Mayor of Concord » Concord Feature News

Port Costa Hit and Run

Concord Blogger — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:44:11 +0000

Mark Pendleton, 49, of Martinez, was struck sometime in the early evening hours by a driver who remains at large. The California Highway Patrol, which is investigating the death, assigned officers to stop and question passing motorists Tuesday near the Highway 4 offramp at McEwen Road — about a half-mile south of the collision site.
-Contra Costa Times
Anyone with information should call the CHP at (925) 646-4980.
This type of story makes me sick. I hope they catch the person who hit him and put them away for life. Sure the news is saying that with the visibility that the drive may not have seen Mark Pendleton. Even if that’s the case, the driver must have known they hit something. I can’t wait for the follow up story where they person turns themselves in or is turned in by their neighbors. Everyone be on the look out for a car with new damage and a front headlight out.

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New Home of the Walnut Creek Police

Concord Blogger — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:04:52 +0000

Walnut Creek is Concord’s rich neighbor. Sure they have the stigma of being all classy and snobbish but just because they have more millionaires per capita than Concord doesn’t mean we should think any less of them. The Walnut Creek Police Dept has also had their fair share of bad stigma handed down. Some people call them heavy handed and others say they that the WC Police treat outsider (yes, people from Concord) like trash. I have never had any run ins with the Walnut Creek Police other than a class I took at Diablo Vally College taught by one of their officers.

The Walnut Creek Police Dept is doing what any good police dept should do and is being proactive with their policing. Recently the Walnut Creek Police Dept announced that they are going to be setting up shop in the popular Broadway Plaza Shopping Center for the holidays. Sorta like how Concord has sub stations set up all over the city, Walnut Creek will be placing a group of sworn officers just to keep an eye on all the shoppers spending their cash at high end stores like Davidson and Licht, Tiffanys and Neiman Marcus. With the holiday season about to be in full swing, the foot traffic at Broadway Plaza is going to increase exponentially. With more people, crime is bound to rise as well. That’s just the nature of the beast.

The Broadway Plaza mall will have a new holiday tenant. The Walnut Creek Police Department is moving into the space between The Christmas Store and Mimi’s Maternity.

The temporary move is due not to an increase of crime downtown, but to an available space at the mall and the police department’s desire to be more visible to the public.

“It’s wonderful to have the police presence for the holidays and not have the space dark,” said mall executive Shelly Dress. “I don’t think people feel unsafe here, but this is an added amenity.”

The police department will be getting free rent for the duration of the roughly two-month stay, Dress said.

Walnut Creek police Lt. Damien Sandoval said the department is shooting for an opening date of the day after Thanksgiving, but he is not yet sure who will staff the temporary office and what the hours will be.

“There’s higher pedestrian traffic there during the holiday season and we would like to be available to them,” Sandoval said. - Contra Costa Times

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Great Photography in Claycord

Concord Blogger — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:07:40 +0000

One of the best things about running a local blog is all of the people I get to meet along the way and see what they do. Regardless of the type of event you need a photographer for like a party, a wedding or just a great set of professional photos, finding quality is difficult. I know when we were looking for a wedding photographer, it was a long task to qualify everyone. Just choosing a random photographer from the yellow pages is never good enough.

I was contacted through Facebook by a local photographer Wayne Miller in Clayton to be added as a contact. Once I saw that Wayne had a website, I had to check it out. There are many local photographers in the Claycord area but this site is one of the most professional and content rich I have seen in a while.

Wayne Miller Photography of Clayton, California, specializes in Portraits and Commercial Photography. Creative Innovation in Photography with an Avant-garde style as he always pushes the envelope in photography. HDR (High Dynamic Range) images, out of the box, and classic styles to meet client’s needs.

Wayne Miller Photography even has an programs for models building their portfolios. The apprenticeship model program is a chance to build your confidence as a model and learn what it takes to be a model in photography. The apprenticeship model program will help you build a portfolio and feel comfortable in front of the camera and people.

The program is on selective bases for the applicant that have the desire and commitment to model. You will be able to try different looks and styles to select areas that interest you in modeling. This is a TFP (Trade for Print or CD) program which means the both you and the photographer trade your time for either prints or a CD of the images.

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Sex Crime Prosecutor Charged With Rape

Concord Blogger — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:41:55 +0000

Back in Oct. I mentioned the troubles Deputy District Attorney Michael Gressett found himself in. Today he and his attorney made a plea of “Not Guilty” in court.

The charges, which were filed Friday in Martinez, include two counts rape, four counts sodomy, three counts forced sexual penetration, one count forced oral copulation, one count false imprisonment and one count of making criminal threats for allegedly threatening to kill the alleged victim, according to the complaint.

