InBerkeley

A friend who is deeply enmeshed in local politics said to me the other day that I was lucky to be in Berkeley, not Oakland. The economic woes of the state have hit everyone, but some cities are faring better than others, and apparently in the kingdom of the blind, Berkeley is currently a one-eyed king. 

But the state picture remains grim, and that will continue to affect local services. With one child about to enter Berkeley High, I’m closely following all the trimming and chopping that is being contemplated. 

To that end, I found the interactive budget balancer offered by the Los Angeles Times to be an instructive exercise. Don’t get me started on the idiocy of state governance, with the required two-thirds majority for passing a budget. Overlook that for the moment and turn to the budget balancer and try your hand at digging California out of its current hole. As the LA Times notes, it’s not easy (unless you don’t care about education, health and poverty). I’ve pasted in a screenshot of my attempt below. I relied mostly on taxing tobacco and alcohol, and finding ways to get non-violent offenders out of California’s grossly overcrowded prisons. But I’m still in the hole for $6 billion: 

General

There are a lot of closed storefronts on Solano in North Berkeley. This one is at 1819 Solano Ave, three stores west of Peets Coffee. The Jamba Juice next door is closed too.

General

Oakland has an extraordinary resource for citizens concerned about crime in their neighborhoods. Oakland Crimespotting is a truly beautiful work of development by Stamen Design that mashes together data from the Oakland Police Department with a versatile interface. You can zoom in on individual incidents, look at a trend over time, and even see what crimes occur at what times of day. In addition to the map, Crimespotting.org provides email alerts and/or RSS feeds of crimes by area. I could, for example, subscribe to a feed of crime reports within a half mile of College Avenue.  

I want this for Berkeley. On the Berkeley Police Department website there seems to be a promise of something similar, Community CrimeView: 

The Crime map section of the Berkeley Police Department web site allows the public to see crimes that have been reported in the city within a few days of their occurrence. Our crime mapping records are updated each business day to ensure the most current information is available to the community. Users can choose which crime types they would like to view for a period of up to 180 days. Once the maps are created, the user can find more specific information about an individual incident by placing the cursor over the event marker.

So click through to see Crime View. What do you get? Well, first you have to read a page of disclaimers and agree to the terms and conditions. Fine. I want my Community Crime View. Here’s what I get: 

Can you spot the difference between Berkeley’s Crime View and Oakland’s Crimespotting? We need Crimespotting or its equivalent in Berkeley.

General