So this is goodbye

To Blogger, that is.

The Island is moving to a fancy new Wordpress-driven site (Cleaner layout! Easier commenting!). This is our last day on the ol' blogspot. Come Monday, you can catch all the news right here.

A quick message to all our subscribers: I'll be working over the weekend to try to move the feed over to the new site. If for some reason your feed falls through the cracks, you can sign up to the new site by clicking the RSS, comment or e-mail subscription links in the bottom left-hand corner.

Thanks to everybody for reading and we hope you'll come visit us in our new home. As always, your suggestions and comments are welcome!

Do city leaders dream of electric cars?

Early this week, the folks at the Vallejo Times-Herald wrote a story about that city's efforts to bring electric carmakers Tesla Motors to Mare Island, in the wake of the company's decision to renew its search for a new home.

Apparently, the makers of the suuuupersexy Tesla Roadster are seeking a $250 million federal loan to build their new car, a luxury sedan, and they'll have a better shot at the money if they build on a brownfield site like an old military base. The story cited a few, including our Alameda Naval Air Station. And I asked myself:

Could it really happen here?

According to Vice Mayor Doug deHaan, the city is pursuing Tesla as a tenant at Alameda Point. "We're making overtures. We have made overtures," deHaan said, adding that he sees Tesla as an "ideal" use at the Point.

Just for the record, I also checked in with council members Frank Matarrese and Marie Gilmore. Matarrese said they'd be a great business to bring to Alameda, adding that for "the 'green' implications and the status, drawing them to town in this economy is a huge benefit to the community"; Gilmore said it's too early to say whether Tesla would be a fit for us but that she's open to talking with them about it.

The city had pursued Tesla before, but this past fall, the company instead zeroed in on a site in San Jose. Late last month, the San Carlos-based carmaker opted to keep looking, saying it wanted a more cost-effective site for its manufacturing plant. A company spokesperson did not return a call or an e-mail seeking comment.

Apparently, we have done this sort of thing before (though it may not have turned out exactly as planned). Back in 1995, Alameda Point became home to CALSTART, a non-profit consortium that was to bring an electric car manufacturing facility and a small business incubator with 20 to 25 businesses (the project was pushed through by then-Congressman Ron Dellums and announced by President Bill Clinton).

The one carmaker they did bring, the Don Johnson-backed Xebra Motors (he put an electric car on "Nash Bridges" that was painted to match co-star Yasmin Bleeth's eyes) fizzled, leaving Alameda shy about $12,800 in unpaid rent and utility bills.

DeHaan said there could be a few little hurdles to bringing Tesla here, the biggest being that SunCal's development plan - should it go through - eliminates the hangar space the carmaker would likely need to produce its vehicles.

I checked in with SunCal spokesman David Soyka, who said it's too early to make a decision like that and that the developer is always on the lookout for new business opportunities.

"I wouldn't take anything off the table," he said.

And here's a twist: Back in 2007, when the carmaker was planning to build its new assembly plant in New Mexico, SunCal pledged 75 acres to Tesla if it expanded - free of charge.

By the way, local superblogger Lauren Do's got an open letter to Tesla chair Elon Musk asking him to bring his new facility - and all those jobs - to Alameda. That's here.

You're on the list

Like many people, Tamara Lange and her family moved to Alameda for good schools. They bought a house almost five years ago just a block from Edison School. But this week, Lange found out her kids may not get to go there.

Lange's child is thirteenth on the waiting list for a kindergarten slot at Edison, one of dozens of kids in the Island's East End who played the school lottery this week and lost. Three of the Island's four East End schools - Bay Farm, Edison and Otis - were short a combined four dozen kindergarten slots, and district officials said last week that the fourth school - Amelia Earhart - is full.

District officials are scrambling to come up with solutions to their enrollment problems - solutions that could include a portable and a fourth kindergarten class at Edison, increased class sizes, shifting school boundaries and diverting some of their youngest charges to wherever they can find a seat.

Meanwhile, parents are scrambling too, to decide whether to sit on the district's waiting lists and hope for the best, push for a move to another public school or send their children to private schools - risking their chances of getting back into their neighborhood school at a later date.

Lange said she's got until the end of next week to let her preschool know whether her child will stay on for kindergarten next fall. The preschool is also holding a slot open for her 2-year-old, and her decision to send that child to the school will be predicated on how the district's kindergarten conundrum turns out.

