After serving on the City Council off and on since 1967, Councilman Nat Bates finally lost his cool during a particularly fluffy City Hall meeting last night.

Richmond has a policy which requires the Council to either end their meetings at 11 p.m or vote to extend them. The Council votes to extend every time, but last night Bates wasn’t having it. He voted against extending the meeting with this disgusted explanation, which echoed the grumbles that often go around the audience after hour three of these meetings:

This Council has to get some awareness of time. We drag things on too long and then we get to the business aspect of it and we don’t have time. This is ridiculous. I’ve never seen a Council that takes so much time, talk so long, but say so little and do so little.

A half hour later, Bates again refused to vote for an extension, telling Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, “You talk too much and say so little, and that’s why we never get anything done.”

Councilman Tom Butt convinced the rest of the Council to limit discussion on remaining the agenda items to two minutes each.

A few quick votes later, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin tried to adjourn the meeting– the last until mid-September– by telling her colleagues that their behavior had been “unacceptable” and urging them to do better in the Fall.

But the normally quiet Jim Rogers had a bit of scolding of his own to do, which he delivered with frequent interruptions from McLaughlin.

“I think that we need to address the issue that we have presentations that go on for 30, 40 minutes at a time, and then we have items where we’re spending $2 million, and we’re setting new policies on transportation, and we’re trying to do it in a two-minute time limit,” he said. “I  think we need to take a look at this. It is in my opinion a crazy way to run a city.”

It was Councilman Corky Booze who had the last word, calling out Councilman Jeff Ritterman, who had walked out a few votes earlier,  for “stomping out of this place.”

The tale of a small, undercapitalized political theater company, its temptation by corporate greenwashing dollars and the alternative it discovers brought a good turnout to Nicholl Park in Richmond on Sunday at the return appearance by the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
The company, which has played the Bay Area for 52 years, made its first appearance in Richmond last year and added the city to the newest season based on the response.
The troupe’s touring production of “2012 — The Musical!” debuted July 2 and the current schedule has it making stops around the Bay Area and Northern California through September.
The Richmond date was the lone SFMT appearance in Contra Costa County.

This view of the downed wig-wag signal was taken by El Cerrito Chamber of Commerce member and train fanatic John Stashik.

The wig-wag signal was taken by BNSF and is being stored in their yard pending completion of the road repair.
The City will file a claim with EBMUD and coordinate the reinstallation of the wig-wag and repair of its damaged concrete structure. EBMUD’s risk management office will determine how to proceed in selecting a contractor to restore damaged property by either acting as the prime contractor or entering into a contract agreement with BNSF for the reconstruction of damaged property. EBMUD will also be recommending how to proceed and notify the City on their approach in restoring the damaged structures.

As for the cost of repairing the road and reinstalling the signal,

The City will file a claim with EBMUD and coordinate the reinstallation of the wig-wag and repair of its damaged concrete structure. EBMUD’s risk management office will determine how to proceed in selecting a contractor to restore damaged property by either acting as the prime contractor or entering into a contract agreement with BNSF for the reconstruction of damaged property. EBMUD will also be recommending how to proceed and notify the City on their approach in restoring the damaged structures.

Aerial photo from 1944 of the Eastshore Highway with the Bay Bridge/Oakland interchange in the foreground. Completion of the four-lane road in 1937 seems to have been the catalyst for Albany's original slogan.

We know the when and why of the new city motto “Urban Village by the Bay” for Albany.
But what about its predecessor, “Northern Gateway to Alameda County”? When and why was it chosen?

The deposed slogan had reigned for decades and had gotten some negative reviews in recent years, including being called “As bland as you’d
expect” in 2007 by The Cougar, the student newspaper at Albany High School. Read the rest of this entry »

Caltrans has announced that the eastbound Interstate 80 Willow Avenue off-ramp will be closed from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, for construction work related to the eastbound I-80 constriction project.
The HOV lane opened to traffic May 24, but according to the agency, “there are still some additional construction activities on ramps (to be done) in the project area.”
Caltrans asks motorists to show caution through the construction zone.

Posted on Friday, July 22nd, 2011
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