The Bay Area Rapid Transit System’s board of directors is expected to approve a proposal to divest the transit agency’s investment funds from coal at its meeting on Thursday. BART overseas several hundred million dollars in investments, including a retiree health benefits trust fund with more than $202 million in assets. The divestment proposal, drafted by BART directors Nick Josefowitz and Tom Radulovich, would preclude BART from making any new investments in companies that derive their profits from “thermal coal,” which is burned to generate electricity.
See also: California Senate Pushes State Pension Funds to Divest from Coal See also: University of California Dumps Coal and Tar Sands Investments
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According to BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost, the BART retiree health benefit trust fund currently has less than $100,000 invested in thermal coal company stocks and bonds. However, in the past, BART has had significantly more of the transit system’s financial assets invested in coal companies. “The policy is designed to ensure that we don’t ever make more investments in coal companies,” wrote Trost in an email.
Josefowitz won a seat on the BART board in 2014 running on an environmental platform, and he unseated 24-year-BART-board-veteran James Fang in the process. According to his biography on the BART website, Josefowitz is a renewable energy investor.
BART’s move to divest is the latest in a string of significant exits from the coal industry by major pension funds, foundations, and government agencies. Just last week, the California State Teachers Retirement System announced its decision to divest from four coal companies. CalSTRS’ move came after the California state legislature voted in 2015 to require the state’s pension funds to divest from coal.
Last September, the University of California announced that it was selling $200 million in coal and tar sands investments. UC officials cited both the environmental damage caused by these industries and the riskiness of investing in fossil fuels.
1. Chevron and Exxon Mobil Corp purposely kept oil supplies tight in California last year in an apparent effort to drive up gasoline prices in the state, a consumer’s group has alleged, according to the Chron$. After reviewing state records, Consumer Watchdog concluded that Chevron shipped gasoline out of the state last summer when gas prices spiked. In addition, Exxon chose not bring in gas supplies from its Gulf of Mexico refineries after an explosion crippled the company’s facility in Southern California. The companies deny wrongdoing, but gas prices in California were about a $1 higher than the average for rest of the country in 2015.
2. Despite this week’s sunny, warm weather, scientists say that the El Niño weather pattern off the West Coast remains strong, the Mercury News$ reports. Climatologists say that the Bay Area should see more rain through April. But so far, predictions of a wet winter haven’t panned out for the region. Oakland is running at just 86 percent of normal for rainfall, while San Francisco is at 93 percent.
Atlanta rap trio Migos are unsung pioneers of the current trap wave dominating mainstream hip-hop. The group exploded onto the scene with its infectious single “Versace,” which Drake further popularized through his remix of the track. Unfortunately, while Migos’ fame skyrocketed, one of its members, Offset, was incarcerated. He has since been released, but, perhaps due to its various run-ins with the law since its debut, the group has fallen short of living up to its pop star potential. However, its influence on the biggest rappers in the industry — including Drake, Young Thug, Rick Ross, and Soulja Boy — is apparent in the shift towards sing-song, melodic flows and hyperactive adlibs in recent years, and Migos certainly deserve their due credit. Their latest mixtape, January’s Y.R.N. 2, marked their triumphant return into the spotlight. Catch Migos on the San Francisco stop of their Dab Tour at the Regency Ballroom on February 17.
Choreographer Keith Hennessey once told an interviewer that he initially hitchhiked from his home in Ontario, Canada, to San Francisco for a juggling convention. Luckily for us, he decided to stick around after realizing the city was a hub of radical art and politics. Hennessey went on to have a powerful influence on the local dance scene as a pioneering queer expressionist dancer, choreographer, teacher, writer, and organizer. For instance, Counterpulse, a crucial San Francisco dance space, began in Hennessey’s living room. Much of his work, including his solo performances that comment on the AIDS epidemic, could be described as activism. His pieces also often intersect with anarchism, punk, and queer-feminism. On February 16, Hennessey will speak at Mills College (5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland) as part of its Contemporary Writers Series. He will likely talk about his interdisciplinary research on engaging “improvisation, ritual, and public action as tools for investigating political realities.”
