Tracy, Calif. residents to now pay for 911 services

The Tracy Press:

On Tuesday, the council approved via a 4-1 vote (with Councilman Steve Abercrombie dissenting) a contract with ADPI-Intermedix, based in Oakland, to send the bills. The city expects to have a billing system ready next month, but doesn’t yet know when it will actually start charging.

Residents will pay $300 for every fire department response to a medical emergency. Non-residents can expect to pay $400. There is no set cost for a fire department visit to a car accident.

The city is working out an option so that households can pay an annual membership fee of $48, which would cover the cost of any emergency aid given during the course of a year, said David Bramell, who is acting as fire chief while Chief Chris Bosch is on administrative leave.

. . .

[Councilwoman Suzanne] Tucker said one person joked if her husband has a heart attack, she’ll be tempted to light the kitchen table on fire to dodge the fees.

[via Thomas Friedman, The New York Times and CBS13]

November 13: Cyrus on The California Report

Dear Friends,

I’ve been informed that my piece on the creation of the world’s longest California roll, is airing today on, appropriately enough, The California Report.

It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams):

FRI – San Francisco – 4:30/6:30/11 pm Pacific – KQED – 88.5 FM – www.kqed.org
SUN – Los Angeles – 10:30 pm Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg

You can also find it on The California Report site later in the day and on my site if you miss the broadcast.

Pith helmets: cool again in California

John and Andy (in order of geographic proximity to me)–

As an unfashionable Californian, I’m a little bit ashamed to think that some high-end California hat store is now selling pith helmets. I wish I was joking.

As the Los Angeles Times reports:

While I didn’t think it was quite the appropriate headgear for that evening’s black-tie wedding, it fits in nicely with the explorer/desert military vibe that labels like Versace and Galliano had embraced for their Spring/Summer 2010 men’s runway collections in Europe earlier this year.

Now, I’m not advocating that when next spring rolls around everyone should chuck that stingy brim fedora and go all safari, but if global warming trends continue, a tree bark topper is certainly one low-tech, old-school option for keeping a cool head with a dash of retro-explorer style.

This is exactly why I don’t live in Los Angeles anymore — because people there think pith helmets “fit in nicely with that whole explorer vibe.”

*sighs*

Yours in non-pithed buglarity,

-Cyrus (suh-ROOS)
Oakland, California

New York Times Op-Ed (Herbert): Cracks in the Future

October 3, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Cracks in the Future
By BOB HERBERT

Berkeley, Calif.

While the U.S. has struggled with enormous problems over the past several years, there has been at least one consistent bright spot. Its system of higher education has remained the finest in the world.

Now there are ominous cracks appearing in that cornerstone of American civilization. Exhibit A is the University of California, Berkeley, the finest public university in the world and undoubtedly one of the two or three best universities in the United States, public or private.

More of Berkeley’s undergraduates go on to get Ph.D.’s than those at any other university in the country. The school is among the nation’s leaders in producing winners of the Nobel Prize. An extraordinary amount of cutting-edge research in a wide variety of critically important fields, including energy and the biological sciences, is taking place here.

While I was roaming the campus, talking to students, professors and administrators, word came that scientists had put together a full analysis and a fairly complete fossilized skeleton of Ardi, who is known to her closest living associates as Ardipithecus ramidus. At 4.4 million years of age, this four-foot tall, tree-climbing wonder is now the oldest known human ancestor.

Give Berkeley credit. The school’s Tim White, a paleoanthropologist, led the international team that worked for years on this project, an invaluable advance in human knowledge and understanding.

So it’s dismaying to realize that the grandeur of Berkeley (and the remarkable success of the University of California system, of which Berkeley is the flagship) is being jeopardized by shortsighted politicians and California’s colossally dysfunctional budget processes.

Berkeley is caught in a full-blown budget crisis with nothing much in the way of upside in sight. The school is trying to cope with what the chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, described as a “severe and rapid loss in funding” from the state, which has shortchanged Berkeley’s budget nearly $150 million this year, and cut more than $800 million from the higher education system as a whole.

This is like waving goodbye to the futures of untold numbers of students. Chancellor Birgeneau denounced the state’s action as “a completely irresponsible disinvestment in the future of its public universities.”

California Council for the Humanities grant submitted!

Amigos y Amigas,

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on a grant to produce a one-hour, bilingual radio documentary about the history of taco trucks in California. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve just submitted it to the California Council for the Humanities!

Here are the opening paragraphs of our grant application:

In California Spanglish, they’re known as loncheras. But in English, they’re known simply as taco trucks. Regardless of what you call them, most Californians simply call them delicious. Given their origins in Mexico, a dash of Americanizations and a kitchen on wheels, taco trucks are the perfect trans-cultural metaphor for California. They represent cheap, quality street food that has spread from Calexico to Yreka and beyond — California Taco Trucks will tell their fascinating story. California Taco Trucks is a sound-rich, narrative-led public radio documentary in both English and Spanish that will describe the rich history and newer incarnations of taco trucks.