"The stress level is very high," she said.

But it's not likely the district will have decisions made by then, according to Student Services chief Jeff Knoth, who met with Edison parents who gathered at the Crosstown Coffeehouse on Thursday night to answer their questions about this week's lotteries and to lay out the path ahead.

The board isn't scheduled to discuss its enrollment issues at its meeting Tuesday, Knoth said. But parents said they plan to come Tuesday to talk to the board about the problem, in an effort to get it solved soon.

Knoth said he thinks the district will probably add a kindergarten class at Edison, which has the students and the space to support it. He also said he thinks he can work out a deal for the after-school program that's at the school to remain. But that is subject to the school board's approval. (A similar deal was on the table last year, but the board deadlocked on it in a 2-2 vote.)

Other short-term solutions to the surplus of students could include increasing class sizes, shifting attendance zone boundaries and moving kids to other schools.

Meanwhile, he said the district's enrollment issues will stretch well beyond this year. A demographic study presented to the district last year showed its enrollment numbers climbing in the East End; according to Board President Mike McMahon's website, the district expects to be short 230 seats at its elementary schools over the next five years.

"This district needs to look at the structure of its schools, because our situation over the next 10 to 20 years is untenable," Knoth said, adding that the district is planning to revive its defunct school restructuring committees.

Lange said that if her child doesn't get into Edison this year, she'll try for next year, and put some time into figuring out what her options are. (She said she had also considered waiting a year and trying to get her daughter into kindergarten the following year if things didn't work out, but decided that wasn't best for their child.) And if that doesn't pan out?

"I'd seriously have to think about moving," she said.

Soft story ordinance coming soon!

The City Council took a first step toward approving a plan to catalogue and study "soft-story" apartment buildings in an effort to make those buildings safer in an earthquake.

The council heard an ordinance Tuesday that would allow the city to catalogue the buildings, which are typically two- to four-story apartment buildings sitting on top of a "soft story" of parking or another large, open space (think windows or retail stores) where a wall would otherwise be.

So far, city building officials have informally counted 224 soft-story buildings on the Island, Building Official Greg McFann said.

Barring a successful appeal , the city would require building owners who make the list to get structural assessments within 18 months of their listing that could cost between $5,000 and $20,000, McFann said. It would also require the building owners to post a notice that they've been listed on their buildings.

The council also told staff they want building owners who make the list to put emergency shutoff valves on their gas line within 30 to 60 days of being listed.

McFann said retrofit work could cost between $9,000 and $28,000 per unit (and if you're looking, a whole bunch of contractors left their cards and flyers outside the council chambers). The retrofit work is not required by this ordinance, though a second ordinance that would require the work to be done could come to the council in another two years.

City officials are undertaking the effort in an effort to avoid apartment building collapses like the ones that occurred during the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge quakes. McFann said there's a 62 percent chance of a major quake on the Hayward fault in the next 30 years, and that
a big Hayward temblor could render 7,600 housing units uninhabitable - 4,500 of them in the Island's soft story buildings.

The ordinance is based on a similar one in Berkeley. Fremont also has a soft story ordinance and San Francisco is working on one. A 2005 state law allowed cities to create the ordinances.

Some folks supported the plan, saying it's a necessary step toward making residents of these buildings safe when that schedule major quake on the Hayward fault hits. And they praised city officials for their collaborative approach in creating the ordinance.

“The Planning and Building Department has crafted an ordinance that fulfills the city’s public safety function while being tailored to minimize the costs and other unnecessary burdens on property owners,” the Alameda Association of Realtors’ local government relations chair, Rob Platt, wrote in a letter to the council supporting the ordinance.

But others said they're worried they won't be able to afford the cost of studying and retrofitting their buildings.

“This ordinance would create a massive hardship which will disproportionately affect the lowest income homeowners on the island, especially first-time homebuyers and seniors,” said Sandy Garcia, who said she fears the condominium she and her husband own could be placed on the list.

McFann said the city is looking for money to help pay for retrofit work.

The council is expected to vote on the plan on March 3.

Your weekend: P.S. I love wine

The venerable Syrah grape is an American varietal - well, wait, let me back up.

