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| Dear District 3 residents, businesses, and organizations, I will be hosting a town hall this Saturday from 9-11am in order to hear your thoughts about the proposed Howard Terminal Project! For months, we have heard from D3 constituents about the ways in which this development will impact the kind of city they want to live in. We would like to give one more opportunity for the district to gather and share thoughts before the Council votes on July 20th. The town hall will be in-person at Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church, 1188 12th Street Oakland, between Magnolia and Adeline. We will be practicing social distancing, and masks will be required. Priority will be placed on affected District 3 residents. Please bring a piece of mail with your name and D3 address to be placed on the comment list. Please join us and tell us what you think! You can RSVP at this link, but it is not necessary in order to attend. Hope to see you there! In Solidarity, Carroll Fife |
The future looks uncertain for Oakland’s First Fridays, the lively arts and community festival that draws about 30,000 to Telegraph Avenue every month. While the event is best known for its support of local artists, it’s also important for up-and-coming food vendors — especially people of color.
First Fridays, which has been on pause since the pandemic began, is facing two major roadblocks: new police fees and new protected bike lanes.
The Oakland Police Department is now charging the festival $24,000 to send 45 officers to each event, as first reported by KQED. Shari Godinez, executive director of the Koreatown Northgate Community Benefit District, said she’s never had to pay police fees in her nonprofit’s seven years of running First Fridays — and she can’t afford it. The Oakland Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, the city placed plastic barriers along Telegraph Avenue’s bike lanes during the pandemic. These new barriers cut the festival’s footprint in half, Godinez said. The Oakland City Council is voting Tuesday whether to install permanent barriers along the bike lanes. The nonprofit has been fighting the new bike lanes not just for the sake of First Fridays but because of safety concerns. A Change.org petition argues that it can be difficult for drivers to see bike lane traffic past parked cars. Bike advocacy group Bike East Bay disagrees,arguing these protected bike lanes are the safest option.
“We’re already running at a loss for this festival,” Godinez said. “This could make it so this festival can’t continue to happen.”
Food vendors who depended on First Fridays say they’re heartbroken the festival couldn’t come back as hoped this July — and they’re worried about future editions.
“That’s where I started my business. That’s where I learned to be a food vendor,” said Mierra Marah, who runs Afro-Caribbean caterer Mi Granny’s Kitchen and sold at First Fridays for five years. “With COVID, it’s very hard for me to make a living because that was the moneymaker for me.”
For vendors who typically bounce around among festivals, First Fridays was an unusually consistent gig. “The sales were very good. It was an event where I could go and know it’d be amazing,” said Kemi Tijaniqudus, whose West African stand Jollof Kitchen stood at First Fridays for three years.
The festival started organically in 2006, with neighborhood galleries advertising a monthly art walk and crowds of people taking over the streets. It has turned into one of Oakland’s most prominent cultural events, with the business district nonprofit taking it over seven years ago.
Organizers intentionally sought out a diverse mix of food vendors and made fees as low as possible in the community spirit, Godinez said. Depending on the month, 30 to 50 food vendors would work the festival. According to a 2017 survey, 81% of First Fridays vendors identified as people of color.
Some vendors who got their start at First Fridays went on to open full-on restaurants, such as Javi’s Cooking, which operates an Argentinian empanada shop in West Oakland, and Hotbird, which draws lines to San Francisco’s Twitter building for spicy chicken sandwiches.
If the City Council votes to make the barriers permanent Tuesday, Godinez said, her nonprofit will apply to make First Fridays extend much further down Telegraph in an attempt to cover the costs of the street closure and staffing.
As for the police fees, Godinez said she’s meeting with city officials in the hope of figuring out a solution — the nonprofit already pays for private security. In the past, safety issues typically arose hours after the First Fridays festival shut down but crowds continued to mill around, such as a shooting that injured six people in 2018.
“I feel like First Fridays got blamed for a lot of stuff happening in Oakland,” Marah said. “It’s very disappointing to me and other vendors who really loved doing that event.”
Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
But the years-long pilot project stoked conflicts between different communities and revealed problems with the city’s transportation planning process.
Five years ago, Oakland planners broke ground on a bold project on Telegraph Avenue: a protected bicycle lane. It might not seem like that big of a deal until you see it. Most bicycle lanes in Oakland and the rest of California are the buffered type, which place bike riders in a painted strip next to vehicle traffic, with parked cars on their right. Protected lanes entirely separate bicyclists from moving traffic by putting a barrier in between them.