Gressett, 51, also faces multiple enhancements for allegedly tying up the alleged victim and using a handgun and an ice pick during the alleged assault. If convicted, Gressett could face a life sentence, Deputy Attorney General Peter Flores said. Because Gressett is a county prosecutor, the state attorney general’s office was prosecuting the case. “As firmly and uncategorically as anyone has ever entered a not guilty plea, we enter a not guilty plea,” Gressett’s attorney Michael Cardoza said in court.

Video: MARTINEZ: Jade Hernandez

“I can say it’s been very difficult after all these years of prosecuting the bad guys,” Gressett said. “The truth will come out … I stand in the shadows of fear in a false accusation. I know the accuser knows they are not true.” - Source

The prosecution for the case stated in the news that they firmly believe that they have enough evidence to convict. The accused Michael Gresset claims that these allegations are false and are steming from political motivations.

Even if thats the case, he must have something to hide if he’s being brought up on charges. I can’t imagine the prosecutors office taking a case to court if there was nothing backing it up. I think this guy is F’d either way. Even if he is found not guilty, he’s never going to be taken seriously as a DA in the County.

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How local blogs shaped the elections in Concord

Concord Blogger — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:54:10 +0000

There is no question that a website can become a call to action. Blogs have been used as a personal soapbox since their creation. Everything from people supporting a cause to people just wanting to share their lives. Blogging is a form of expression that allows for anyone to post their thoughts and opinions even anonymously. Technorati currently watches 112.8 million blogs.

As for Concord, there are only a handful but even a handful of blogs are more than enough for people to pay attention to. Like most people I have a busy life. Between work, school, kids and grocery shopping, we have to find ways to get educated on matters that affect our lives especially when it comes to elections. Besides reading leaflets and seeing lawn signs we look of ways to understand what other peoples thoughts are as well. Sometimes that’s talking to a friend in the area to see who they favor. Sometimes it’s looking online to see what is being written outside the mainstream news agencies. The local blogs in Concord all rallied behind one accomplished group and it paid off.

I’m a blogger and I didn’t know much about the local politics until I started this site. Looking around for other blogs like mine in the area and I wanted to see what they had to say about who was going to be the best candidates for me to vote for come election day. The first blog I came across was Halfway to Concord.

This site contains a lot of content. The owner Bill puts a lot of work into this magazine style blog. Just the number of categories available and new content in each makes this one of my firsts stops in the day to see whats new in Concord as well as the State. Getting about 2,346 unique visitors a day proves they are the front runner.

Because Halfway to Concord is a must see site for Concord, who they endorse makes a large impact.

Gary Eberhart and Sherry Whitmarsh have a block smack dab in the middle where no one can miss it and Bill Shinn had a place on the header.

What makes Gary and Sherry so special?

There were other people running for the seats on the MDUSD School Board but other than some signs I passed on the road I never heard about or from them. Do candidates think that by putting their happy face on a poster is all it’s going to take to win? Maybe. What stood out for me in the MDUSD School Board elections was that there were blogs set up in DIRECT support for Eberhart and Whitmarsh on top of each of them managing their own blog. Talk about an effective campaign strategy.

The MDUSD blog averages about 300+ visits a day based on their sitemeter. Sitemeter can’t be counted on for unique visitors but it does show how often the site is accessed. The blog has one purpose and it’s laid out in the top line.

MDUSD Information and Discussion Blog. This Blog is operated by school board members Paul Strange and Gary Eberhart and will provide a forum for discussion of happenings in MDUSD. We will celebrate the achievements that occur in MDUSD and provide an opportunity for discussion and input on matters that can be improved. All schools, sites, Parent Groups and Teachers will be provided access to the shared calendar to make event information available to the community.

Using a blog to share and discuss information is a brilliant idea for members of a School Board. I learned more than enough about the state of the MDUSD and who the players were just by reading this site. But the best part was that I was able to get additional opinions from parents who had there kids in the MDUSD.

This site is run by a mom that wants nothing more than the school system her kids attend to be the best it possibly can. Hundreds of posts about the MDUSD and her opinions make it clear that there are successes and failures within the system. They actively supported Gary and Sherry for the seats in the MDUSD. I looked for another site that may have a different side but there was none. No one thought it important to have a blog site in support of the other candidates. I believe that was another failure by them. How are people to know what your positions are unless you make them public. Gary and Sherry did this precisly and they had the support of the parents and teachers of the MDUSD.

For the most part the parents and teachers blogs supplied information relevent to the election as well as ongoing updates on events and updates in the MDUSD. I got more information from these sites that I did from any mailing list or newsletter sent out by the MDUSD itself. But if I wanted and edgier take on the Mt. Diablo School Board I would spend a few minutes on Mister Writers War on Education.