The tiny grapes were introduced in California in 1878. In 1884, the Durif grape from France - which, like the Syrah grape, is characterized by small, dense, color-saturated clusters of fruit - was planted in California. Most of the Syrah vines were destroyed in a phylloxera epidemic in the 1890s, according to this history on the website for P.S. I Love You, a "petite syrah advocacy organization" that, incidentally, is holding a tasting party for the fruit of these vines on Friday.

In the 1970s, a pair of French ampelographers (had to cut and paste that one) examined vines at UC Davis and determined they were French Durif, not American Syrah. I understand there have since been DNA tests.

Anyway. If you love Petite Syrah, check out P.S. I Love You's Dark & Delicious tasting party, which is being held from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday at Kent Rosenblum's new Rock Wall Wine Company, 2301 Monarch Street on Alameda Point. Tickets are $50 in advance (they're available online) and $60 at the door.

The ticket will include tastings of 30 petite syrahs and food from 20 chefs. In addition to the food and wine, they'll have a silent auction and an artist, Ann Rea, who will teach you how to paint a vineyard scene.

The list of participating food and wine providers, directions and more can be found by clicking the website link, two paragraphs up.

City to city: The revenue edition

So last week I did a piece comparing our city's budget to a similar size city's, in an effort to broaden the conversation about how our cash-strapped Island spends its dollars. I had originally intended to focus primarily on the services folks have talked about, including public safety and administration. But some interesting questions popped up that I thought I'd take a stab at answering.

A big question was how the revenue flows in each city. And this one's got some interesting answers.

Nearly 40 percent of Redwood City's general fund revenue comes from property taxes, compared to our 31 percent. Their sales tax revenue is $19.4 million, compared to our $5.7 million.

So if our general funds are relatively close in value (with theirs at $82.5 million to our $75.9 million, give or take library, planning and some other services we don't include), how do we make up the difference? By taxing the crap out of ourselves, and by pulling in money from city enterprise services (think golf, ferry and Alameda Municipal Power) and other agencies.

A whopping 26 percent of our general fund budget is expected to come from other taxes and fees this year, including $4.1 million from our (pre-Proposition P) property transfer tax (though they're now expecting to take in less than that) and $9.1 million in utility users tax, which Redwood City uses instead for capital improvements. And we're contributing almost three times the amount that city does for licenses and permits.

Alameda is also balancing its general fund on money from other agencies, including nearly $6 million in money from the state to replace the vehicle license fee money we would have got before Gov. Schwarzenegger eliminated a scheduled fee increase. Redwood City's general fund budget shows just about $1 million from that bucket.

But we're also pulling in money from city-run agencies like Alameda Power and the Chuck Corica Golf Complex - enough to help put some of those agencies in the red. The golf complex, which is slated to contribute $306,451 to the general fund this year, was on track at the beginning of the year to lose around $700,000; our sewer fund is slated to be more than $2 million in the hole this year, with $641,375 going into the general fund (though this one seems to be sitting on a $40 million reserve). It's also budgeted at around $922,000 worth of debt payments this year.

In contrast, Redwood City's water and sewer services both appear to be in the black, with each contributing some money to city services (similar to our Alameda Power, which is on track to drop $2.8 million into the general fund this year).

If you're looking for an update on these numbers, by the way, the city just released its second quarter financial report.

I'm Miffed

At myself, that is. Yesterday I reported that leaders of Harbor Bay's homeowners associations and businesses asked the City Council to consider swapping the Mif Albright nine-hole golf course for a similar-size swath of land that had been the site for his proposed Harbor Bay Village VI residential development.

Turns out I was so focused on typing up my stories at the meeting that I missed a kind of key detail: The council had in fact already planned to talk about making the swap in an earlier closed session.

The council had scheduled a closed-door session with its real property negotiator on Tuesday to discuss "price and terms" for the properties at 1855 North Loop Road and the golf course, and it listed the negotiating parties as the course and Harbor VI. But the item was taken off the agenda (council members Lena Tam and Marie Gilmore were both out sick).

During a later public discussion of potential uses for the just-closed course - uses that all required the city to lay out money it said it closed the course to save - the business and homeowner group that had opposed Harbor VI developer Ron Cowan's plans to build 104 homes in the midst of the business park, led by Mayor Beverly Johnson's onetime campaign manager, Barbara Price, asked the council to consider the swap.