Founded in 1982, Maximum Rocknroll is a non-profit publication that covers punk and hardcore scenes from around the world. The magazine has clung to its staunchly DIY ethos over the years. Even as it has grown into something of an institution, it has continued to eschew corporate sponsorship and coverage of major-label acts, positioning itself as an ardent champion of formidable underground bands that may not otherwise have a chance at coverage in the mainstream press. This Thursday, MRR will kick off its festival, Still Not Quiet on the Western Front, which features dozens of bands playing shows at various venues in both San Francisco and the East Bay through the end of the weekend. A few events under the Still Not Quiet umbrella to look out for? Noise-punk outfit Criminal Code at Thee Parkside on Thursday; Saturday’s record swap at LoBot (which precedes that day’s concert with Uranium Club, The World, Neighborhood Brats, and Neutrals); and Cold Beat and Flesh World at Oakland Metro Operahouse that same night. Refer to Maximumrocknroll.com/Fest for the complete schedule.
Alfonso Dominguez and Hunter Marshall, the organizers of the Oakland Music Festival each fall, have a proven sixth sense for booking artists on the verge of blowing up: SZA, one of the headliners of the 2014 edition, was recently featured as the only other guest vocalist besides Drake on Rihanna’s acclaimed album, ANTI. Anderson Paak, who was just starting to get buzz as Dr. Dre’s protégé when he headlined OMF in 2015, stunned fans and music industry heads alike with his soulful LP, Malibu, released last month. At OMF’s new monthly event, Haus Party, audiences can now check out the pair’s prescient tastes year round. Held at the recently re-opened Uptown Nightclub in Oakland, the concert series is dedicated to spotlighting local talent. This month’s edition features R&B crooner 1-O.A.K., Berkeley rapper Rexx Life Raj, and San Francisco producer Julia Lewis. DJs Azure and Agana will be behind the decks, with bilingual Oakland rap duo Los Rakas as hosts.
Mercury 20 at 10 In 2006, a handful of artists joined together to turn a small space in Uptown Oakland into an artist-run gallery. Since then, the collective’s membership and gallery space has grown into what is now Mercury 20 (475 25th St., Oakland). In celebration of its ten-year anniversary, the gallery is hosting Mercury 20 at 10, a group exhibit showcasing the collective’s many artists, including mesmerizing installation artist Nick Dong, masterful paper cutout artist Carlo Fantin, and innovative textile specialist Ruth Tabancay. The show is also a snapshot of the gallery at a critical moment in its evolution, during a time when the Uptown area is poised for another rapid transformation. While Mercury 20 consistently exhibits its members’ work, it’s rare that so many of them are shown together at once. Mercury 20 at 10 is a varied portrait of a tight-knit group of local talent.
If adapting the story of Count Dracula for the stage is a tricky task, then adapting it as a musical must be really challenging. But Piedmont Oakland Repertory has met this challenge with Blood Tango, an original musical adaptation of the Dracula story first popularized by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel and immortalized in various adaptations for the stage and screen in the decades since. Opening on February 13 at the Pacific Boychoir Academy (215 Ridgeway Ave., Oakland), the play will run through March 13. Blood Tango was written by Piedmont Oakland Repertory producer and artistic director John McMullen, who was joined by composer and pianist Tal Ariel and actress and singer Elizabeth Jane Dunne in composing the musical’s score, which includes fifteen original numbers. Set in an asylum on the English coast in 1922, Blood Tango borrows some of its character names and broad plot points from Stoker’s novel, but as its title may suggest, reimagines them in light of a certain craving not for blood, but for a dance craze nearly as dangerous: the tango.
Oakland stands poised to dominate California’s new era of regulated medical cannabis. The Oakland City Council could green-light up to eight new medical cannabis dispensaries per year, as well approve dozens of related licenses for cultivation, testing, edibles, and pot extracts at its meeting on Tuesday, February 16.
Under the sweeping plan pushed by staffers in Mayor Libby Schaaf’s administration, Oakland would also issue new licenses for delivery-only dispensaries, transportation services, lounges, and analytical labs. The plan also likely will produce millions of dollars in new tax revenue for the city; would increase safety by reducing the need for a black market for medical pot; would add more local jobs; and would produce safer medical cannabis supplies on a smaller carbon footprint, according to city staffers. The plan is scheduled to go before the council’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday night, February 9.
Many in the industry cheered the plan on Monday. “It’s long overdue,” said Dale Sky Jones, chancellor of Oaksterdam University in the city’s Uptown district. “But I trust Oakland to continue to be the leader.”
“Oakland’s always been at the forefront of the legal cannabis movement,” said BLUM dispensary Executive Director Salwa Ibrahim. “It’s only appropriate the city continue to expand its legislation in ways that allow our industry room to thrive, innovate, and compete with the rest of the country.”
