A blog about Politics and News.
Real Name: Gretchen Wenner Address: 1707 Eye Street Bakersfield, CA 93301 Member Since: November 01, 2007 Last Signed In: October 14, 2009 Profile Views: 1849 Blog Views: 37453 Bike riders: Watch for drilling rig on bike path! Canyons meeting under way... Bldrs Exchange drama... Recycling wackiness State's property values decline for first time since 1933... City seeking applicants for Board of Building Appeals Homebuilders v. city (and county): Latest buzz Council, Weds night: development "freeze?" Suing Bakersfield: Pork hits fan? And they're off! City Council seat beckons... City of Bako: Initial damage estimates from state budget deal November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 November 08 December 08 January 09 February 09 March 09 April 09 May 09 June 09 July 09 August 09 September 09 October 09 November 09 Get e-mail updates from this blog, and download to print on the go with the City Beat Printcast.
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TRIP hosted an open house about the 24th Street project tonight. It was considerably calmer than the the 58-to-Westside Parkway one a few weeks ago.
There are three segments to this project:
There's the Oak and 24th intersection. With so much traffic there turning, it's a challenge, TRIP engineer Ted Wright said. The options range from just more lanes to a split-level intersection with curving ramps.
There's the 24th Street segment. This is the tricky part. It's to be widened to six lanes....
(Formerly titled "The money trail from The Canyons to Ken Weir")
"They know that I have not received any contributions from General Holdings or other investors in the Canyons Project," City Councilman Ken Weir said Wednesday.
Turns out, not so much.
Weir received $250 from Citizens for Community Planning on Aug. 23, 2006, according to the group's filings.
Citizens for Community Planning is a local PAC. At the beginning of 2006, it had no money. During the first nine...
One of the arguments that's been used by people on the side of Ken Weir in the Planning Commission Conflagration of 2008 (Part One) has been that Russell Johnson works for Mike Maggard, and that's a conflict.
It's legally not a conflict of interest, but it does raise the question of smell test.
Mike Maggard is a public official, elected by many of the same people who elected Ken Weir. Maggard probably believes in all the same things Weir professes to believe in — planning standards...
Caltrans will bring an informational presentation right to Westpark on May 22 at Harris School. A time hasn't been nailed down yet, so just cancel your plans. Odds are it'll be over in time to get home for Lost.
In case you, like David Couch, would like to do a point-by-point rebuttal of Ken Weir's statement Wednesday, here's the official transcript prepared by the city clerk's office.
We've recorded just the audio of Ken Weir's remarks and put it in a file, which you can listen to here.
We went with audio-only, because we figured the video isn't that great in this case — it's just him talking. And going with YouTube we'd have to break it into two pieces, because it's longer than the 10-minute limit. We could have attached it to a picture, but decided that an audio-only format would provide maximum flexibility, for people who want to transfer it to their portable...
KGET had Ken Weir on again this morning.
"I think Mr. Johnson and I differ significantly on a number of policies," he said.
He was asked directly for an example, but did not provide one.
I guess he was on KNZR again this afternoon, too, but I missed that. Anyone hear it?
KGET-TV had Ken Weir and Russell Johnson on TV this morning.
Weir says there's a "new philosophy" on the council. He doesn't articulate what it is or how Johnson doesn't fit it. He says it's not about the Canyons, but hasn't said what it's about.
Here's the dialogue between me and Weir over the last week, conducted by e-mail:
Thursday:
Q: Are you planning to ask the council to remove Russell Johnson so that you can make an appointment of your own to the Planning Commission?
A:...
The mayor candidates will be on Quality of Life next week, 9 a.m. Tuesday on 89.1 FM. The interviews will be pre-recorded, individual interviews, unfortunately. Probably the fact that the studios are in Fresno and they were dealing with four people is why.
Meanwhile, I've heard Ken Weir will be on Ralph Bailey's show on 1560 AM today at 3:30. I'll be listening, since he doesn't answer my e-mails anymore.
Most members of the Bakersfield City Council won't say how they're planning to vote on Ken Weir's proposal to remove Russell Johnson from the planning commission.
I'm putting Weir down in the for column — it's his proposal. Sullivan has said she's for, Benham has said she's against. Hanson, Scrivner and Couch won't say, but gave some comments that backed up what I already expected, based on how the council has broken in the past — Couch against, Hanson and Scrivner for. It takes...
