The Editor's Back Fence

You Need to Know

Thursday April 04, 2013 - 09:03:00 PM

Here are a few important articles which ran this week in the commercial publications which cover Berkeley:

The Media News publications ran this story about the Berkeley City Council's handling of the city's chronic homeless population. It's noteworthy that reporter Judith Scherr not only covered the city council meeting, where all was mostly sweetness and light, but also covered the Chamber of Commerce meeting where Mayor Bates sang a different tune.

Sudden Oak Death is a very real problem for the East Bay. Berkeley Patch, the local manifestation of the Huffington Post/Yahoo empire, has a good story about a new UC project to track its spread.

Another UC Berkeley story that's not so upbeat is featured on berkeleyside.com: the Big U's plan to build a lavish and probably ugly swim center on Bancroft which has been criticized by city planners and residents.

And finally, Berkeleyside's links section points to a press release from the Berkeley Public Education Foundation which oddly enough was not sent to the Daily Planet, reporting the appointment of longtime developers' flack Erin Rhoades, spouse of Mark Rhoades, another one of same, as the foundation's executive director. This should come as no surprise, since the BPEF chair is developer Chris Hudson. School district watchers might be alert to the potential expansion of the Berkeley Unified School District's edifice complex, which is now producing a wall of concrete along Milvia, with more in the works.