San Leandro Bytes

Tweets from San Leandro Townhall Meeting – 7/14/14

Tweets from San Leandro Townhall Meeting – 7/14/14 Council Meeting Notes 3 Responses »

Jul 212014

Tweets by Mike Katz-Lacabe

The San Leandro City Council no longer keeps minutes of its meetings. Anyone interested in what transpired has to listen through hours of recordings. There is no way to search through them either. San Leandro Bytes editor Mike Katz-Lacabe (who is currently running for City Council) sometimes tweets from the meetings. I’m going to start collecting his tweets to serve as the record the City Council does not want to keep. The tweets are slightly cleaned up for ease of reading.

Mayor Cassidy notes that San Leandro City Council voted to extend Measure Z (.25% sales tax) and increase to .5% mainly to fund roads.

San Leandro Town Hall meeting starts with update on Marina & Davis freeway overpass construction project. Summer 2015 ETA for completion.

Pile driving complete on San Leandro Marina overpass. Pile driving starts in August for Davis overpass: 7am to 3pm.

Question to CalTrans: Can you do something about timing of lights on Marina Blvd in San Leandro? Traffic there is horrible.

CalTrans response from Scott McCrank: We agree. We’re looking at it, but “only such green time that can be allotted.” We’re brainstorming…

San Leandro Town Hall meeting has nearly 60 attendees and about 15 City staff.

Police Chief reports that crime in San Leandro is down 7% from last year. Note that this matches regional trend.

Former San Leandro CM Howard Kerr supports increasing sales tax to 10% or more to fund more police, surveillance in streets, neighborhoods

San Leandro CMs Benny Lee, Jim Prola ,Diana Souza supported Measure Z in 2010 and support doubling

Commenter at San Leandro Town Hall: Look at cutting city government, including red light cameras, before increasing sales tax.

Dwight Pitcaithley at San Leandro Town Hall: Why aren’t voters being allowed to vote on the fate of the San Leandro Marina?

Mayor Cassidy responds to Pitcaithley: We don’t have a final plan for the San Leandro Marina yet. EIR is currently underway.

San Leandro Comm Dev Director Cynthia Battenberg notes that public wants boat harbor, but not enough to pay for it. From 11/2007 Godbe poll.

Leo West at San Leandro Town Hall: Measure Z was supposed to be a temporary tax & now it’s for 30 years. Says supporters of Measure Z lied.

Mayor Cassidy to West: We eliminated utility user tax rebate for large businesses. Spent money wisely. Doing same work with less staff.

Two more supporters of a boat harbor in San Leandro speak of a lack of vision, the marina as a gem in the Bay Area, & resident support.

Mayor Cassidy response to question from Justin Hutchison: City is working on free wifi in downtown San Leandro.

The future of local media in San Leandro

The future of local media in San Leandro Media 1 Response »

Jul 142011

For the last couple of years local news junkies in San Leandro – and confess, you are one of them – have seen their choices for San Leandro coverage multiply. In addition to the trusty San Leandro Times, San Leandro now counts with its own daily news website, the San Leandro Patch, as well as three newsy blogs: San Leandro Bytes, East Bay Citizen and yours truly, San Leandro Talk. If something is happening in town, chances are you’ll hear about it.

As bright as things may be looking for local media currently, there are signs that San Leandro’s news renaissance may be coming to an end. Already, we’ve lost a print news source as the Daily Review no longer has a reporter assigned to San Leandro. While they cover the occasional story, they do so days late and with little insight as to what’s actually going on.

I’ve written before about the shortcomings of the San Leandro Patch, which have become even more pronounced lately as they’re shifting from local to regional coverage. Ad sales continue to be dismal – the SLP currently only shows 3 local ads. AOL just debuted a Huffington Post San Francisco edition, and if it’s as successful as other local HPs have been, it won’t be long before AOL replaces its Bay Area Patches with one general HP Bay Area.

Things look no better in the blogosphere. After a plea for financial support went unanswered, Steve Tavares, the blogger behind East Bay Citizen, auctioned off its domain name. While the blog is still accessible at its blogspot address, it hasn’t been updated since July 1st. Tavares is tweeting and he’ll likely go back to blogging, but already his San Leandro coverage had become poorer since his one contact as City Hall lost his post.

While San Leandro Bytes and San Leandro Talk will likely continue, neither of these blogs are run by actual journalists and they tend to cover issues of particular interests to the bloggers. In any case, they are not comprehensive.

The future doesn’t have to be as hopeless as I fear, however. While the Patch may change from its present form, chances are its replacement will continue covering San Leandro is some manner, at least in the short term. If they concentrate on the most important news stories rather than fluff pieces, it may actually be an improvement over what’s there now. There is also the possibility that someone will start an independent online news site for San Leandro, in the model of the Berkeleyside. It could take advantage of the content available in the existing blogs, and interface with Facebook and other social media sites to make it easy for San Leandrans to add their own news content. If well marketed to both the public and local businesses, this model could be financially successful (at least in the sense of paying a modest salary to the person in charge). And indeed, as new technologies are created every day, there may be something in the horizon that I can’t foresee.