enter a plea as he was scheduled to do at the Alameda County Superior Court today (Friday). -more-

Berkeley planning commissioners voted 8-1 Wednesday to approve a key legal document that paves the way for construction of a long-delayed 24-unit condominium building at 2701 Shattuck Ave. -more-

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums proposed $14.4 million in cuts to the City of Oakland budget this week to offset a projected $15 million deficit in the next fiscal year, including calling for the closing down of non-essential city services for 12 days each year. -more-

While UC Berkeley’s new downtown museum may attract praise from architecture critics, downward-directed thumbs may come from those already frustrated with the hunt for downtown parking. -more-

With some 30 cities and 80 organizations on record opposing the state agriculture department’s plan to spray coastal cities and the Bay Area to eradicate the light brown apple moth (LBAM), one city is bucking the trend. Reedley, a Fresno County agricultural community of around 24,000, has stepped up to support the state. -more-

Zanne Joi, organizer for Code Pink, was arrested this afternoon (Thursday) on charges of trespassing, battery on an officer and resisting arrest at the downtown Marine Recruiting Center. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education took an in-depth look at Berkeley Unified’s 2007 Academic Performance Index (API) rankings at the school board meeting Wednesday. -more-

A 29-year-old Berkeley man was shot and killed Wednesday night as he stood on a sidewalk near the corner of California and Tyler streets. -more-

Oakland City Council incumbents running for re-election are taking in campaign donations from individuals who regularly require City Council approval for the business they do with the City of Oakland. While the practice is, for the most part, not illegal, it violates the spirit of the 1997 Oakland Campaign Reform Act, which sought to prevent a connection between City Council decisions and campaign donations to city councilmembers running for re-election. -more-

In the tightly contested June 3 races for the Oakland City Council, incumbent councilmembers are predictably winning the important fund-raising battles, with 5th District Councilmember and Council President Ignacio De La Fuente leading the way. -more-

The questions posed to Senate and Assembly candidates at Tuesday evening’s forum presented by the Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action came from real life. -more-

What seemed like typical lunch-time ruckus to visitors at Berkeley High School last week was in fact an act of solidarity with immigrants across the nation. -more-

A massive manhunt scoured the Berkeley hills Friday afternoon as officers closed Highway 13 along Tunnel Road while they searched for the men who carjacked a San Ramon man in Oakland. -more-

An early riser at 5:30 on Wednesday morning thought he’d spotted a thief in the act of committing a crime which is the subject of legislation that has passed the state Assembly and is now headed for the Senate. He saw a man loading many copies of newspapers from distribution boxes on College Avenue near Ashby into a pickup truck, and he called the Berkeley Police Department with a full description of the man and the truck, complete with license number. -more-

Described as friendly, brilliant and bright-eyed—and at the same time as scary and cult-like—six LaRouche Democrats are running for Alameda County Democratic Central Committee (ACDCC) slots. -more-

In a move that closely resembled past efforts to thwart cell phone antennas from being located in Berkeley, the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) did not approve a permit for T-Mobile to construct a new wireless telecommunications facility on the roof of an Affordable Housing Associates-owned multistoried building at 1725 University Ave. -more-

AC Transit bus district directors took their first steps last week toward a possible fare increase this fall, holding a public hearing on the issue May 21 at Oakland City Hall. -more-

The Berkeley Sea Scout leader who was arrested in December for the alleged sexual abuse of his charges was hit with still more counts on Friday. -more-

Thousands of patient care and service workers for the University of California system announced Friday they plan to strike as soon as June 2 because they feel their wages just don’t cut it. -more-

Berkeley firefighters found themselves facing two structure fires that erupted within minutes of each other Sunday afternoon, reported Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong. -more-

The masked takeover bandit dubbed “The Lone Gunman” has pulled off at least two more armed robberies in Berkeley, police announced. -more-

The University of California Board of Regents Tuesday signed off on the environmental impact reports on two controversial buildings at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. -more-

Construction of the Berkeley Unified School District’s $10 million transportation facility at Sixth Street is scheduled to begin Monday, according to district officials. -more-

The Berkeley Unified School District is a step closer to relocating its administrative offices from the seismically unsafe Old City Hall building on 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way to the southwest portion of the West Campus, between Curtis and Browning streets. -more-

The curtain went up on the Downtown Area Plan’s second act Wednesday night, with a sharply divided Planning Commission headed for a rewrite. -more-

The California Department of Education (CDE) has retracted its statement that state school suspension data, which revealed that Berkeley’s Willard Middle School had one of the highest violent-suspension rates in the Bay Area last year, was inaccurate. In an article in the May 22 Planet, CDE information officer Tina Jung told the Planet the suspension data published in the San Francisco Chronicle on May 19 was “incorrect.” Jung said in an e-mail, “We should not have attested that the data used by the [Chronicle] reporter was inaccurate, only that CDE cannot verify its accuracy.” -more-