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In what Oakland Residents For Peaceful Neighborhoods (ORPN) calls a "victory for the people" the Oakland City Council voted last night not to collect the increase in the tax for the Landscape Lighting and Assessment District (LLAD) after the Alameda County Superior Court upheld the tax. ORPN reports on this : City Backs Off LLAD Tax Hike At a special July 22, 2008 meeting, the Oakland city council voted not to collect the Landscape and Lighting Assessment (LLAD) tax increase that it previously declared voters had approved. The decision is a $12 million victory for Oakland residents, who expressed broad outrage at the blatant ballot-box stuffing in a mail-in vote that City Hall conducted in April and May. However, no councilmember admitted that she condoned and participated in the vote rigging. Instead, the council took cover under a state supreme court ruling on assessment districts in general issued last week. Before the vote, one resident told the council, "If the pr

Of all of the news from today's surprise inspection of the California Hotel, comes the shocking revelation that Ricky Graham, the Acting District Director for Congresswoman Barbara Lee, called Linda Carter, who's a tenants activist, not to express support for the tenants, but to complain to her for the negative press in Oakland Focus. That's sad. This is what Carter reports: Ricky Graham, is described as being in charge of the press and media coverage for Congresswoman Barbara Lee's office in Oakland, and Mr. Graham called earlier today to voice his complaint because I pointed out recently that there has been no visible public support coming from Congresswoman Barbara Lee, that suggests that she supports the rights of the residents to remain in their housing at the California Hotel. Congresswoman Lee has not appeared at any of the recent rallys or protests by the residents of the California Hotel who are being unlawfully forced out of their housing, and I believe that

California Hotel Residents Angry With City of Oakland, Congresswoman Barbara Lee | Surprise Inspection Scares Tenants UPDATE: Ricky Graham of Congresswoman Lee's Staff Makes Wrong Move I don't know what the hell's going on, but the City of Oakland's looking real bad in this matter with Oakland Community Housing's attempt to unlawfully evict the tenants of the California Hotel . Moreover, and I really like and support Congresswoman Barbara Lee, but her office is not looking good in this matter either. I just got this horrifying email from Linda Carson, which I'm going to post below and send to National Public Radio. I know for a fact that Congresswoman Lee's staff is aware of the bad press they're generating for the Congresswoman because they're leaving their tracks all over my specialized website traffic detection system and several times Monday. Even the Congresswoman's Washington DC office has got into the act -- welcome back! The Oakland

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I got an email from a friend who's homeless and reports that a man by the name of "ED" decided to end his life by walking in front of a train one morning at 711 Harrison St, near where she sleeps in her car. She reports that this happens a lot. My fear is that the cities of Oakland and Berkeley are doing nothing to curb the real source of new homeless people: landlord activity in those cities. Just look at the California Hotel matter, which the City of Oakland seems to be a partner in with Oakland Community Housing. It's an outrage.

Councilmenber Nancy Nadel (District 3, Oakland) is catching hell over this exchange with a property owner in her district. The basic news is that she does not see -- and I guess will not look to find out if -- any improprieties existed in the way the Landscape Lighting and Assessment Distict votes were counted. Check this out, which was on the Yahoo Message Board and the HarriOak blog: People may be interested in the following exchange between Nancy and one of our neighbors about the LLAD tax. For those who aren't following this issue, the measure would have been defeated by homeowners who are already struggling with taxes that typically range from $5000 to $12,000 a year. But the city wanted it to pass so it added extra weight to the votes cast by the Port of Oakland and by city-owned properties. Since this surely is illegal, the city is now preparing to be sued. (Which we will also pay for. Dishonest government is extremely expensive.) On top of the vote rigging, the State Supre

It seems that Athol avenue is experiencing a new rash of robberies and break-ins. It's caused a new buzz with people online. This was from the Yahoo Message Board: Greetings Neighbors: My neighbor on the 400 block of Athol was also burglarized on Friday, maybe early afternoon. Similar M.O. They got TVs and laptops. They even left my neighbor's big flat panel TV on the street (their truck was probably already too full of other stuff). This was very upsetting, since they are only two houses away, and either I and/or my assistant were working on the house (the neighbors house is just out of sight). In hindsight, I think I might have seen these guys. I did give them a second look, since they were unfamiliar and driving unusually slowly. I watched but then they disappeared around the corner. So that is very frustrating. I feel very stupid for not taking more action. Here's what I remember of their description (please note, this is a fuzzy recollection based on a very brief vie