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Currently, Oakland is falling behind other cities, city staffers report, and needs to align its laws with the new state regulations. Oakland trails San Francisco and Sacramento in dispensaries per capita. Oakland’s eight licensed dispensaries paid more than $4 million in taxes in 2015, and revenues should grow 28 percent in 2016, staffers estimate.
Californians legalized medical marijuana in 1996, but the legislature did not enact state regulations until 2015. Oakland had been blazing its own trail, first in 1998 with the opening of the Oakland Cannabis Buyer’s Cooperative, and again in 2004 with four licensed dispensaries, plus four more in 2011.
Oakland drew federal threats of prosecution for licensing medical cultivation in 2010, but current policies from the Obama administration steer prosecutors away from targeting state-regulated pot commerce. California lawmakers regulated medical pot from seed to sale in October with the passage of the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA).
MMRSA bestows unprecedented legitimacy on state-licensed canna-businesses, and is super-charging the billion-dollar industry’s growth this year. While many cities reacted to MMRSA with bans, others are seeing green and cashing in.
MMRSA calls for about ten new license types covering most aspects of the pot trade, and the state’s dual licensing structure lets localities choose how much activity they want. Oakland’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission advised the city to daylight the already-robust underground pot economy in Oakland, and city staffers are recommending that the council do just that.
“Oakland has fallen behind other jurisdictions,” states a report written by Greg Minor, assistant to City Administrator Sabrina Landreth. “Unregulated non-dispensary activities have resulted in electrical fires (stemming from flawed indoor cannabis cultivation), violent crime (such as robberies, burglaries, and even homicides), and the use of pesticides and fertilizers that run counter to the crop’s medical purpose.
“By aligning with state law,” Minor’s report continued, “the city will … encourage unregulated medical cannabis operators in Oakland to come into the light.”
Staffers recommend lifting the city’s four-year-old cap on dispensaries and replacing it with zoning-driven limits — like San Francisco does. Dispensaries would also be able to cluster “in certain areas and not in others, depending on the character of the area,” according to Minor’s report.
A 600-foot buffer would continue to prevent licensees from setting up shop near schools and youth centers. A new type of delivery-only dispensary permit is also needed to control the dozen-plus operators that already exist, staffers report.
“[Deliveries] have operated in and out of Oakland for several years, largely in a clandestine fashion,” Minor’s report states. “Further, that number could rise as smart phone app delivery services continue to develop and satisfy the consumer demand for convenience. Delivery services also serve an important function for elderly and disabled individuals who cannot easily travel to brick-and-mortar facilities.”
C.R.A.F.T. delivery collective operator Alan Sorrentino applauded the recommendation, saying it showed that “the city’s commitment to providing patients with increased access to quality tested medicine.”
The city may issue about sixty permits for commercial gardens, kitchens, transportation services, and other categories this year. Staffers advise that non-dispensary permit proceedings should not be open to the public — in order to shield garden locations from would-be burglars.
Most commercial pot activity would have to occur in industrial-zoned areas of town near the waterfront. Commercial home-growing in residential areas would not be allowed. However, small kitchens and collective gardens might be exempt, provided that small scale edibles producers meet “cottage food operations” requirements under California’s Homemade Food Act.
Also exempt from permitting would be small-scale collective or personal cultivation of weed gardens up to 96 square-feet in size with up to 32 square-feet of canopy.
Lastly, Oakland may get vape lounges. Patients want it, other cities allow it, and they’re not bothersome. Lounges cut down on the number of people smoking in cars and provide a place to medicate for the many low-income patients barred from doing so in their apartments or other dwellings.
Two important housing items are coming to the Oakland City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee on Tuesday: affordable housing impact fees and amendments to the Ellis Act Ordinance that would provide more assistance to renters evicted so that landlords can convert rental housing into condos. In addition, the Oakland police want to outfit another 120 cops with body cameras.
Impact fees: Oakland has been working on implementing an affordable housing impact for a while now. Tuesday’s meeting of the Community and Economic Development Committee is the first chance for the city council to forward a specific proposal to the full council for a vote. Currently, the city is considering splitting Oakland into three geographic zones, with each zone having either a different fee, or a different phase-in period. Each type of market-rate housing project (multi-family apartment buildings, single family homes, townhouses) would have a different fee applied to it. The council also has to determine when the fees would triggered – when a developer pulls building permits, or when a developer files a plan with the city? Depending on what the council decides for these and other questions, the city could raise, or forfeit tens of millions of dollars. Critics of impact fees worry if the fees are set to high, or phased in too quickly, they could stifle construction of new market rate housing in Oakland.