To do this on Telegraph, Department of Transportation staff started by reducing its four-driving lane design to two, with one lane for each direction of vehicle traffic, and a center turn lane. Then they moved car parking about four feet away from the curb and painted stripes designating the space in between parked cars and the sidewalk as the protected bicycle lane.
Over time, the Department of Transportation, commonly referred to as OakDOT, added other physical barriers like bollards, plastic poles stuck into the ground to better separate the protected lanes from the parking spaces, and planters and small islands. This pilot project was intended to demonstrate the effectiveness of protected lanes, and eventually the city would build permanent concrete separators and wider bike lanes, making the changes permanent.
But on June 2, OakDOT Director Ryan Russo recommended abandoning the protected lanes and returning the street to a buffered layout. The announcement caught many by surprise and marked an about-face for one of the transportation department’s most high-profile projects.
In a blog post explaining his decision, Russo wrote that it came down to three things. First, the many staggered outlets and entry points for cars, bikes, and pedestrians created dangerous intersections between the protected bike lanes and traffic. Second, the protected design, at least in its pilot phase, failed to alleviate potentially harmful economic effects on local businesses. And third, OakDOT was unable to conduct sufficient and equitable community outreach about the redesign and its impacts. Russo said further improvements could not overcome these issues.
“We brought in well-received bus boarding islands, two kinds of plastic posts, and planters designed to both beautify and protect the installation,” he wrote about improvements. “But each of these interventions proved temporary and insufficient.” Cars ended up running over posts, people removed planters, and the islands caused accidents.
The board of the KONO Community Benefit District, which represents business owners in the area, viewed Russo’s announcement as a victory. Many shop owners and restaurants think the bike lanes are bad for their business. They’d gathered more than 1,800 signatures on a Change.org petition calling for the removal of the bike lanes.
Oakland’s and California’s wider biking advocacy communities were horrified by the plan to take out the protected bike lanes. They believe that the paths were much safer than the buffered lanes could ever be, and they accused OakDOT of caving to the demands of businesses that care more about parking than traffic safety.
Dave Snyder, the California Bicycle Coalition’s executive director, told The Oaklandside that OakDOT’s recommendation was unprecedented. The Telegraph Avenue changes were approved under the state’s Active Transportation Program, and out of nearly a thousand similar bike and pedestrian safety improvements also approved through ATP program since its inception in 2013, only one other project Snyder can think of, he said, reverted back to an old design.
Multiple city and regional transportation authorities rejected OakDOT’s proposal to take out the protected lanes, including the city’s Bicyclist and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, the City Council’s Public Works Committee, and AC Transit.
Yesterday, the City Council considered Russo’s recommendation alongside input from community groups and Oakland residents. After hearing from both sides, the council voted 8-0 to reject Russo and OakDOT’s suggestions. The city will keep the protected lanes and eventually expand them.
But the council’s decision by no means puts the controversy to rest. The struggle over Telegraph Avenue symbolizes broader challenges facing Oakland about designing our streets and making them safer. With residents loudly questioning what projects get completed and why, and who gets to benefit from them, this week’s decision is a bellwether for other traffic safety projects, raising all kinds of questions.
We examined the origins of the Telegraph Avenue controversy to see if there are lessons to be learned, not just about Telegraph Avenue, but deeper problems affecting our city’s ability to make big transportation changes work for everyone. Sources told us Oakland’s transportation department has staffing problems that cause trouble when the city tries to roll out big projects. In a city with strongly differing views on how to design the streets, these problems can doom pilot projects like the Telegraph bike lanes, even if the lanes are making streets safer. But an even bigger issue is that Oakland still isn’t doing a good job taking into account the views and needs of communities of color, and that failures to properly survey and plan for everyone’s needs causes conflict.
If the sole purpose of OakDOT redesigning Telegraph Avenue was to make it safer for bikers and pedestrians, then data suggest they should keep the protected bicycle lanes.
OAKLAND, Calif. (KRON) – Non-police measures are now being taken to prevent illegal sideshows in Oakland.
The deterrent will be waiting at a popular intersection before the sideshow vehicles arrive.
One less intersection for illegal sideshows. That is what the city of Oakland hopes will be the result of installing these raised pavement markers called botts dots at the intersection of 35th Avenue and MacArthur.
“Your car hits them. Your car is going to fly up and down. Hopefully, it will discourage the sideshow activity. Second, it will reduce the speed,” City Councilmember Noel Gallo said.
Oakland City Councilmember Noel Gallo says Botts dots are among several sideshow deterrents in the works for Oakland city streets.
“Here at the major intersections, we’re going to try this. The other one we are looking at, like they have in Europe and Mexico, they have the roundabout that you have to slow down to get to the next block,” Gallo said.
