October 29th, 2009 01:22pm
by PD
Phillip Burton, the congressman and legendary San Francisco political boss, called it his contribution to modern art.
That would be the 1981 congressional reapportionment plan for California.
If you like want to try your hand at abstract art and your dance card is clear for, oh, 2011, the state will soon start accepting applications for appointments to an independent commission that will draw legislative boundaries after the 2010 census.
By passing Proposition 11 …
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October 27th, 2009 01:26pm
by PD
From what I hear, one Sonoma County supervisor, Shirlee Zane, may vote against selling the landfill on Mecham Road at today’s meeting. But it’s not clear there’s a second vote out there to block this controversial sale. (The supervisors need at least four votes to sell this public asset. The vote is planned for sometime around noon.)
But here’s one of the main reasons you can expect the board to go …
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October 27th, 2009 01:25pm
by PD
For residents of the North Bay and North Coast regions, what’s the impact of a grand compromise – if there is one – on water in Sacramento?
Most obvious is the bill.
Neither Sonoma nor Marin counties get any water from the state project. Neither do the counties farther up the coast. They would, however, have to help pay off $9.4 billion in state bond debt needed to buy the new plumbing.
So …
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October 27th, 2009 01:20pm
by PD
In a major surprise, Supervisor Efren Carrillo joined Shirlee Zane today in rejecting the sale of the Sonoma County landfill to an Arizona firm. The board needed four votes to sell this public asset. It only received three.
Many applauded the outcome, but don’t expect that this means the county will seek to reopen the landfill on its own. Sonoma County still lacks the financial resources to do that.
“I don’t see …
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October 20th, 2009 01:27pm
by PD
Curious things are happening in Rohnert Park, making one wonder whether there’s maneuvering afoot to get former City Manger Carl Leivo, an outspoken critic of the City Council at one time, back in his old position.
At last week’s meeting, Mayor Amie Breeze, who originally supported the idea of hiring a headhunter to conduct a broad search for a new city manger, suddenly reversed course. She wanted the search to be …
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October 16th, 2009 01:28pm
by PD
Twenty years ago today at 5:04 p.m., three friends and I were seated in Section 2, Row 19 of the upper deck at Candlestick Park, right behind (albeit well above) home plate. This put us directly under a cement canopy around the rim of the ballpark.
I mention that because five years or so earlier, as a greenhorn reporter in San Francisco, I had written a story about a city-funded seismic …
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October 16th, 2009 01:28pm
by PD
The Loma Prieta quake gave me a good shake in my third-floor office in Sacramento, more than 100 miles from the epicenter. I arrived in San Francisco a couple hours later, watching houses burn in the Marina from the Golden Gate Bridge.
But the quake story I remember best came two days later when I got a tip that 16 children who had suffered serious injuries in the catastrophic Armenian quake …
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October 13th, 2009 01:29pm
by PD
Winter fell on a Tuesday this year, and it fell with a vengeance, exposing all those hidden places in life — in Sonoma County — where we’re most vulnerable.
Trees. Roads. Power poles. They succumbed at their weakest joints, leaving blackouts, traffic jams and new lakes in their wake.
At one point today, this was the count: nine county roads flooded, 2,215 customers out of power, one sewing store at Coddingtown Mall …
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October 12th, 2009 01:30pm
by PD
Apparently time has sweetened Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s view of a bill that tightens the definition of honey for the purpose of commercial sales in California.
At a news conference in July, he blasted AB 1216 by Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, as an example of wasted time and effort while hinting that perhaps it was time to return to a part-time Legislature.
“Well, it’s obviously very sad that we are in the …
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October 11th, 2009 01:31pm
by PD
Tedd Peterson of Cloverdale writes, “Parents who do not have their children immunized pose a major threat to the public at large, especially to those who have weak immune systems, those who are already ill, and those who are elderly. One wonders what they will do should their own children come down with communicable diseases. Rely on prayer?”
Mickey Cooke of Glen Ellen said, “As one who had every disease children …
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