Golf Commission President Jane Sullwold, who said she had long heard rumors that the land swap was slated to take place, asked the council to allow the contractor it hired to run the Chuck Corica Golf Complex, Kemper Sports, to determine if they could run the course at a profit.

Harbor VI had asked the Planning Board in May to grant it a variance to build homes at the North Loop site, which nearby businesses and homeowners vigorously opposed. The board denied the request.

Island arts: Guitarist Carl Weingarten

Carl Weingarten started his music career as a photographer. He started taking photos at age 7 and by junior high school had moved on to shooting Super 8 movies. His early career as a visual artist has informed his music, even as it's changed and grown over the span of three decades.

"I'm attracted to music that's instrumental, that's evocative," Weingarten said during an interview this weekend in a local coffee house. "I was taken with music that would sort of transport me in a way."

Weingarten has released 19 albums, with his latest, "Lost in the Air" - a collection of acoustic performances of songs he wrote - newly available online and on the airwaves (more on that below). He's got a new album in the works that he hopes to have out by the end of the year. Oh, and he's also still shooting pictures: Some of his work is featured at Frank Bette Center for the Arts' current "Wabi-Sabi" show, and he just got word he'll also be featured in the center's "Alameda on Camera" exhibition. He also runs his own record label, Multiphase Records.

Here's our first Island artists profile (thanks Carl!). By the way, if you'd like to hear a track off his new album, you can click right here. (The photo, by the way, was shot by Stephanie Williamson.)

MUSICAL STYLE: Ambient Americana

INSTRUMENTS: Dobro, traveler guitar, slide, ebow (on current release)

INFLUENCES: (Short list) Ennio Marconi, Brian Eno, Antonio Vivaldi, Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Duane Allman, Leo Kottke, Bill Frissell, Alvin Nikolai, Murray Louis

ORIGINS: Weingarten actually started out as a photographer at age 7, then moved on to making films. He taught himself how to play the bottleneck guitar in college and started writing his own compositions. “Every time I’d take a step and learn something, I would want to try to put in a film,” he said. When he graduated college, he had little luck breaking into the tough, insular film world. By contrast, the music business was starting to open up to independent artists. So he started recording and producing music.

EVOLUTION: He started out in St. Louis playing electronic music in the vein of Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream; he and some friends put out an album of electronic music that was well-received by the local and indie music press. He had a techno-pop band called Delay Tactics (“We were kind of called the Ventures of the ‘80s”), and then he moved on to a hybrid that included acoustic instruments. He wrote scores for dance companies, which pushed him to branch out in his instrumentation. When he came to the Bay Area in the 1990s, he started working with musicians from China, Pakistan and India. “I began developing a style that I would call cinematic music. Two records I composed are based on film scores. Every track on the CD is a scene in a movie.”

HOW’D YOU END UP IN ALAMEDA?: A St. Louis native, Weingarten moved to San Francisco – he’s got family in the Bay Area - in 1992 with the aid of a hefty severance package he got when his company was sold. He lived in the city for six years, until the dot com bubble lifted rents into the stratosphere. He’s been in Alameda, which reminds him of his hometown, since 1998. “I heard nothing but bad stories about Alameda, and the police. When I looked around, I said, ‘What’s the problem? There’s parking.’ I found a place, and I’ve been here ever since.”

WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOW?: Weingarten has just released a live, acoustic CD, “Lost in the Air.” He put together the CD for fans who’ve asked him for an album of just him playing his guitar. It’s available online through Weingarten’s label, Multiphase Records, or through CD Baby or Amazon. You can also hear his music on Echoes radio online. He’s also got some photos in the “Wabi-Sabi” show at Frank Bette Center for the Arts.

WHAT’S NEXT?: He's working on a new album that will include “a lot of electric guitar looping,” which he said is a form of improvisation, including new versions of the songs on his current CD. That should be done by the end of the year. He's also got an upcoming gig with local trumpeter Jeff Oster and will be featured in the Frank Bette Center's upcoming "Alameda on Camera" exhibition.

Could Cowan get Mif?

Last night's City Council brainstorming session on the fate of the just-closed Mif Albright nine-hole golf course ended with a suggestion that didn't appear in the staff report: Trade it to Ron Cowan to build his stalled-out Harbor Bay Village VI development.

The council was slated to discuss the potential exchange during a closed-door meeting but deferred the discussion for a later date.

