Transitions in City Council: CM O’Keeffe to retire. Brinkman takes helm as Mayor

Appointed Mayor Kurt Brinkman

Jennifer West’s one year term as Mayor ended on December 4th. Via her blog, she announced a personal career change that will bite into here public service availability. The City Emeryville does not have a directly elected Mayor. Every year, the five City Council members select a Mayor and Vice-Mayor from among themselves for a one year term. This year, Kurt Brinkman has been selected to fill this role that consists of the additional powers of running the council meetings and making political appointments. More can be read about this process on this Emeryville Tattler Opinion post. Council member Jac Asher was selected as the new Vice Mayor.

 

Emeryville dumps red-light cameras | KTVU News

Emeryville has joined the growing list of cities (including Berkeley, L.A. and Cupertino) that have decided to end their use of red-light cameras. Citing among the reasons for taking down the devices is that they were too time-consuming to oversee. Many cities see these automated devices as “Cash Cows”. In fact the red-light Camera at 40th & Horton issued 3120 citations in 2011 at $508 a piece (That’s $1,584,960 in revenue!). The reporter in this segment says the city “makes $1,000’s”. If this is the case, where does the rest of this revenue go? Apparently a State Mandate required the

Emeryville braces for life without Redevelopment Funds

City Manager Patrick O’Keeffe likened it to “an Earthquake” at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, and the aftershocks can be felt throughout the 1.2 square miles that is the City of Emeryville. As part of his budget deficit proposal, Governor Jerry Brown abolished state redevelopment money in turn killing the nearly 400 agencies that manage these funds. The subsequent December 29th, 2011 appeal against this decision was upheld, retaining the cut-off for elimination at February 1st. The final fight to be waged will be an appeal to extend this deadline for closing existing projects to April 15th. The Emeryville City Council did not sound optimistic of this happening after traveling to Sacramento to discuss the matter with State Senator Loni Hancock.