Michael Peckham returns to Santa Fe Market
Michael Peckham--the tall and gregarious son of Santa Fe Market owner Bob Peckham--has returned. His first day back behind the meat counter is today. "My dad hasn't been feeling too well," he says, and he wants him to be comfortable.
The baggage car that couldn't
That prized former Union Pacific baggage car--donated to the Golden State Model Railroad Museum but blocked at the last minute by concern about clearance past PG&E power lines--is gone for good. The museum has been unable to resolve the problem, so the donor, Levin-Richmond Terminal Corporation, has given it instead to the Pacific Locomotive Association, operator of the Niles Canyon Railway.
The Pride Fund had granted the museum $6100 for accomodating the baggage car--but has now consented to letting the museum spend it on a street-side wrought iron fence and landscaping, said museum official John Edginton.
Conversation openers at the Washington School community forum
If you're planning to attend the Washington School community forum on February 10 and want background on West Contra County Unified's performance and how the state's budget crisis will affect us, read last week's Sacramento Bee articles on school funding.
Start with "Paying for schools: A $4 million tale of forgiveness." (All links are below.) It's about a deal struck in 2000 by then-Assemblyperson Dion Aroner to help West Contra Costa County Unified School District recover from its 1991 financial disaster. Though the state had come to the rescue with a $29 million loan, debt repayments were suffocating. Aroner's bill gave the district some air.
As part of the deal, the district got $4 million in $800,000 payments per year to spend as it pleases. Those payments are supposed to continue until 2005.
In fact, many school districts receive some special payment or other. All together, such grants are known as categorical aids and comprise $12 billion in the state's budget. This year, with his eye on the $35 billion shortfall, Gray Davis proposed to consolidate and cut this funding. Read about it in "A labyrinth of spending: Special programs have grown into vast, bureaucratic jungle."
Another part of Aroner's deal was to have the school district's performance monitored by the state's Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. That group reported last July and in January that the district is still not performing up to snuff.
The district is improving in some areas, but still in trouble in others -- especially hiring and financial practices.
"There are several major concerns ... in which little or no change has occurred," the team wrote in July.
The latest report, posted on the Internet in January, notes that little has changed in these ongoing areas of concern. It echoed the reports of the past:
"If the district does not resolve these issues, the district's future fiscal solvency will continue to be at risk."
The article also says that the district's state-appointed trustee wrote a response, but it doesn't seem to be on the Web.
Collective Newsletter to spring back
Where's the Point Richmond Collective Newsletter? We haven't seen a new issue since early November. Publisher and Ginger Springs Day Spa owner Patricia Brown reports that she would have published again on February 1 had her biggest advertisers bought ads as usual. She plans to make it spring back to life--in a new, alternate-month schedule--on March 1.
Raves for 'Dead'
The East Bay Express has just published a review that calls correspondent Pete Livingston's embattled movie about death in the movies "one of the most provocative documentaries of 2002."
"Over 9 Billion Dead Served" examines the "vocabulary of violence" in popular films. Its release has been delayed while the publisher, Not The Enemy Media Inc., asks a court to protect it from angry Hollywood studios.
Point Richmond International Raceway
As if rolling burritos wasn't enough, Rosamaria's Cafe owner and Talk correspondent Mike Nova is building what he calls Point International Raceway--in the attic, over the stove and dishwasher, in one-thirty-second scale. Anyone can play, but you have to bring your own car....Meanwhile, Mike's thinking about another project, and this one's in double-size scale. Just what it is, he's not saying yet.