Very opinionated and never watered down. Mister Writer calls it like he sees it. Obviously he’s a writer because he expresses his thoughts online in an eloquent fashion that paints a picture of what he is trying to get across. When the school board was fined over $800,000 by the IRS, he made his opinion very clear and it seemed that only Gary Eberhart was trying to do anything about it. In his blog Mister Writer states his position on Eberhart and Whitmarsh.

I am a parent, first and foremost. Having had a good corporate job and losing that income in order to become a teacher, only to find that teachers, in this district, no more regarded than servants, were serving a master of dubious intent and merit, I decided to add my voice, with my name attached, in order to make my statement. And that statement has always been “change is needed. Fix it!”

People assume that I have always been a supporter of Gary Eberhart. Not so. Like so many people in this district who have neither the time nor the stamina to actually uncover the truth, I never use to look at board agendas, or listen to the meetings. In fact, my first (and only decent principal) told me quite frequently that sadly, to be a teacher, one needed to know the politics of education. She was right.

Based on some of his recent posts, Mister Writer may be going away. I hope it is not so. I think with his other ventures, he will never really go away but his site has been a source of information and humor for a while.

Another one of the most popular local blogs in Concord is Claycord which has information fed to the owner from numerous sources. The updated information is really what keeps people like me coming back on a regular basis.

The anonymous blogger at Claycord made no secret who they endorsed for the MDUSD. Eberhart and Whitmarsh were the subject of many posts. With the readership of Claycord, many people were educated and driven towards the right vote to make for the Mt. Diablo School Board.

Local Blogging makes a difference.

With 6 prominent local blogs all supporting the same candidates it really was easy for me to know who was going to win the seats on the MDUSD Board. After all the votes were tallied, it was obvious. Many people did other research and looked at the candidates in other ways. All the campaigning that Gary and Sherry did was amazing and I was reinforced by driving to work just about every day and seeing Gary holding his sign on a corner. Between the low tech campaigning and the high tech boost, was there really ever any question?

Local blogs can be used for many things from providing information to promotion of a group or event. I’ve been writing/blogging for a long time and I’ve seen major decisions made based on what’s written online. I have a theory that Twitter helped elect President Obama. In the next set of elections, I predict that more blogs will be created by the candidates to support their causes. I think that the support Gary Eberhart and Sherry Whitmarsh got from the local blogging community is really what helped catapult their status amung voters.

Update: Bill over at Halfway to Concord pointed something out in the comments. Besides having the support of the local blogging community in Concord, they had a Facebook support team of over 190 people as well.

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Eco-Friendly Divas Plant Roots on MuseGreen

Concord Blogger — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 08:18:44 +0000

Most people are concern about the environment. The National Green Machine is gaining steam and people on a local level are trying to inflict change. Some support Green initiatives by recycling more others by promoting alternative energies. The Divas over at MuseGreen take it a few steps further by running a blog sharing and discussing all things GREEN.

MuseGreen was started by five ladies that wanted to do more than just talk about ways to make the Earth a better place. MuseGreen is based out of Walnut Creek Ca. and uses the power of the internet and social media tools like Twitter to put a little bit of green all over the world.

Green Games

Play games on the site to have trees planted for real. Sow much for the planet!
Warm up those brain cells and do something great for the planet at the same time! For every 10 questions you answer correctly, we’ll plant a tree on your behalf. Login and we’ll keep your all time score!

Green Shopping

MuseGreen’s green shopping experience donates 2% of all proceeds to our hand-chosen environmental causes.

Now, of course, they’d love everybody to choose from their selection of eco-friendly, organic products, but we also know that life’s not always like that and sometimes that’s just not possible. So, whatever you buy through their store, green or otherwise, will result in a donation back to planet. They hope that this will also help to offset the carbon footprint of the products you purchase.

Your shopping will help support some great causes.

Green Writing Challenge

The MuseGreen Student Writing Challenge; the aim of which is to solicit input from our youth on critical environmental issues.

The MuseGreen Team would like:

to hear directly from students themselves since, let’s face it, they sometimes have the best ideas!
to know what they think and how they feel about issues such as climate change, renewable energy sources and sustainable living. Do they feel the environmental issues discussed in school and in the news are real problems or just a lot of hype? Do they see things in their lives that make them want to spring into action? Do they have good ideas for solutions to these problems or practical tips for changing behavior?
students to use their writing skills in a real world application that also makes use of their understanding of environmental issues. Each week, one student’s work will be selected to be published on MuseGreen.com. Not only will their work be seen by thousands but it will also look great on future resumes!