Why that particular intersection?
“One it was the sideshow but 35th is a downhill coming from way up in the hills by highway 13. I went to go purposely see it and people are flying down the hill. So we got them in place,” Gallo said.
However, he says the plan is to install barriers, roundabouts, and raised pavement markers at all of the known hot spots for sideshows throughout the city.
“First of all, on International where are the businesses are, 42nd and down underneath the freeway,” Gallo said.
But will it be enough to stop scenes like these? Only time will tell.
Oakland, CA –With the long July 4thholiday weekend approaching, the City of Oakland is implementing temporary safety measures where many gather to enjoy 4th of July festivities: Grizzly Peak, where people gather for a great view of Bay Area fireworks, and Lake Merritt, where thousands of people are expected to celebrate the long weekend with picnics and summertime fun in the sun.
Grizzly Peak: Road Closures in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone
The Oakland Fire and Police departments continue to work in partnership with neighboring jurisdictions on actions to mitigate fire risk in the Very High Fire Severity Zone and throughout the city during the July 4th holiday.
In response to significant regional concerns about fire safety and emergency vehicle access, Grizzly Peak Blvd. between Skyline Blvd. and Centennial Dr. will be closed to all thru automobile traffic along the following roads from 5 am July 4th through 5 am July 5th. Additionally, the following intersections will have electronic signage and personnel on hand to prevent thru traffic from entering:
The City of Oakland is coordinating with the City of Berkeley, East Bay Regional Parks, UC Berkeley, Moraga/Orinda Fire, Alameda County, Cal Fire, and Caltrans regarding the closure.
This corridor was closed over 4th of July for the last two years with great success. There were no confirmed fires, and significantly reduced crowds and illegal parking at the lookout points, thus allowing first responders to efficiently travel along the ridgeline to respond to 911 calls.
Lakeshore Avenue at Lake Merritt: Partial Closure
Lake Merritt is Oakland’s crown jewel, home to the nation’s first wildlife refuge, and the heart of the city. This holiday weekend, the City expects several thousand visitors to come to the Lake to enjoy the long holiday weekend.
On summer weekends, particularly on holidays, traffic and parking congestion along the narrow Lakeshore Avenue has become a safety concern. Cars are often double- and triple-parked from MacArthur Boulevard to E. 18th Avenue, creating significant traffic jams and, of greatest concern, impeding access for emergency vehicles like fire trucks and ambulances. Quite simply, there are too many cars in too little space and the temporary closures are intended to help deliver any needed emergency services to people at or around the Lake as swiftly as possible.
During the summer months, the atmosphere at Lake Merritt has naturally evolved into more of an unofficial festival, and to keep things safe, the City is implementing the same kinds of road closures used at festivals to facilitate emergency vehicle access and keep cars away from crowds of people.
“The Fourth of July holiday presents a unique opportunity to make choices that will mitigate potential hazards and enhance the overall safety and enjoyment for Oakland residents and visitors,” Oakland Fire Department Chief Reginald Freeman said. “The decision to limit vehicle traffic along key corridors proved successful last year along Grizzly Peak where fire danger is extremely high and roads are narrow, and we expect similar results this year. Oakland Fire supports any traffic planning strategies that will enable firefighters and other emergency responders to efficiently plan for and respond to emergency incidents in our community, especially events where large crowds are expected.”
Road Closures/Parking Restrictions
On Saturday and Sunday, beginning at 4 am and continuing until 12 Midnight:
Lakeshore Avenue
El Embarcadero—Closed
Grand Avenue
These closures and restrictions will improve traffic safety and allow for greater access for park visitors, bicyclists, and pedestrians around this narrow section of Lake Merritt. They will also allow for emergency vehicle access when needed.
(Full size map available at https://www.oaklandca.gov/resources/4th-of-july)
Visit the Black International Marketplace of Oakland
The Black International Marketplace of Oakland (BIMOO) and the City of Oakland invite micro and small businesses to participate in the marketplace. Located between El Embarcadero and the grass in front of the pergola columns,
BIMOO provides a legally permitted space for vendors to gather and sell products and services. The marketplace takes place at Lake Merritt every Saturday and Sunday from 11 am to 6 pm and hosts more than 50 food, retail, and artisan vendors and organizations, providing community information and commerce for micro-businesses.
Want to be a vendor? Register at www.bimoo.org. Early registration is encouraged.
Redesigned gardens, works by local artists, and a new café led by Tanya Holland greet guests at the reopened OMCA.