Mayor Beverly Johnson said the council ought to consider the idea, which was offered in a later public session by leaders of Harbor Bay's business and homeowners associations, who this past spring came out to oppose Cowan's plan to put the 104-home development smack in the middle of the business park.

The 12-acre spot also sits a half mile from the main runway at Oakland International Airport.

"What we’re asking the mayor and council to do right now is to consider taking that strip of land and putting sports and recreation fields on it, and to have Ron Cowan build his (development) on the golf course, in what some would call a land swap," Mel Grant, a business owner who spoke for the group, told me after the item was heard.

The group included Grant; Mike Robles Wong, president of the Community of Harbor Bay Isle board president; Islandia Homeowners Association president Elizabeth dos Remedios; and Barbara Price, a consultant on development and governmental affairs and Islandia resident who also reportedly ran the mayor's 2002 campaign.

City staff had laid out a list of potential options for the 12-acre Mif that included sports fields, a BMX bike park, a dog park and open space.

The suggestion came moments after a kind of dramatic exchange between Johnson and Golf Commission President Jane Sullwold, who said she'd heard rumors that just such a thing was in the works. She said the city should let the contractor it hired to run the Chuck Corica Golf Complex study whether it could run the short course at a profit.

"You know of course, the rumors that have been flying around for years that the Mif Albright property is a goal of Ron Cowan for a new Harbor Bay Club," Sullwold told the council. "I've been getting calls and e-mails that what’s really going on here is some kind of land swap, that they're going to get that property, tear down the Harbor Bay property, and build homes there. Everyone thinks that’s really what’s going on."

"We’ve heard that. There are a lot of rumors going on around the golf course, and we’re aware of that," Johnson responded.

More to come on this, we're sure.

The stimulus passed. Now what?

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion stimulus bill that includes - well, something for everyone. So what's next for our fair burg? Does the federal government helicopter in a huge chunk of cash and drop it on the front lawn at City Hall? Not exactly.

The bill has money for a host of transportation, energy, infrastructure and other projects as well as cash to "stabilize" everyone from people who are unemployed and facing homelessness to state governments bobbing on a sea of red ink (and I see there's more money for digital set-top converters too. Yay!). So what does this mean for us? Well ...

I checked in with Deputy City Manager Lisa Goldman, the city's reigning stimulus expert. And as it turns out, now that the bill has passed, the real work begins. Many of the new and expanded grants and loans authorized by the bill will be handed out according to formulas, which are typically based on things like population size (and even then, it's not clear how much each city could get). But a lot of the money will be awarded based on rules that have yet to be written by the federal departments that will be handing it out.

City officials know they will get some money to do some resurfacing projects on Fernside Boulevard and on Central Avenue, but at this point, that's about it. Goldman said the funding categories shifted through the sprawling bill's flight through Congress and onto the President's desk, so they're not totally sure yet how much they'll qualify for or what it can be spent on.

"We're still working our way through the bill and the various categories to see what else we might be an option for us," Goldman said. She said the city's in wait-and-see mode for the rules and potential funding amounts, and that she hopes to have more information in the next few weeks.

Still, she told the council last night that the city should get money for energy efficiency projects, public housing and its community development block grant program, which helps pay for services for low-income residents. The city could also apply for clean water grants and loans included in the bill.

The city's original $67.6 million "wish list" included money for restoration of the old Carnegie Library ($5.63 million), reconstruction of a portion of Harbor Bay Parkway ($5 million) and improvements to the Harbor Bay dike and seawall ($5 million), demolition and infrastructure improvements for Alameda Landing ($4.75 million) and construction of the Stargell Avenue extension, considered a "must" for moving Alameda Landing forward ($9 million of the $20 million project).

Goldman said park projects like resurfacing basketball and tennis courts and replacing fences that are included on the list won't qualify for funding under the newly signed bill.

"One thing we did know is that we would have to spend the money quickly - (within) 90 to 120 days. That’s a pretty high bar," Goldman told the council last night, saying projects that need environmental or historical review can't get going that fast. "We may have a long list of very worthy infrastructure projects, but they just don’t qualify."

The bill is available here, and the city's original wish list, here. For a more detailed breakdown of the bill, click here. And if you're looking to keep track of how the money is spent, our new President has set up a website for that, too.