Students are always getting assignments from their English teachers to pick a topic and write about it. Now you don’t need to rack that brain of yours for something to write about. Just write something about how you feel about the environment and what you would do to improve it and kill two birds with one stone. Get an A+ on your paper and get featured at MuseGreen for your outstanding work. If you tell your teacher you wrote it for MuseGreen, you have a much better chance at that A+ since you are serving a better cause.

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Eberhart and Whitmarsh out in force

Concord Blogger — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:02:25 +0000

Gary Eberhart and Sherry Whitmash have gathered a very large crowd around Concord. I saw groups gathered at two locations around the city. I expected to see some supporters but they have about 100-150 people holding signs supporting the candidates. They have my vote.

This is a quick picture I took with my cell phone. The quality sucks but you can see the people.

Most Commented Posts

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Concord Crime Reports - Where’s the proof?

Concord Blogger — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:29:05 +0000

I don’t think I want to get into the habit of dissecting other bloggers posts but I read one recently that really got me scratching my head. Over at a popular Concord blog Claycord there was a “press release” stating that Concord crime was declining. Immediately something caught my eye about this “Press Release”from the Concord Police Department.

If this was a real “Press Release” that Claycord had gotten a hold of then why is there an obvious page break in it? I think that this was not an actual press release but just some information that somehow was sent around and he decided to add the Concord Police logo for effect. I have searched far and wide for a copy of this press release and if it exists online then even the great power of Google can’t see it regardless of what searches I ran.

If crime in Concord is really declining even with all the news of bank robberies and drive-bys then I guess I can sleep better at night. I would think that local media not just blogs would be highlighting this information as well. Even the CC Times would publish something about this to fill a column up in the paper. Another interesting thing I saw was that this report only covers the first 6 months of 2008 where the numbers for 2007 are for the same time period. The issue with this is the crimes are not all listed if you look at the complete picture of last years crime in Concord and you do the math, something just doesn’t fit. Here are the numbers that I pulled right of the DOJ website. You can see it here.

State	City	Population
Ca	Concord	122,202

Violent crime	492
Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter	3
Forcible rape	13
Robbery	270
Aggravated assault	206
Property crime	4,998
Burglary	816
Larceny-theft	2,970
Motor vehicle theft	1,212
Arson¹	23

Key points from this are that this report IS the real deal. The types of crimes shown through the DOJ are the ones that should have been in this Press Release. Larceny-Theft is way off unless the second half of 2007 was a time where criminals were going gang busters on the city. Property Crime is not listed on this press release either along with the number of violent crimes.

So the “press release” may be an initial finding but I can’t seem to understand the discrepincies in the data. Maybe new crimes are being reported, maybe this is not really a press release but some communication that was supposed to make the people feel better.

If it is legit, I would like to see where it came from and why certain crimes reported by the UCR are not listed. I think this Press Release, if it is real is only highlighting the positives and keeping out the crimes that have risen this year.

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Ethanol Fuel Now Available in Concord

Concord Blogger — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:55:09 +0000

Ethanol fuel is ethanol (ethyl alcohol), the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. It can be used as a fuel, mainly as a biofuel alternative to gasoline, and is widely used in cars in Brazil. Because it is easy to manufacture and process and can be made from very common crops such as sugar cane and corn, it is an increasingly common alternative to gasoline in some parts of the world.

California only has five of these stations, including the new one at Highway 4 and Willow Pass Road.

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Drive-by Shooting in Concord

Concord Blogger — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:33:47 +0000

Last week there was news about a drive-by shooting in Concord. I don’t hear about too many of these, in fact this is the first I know of in Concord. I hope this isn’t just more escalation in the gang violence in the city but with the growing crime in general is enough to make me sleep with one eye open at night. I don’t live in an area of Concord that would be considered high crime but I guess you never really know. Here is some information on the drive-by shooting that happened in Concord.

A 16-year-old Concord boy who was shot three times early Monday morning in a drive-by shooting is expected to survive his injuries, Concord police Lt. Andrew Gartner said.

Police received a call reporting a shooting shortly after midnight Monday at Grant Street and Olivera Road, near Hillcrest Park.

When officers arrived, they found the victim with gunshot wounds to his left wrist, his right shoulder and possibly his left shoulder, Gartner said.
According to witnesses, the boy had been walking along the street with some friends when a vehicle drove by and the right front passenger shouted out the window, asking if they “bang,” Gartner said. The witness then heard gunshots. - CBS 5

The area of the shooting is not a great area but I can think of a couple other places in the city that are worse. The park is a place where local kids will hang out after dark and party and sometimes get into fights. Shootings are rare there but they have happened, just nothing that has been described as a drive-by.

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