The Oakland Museum of California officially reopened on June 18 after a long 15-month hiatus unveiling an extensive $15 million renovation of its outdoor sculpture garden, a new café by acclaimed Oakland chef Tanya Holland, and new artwork by local artists.
OMCA Director and CEO Lori Fogarty said she is eager and excited to welcome people back into this treasured community space, which was originally built in 1969. The updates have been a long time in the works, with planning getting underway five years ago and construction starting in February 2020.
“If there has been a silver lining in this [past year], it’s that we are now opening and unveiling our transformed garden,” Fogarty said. “We’re thrilled now that we’re opening, and we have this incredibly beautiful new outdoor space.”
Famed landscape architect Walter Hood and architect Mark Cavagnero designed the museum’s new landscape, which was installed by general contractor Cahill Contractors. Museum staff said the goal was to create a more inviting community space for casual hangouts and events.
The main garden in the back of the museum, which features expansive views of Oakland and Lake Merritt, had felt largely underutilized. Where there was once a concrete wall facing Lake Merritt, there are now three gates on the 12th Street side that will connect pedestrians walking between the lake and the museum.
Fogarty said the team knew they needed to change something when, during the 2015 Warriors Championship celebration at the Lake Merritt amphitheater—they realized how close the museum was to the action of Lake Merritt but how far away they felt.
“There were a million people around the lake. Standing up on one of these terraces looking down, we realized, nobody knows we’re here,” she said, noting this experience planted the seed for the concrete wall’s removal, the creation of the new entrance, and two new ADA-accessible ramps onto the campus.
The museum staff also wanted an improved space that could hold community events, similar to its popular Friday Nights at OMCA series, which began in 2013. Held on the 10th Street side of the museum, the Friday night programs offered after-hours access to the galleries, in addition to hosting local food vendors, live music, and activities. The new gardens offer the potential for more community programming.
Friday Nights at OMCA is still on pause because of the pandemic, but museum staff say they hope to restart the event this fall. The OMCA team is currently working with Off the Grid, the San Francisco based mobile foods company, to recruit performers and food trucks. “I can say for me personally if there was one thing I miss most in the last 15 months, it was Friday nights at the museum,” Fogarty said.
The plan is to eventually have the museum’s revamped sculpture garden be an open public space—even when the museum is closed. Until then, people can reserve free tickets solely to visit the garden. They will still need to enter at the main entrance on Oak Street and check in with museum staff.
Part of the garden improvement was the planting of native California plants. Each of the garden’s three levels has a different bioregion terrace: the lower level features ferns, the second level has woodlands, and the top level will eventually be all succulents.
During the project, some of the existing sculptures were moved and given a proper renovation, including Betty Gold’s Monumental Holistic 1, George Rickey’s Two Red Lines II, a kinetic piece, and Peter Voulkos’ Mr. Ishi, which was originally commissioned when OMCA opened in 1969 but had been stored away. Other California artists with sculptures in the garden include: Ruth Asawa, Bruce Beasley, Beniamino Bufano, Mark di Suvero, and Viola Frey.
Visitors will also get to see new furniture via an installation titled, “Portals,” by Oakland-based artist, Binta Ayofemi. “The furniture element we knew was important,” Forgarty said. “This is a great opportunity to have a local artist be part of this. Utilizing the architecture to create spaces for rest and reflection.”
The benches, picnic tables, and tables for the new café Ayofemi created from local cedar and redwood are placed throughout the gardens, inside the museum, and will also be at the new, buzzworthy café, Town Fare, led by Oakland chef and restaurateur Tanya Holland. News of Holland taking over the space at the museum was announced in February of 2020 after the closure of her restaurant at the San Francisco Ferry Building.
“I’m combining all my interests at once now: my love for Oakland, my love of art, and the outdoors,” said Holland about how visitors will be able to eat her food while enjoying the museum’s gardens. “We get to have our own herbs and small vegetable garden so it’s just really exciting.”
Holland sees Town Fare as an opportunity to extend her vision of cooking beyond soul food while being in a space that represents the community. “[The space represents] the diversity, which I love about Oakland. I hope that it’ll be well-received.”
Town Fare will operate in a to-go capacity until it opens as a sit-down restaurant later this summer. Foodies will be able to grab picnic boxes to enjoy in the museum’s gardens. Holland said the menu is California soul food-inspired, which will be primarily plant-based and seasonal. Opening weekend dishes included ricotta toast topped with blistered tomatoes, vegetarian muffaletta and fried chicken paillard.
She is also eager to work with local brands, and is partnering with Firebrand Artisan Breads, Red Bay Coffee, and Almanac Beer Company.