With their humble beginnings as a blue-collar staple of journaleros statewide, taco trucks have since crossed socio-economic and cultural boundaries as more non-Latinos have discovered them. Further, as these trucks become more prevalent, cities like Turlock, Salinas, Stockton and even Los Angeles have battled with taqueros over how, when and where taco trucks can operate. Finally, many around the state have adapted the trucks to create new types of fusion cuisine served from a taco truck, such as Korean-Mexican (Kogi BBQ), Chinese-Mexican (Don Chow Tacos) and Japanese-Peruvian (Lomo Arigato).

Taco trucks represent a fascinating and unique lens through which to understand food culture, immigration, and demographics of late 20th century and early 21st century California. While taco trucks exist in other parts of the country, their presence originated in California. Raul Martinez is believed to have opened the first taco truck – converting an ice cream truck — outside of an East Los Angeles bar in 1974. He went from $70 in sales that first night to controlling a small empire of 10 King Taco restaurants and trucks around Southern California. By 1987, Martinez had earned $10 million in sales across his various properties. Nearly all taco truck owners don’t establish vast empires à la Martinez. Most are family-run businesses that work long hours and earn slim margins on a product that sells for around a single dollar.

Today, taco trucks exist in probably all of the 50 states, however, their largest concentration is in the Golden State. Los Angeles County alone has over 7,000 taco trucks, according to the newly founded Asociación de Loncheros – the rest of the state likely hosts thousands more. While taco trucks have existed for decades, the association itself was founded in 2009 after many loncheros found themselves afoul of new laws making it harder for them to operate in the City and County of Los Angeles. They have worked with attorneys in Los Angeles and Stockton, as well as UCLA law students to fight back and have struck down unconstitutional laws that restrict their trade.

Since the founding of Kogi BBQ, a Korean-Mexican taco truck in Los Angeles that famously uses Twitter to advertise and stay connected with its customers, dozens of nouveau food trucks have sprung up. They sell various treats including Indian cuisine, Mexican-Asian fusion, ice cream, shaved ice, burgers and various other combinations. However just as the classic trucks before them, this small community of newer trucks has to navigate an oft-confusing sea of municipal and county codes. These new trucks have received national media attention, and although they represent a small minority of the California taco truck community, they may just represent where it is headed both in California and on the national scale.

I’m supposed to be notified if we will receive the grant before December 2009.

If accepted, I will be working with Robert Breuer who will serve as photographer and associate producer.

We’re grateful to have received the support of the Asociación de Loncheros, who will act as the sponsoring organization. Our humanities advisors will be Prof. Abel Valenzuela (UCLA), Mark Vallianatos (Occidental), Prof. Roberto Alvarez (UCSD) and James Rojas (Latino Urban Forum). We will also be receiving culinary consultation from Bruce Aidells (Aidells Sausages) and Melanie Wong. We’ve also received letters of support from the Public Radio Exchange and NPR’s Latino USA.

Clark Boyd has also agreed to serve as script editor and Robin Wise will be our sound engineer.

Muchas gracias to Julie Caine for all her help. She successfully got her radio doc, “Squeezebox Stories” funded last year.

Keep your fingers crossed! Here’s to hoping we get it!

July 12: Cyrus on Weekend Edition Sunday (NPR)

Dear Friends,

I’ve been informed that my commentary on California IOUs will be on Weekend Edition Sunday (July 12)!

It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams).

New York – 8 to 10 am Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC – 8 to 10 am Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org
Los Angeles – 5 to 10 am Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg
Boston – 8 to 11 am Eastern – WGBH – 89.7 FM – www.wgbh.org
San Francisco – 7 to 10 am Pacific – KQED – 88.5 FM – www.kqed.org

It will also be archived at npr.org and here if you miss it.

Lemme know if you hear it!

Update: Audio is here.

SF Chron: New land-use law’s message: build near transit

SF Chronicle:

But [Stephanie Reyes, senior policy advocate with San Francisco’s Greenbelt Alliance] and other advocates acknowledge that the importance of SB375, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late September, lies as much in the tone it sets as in what it will accomplish, which remains unclear.

Essentially the law, which will take years to implement, uses incentives and requirements to encourage local governments and builders to concentrate growth in urban areas or close to public transportation hubs in an effort to reduce Californians’ use of cars and lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

The ultimate impact will depend on how the legislation is put into effect, and whether its carrots and sticks will outweigh the cries from people who don’t want big new buildings on their block.

Whatever the law’s accomplishments, proponents hope it sends a clear message that will be reflected in future legislation and policies on the state and local levels: Dense, transit-oriented development is a critical goal for the collective good.

Also, see SPUR‘s “A Midlife Crisis for Regional Rail“

LA Times: Needles casts an envious eye elsewhere

LA Times:

NEEDLES, CALIF. — Depending on their mood and whom you talk to, people in this parched railroad town clinging to the eastern edge of California call it the poor stepchild, the redheaded stepchild, the ugly stepchild of San Bernardino County.

They grouse about not getting their roads paved, about being 220 miles from the county seat, about being a dumping ground for parolees and sex offenders — all the while gazing enviously across the Colorado River at boomtowns in Arizona and Nevada.

“The building codes are stricter here, the taxes are higher,” said Patricia Scott, a nurse. “I cross into Arizona and it’s growing by leaps and bounds. We are the only community in the tri-state area that hasn’t grown, and it’s probably because we are in California.”