What does street cleaning make you think of? Noise? Dirt? Big trucks? All of the above? Want to hear that at night while you sleep? Well, it's for those reasons that the Downtown Lake Merritt Neighborhood Group launched a petition drive to have the City of Oakland go from nighttime to daytime street cleaning and got 181 people to sign it. The trouble is that the City of Oakland's stil not implemented the change. Here's the Downtown Lake Merritt Neighborhood Group's notice on the matter: Good Afternoon, 18 months ago, the Downtown Lake Merritt Neighborhood Group presented a petition with 181 signatures to the Oakland Public Works Agency and our City Councilmember, Nancy Nadel, requesting that street sweeping hours in our neighborhood be changed from 12AM-3AM to daytime hours. The petition read: "The current street sweeping hours are inconvenient because they occur when the highest percentage of us are home -- the middle of the night. The street sweeping sched

In this controversial eviction action by Oakland Community Housing, Inc with respect to the tenants of the California Hotel , some apparently called Congresswoman Barbara Lee's office and got no action at all. This is what they wrote, which I originally placed on the initial blog on this matter, but now I'm repeating here as a post of its own: Update on California Hotel and Drasnin Manor tenants July 19, 2008 Hi Darlene & others concerned... The elderly, disabled and the poor in the California Hotel have been sold out by Oakland City Councilmembers, non profit housing organizations and apparently Congresswoman Barbara Lee who remains completely silent on the issue of their housing plight, so far . (Oakland Focus emphasis) The California Hotel tenants continue to remain in their housing and refuse to move after being doublecrossed by those that were supposed to watch out for their best interests. They have organized themselves to clean the hotel up and maintain it for th

Calfornia Hotel Resident Eviction Calls For Oakland City Attorney Action ASAP The California Hotel is the center of a battle between poor tenants and Oakland Community Housing, Inc. The California Hotel is a historic landmark building in Oakland currently owned by Cahon Associates, Inc., an affiliate of Oakland Community Housing, Inc. The building, located at 3501 San Pablo Ave. near the Oakland border with Emeryville, currhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifently has: • 75 single occupancy rooms, • 58 efficiency apartments, • 16 studio units, • a supportive services area, a large lobby and mezzanine, and • several ground floor commercial spaces. UPDATE: Congresswoman Barbara Lee's Office pointed to for inaction on this matter. Here's the problem. Last year, Oakland Community Housing put out this Request For Proposals to find a developer to, as the RFP put it: take over ownership and to convert the existing property into a model permanent supportive housing complex as

I saw the 11:30 Friday showing of The Dark Knight at The Grand Lake Theater here in Oakland's Lake Merritt area, and told a friend how much I liked the second in the newest series of Batman movies. So he goes to see it that night with his wife and reports "I liked The Dark Knight or what I could hear, because the speakers blew out! I'll see it again. Wow. Hey Grand Lake Owner Allan Michaan, time to fix those speakers!

I had the pleasure of meeting six-time US Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps today at Stanford, California when I was there for The Bank Of The West Classic tennis event, and was impressed that he was such a nice and normal person. So this video is about that and the cool video he made for me -- with my coaching -- at the Bank Of The West Classic. Hey, Phelps may get all the ladies, but that's cool. Michael Phelps is a cool muthafucka. If you see him in Bejing, tell him that. Make a t-shirt saying that. More athletes could take a page from his book, and just be cool and nice people.

I just got wind of a new rumor that there's a petition going around to recall Mayor Ron Dellums. I personally don't want this, and prefer the rough-and-tumble of an election to sort things out, but it's out there I'm told. I think Mayor Dellums is trying to do better; to be better. Perhaps this is just the thing that makes a mayor go from not-so-hot, to good. This wasn't the first time someone floated such a recall effort. In fact, just last year in August , word was going around about a then-new website called "RecallDellums" that is not up now. Stay tuned.