How's the weather? It awful — and illegal
"Bay Area National Weather Service office hit by DOGE layoffs" San Francisco Chronicle reported by Anthony Edwards
Thursday’s massive National Weather Service layoffs included three employees at the Monterey office, which provides weather forecasts for nearly all of the Bay Area, including San Francisco [and Alameda]. One meteorologist, an administrative support assistant and a facilities technician were fired with less than a day notice.
The Monterey office was already short-staffed.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction?
from the California Playbook Politico newsletter:
Assemblymember Mia Bonta is calling Democratic Party insiders and asking for their support to run for state superintendent of public instruction in 2026, three people familiar with her outreach said.
[...]
The assemblywoman's interest in California’s top education post harkens to her background. Prior to being elected to the Assembly, Mia Bonta was president of the Alameda School Board and ran a nonprofit that supports low-income students.
Alameda County Civil Grand Jury
Currently 5 anonymous residents of the City of Alameda serve on the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury. Applications are being accepted to serve on the next term that begins on July 1.
Gondolas (or "Up Up Ups" as one of my kids used to call them)
While riding on the gondola at the Oakland Zoo with my kids, I often wonder if it could just extend across East Oakland and take us back to Alameda (perhaps with a stop along the way for tacos).
One of the far-fetched, attention-seeking candidates for Oakland mayor thinks that's a great idea:
Funding for Alameda to Fix Stargell Ave
This past Wednesday, the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission approved approximately $5.5mm of funding for City of Alameda to improve Stargell Ave.
This blog previously reported that Alameda's application for California's "Active Transportation Program" funds for Stargell Ave scored 89 out of 100 — which sounds good, until you look at how deeply Caltrans and the Newsom administration cut the ATP program. (It's the only ground transportation program cut in this current fiscal year.) But thanks to very diligent grant application writing by City of Alameda staff and the support of MTC staff, the Stargell project will be awarded with a combination of funds: a few hundred of thousands of dollars from the statewide ATP and then some millions of dollars from the regional "SR2TBT" program.
slides from an MTC staff presentation
That mouthful of an acronym stands for "Safe Routes to Transit and Bay Trail" — a regional program that's funded by portion of tolls paid by drivers crossing the state-owned toll bridges of the Bay Area and it's systematically distributed to fund projects to improve the experience of taking transit, walking, and cycling near the bridges or the Bay Trail.
While City of Alameda's federal funds to improve Lincoln Ave are "in jeopardy under the current presidential administration" (accord to a staff update at Wednesday's city Transportation Commission meeting) it's to city staff's credit that they have been working in parallel to pursue many different sources of funding and are also able to announce these successes with regional and state sources.