News

This past Sunday June 5th 2011, father Jorge Crespin, who has been at St Joseph’s for over 40 years, announced at the 11:00am Spanish mass with a sad heart that he has been ordered to leave the parish. -more-

A comparative analysis of overtime payments in twelve regional municipalities by the civic group Berkeley Budget SOS reveals that the City of Berkeley annually spends above the average for overtime, as adjusted for population. If Berkeley reduced its overtime payments to the twelve-city per capita average, up to $30M in annual savings could be achieved while still leaving $17.5 M available for overtime expenses. -more-

On June 3, 2011 at about 10:00 p.m., a group of young men were socializing in front of an apartment building in the 1500 block of Fairview Street in South Berkeley. City of Berkeley Police Department (BPD) dispatchers received 911 calls from community members reporting hearing possible gunshots and a shooting. -more-

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will host a series of public hearings throughout the County to discuss redistricting, a process required by State law in which the County’s supervisorial districts are adjusted every ten years after the release of new federal census data. -more-

(The author covered, for the Planet, a workshop held by regional agencies on a State-mandated plan to designate places for future residential and job growth in the Bay Area. The currently proposed plan would mandate thousands of new housing units and tens of thousands of new residents in Berkeley, and hundreds of thousands of permanent new residents in Alameda County overall.

This article describes the experience of attending the forum, including small group sessions, interactive voting on a carefully pre-selected set of options, and some of the objections and questions raised by participants.)

A workshop on how to accommodate a projected 900,000 new households in the Bay Area—nearly 16,000 of them in Berkeley—over the next 25 years drew more than a hundred self-selected locals to Oakland on the evening of May 24, 2011. -more-

Gina Sasso, 49, who died last Wednesday of complications of pneumonia, was feted Sunday in People's Park and later memorialized by an ad-hoc demonstration at the corner which was formerly the home of Cody's Books on Telegraph. She was a Berkeley activist who touched the hearts and lives of the more than 75 people who showed up Sunday for a hastily-assembled celebration of her life and many others. The upbeat event was organized by longtime Sasso friends, Max Ventura and Soul. -more-

Two Oakland brothers were convicted today of three counts of first-degree murder and other charges for killing their brother's wife and two of her family members,one of whom was a student at Berkeley High, on Thanksgiving Day 2006 in what a prosecutor said was a misguided act of revenge. -more-

Daniel Borenstein, award-winning columnist and editorial writer for the Bay Area News Group will address the Spring Meeting of the Northeast Berkeley Association (NEBA) on Thursday evening, June 2.

For Immediate Release -more-

One often sees reference to Taizé services held in a few East Bay churches, both Catholic and Protestant. "What exactly is a Taizé service and what does the name mean?" is a question frequently asked. Therein lies a fascinating story. -more-

Naturally I was shocked to learn that Contra Costa's law enforcement task force commander Norman Wielsch was involved in prostitution. But I was more shocked to read that, even with a unique competitive advantage — i.e., being able to use his badge to shut down other massage parlors — Wielsch still couldn’t make a financial go of it! -more-