City Hall

  Mayor West’s State of the City Address 7:15 pm tonight, City Hall (City Manager, Patrick O’Keeffe, will also speak.) For those who can’t attend tonight’s meeting, the address will be televised (find the link on the city website) or on Emeryville TV, channel 27. As with all city council meetings, it will be reshown on Ch. 27 at other times as well, and will be archived on the City Council website. The City Council agenda for tonight’s meeting includes: Study Session on Proposals to contract out our Fire Services (starts at 6:30 pm) Discussion on the new LED street lights around town Design for the new park to be located next to Stanford Ave. between Hollis and Doyle (which includes a dog run in the plans) Appointment of a new Planning Commissioner Update from Ohana, a new non-profit that is working to support ECAP and other needs of the neediest in town Sustainable Communities Strategies update (this is the regional plan from MTC for transportation and land use going forward to address greenhouse gas emissions) All of these items are discussed in a bit more detail on Mayor West’s blog post here. She invites residents to come, listen and

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I recently attended my first meeting of the Finance Committee as a resident member and came away with positive impressions.  The Committee now has an expanded cadre: two city councilors, two business representatives, and two resident members.  By the time we next meet, a representative of the labor community in Emeryville will be added.  This is a striking improvement over its previous incarnation when just two city councilors served. Staff support for the Committee, led by Karen Reid, City Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, came informed and responsive to the queries of members.  City Manager Patrick O’Keeffe and Assistant City Manager Dolores Turner also attend the Committee’s meetings. For citizens interested in how the city fares financially, the quarterly meetings of the Committee are a great place to get answers.  I found Reid’s “City of Emeryville Quarterly Financial Report: Fourth Quarter 2010-11, as at June 30, 2011″ especially useful, with its comparative data between this year and last. (Look for it on the City’s website.) Given the shaky state of the national, state, and local economies, the Committee spent most of its time looking at ways to keep tax revenues in town and to manage our investments expertly.  A comment

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The Emeryville City Council will consider Sherwin Williams’ request to extend its work hours at the Horton and 45th streets clean-up site to include Saturdays and evenings until 9 pm. Current hours are 7 am to 6 pm on weekdays. The clean up has been ongoing for 45 days and is expected to continue for at least another three months. Despite repeated requests from neighborhood residents, Sherwin Williams, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), and Bay Area Air Quality Management (BAAQM) have so far refused to conduct testing of dust being generated by the clean-up. Soil at the site contains arsenic, lead, and benzene, among other toxins. Sherwin Williams now says it is working with DTSC to configure a dust sampling plan, but so far no sampling has been done. Several residents first complained of the dust three weeks ago, including a call to the BAAQM hotline. Mara Feeney, a public relations person hired by Sherwin William to address community concerns, said that they have problems with testing of the dust because “there is no ‘baseline’ data to use for scientific comparison.” Sherwin Williams has the same resources as any other multi-billion dollar corporation, with the very best

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Sherwin Williams asks for extended work hours (evenings, Saturdays), while refusing repeated requests for testing Sherwin Williams has spent the past 45 days cleaning up the mess it made during its heyday dacades ago, when it was busy “covering the world.” And it’s quite a mess. More than 8 acres of land at the corner of Sherwin and Horton streets in Emeryville is contaminated with arsenic, lead, and solvents like benzene. While the clean-up –- reportedly just one-third of the way done –- is good news, the bad news is the clean-up is generating dust – a dust that residents say is sticking to their cars, blowing into their open apartment windows, and leaving a layer of grit on their morning newspapers. “It’s a change I’ve noticed since the clean up started,” said nearby resident Archana Horsting, referring to the dust on her newspaper. “I feel like I need to wash my hands because I don’t know what it is.” Horsting, a long-time resident of the Emeryville Artists’ Cooperative (EAC) and Executive Director of the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, spoke at a recent meeting between EAC residents, and representatives of Sherwin-Williams (S-W) and the state Department of Toxic Substances

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by Doug Oakley Contra Costa Times August 9, 2011 Berkeley and Emeryville officials wooed representatives from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory on Monday, in hopes the institution will choose their cities to build a second campus for 800 scientists. The meeting in Emeryville was the last of six held over the past three weeks that included Oakland, Richmond and Albany as possible sites for a new lab facility. At each meeting, cities tried to show why their sites are the best. When the process is over and the second campus is finished in 2016, 800 scientists will go to work in 500,000 square feet of labs and offices, a size that could grow to 2 million square feet over time. Landing the lab in any of the six proposed sites would be a boon for jobs and spending. Monday night’s proposal by Wareham Development was actually three in one: One alternative in Berkeley would house the lab on an 18-acre site just north of Ashby Avenue and Seventh Street; a second option would be located in Emeryville at Emery Station near the Amtrak Station; and a third would use both sites. On hand to hear the proposals were lab Director Paul Alivisatos

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