Hayward city officials, along with HUSD and HARD representatives, have been meeting with residents in neighborhoods all over town to hear what their concerns are and what should be done to improve their quality of life.

Officials say the Neighborhood Partnership Program has been a big success. Here’s a presentation that explains what’s going on. The goal is to have an initial set of four meetings facilitated by the city, then turn the reins over to the residents. So even if the meetings have already been held for your area, you should be able to get in contact with people who have set up an action team. For more information, call Neighborhood Services at 510-583-4227 or e-mail director David Korth at david.korth@hayward-ca.gov.

And just as a reminder, you can also use the city website’s Access Hayward feature to file complaints or suggestions of things that need work.

You’ve probably heard the tragic story that happened last week involving the Hayward High School students. We’re keeping an ear out for updates, but I received a press release  that was e-mailed to me by relatives of the twins. We’re not releasing any names at this point because of the nature of the case.

Here’s the family statement, which they want to be shared: Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: Here’s the story.

Started like a work of friction. Less than 10 minutes in, Board President Frumkin called a recess because Trustee Reynoso wanted to rebut Frumkin’s statement from district lawyers refuting Reynoso’s legal findings from the last meeting regarding the matter of Trustee Armas’ relatives working for the district. Get all that?

When they returned and Reynoso kept talking, they had HUSD security kinda awkwardly escort Reynoso out of the council chamber. Just outside the doors, neither HUSD security nor a uniformed HPD officer knew what to do about the situation. It was like “So someone’s breaking Roberts Rules of Order? Who, exactly, is supposed to do what about that?” At one point there was some question of whether the security guard who sits at the desk downstairs should be brought into the situation.

In the meantime, Reynoso went back to his seat. Then a sergeant and another officer arrived. During another recess, they met with the board behind closed doors and then the officers left and Reynoso again took his seat, this time for the duration of the meeting. He also was allowed to make his rebuttal statement without interruption.

I hit the officers up on their way out, they said Reynoso simply wasn’t committing an arrestable offense. I asked them if they’d ever had to respond to a call like that before and they said no, tonight was a first. So I guess they won’t be bringing the paddy wagon around for Roberts Rules violations or anything like that.

Public commenter Doug Ligebel struck a chord with the audience and garnered applause when he said, “I don’t want to see three uniformed police officers at a school board meeting when there have been 13 murders in Hayward this year.”

So I will be working on a story on the whole deal, but I figured I’d offer up a HayWord entry to comment on for those of you who saw the meeting. They also reviewed the final budget numbers for the past school year and heard a presentation on how Measure I projects are going, and they’re going very well.

Here’s the gist of things that came out of Tuesday night’s meeting, I’m working on a couple of stories for later this week:

BURGLARY UPDATE: Council heard a report about this summer’s uptick in residential burglaries from Lt. Sheryl Boykins and Lt. Reid Lindblom, who are the community resource officers for the southside and northside, respectively. They had some figures, here are the highlights:

June saw the largest increase, from 78 to 118, a 51 percent increase, while May saw a 28 percent increase and July 13 percent. If you look at the totals for the first seven months of the year, there’s only been a 5 percent spike during that period compared with 2009, so it’s pretty clear the rise began with summer. And it’s not a Hayward thing, there have been increases in surrounding communities and most of those arrested have been from out of town. They’ve arrested 44 burglary suspects in the past three months, what Boykins said is “more than we usually arrest in a year.”

The lieutenants said the most affected neighborhoods are Darwin, Leeward, Bell Harbor, Palma Ceia, Fairway Park, and Silver Maple in S. Hayward, while in N. Hayward it’s Prominence, Bailey Ranch, area around Atherton and the area around Pinewood and Farm Hill.

They said they’ve increased presence in those areas but more importantly have worked with the community to let them know what’s going on and what they can do to prevent it, most notably helping watch over the neighborhood.

“We make way more arrests by networking with the community than we do by being in the right place at the right time,” said Lindblom. Read the rest of this entry »

Good news! We have some additional hands around here these days: Chris Metinko, who was covering Alameda County issues for the Oakland Tribune, joined us to take over the unincorporated areas beat.

