I had to take a blogging vacation. The job required all of my attention and taking care of the little man is almost a full time job also. I had to change around some priorities and the blog was way down on the list. I thought of just shutting it down but I am still very much interested in whats happening in the area and I think the site has enough readers to keep it up. Work is still crazy for those of you that know me on a personal level, you have heard enough of that. The Mayor of Concord blog should continue and I think between the awesome growth of Claycord and some other new local blogs that have popped up in the area over the past few months, we are becoming a great community of online contributors to the events and news around Concord and surrounding cities. I have a few new posts already drafted and have spent the past couple months putting together new ideas for posts that will be interesting for the readers. Thanks again for your support and I look forward to getting some new posts up in the weeks to come.

I didn't know that every neighborhood in Concord had their own newsletter. Well, maybe not every neighborhood does, but Dana Estates is special then. Oct. 28th there will be a General Meeting for the residence and a guest speaker Edi Birsan (He's a local blog reader and suppporter) will be talking about the history of radiological activities at the Concord Naval Weapons Station and if we have anything to worry about. If you live in Dana Estates, they are looking for some help in the form of a new webmaster for DANAESTATES.ORG. As you can see from the current site, it could use a good face-lift. Do other areas of Concord have committees like this? Also they are collecting donations for the Toys for Tots program. You can drop off the donation at the General Meeting or at Mitchell's Contra Costa Travel at 2227 Willow Pass Rd.

I have had a Facebook profile for a few months. I have the link on the right sidebar but other than that I haven't said much about it. I feel like I live on Facebook. I communicate with most of my frinds and family from there. Well..that and Twitter. I set up the fan page for the Mayor of Concord to share local news with people on Facebook that may not have heard about this site. Why a fan page? Part of the reason was just to expand the reach of the site. I was only posting links to my blog then realized I could do even more than that and share other local stories from new sites and other local blogs. I think that doing this gives my 'fans' interesting stuff to read even if it's not on this blog. You can contribute. One of the best parts of having the fan page on Facebook is that anyone can add links, pictures or updates to the page.I have got many emails from people asking for a way to add more 'social' in my social media. This is a step in the right direction. If your organization is holding a fundraiser, post a link on ...

I was going through my morning routine and fell into a new local blog in Concord. Straight Outta Concord looks like it was started back in April based on the first post. The site is described as. "This blog is created as a radical alternative to the number of moderate to conservative blogs from the concord area. for better or worse, the interwebs have become an important part of our society, and we feel the need to represent our points of view on these interwebs. as we all know, if it isnt on the interwebs it doesnt exist." Some of their posts may be a bit edgy from some of the readers but it's great to see more local blogs popping up.

Head over to the Myrtle Drive blog and read the most recent post. The blogger's attention was called to a strange car in front of their house yesterday with the people inside snorting drugs in the front seat. I envy the fact that they have external camera on their house and capture stuff like this on video. There are always going to be drug users and doing the hardcore crap like meth or coke or whatever they were doing is just a ruined life in the making. What I don't understand is why people would pull into a random neighborhood in front of a strange house and o this in full view of people. Are they looking to get caught? On a side note, I'm not sure about the timing but could this be the same SUV involved in the fatal Pleasant Hill Crash yesterday?

Just six months after hitting the hyperlocal blog scene, Walnut Creek blogger "Dub C" is calling it quits. The blog started in January focused on news and events around Walnut Creek and quickly gained steam with the community. Due to "...commitments of real life have taken center stage and squeezed out my blogging time for the foreseeable future." It was nice to have a couple blogs in Walnut creek to check into for local news. Now we are down to one. Thank you Dub C for the time you put into the site and I look forward to the time you can get back infront of the computer and spread some information.

The Contra Costa County Water District has a new post on their blog (yes they have a blog) offering coupons for mulch along with participating companies in the area that you can visit and pick up this water conscious landscaping topsoil. The Benefits of Mulch • Mulching is essential to the survival of your landscape during a drought. Mulch will reduce the amount of water that evaporates from your soil, greatly reducing your need to water your plants. • Mulch improves the quality of your soil by breaking up clay and allowing better water and air movement through the soil. Mulch provides nutrients to sandy soil and improves its ability to hold water. • Mulch acts as an insulating layer on top of soil, keeping it cooler in the summer. Roots like that! • Mulch keeps weeds down, and the weeds that do grow are much easier to pull. Gardeners like that!

As I mentioned in the last post, I have been working on a new section of the site that took a bit longer to build than I first anticipated. I wanted to do something for the businesses of Concord that will highlight their hard work and get them in front of the community in a different way. It may be a bit premature since I'm not completely done with it but I couldn't contain myself any longer. I strongly believe that businesses are what keeps a city strong. You can tell a lot about a city by the number and types of businesses that take up shop there. The problem with that is that many small businesses starting out in a city have a difficult time getting the exposure they need to grow and thrive. Typically bigger businesses take all the spotlight and the small businesses struggle. With the internet being the primary source people find information, many smaller businesses can not keep up with larger ones in amounts of exposure. I wanted to help change that on some level. I have a couple businesses in the area that support the blog in different ways. I was getting emails from other businesses ...

