Friday, March 16, 2012
Mayor pro tem rejects as 'absurd' suggestion of tilt toward Safeway.
Walnut Creek Mayor Pro Tem Kish Rajan said the Shadelands Advisory Committee process is operating in a way to protect the community interest. Rajan, responding to criticism about his role in the Shadelands Advisory Committee in a Patch letter to the editor by community activist Justin Wedel, suggested the barbs are unfair to the volunteer committee members. "I have said consistently that this process is an effort to define a potential development that could blend the property owner's (Safeway's) interests with the interests and needs of the community," wrote Rajan in an email. "We would not have insisted upon a specific plan process, with an advisory committee, if we didn't want to protect the community interest." "I am very grateful to …
Monday, September 12, 2011
Walnut Creek needs to be honest about its financial mess.
- OPINION
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Monday, September 12, 2011
By Justin Wedel It is said that if you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it. While I venture to guess that most of us do not subscribe to this adage, our City Council surely does. This is no more obvious than the council’s continued drum beating that they did not cause the city’s financial mess and that the city’s finances have in fact been managed conservatively. The continuation of their lie is the Blue Ribbon Task Force on “Fiscal Heath.” From the start, the council’s goal of this farce has been clear: raising your taxes to cover their mistakes and to continue the council’s out-of-control spending addiction. The dedicated Task Force members, who are to be applauded, utilized the past two meetings to review the…
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Resident and 2010 City Council candidate Justin Wedel raises questions about the council's recent decision to continue to fund Walnut Creek's downtown trolley.
As part of last spring's budget cuts, Walnut Creek's “free” downtown trolley received funding through the end of this fiscal year. To determine ongoing trolley funding the council requested a study on trolley ridership. During the April 5 City Council meeting, the results were reported and the council continued their spending spree – with yet another unopposed vote – and appropriated $200,000 for the downtown “free” trolley for 2011-2012. Our council’s failure to provide a strong financial analysis to justify this expenditure, when so many other essential services are struggling to survive, is yet another glaring example of the lack of transparency from our elected officials. The process of funding the trolley again was rife with …
Friday, December 31, 2010
Here are some of the stories that mattered to people living and working in Walnut Creek. Many will continue to have an impact in 2011.
Throughout 2010, Walnut Creek's retiring City Manager Gary Pokorny often referred to the New Normal. This was his way of describing the economic reality of a world enduring a long and transformative recovery from recession. We're also living in an era when citizens must face up to a dysfunctional public financing system that is leaving our cities, our public schools, our county and state service agencies scrambling after increasingly scarce dollars. The major stories affecting Walnut Creek in 2010 largely centered on the community feeling the pain of this New Normal but also trying to find ways to adjust. It was a year of transition, with leaders changing, city workers getting laid off, and residents and workers speaking up--some for the …
Sunday, October 31, 2010
This highly contentious election is just two days away, and it's been a nasty, angry, crazy race. In case you're still undecided, you can click links to Walnut Creek Patch's key stories on this race.
Whatever happened to the happy, shiny suburb known as Walnut Creek? It has been overcome by a gloves-off, hard-hitting, contact-sport election with several forces fighting for control of the city's destiny. Yes, I'm talking about the City Council race. Three candidates, Kristina Lawson, Cindy Silva and Justin Wedel, are fighting for two seats, and the battlegrounds have been sharply drawn. When I started my blog, Crazy in Suburbia, in the fall of 2008, I wanted to scratch beneath the shiny, happy surface of this California suburb, my hometown. I thought my muckraking would focus on despairing alcoholic moms, teen ennui and hookers working out of downtown condos. But as editor of Walnut Creek Patch, I wound up covering City Hall and the …
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Walnut Creek City Council candidate Cindy Silva responds to questions readers have raised over the course of the campaign.