That includes Castro Valley, San Lorenzo, Fairview, Ashland and Cherryland. Like the rest of us, he’ll tackle all aspects of the areas, including schools, crime and planning/land use/neighborhood issues. In addition, he’ll be taking on stories out of Cal State East Bay and Chabot College.

Chris is a very welcome addition. If you have stories out of our neck of unincorporated AlCo, let him know. He’s at 510-293-2479 or cmetinko@bayareanewsgroup.com.

After looking at the “About The HayWord” page, it appears that it’s time to revisit all of that info. Still lists Kim Santos as editor (she’s now at the Valley Times/Tri-Valley Herald), Jason Sweeney covers San Leandro and Kris Noceda left us last week. To those not in the Twitterverse – that’s where news breaks these days — Kris left the Review to join an online news group.

Yeah, we’re already missing him — not just because he’s a good reporter and a positive newsroom presence, but also because now we have to cover his beats until a new reporter is hired. In a nutshell, that means I’ll pick up Castro Valley, Fairview, Cherryland, Cal State and Chabot College stories; Jason Sweeney is going to tackle unincorporated crime items, San Lorenzo and Ashland.

Now then, please read this official policy. We’re going to start enforcing it. I honestly don’t have much time to play comment police, so if you post something unacceptable, I will have to put you in the spam queue. Then, when I have a chance, I’ll look at the spam queue and see if there’s anything there to post. That means you will not have the instant gratification of seeing your comment go live when you hit the post button, and I can’t guarantee what kind of lag time there will be. Here’s that policy:

Blog policy: While The HayWord welcomes lively discussion and tough criticism, personal attacks on writers or other readers are not allowed. Spam, obscene language, personal attacks or abusive hate speech are not allowed. You may not pose as another person when posting. Violators are subject to a ban. We recommend that posters to The HayWord use their full names when posting, to keep this forum reliable and encourage constructive discussion.

It’s been nearly a year to the day since intrepid reporter Kris Noceda announced he joined the world of Twitter.

That was a good call. After waiting and watching to see if Twitter wasn’t some kind of online flash-in-the-pan, the other Review reporters have joined him. Follow Eric Kurhi at www.twitter.com/erickurhi and Jason Sweeney at www.twitter.com/Jason_Sweeney .

Twitter serves a different function than either stories or this blog. It’s an instant-information mechanism, good for short bursts. For example, when someone’s out in the field chasing down fire or crime information, or as-it-happens reports from school board or City Council meetings. Expect information to be in very short form and more informal than you’d see in a story or even on a blog.

You can also find links to other Tweeters, such as the City of Hayward or the Hayward Public Library.

You don’t have to be on Twitter to read the entries — just visit the sites to see what’s been posted.

Despite the spate of homicides this year and the disparaging comments you can often find below stories about crime in Hayward, violent offenses are down by nearly 15 percent, according to FBI statistics released this week. That’s about on par with decreases seen in the nearest big cities of Fremont and Oakland, although the per capita crime rate is considerably different in all three.

The report only has info for cities with a population of 100,000 or more.

The referenced story gives you all the Hayward info, but if you’d like to compare the stats with other cities, you can look at the FBI report here.

For a short spell late this afternoon, the Hayward landmark building that was dubbed “The Toaster” by a famous architecture critic smoldered as firefighters worked to douse a blaze in the 12th floor penthouse.

While the investigation just started, a neighbor said he thinks the blaze might be related to graffiti that appeared overnight.

And what graffiti! Take a gander at this masterpiece:

It looks like an illiterate giant was using finger paint to play a game of Hangman. Anyone have a clue as to what SKORE HTF IMG means?

In other news, I will be off next week so you might see a longer gap than usual between HayWord posts. Play nice, everybody!

Hey, who wants to see a van crash through a storefront window in a failed attempt to steal an ATM machine? I mean, who DOESN’T want to see such a thing, really?

It’s not the biggest crime news to strike Hayward, but KTVU has an entertaining video clip of how it went down. It’s worth a watch.

And if you happen to recognize the backwards-baseball-hatted accomplice, police would like to hear from you at 510-293-7000.