So the Ken Weir-Russell Johnson affair will come to a turning point tomorrow night. Will the public turn out? Will the council vote with Weir?
The best way to follow the action is to show up at City Hall for the meeting at 6:30. (Get there early; kids always take up a lot of seats.) The second-best is to watch it on KGOV, either channel 16 or over the Web. But what if you're going to be out and about, doing something else? I've got you covered. I'll be Twittering periodically through the...
I just talked to political consultant Stan Harper, who said he'd been asked by some folks — he wouldn't say who — to look into what it would take to recall Councilman Ken Weir. He said he heard that there was a meeting Sunday night at a home in the Third Ward. He said 40 people committed to walk precincts and collect signatures.
"This is a real hot issue in the Third Ward," he said. "People are really upset.”
Update:
I looked up what it takes to...
Remember how Ken Weir wanted to change the planning commission so he could get rid of Russell Johnson? He wasn't willing to wait a year, so he introduced a proposal to speed things up.
Well, apparently he's not willing to wait for that process either.
Johnson tells me Councilman Zack Scrivner gave him a chance to resign this morning. The alternative was having Weir put Johnson's removal on the agenda for next week.
No word yet from Scrivner or Weir.
The city doesn't have a number yet.
Marian Shaw tells me she might have a total cost for the TRIP system worked out by the end of the week. Maybe.
Then, they have to come up with the growth. That involves, basically, coming up with a forecast of everything that will be built in Bakersfield for the next 20 years — single family homes, mutli-family residential, fast-food joints, grocery stores, strip malls, coffee kiosks, office buildings, warehouses. Each of those have a different...
Bakersfield expects to have a preliminary number tomorrow for its traffic impact fee. Well, not the fee, actually, but the amount of money the fee needs to raise.
After they come up with the number, they'll need to translate that into actual fees, and engineer Marian Shaw said she doesn't expect to have that tomorrow.
So I'll do the math instead.
Last summer, the city threw out a few numbers. It put 80 percent of the cost on the projected 298,667 dwelling units, and 20 percent on the...
I've spent a couple days going down Joseph Caporali's memory lane, paying particular attention to his six Las Vegas weddings. Some of his enemies have brought out their own memories, too.
When you decide who to vote for this June, will the hijinks of 10-30 years ago play a part? Does the fact that they're so, well, unusual make a difference?
I got a letter from Caltrans today thanking me for my letter on Highway 58. I didn't actually send a letter, but whatever. I imagine several hundred of these will be delivered to the Westpark neighborhood today, and a few to other parts of town, too.
I don't know about you, but I like to be there when my bosses are talking about me.
But City Manager Alan Tandy is scheduled to miss his own performance evaluation next week.
Tandy was supposed to get his annual review by the council back on March 12. But the council had so much else to talk about that they didn't get around to him. He was deferred until March 26, but again the council had too much on its plate, so they deferred him until this week.
Tandy is the only thing the council has...
The Hollywood writers' strike is over — new Galactica this week, new The Office next week, new things to say about impact fees in two weeks.
Meanwhile, today's City Council Planning and Development Committee meeting was pretty much the same as all the previous meetings — City Manager Alan Tandy laying out why the city needs the money, and the Homebuilders' Association's Cassie Daniel arguing that the whole community, not just buyers of new homes, should bear the burden of...
I'm preparing a list of questions for the mayoral candidates on Hot Bakersfield Issues. I'll send them out, ask for answers, and print them in a future issue of the Californian (and, you know, here on the site too). We've got our ideas, but I figured I'd open it to the floor. What question would you like to see Harvey Hall, Marc DeLeon, Joseph Caporali and Dennis Martinez answer?
For your viewing pleasure, we've put together a short video of the highlights of last week's debate on the Second Amendment, so you can see exactly what Scrivner, Benham and the rest of the council said.
I'm trying an experiment starting today with Twitter.
Every so often — once a day is the plan — I'll send out a notice about what's going on on my beat. Usually it will be a preview of whatever story I'm working on that day, if it's City of Bakersfield-related. Sometimes it will be a flash on something that just happened, like, say, when Benham and Weir argued yesterday about solid waste.
The cool thing about Twitter is that you can sign up to have the notifications sent where...
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