Ellis Act assistance: The CED committee is expected to vote on a specific proposal to increase financial assistance for tenants who are evicted under a state law known as the Ellis Act. Currently, only tenants defined as low-income get assistance, and Oakland’s assistance is among the lowest of California cities with rent control. The amendment would extend financial assistance to all tenants regardless of income, set a base amount of $8,000 per unit, and provide an extra $2,500 in assistance to renter households that include seniors, disabled renters, low-income people, or families with children under the age of eighteen.
Police body cameras: The Oakland police department is asking the public safety committee to approve the purchase of 120 new Vievu body cameras as well as docking stations, software, and maintenance services for a total of $1.1 million over the next three years. The department credits body cameras with reducing the number of complaints generated against the police by improving both police officer conduct, and dissuading people from making frivolous or false complaints. In order to outfit every officer with a body camera, the department wrote in a staff report that it needs 350 additional devices. Last year, Taser tried getting Oakland to dump Vievu and purchase its body camera system, but Oakland appears to be sticking with its existing vendor.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit System’s board of directors is expected to approve a proposal to divest the transit agency’s investment funds from coal at its meeting on Thursday. BART overseas several hundred million dollars in investments, including a retiree health benefits trust fund with more than $202 million in assets. The divestment proposal, drafted by BART directors Nick...
Stories you shouldn’t miss:
1. Chevron and Exxon Mobil Corp purposely kept oil supplies tight in California last year in an apparent effort to drive up gasoline prices in the state, a consumer’s group has alleged, according to the Chron$. After reviewing state records, Consumer Watchdog concluded that Chevron shipped gasoline out of the state last summer when gas prices spiked....
Atlanta rap trio Migos are unsung pioneers of the current trap wave dominating mainstream hip-hop. The group exploded onto the scene with its infectious single “Versace,” which Drake further popularized through his remix of the track. Unfortunately, while Migos’ fame skyrocketed, one of its members, Offset, was incarcerated. He has since been released, but, perhaps due to its various...
Choreographer Keith Hennessey once told an interviewer that he initially hitchhiked from his home in Ontario, Canada, to San Francisco for a juggling convention. Luckily for us, he decided to stick around after realizing the city was a hub of radical art and politics. Hennessey went on to have a powerful influence on the local dance scene as a...
Founded in 1982, Maximum Rocknroll is a non-profit publication that covers punk and hardcore scenes from around the world. The magazine has clung to its staunchly DIY ethos over the years. Even as it has grown into something of an institution, it has continued to eschew corporate sponsorship and coverage of major-label acts, positioning itself as an ardent champion...
Alfonso Dominguez and Hunter Marshall, the organizers of the Oakland Music Festival each fall, have a proven sixth sense for booking artists on the verge of blowing up: SZA, one of the headliners of the 2014 edition, was recently featured as the only other guest vocalist besides Drake on Rihanna’s acclaimed album, ANTI. Anderson Paak, who was just starting...
Mercury 20 at 10 In 2006, a handful of artists joined together to turn a small space in Uptown Oakland into an artist-run gallery. Since then, the collective’s membership and gallery space has grown into what is now Mercury 20 (475 25th St., Oakland). In celebration of its ten-year anniversary, the gallery is hosting Mercury 20 at 10, a...
If adapting the story of Count Dracula for the stage is a tricky task, then adapting it as a musical must be really challenging. But Piedmont Oakland Repertory has met this challenge with Blood Tango, an original musical adaptation of the Dracula story first popularized by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel and immortalized in various adaptations for the stage and...
Oakland stands poised to dominate California’s new era of regulated medical cannabis. The Oakland City Council could green-light up to eight new medical cannabis dispensaries per year, as well approve dozens of related licenses for cultivation, testing, edibles, and pot extracts at its meeting on Tuesday, February 16.
Under the sweeping plan pushed by staffers in...
Two important housing items are coming to the Oakland City Council's Community and Economic Development Committee on Tuesday: affordable housing impact fees and amendments to the Ellis Act Ordinance that would provide more assistance to renters evicted so that landlords can convert rental housing into condos. In addition, the Oakland police want to outfit another 120 cops with body...
