News you don’t want to miss for July 18:
1. Berkeley’s municipal code will no longer made reference to “manholes” after the City Council voted to remove the term and replace it with the gender-neutral phrase “maintenanceholes,” Curbed SF reports.
2. The Alameda City Council agreed with a recent Alameda County civil grand jury report that found two councilmembers violated the city charter by pressuring the city manager to hire a candidate for fire chief that was backed by the local firefighters’ union, the East Bay Citizen reports. Councilmembers Jim Oddie and Malia Vella recused themselves from the discussion to pen responses to the grand jury’s findings.
3. A state auditor’s report described Information Technology security for 21 of 33 government entities in California as having “high-risk deficiencies,” the Associated Press reports. The report comes at a time when some local government IT departments, particularly on the East Coast, have been hacked and had their data held for ransom.
4. Sen. Kamala Harris is leading a new Quinnipiac poll in her home state, Politico reports. On the heels of Harris’s successful debate appearance, she has risen to the top in the delegate-rich state with 23 percent of the survey. Joe Biden dropped five points from a similar poll in April to 21 percent.
5. A resolution calling for the impeachment of President Trump on Wednesday was tabled by the House of Representatives, essentially killing it with the help of 139 House Democrats. Rep. Barbara Lee supported the resolution, the East Bay Citizen reports, but what about Alameda County’s two other members of Congress?
6. Fremont residents turned out in droves to protest a proposed navigation center for the city’s growing homeless population, KTVU reports The decision for placing the navigation center in the Decoto neighborhood of Fremont or behind City Hall was not on the agenda at Tuesday night’s council meeting and won’t be decided until later this year.
7. Pumpsie Green, a native of Richmond and graduate of El Cerrito High School, who became the first African-American to play for the Boston Red Sox, died Wednesday, USA Today reports. He was 85. Although baseball had long been integrated by 1959, the Red Sox were the lone holdout for signing African-American ballplayers. Green was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame last year.
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