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I found this post on the Yahoo Message Board for Adams Point. It's a long response to the proposal to ease conversions of apartments to condos. SAY NO TO OAKLAND'S URBAN REMOVAL PROGRAM--CONDO CONVERSIONS REVISITED! * 3 City Councilmembers led by Ignacio Dela Fuente have put a city-wide proposal to gut Oakland's existing condo conversion protections ON THE FAST TRACK with only 2 months of public hearings and no study on the impacts, including displacement of vulnerable tenants and exacerbating declining school enrollments. They want it passed before Mr. Dellums takes office. * IF YOU ARE A RENTER, increased condo conversion means that you may be evicted from your home and forced to find new housing in an even more difficult rental market. * There will be NO RENT CONTROL PROTECTIONS if the new condo units are re-rented. Over 25% of Oakland's current condos are already being rented out. * OVER 90% OF OAKLAND RENTERS won't be able to afford the new condos. Average c...

Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente made a terrible mistake yesterday when he said this to the San Francisco Chronicle: "To be candid, we made more money in one Rolling Stones concert than the A's made (us) in a whole year. We will deal with it," De La Fuente said. Wow. Apparently, Ignacio De La Fuente and the Coliseum Authority think that Cisco Field will only be used for baseball and not concerts. Does anyone at the Coliseum Authority understand that a new competing facility will open and threten to pull over half of the Coliseum's events away from it? I really think that Oakland Officials don't understand sports and entertainment as an industry, and yet are too ego-driven to know when they're making a mistake. This is a massive error.

Here's an example of failure in the making. Instead of forming a private sector task force on the A's matter, Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente calls on stadium manager SMG for advice. Anything to put money in SMG's pocket. It makes me wonder what SMG does for them -- tickets to events? That's not right. The Coliseum Authority's enabiling resolution contains a provision to establish a 20-person private sector advisory board. But it's never been done at all. The SF Bay Area has some of the World's top sports business minds, but we in Oakland don't call on them. What's Ignacio afraid of? Good advice? In the days when the Coliseum was ran by Oakland business people, they would get together and devote time to solve the problem. Instead, we get Ignacio making more negative comments about the A's, as in "We make more money without them." Know where they got that idea from? SMG. SMG's not an economics firm -- ...

Yesterday, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that the effort to bring the 2016 Olympics to San Francisco was over. As the head of the Oakland Super Bowl XVIV Bidding Committee, which from 1999 to 2001 worked to bring the Super Bowl to Oakland, I hated to witness that event. I thought San Francisco had its best chance yet to land the Olympic Games because it had a large set of people who seemed to be equally committeed to doing it. The SF 2012 Olympic effort was the largely the story of the work and energy of one person, Anne Cribbs, whereas this time the heavy lifting was spread out more to others. In the case of Oakland's Super Bowl that effort was totally the story of my work and enthusiasm. But in all three cases, one element of Bay Area society came forward again and again: the selfish action of one key player, perfectly timed to wreck the chances of winning. What makes the Bay Area a great place to live is also that which keeps it from really growing as a socie...

In their blog of the same name, Brooke and Lian point to a growing movement in West Oakland to reduce the tide of social change driven by gentrification. They point out that since 2000, 20 percent of Oakland's black population has left Oakland, and -- they claim -- most of that departure from West Oakland. There's a campaign to stop this and the leaders of the effort have posted signs and even a large billboard in protest of what is called "predatory development." This has been ignored in the mainstream media, with people like the East Bay Express' Chris Thompson calling retailers like Walgreens champions of urban development, but offering no proof to back his claim. Still, the drive -- as uncoordinated as it seems to be -- moves on. My prediction is that it will eventually lead to the first full scale riot Oakland has ever seen. All of the drivers are in place: wildly disparant income levels, high crime, poor neighborhood job opportunities, angry police off...

This was posted on the "local" Yahoo! Message Board Earlier this evening [Thursday night], one of the ground-floor apartments in our building was burglarized. We are at 405 Blellevue, which is at the corner of Bellevue and Van Buren. The thief[ves] came in through the window and exited through the front door. No one saw or heard anything. The tenant came home around 2:30 a.m. so we're not exactly sure when it happened, but we think it was around midnight. The burglar(s) took an Apple laptop, iPod, and a Dark Blue LeMond road bike, as well as some small personal items. The also took a red suitcase, presumably to carry the smaller loot. The thief could still be out in the neighborhood with these items. The tenant said that last night they awoke to a knocking. At the time, they thought it was the front door, so they went to the door to find no one there. It seemed peculair, but at the time they thought it was maybe the wind or something else that made the sound. Now, in retr...

I just found this video while looking for other content, and wondered why Councilmember Pat Kernighan's staff didn't place it on her website. In this video, made by the "Choose Or Loose The Oakland A's" effort, the District Two representative says she will raise the matter of the retention of the A's to the level of public discussion. Well, Pat, lets' get started! Here's the video: