Article by Jennifer Inez Ward.
Last updated at Tue, 22 Feb at 6:57am.

Oakland must begin to make hard choices to right its financial ship.

This was the message Sunday afternoon at the joint meeting of Make Oakland Better Now! and the East Bay Young Democrats.

Article by Amy Gahran.
Last updated at Wed, 17 Feb at 7:22am.

Tonight, Oakland City Council is meeting discuss the controversial proposed 2010 municipal budget. At Oakland Local, we've been trying to understand Oakland's budget process -- especially how public participation really fits in. Unfortunately, Oakland's budget process is daunting, convoluted, cryptic, and frankly seems engineered to discourage meaningful public participation...

Blog entry by Make Oakland Bett....
Last updated at Mon, 15 Feb at 8:19pm.

    This coming Tuesday afternoon, Oakland’s City Council will begin making some of its most important decisions of the year.  The actions Council takes or does not take will have an enormous impact on Oakland’s short, medium and long-term ability to provide core services to its citizens.  Without courage and leadership, the city may soon be unable to provide even marginally adequate police or fire services, maintain its streets, parks and libraries, or fulfill many of the other tasks that are critical to everyone who lives here.

Blog entry by Make Oakland Bett....
Last updated at Sat, 23 Jan at 4:54pm.

At the Make Oakland Better Now! budget meeting on January 11, we passed out a ballot asking members in attendance to give us their views on where the city should make the cuts that are going to be necessary to balance this year’s and next year’s budget.  We had around30 people at the meeting, but only about 15 cast their ballots.

Blog entry by Make Oakland Bett....
Last updated at Wed, 23 Dec at 9:27pm.

     The City's budget woes are rapidly coming to a head, and while reasonable minds can differ as to what needs to be done, it's painfully clear that something dramatic needs to be done, and really, really soon.  If you don't read another city document for rest of this year (and lucky you), you should see

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