When it opens as a sit-down restaurant later this summer, Town Fare will be open to the public even when the museum is closed, giving that same sense of openness as the gardens. Alterations have been made along the 10th Street side of the museum for the public to have direct entry into the restaurant.
In terms of what art is on display at this time, visitors can see a new mural adjacent to the gardens that’s the result of the museum’s partnership with the Black Cultural Zone, and its Art for the Movement initiative.
Visitors can also see a special exhibition, “You Are Here: California Stories on the Map,”which originally debuted in March 2020. This exhibit showcases an array of maps from Oakland, the Bay Area, and California, intended to tell the stories of how maps shape who we are.
Another ongoing exhibition is “Dorothea Lange: Photography as Activism” which pays homage to the renowned documentary photographer, and “Black Power” which tells the history of the Black Power movements throughout California. Later this summer, the museum will also debut “Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism,” which will explore the art, music, literature, and cinema associated with Afrofuturism, the visionary and generative movement which envisions a just future where Black people and Black ideas thrive.
Visitors to the OMCA are encouraged to buy tickets in advance. The museum is still requiring masks regardless of vaccination status. This particular guideline will remain until further advanced notice by OMCA, and tickets are on a timed-entry basis.
The $18 million is over the course of the next two years.
There was some expectation that the council would delay the controversial decision but, by a vote of 7-2, the Oakland City Council approved a plan that will redirect the funds from the police department to the Department of Violence Prevention with the intention of improving public safety.
The move comes as Oakland has seen an alarming spike in street violence and deadly shootings, including the mass shooting during Juneteenth festivities at Lake Merritt this past weekend.
The city council held budget discussions that started at 10:30 a.m. Thursday during a special meeting that included hours of public input. Council members Nikki Fortunato Bas and Carroll Fife spearheaded the push to defund the Oakland Police Department with the amended budget vote.
“We can make adjustments if we need to but, right now, we have to focus on our violence prevention, affordable housing, our homeless populations and that’s what this budget helps us move forward and do,” said councilmember Dan Kalb.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf released a statement voicing her opposition to the revised budget and the police department cuts.
“Unfortunately, it [the budget] also cuts 50 police officers who respond to Oaklanders’ 911 calls and enforce traffic safety. It also cuts much-needed future academies, which will significantly reduce police staffing and delay response to Oaklanders in their time of crisis,” Schaaf’s statement read in part. “It will force our officers to work even more overtime shifts, which are expensive and unsafe for officers and residents alike.”
“I believe that until we have proven alternatives, we cannot destroy Oakland’s current public safety system at a time when we are losing so many to gun violence,” the mayor added.
The Oakland Police Officers Association said it supports the programs funded in the new budget but not at the cost of taking officers off the streets.
OPOA president Barry Donelan estimates about 50 vacant positions will no longer be filled which will mean slower 911 response times.
“The two no votes are from council members in districts that are most impacted by violent crime. The message they’re saying is ‘we may support your programs but we do not want less public safety at a time of skyrocketing violent crime,’” Donelan said.
A number of activist groups including Anti Police-Terror Project applauded the reallocation of funds.
“This historic budget ensures a comprehensive audit of the Oakland Police Department and a thorough examination of positions that could be civilianized, moved out of OPD or a combination of the two,” the group said in a released statement.
Following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis last year, many people in Oakland have been demanding that Oakland officials redirect a large part the city’s police budget to alternative public safety measures.
Some contend that police don’t prevent violence, they just respond to it.
Schaaf’s proposed budget sought about $650 million for police in the 2021-23 budget.
The more than $17 million that the City Council budget team would redirect to the Department of Violence Prevention doubles that department’s budget. It would also quadruple the amount the city allocates to the department from the general fund.
The added money would employ violence interrupters and community ambassadors in flatland neighborhoods.
“With increased violence across Oakland, council must act by addressing the roots of violence and poverty,” Bas said.
She said the city must do that by investing in prevention in the most dangerous neighborhoods as well as investing in housing, jobs, libraries, parks, and the arts. The city must also improve its system of policing that gets more guns off the streets and focuses “police response and investigations on serious and violent crime,” Bas said.
https://www.oaklandca.gov/services/apply-for-city-of-oakland-and-port-of-oakland-jobs
Check out these job opportunities with the City of Oakland!
· Lifeguard, Part-Time
· Deputy Director of Housing
· Police Communications Dispatcher
· Human Resource Operations Technician
· Spatial Data Analyst III
· Police Officer Trainee
· Civil Engineer
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