Last week I mentioned being interviewed for an upcoming article on the Contra Costa Times. I got an email today that the article by Theresa Harrington who covers the Mt. Diablo school district was printed and available online. Be sure to go check it out. There are a bunch of comments from other local bloggers also. Thank you Theresa for speaking with me about the topic and for putting out the article on local blogs.

I was exchanging emails last night with a Concord resident and they brought up a great idea. Allowing people to write posts for the blog on topics they feel are important. I had brought up guest postings in the past and wanted to open the floor again to my new readers. There are so many people in Concord that have something to say and I think that giving anyone a chance to write their views, opinions and share information with others is an important thing to offer. I have gotten emails in the past with news and links to stories that people wanted shared through the site and I have posted them in the past but never in a very formal way. Now I want to make a formal announcement that anyone in the area that wants to give a guest post for the Mayor of Concord blog can now do so. Be a Voice for Concord Is there something you want to say? Maybe there is an issue you want to have an open discussion about online to see what other people are thinking. Are you a student that wants to give your opinion of the current situation? Anything (almost) is fair ...

I was looking for the article that I was interviewed for along with Claycord and other local blogs about how local blogging plays a part in keeping people informed. I figured the article was meant to show how a local blog can help fill the gap with other news a typical paper seems necessary to print. I was emailed a link to a very recent article on the Contra Costa Times that may shed some additional light on this. The article is titled Unfair reporting on MDUSD and here is a snippet from it. I have been a Mt. Diablo school district secretary since 2008 and a parent of children in this district since 1991. I am very concerned about the quality of "reporting" by the Times with regard to school district issues. I attend most of the board meetings. Anyone with a basic knowledge of critical thinking who hears the entire meeting and then reads the newspaper article the next day will notice the logical fallacies and cherry-picked quotes taken out of context or placed for maximum negative effect against the superintendent or the district. This does nothing to promote the public's right to know, but it does serve to promote a ...

I just got off the phone with Theresa Harrington from the Contra Costa Times. She is putting together a story about the Mt. Diablo School District and how local blogging plays a part. It was a good call. We spoke for about 30 minutes and talked about why people read local blogs, how a local blog can get the attention from the school board, and if local blogging really makes a difference. My thoughts are that media is so enamored with stories every day and there are much bigger stories to write about like the budget crisis that the local blogs fill the gap. The MDUSD blog covers a lot, the Monday memos give some insight but these are public officials and they have to toe the line with many issues. A local blog as no line to toe and since we have a platform to write about our opinions it makes for a great conversation. We spent some time talking about the other blogs in Concord and discussing my thoughts on them. Over all, it was a nice conversation and I'm looking forward to the article which should be published on Sunday. Theresa is going to reach out to the other ...

I was logged in and was notified that I got a hit from a new site and saw that there is a new local blog on the scene that covers Oakley and Brentwood. Broakley.com is the local news source for Brentwood and Oakley.It was just hitting the ground running.a matter of time before a local blog surfaced that covered that area and I am glad to see that they are. The first post is dated Jan. 20th and since then King Mogey has already kept a stead amount of posts on what's happening in the area. Keep up the great work King Mogey. The East Bay may be headed to the most locally blogged about area in Northern California. Head over to Broakley.com.

I've been planning on writing about Twitter and BART for a while so I might as well throw it out now. Twitter is a great communication tool. I use Twitter as Concord Blogger and talk with other people in the area as well as put out top news stories from different news sources in the East Bay. I get 95% of my news from agencies on Twitter. I write about Twitter a lot on my other blog. Not very often that I get to talk about it in the context of Concord but that may be changing. BART has a profile on Twitter that I follow. They notify people of BART delays and other information on a very regular basis. I don't even ride BART but I read every update they send out just to see whats going on. Our favorite news blogger Brittney Gilbert of CBS Eye on Blogs had uploaded a picture she took with her phone while on the BART train. by brittney BART may be having problems but they are doing a good job keeping people updated on delays and other information about their service. If you have a profile on Twitter I would like to follow your updates. I'm Concord_Blogger ...

I made it to the MDUSD District office before they closed. I had a great conversation with Lori Amenta the Assistant to the District General Council. Lori is working hard to bring donations in for these kids and explained she is happy to work longer hours and through lunch breaks to get things done for HOPE. I dropped off my donation which they were thankful for and I got to hear some more stories about kids in Concord and surounding cities that are less fortunate than us. Trust me, if you are reading this blog then there is a good chance you have more than most of these kids. The story in the Contra Costa Times really pulled my heart strings. Maybe that's melodramatic but the article did touch me enough to do something about it. I wasn't always the Mayor of Concord, I remember growing up with financial problems and I have made every effort to make sure my family and I don't have to worry about food on the table or a roof over our heads. As I mentioned in the previous post about homeless students, kids should not be going without food and from the stories I heard ...