As the three-way race for two seats on Walnut Creek's City Council began two months ago, Walnut Creek Patch invited readers to tell us what they'd like to hear from candidates. We have heard plenty about police concerns and public safety, and candidates' concerns about police pensions. We've also heard ideas from Kristina Lawson, Cindy Silva and Justin Wedel on how how to safeguard the city's economic future. Some of you, though, have had more specific questions about issues that affect your lives as Walnut Creek city residents. Some of these issues have come up before the City Council and are likely to reach council chambers again. Most of these questions were not addressed in candidate forums, though. I hesitate to call them "minor" …
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Spending priorities -- past, present and future -- are at the core of a contentious City Council election.
It's called the politics of scarcity. In Walnut Creek, the phenomenon has elevated this fall's election into the most contentious City Council campaign since the growth vs. anti-growth battles a quarter-century ago. "Resources are scarce. People are feeling pressure," said Councilwoman Cindy Silva. "People who want to protect something are going to start fighting." Indeed, the battle lines have been sharply drawn. Budget cuts and hiring freezes have sent the city's police officers into the streets to campaign against Silva. They have put up campaign signs urging voters to elect her two opponents. Off-duty officers have even stood on Ygnacio Valley Road, waving the blue and white placards. "We reached the breaking point. We felt we had …
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-122.061825
City of Walnut Creek
1666 N Main St, Walnut Creek, CA
/articles/its-the-economy-voters
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Tap into your inner Don Draper and ponder which campaign signs of local and state candidates stand out, do the best job conveying their candidates' views or personality, sell them to voters. And: some sign mayhem and my vote for coolest looking sign.
If you drive around Walnut Creek these days you can't help but turn a corner and be confronted by one, two, 20 signs touting the candidacies of men and women running for local and state elections. Like me, I'm sure you've had varied reactions to the different sizes, and not just because you support or oppose the candidate whose sign is in your face. You might be thinking: Why did she choose those colors? Pink? Seriously? And what's with that weird curly-cue flourish above that candidate's name? This has definitely been an emotionally charged election season, and I'm not just talking Meg Whitman and Housekeepergate. I'm also talking the Walnut Creek City Council Race and the downtown library's Signgate. For the purposes of this …
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Campaign statements show that some of the usual suspects are donating to candidates -- but there are surprises, too. Attached are the PDFs of their campaign-finance statements.
Incumbent Cindy Silva leads her three rivals for Walnut Creek City Council in the amount of money her campaign has raised, according to campaign finance statements released Wednesday. Silva, the mayor pro tem who is running for re-election, has taken in $26,399 in contributions for the reporting period that ends Sept. 30. Not far behind is Kristina Lawson, a planning commissioner, with $25,622 -- $4,500 of that amount from a loan she made to herself. Justin Wedel, like Lawson a first-time candidate for City Council, has brought in less than half of each of his rivals, $11,295. He, too, made a loan to himself in the amount of $4,000. Silva began her campaign with $2,676 in cash and has spent about $21,079. She ends this reporting period …
The purpose of police posting these Wedel/Lawson signs at the library is obvious.
UPDATE EARLY THURSDAY: The pro-Wedel/Lawson campaign signs are back up in view of the new library's parking lot, hours after the Walnut Creek Police Association agreed to remove them from the fence that they were hanging from. These photos show that two signs were affixed to posts that raise them above the fence. The posts appear to be standing on the property, adjacent to the library, belonging to Julia Maxwell and her daughter Elizabeth. Elizabeth Maxwell had given the Walnut Creek Police Association permission to hang a total of three signs on the fence that serves as a barrier between their property and the library property and Civic Park. On Wednesday, the Walnut Creek Police Association agreed to remove two of the signs from the …
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Walnut Creek Library
1644 N Broadway, Walnut Creek, CA
/articles/whats-with-the-pro-wedellawson-signs-hanging-at-the-library
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Mary Anne Clark
3:17 pm on Friday, March 23, 2012
I think there might be a serious problem in the Design Review Office and with the design review process. Once a decision is made, it is impossible to have it reversed, even if the design review was in error (we residents of Rossmoor are finding that to be true; notification process was faulty). This means that any corporate entity can slip something under the noses of the Community Development … more ›