Morning News Round-Up -- 5.20.10: Calling all Steinbecks...

The big news today is that workers living in a labor camp in Pescadero may have been drinking contaminated water for a decade... this is a troubling story. The housing is part of Marchi farms and has been closed down by the County, although it seems families may still be living there. Where is John Steinbeck when you need him?

The Daily Journal gives a run down of the candidates in the 21st Assembly District... Rich Gordon, Yoriko Kishimoto, and Josh Becker... How many more run-downs do we really need?... Endorsements anyone?

Lee Duboc must be very pleased today... the pension reform initiative is heading to the ballot in Menlo Park. Could this be a Silicon Valley trend among cash-strapped cities? The Mayor of San Jose has been talking about asking voters in San Jose to vote to do away with the often-expensive binding arbitration...

The County is considering requiring (?) companies to offer employees a pre-tax transit option to get to work. This should help SamTrans and perhaps Caltrain and BART too...

Welcome to Millbrae, where the City might cut a program to help feed needy seniors... That's probably not fair of us, they are looking at cutting employees too...

You know the black box that records the last seconds of plane crashes... well Congresswoman Speier would like one in your car too... I'm sure privacy advocates will love that.

The Jefferson Union High School District may be asking voters to dig a little deeper into their wallets this fall... their polling looks good.

Silicon Valley has some serious interest in the upcoming Republican primaries for US Senate and Governor. New polls are out together. The first one actually confirms what Steve Poizner said a few weeks back -- that his race against Whitman is tightening... The second has Carly Fiorina leading (slightly) over Tom Campbell, but within the margin of error... (Joey Lucas will explain everything later...)

Morning News Round-Up -- 3.12.09: When Lessig says something is brilliant...it is...

We'll start today's Round-Up with our County's elected officials doing what we put them in office to do...(mostly)...

• Jerry Hill celebrated a major milestone yesterday in Sacramento...he survived 100 days. Much to Jon Mays' dismay, the former Supervisor introduced 22 bills in his first 100 days...that seems excessive. But since he is our bearded local hero, we'll let it slide...
• Congresswoman Jackie Speier is so cool. She is setting up a local panel to evaluate any possible earmarks coming into her District. So it won't just be big campaign contributors or insiders, everyone should/could get a fair shake. And the panel that Speier is setting up is high-level -- Lawrence Lessig is chairing it...and when (our hero) Lessig calls someone else's work "a flash of brilliance" it is high praise...
• Speaking of Speier and our other Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (who reads her Blackberry in the bathroom) -- they met with Congressman Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee to discuss San Mateo County getting some money back from Lehman Brothers' collapse through the Troubled Asset Relief Program...

And on to the rest of today's Round-Up...

A suspicious package in Palo Alto down the street from a Jewish day school caused the school's evacuation. The make-shift package was made to look like a bomb and carried with it a menacing note...That is a scary story...

And here are some scary stats: more than 1/3 of the San Mateo County non-profits are expected to make layoffs or reduce staffing and only 5% consider themselves financially strong. This is all according to The Alliance of Nonprofits for San Mateo County.

Everest Charter School...again. This time, the expected happened. The State's Board of Education said yes to Everest 's Charter even though the Sequoia Union High School District and the San Mateo County Board of Education said no. So much for local control, I guess...Sequoia Union High School District and the Everest folks are still fighting about the space that Sequoia has set aside for Everest. Sequoia thinks that the space in East Palo Alto is good for Everest. Everest (apparently) doesn't want to be in EPA. Watch Dog thinks that Everest's anti-EPA stance is suspicious/curious...

We have a great update on the cockfighting story from Pescadero. The guy arrested for holding the (alleged) cockfight is now saying that all the animals were for a giant barbecue...(they were going to eat Little Jerry Seinfeld?) An interesting defense since the police who broke up the cockfight (apparently) found syringes, fighting spurs, and antiseptic a.k.a. cockfighting paraphernalia...

And what would the Round-Up be without another school district in trouble looking at taxes...this time it is the Burlingame Elementary School District studying a renewal of their parcel tax...

Panic time? When the sea level rises, our County is in trouble...that according to the Pacific Institute who released a report yesterday. Watch Dog worries that we'll lose our blog-crush, Pacifica Riptide...

The 20-year old karate instructor who was arrested for (allegedly) molesting a 13-year old pleaded not guilty yesterday to four felony counts of child molestation yesterday...

The City of Palo Alto and Stanford University don't always get along. Although neighbors and inextricably linked, land-use and taxes and traffic and housing cause all kinds of disputes. Take the proposed new hospital Stanford would like to build. Palo Alto is concerned about the impacts to roads, housing, etc. The City of Palo Alto and Stanford officials are set to meet to discuss the hospital and other Stanford-expansion projects in 3 days...in a thinly-veiled move to make the hospital look better to residents (and perhaps to the Palo Alto City Council as well) -- Stanford release a report yesterday pointing out that the hospital expansion would add $18 million in revenue to the City of Palo Alto...

That noise you hear in the middle of the night (starting March 18th) will be Caltrain grinding its tracks...that sentence hurts my teeth to even write...we anxiously await complaints from Atherton and Menlo Park neighbors...

Morning News Round-Up -- 3.10.09: Little Jerry Seinfeld Seized?

The animal cruelty stories are back. Watch Dog can't decide if these are more depressing than the sex-video extortion crime report from yesterday. Either way, a cock fighting ring was raided over the weekend in Pescadero. 150 roosters were seized...so was the guy who owned the property. No word yet if Little Jerry was among the seized roosters...



And an update on the Girl Scouts and others involved in the parking lot accident on Sunday: Of the 5 folks that were hit, 3 have been released from the hospital while a mom and her 6 year old daughter remain in serious condition.

It is Millbrae's day to look at raising taxes to bridge a $1.7 million budget gap. Revenue is down, sales taxes are down, etc., etc., etc.

The Burlingame Elementary School District is also looking to voters...not for a new tax, but an extension of a parcel tax already on the books. Here is some free advice to the Burlingame Elementary School District officials: make sure parents aren't super-pissed at you before going to the ballot and figure out a better lottery system...

Half Moon Bay is looking at at judgement-obligation bond to pay the $18 million it owes to developer Chop Kennan. HMB's process to get this done is pretty complicated -- they need to get court approval and on a parallel track Aseemblymember Jerry Hill and Senator Leland Yee are trying to get urgency legislation passed in Sacramento...what a mess.

In other HMB news, the City was featured in a Chronicle piece this weekend about spending stimulus funds on road repairs. (Sorry we missed it yesterday...it's just that the Chronicle is so light these days that we thought it was an under-the-door flyer, rather than the Sunday paper...)

San Bruno is also looking at the stimulus package for some funds for some water projects. Pacifica is looking for stimulus too (thanks Riptide)...

Michelle Durand's "Off the Beat" in the Daily Journal explores Obama's graying hair...actually, it is a critique of the coverage of Obama's graying hair -- to which Durand adds a few more column-inches.

A bio-tech job fair (obviously) attracted an overflow crowd yesterday in South San Francisco. The City of SSF was a partner in this job fair trying to connect newly laid off workers with bio-tech jobs. Bio-tech jobs got a big boost from (quickly-graying) President Obama yesterday when he declared that he believed in science...