Signs of something very wrong in the world--and in Suburbia? 73-year-old man stabbed in Clayton post office Saturday

A Clayton man who just celebrated his 73rd birthday suffered fatal stab wounds while visiting Clayton's main post office Saturday morning.

A suspect, identified by the Contra Costa Times as Shannon Bradley Moore, 37, of Concord, is in custody in the stabbing death of Raymond Casso. The attack occurred in the normal tranquil, low-crime city of Clayton. You can view a photo of the victim at the local blogging site, Claycord.com.

Casso was attacked at the post office at 6150 Center Street at 11 a.m. for reasons that are either unknown or for which the police are withholding comment. The assailant, chased by witnesses, fled across the street to Ed's Mudville Grill, where he was arrested.

Claycord.com says an off-duty Clayton police officer and another person helped capture the suspect. Claycord.com, which has been posting frequent updates about the case throughout the day, says that this slaying is the first to occur in Clayton since 1995.

Update Sunday morning: Mister Writer, another blogging friend, knew Casso through the Clayton Valley Concord Sunrise Rotary Club and has some nice words to say about this always jovial, easy-going man and the insanity that occurred in Clayton Saturday.

Neiman Marcus meeting Thursday night? How did it go?

Dear readers,
I had wanted to attend Thursday night's community meeting hosted by Walnut Creek regarding the Neiman Marcus proposal. The city was going to provide a summary of community comments that were received at two community workshops held on January 31 and February 11.

But alas, I couldn't get to the meeting. A combination of work deadline and child care issues kept me home. The city's Planning Commission will hold a public hearing this coming Thursday on the new Neiman Marcus proposal , at which the developer, Broadway Plaza owner Macerich, will share comments from those public workshops.

The Commission will listen to those comments, hear how and if Macerich plans to address them, and continue the matter until April 2, at which time the Commission will make a recommendation to the City Council on whether to allow General Plan and Zoning Map amendments necessary for the current proposal to go forward.

I'm also interested to hear from anyone who attended those workshops.

The reason: After I posted this, "After WC city leaders and Broadway Plaza (finally) listen to what people have to say, they receive more favorable feedback on Neiman Marcus, a reader complained about the format of the workshops, saying they actually limited honest, open feedback, and were perhaps designed to elicit positive response to the project.

Thoughts anyone?

East Bay unemployment at highest level in nearly 20 years

The state's unemployment rate rose to 10.1 percent this week, with unemployment in Alameda and Contra Costa counties at 9.2 percent. That’s way up from about 5 percent a year ago.

In all, close to 120,000 people in the East Bay were jobless in January--72,000 in Alameda and 48,000 in Contra Costa, according to the state Employment Development Department. A spokesman for the department told the San Francisco Chronicle that the East Bay's current unemployment rate is the highest since 1990.

But here is some consolation, as if we can find any at this point. We’re nowhere near as bad off as places like Imperial County, way in the furthest southeast corner of the state, where the unemployment rate is at 24 percent: or Colusa County, northwest of Sacramento where the rate is at 26 percent.

Which counties are faring the best in these tough times? Ever-blessed Marin County has the state lowest unemployment rate at 6.6 percent, followed not too far behind by San Mateo (7.2 percent) and San Francisco (8 percent) counties.

The state this week put California's rate even higher, at 10.1 percent. East Bay unemployment, meanwhile, hovers above 9 percent — with 140,000 unemployed workers — up from just over 5 percent a year ago. In San Mateo County, January unemployment stood at 7.2 percent,

DA declines to file charges in alleged St. Mary's rape case

Someone claiming to be a St. Mary's College student and a suspect in the alleged rape of another St. Mary’s student posted on this blog, proclaiming his innocence:

“I am being accused of a crime I didn’t commit,” wrote the poster, who identified himself as Blake Johnson, the St. Mary’s sophomore whom police had arrested last Friday on suspicion of rape. “I want scream my innocence from the top of Mt. Everest and tell the world.”

You don’t see many recently arrested crime suspects protesting their innocence so vehemently and publicly (because they get lawyers who tell them to keep their mouths shut). This comment certainly got my attention, especially when Johnson (or the person claiming to be Johnson) said his goal was not to persuade, but “to express my anguish in these hard times.” He also spoke of the “undeserved” pain and suffering his family his going through.

It turns out that Johnson (or the person posting and claiming to be Johnson) might have a point in protesting his innocence.

According to the Contra Costa Times, the District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges against Johnson and sent the case back to police for further investigation.

Moraga acting police Chief Robert Priebe says the case is still “active.”

Johnson was arrested and booked into County Jail in Martinez, but he immediately posted $100,000 bail and was released. Police and college officials say the rape occurred January 24 at an on-campus residence and involved a woman who was also a student at the college. The woman identified Johnson as her attacker, leading to his arrest.

We don’t know the circumstances of the case. Did it involve two acquaintances? Is it a he said/she said thing? Did the woman properly identify the man she says assaulted her?

I posted a response to Johnson saying that I hope the truth comes out, and, if he is, in fact, innocent, that he will be exonerated.

Rats! Confirmed at WC's Century movie theater

The Contra Costa Health Services department inspectors came, and they found evidence, in the form of droppings, that rats had been visiting the Century 14 movie theater, the Contra Costa Times reported.

But inspectors found no evidence that rodents had been in the food services area, which is good news for us popcorn munchers, as well as for the theater. Had inspectors detected the vermins' presence in the food service area, the theater would have had to close immediately. The inspectors also didn't personally see any rats during their visit.

The inspection was prompted by 10 complaints the department received about the theater, plus a story in the Times last week about some movie goers seeing cat-sized rats while watching Revolutionary Road.

The inspectors gave management a list of violations that they must correct before another inspection Tuesday.

Big Ugly Houses, Chapter 6: Tarp House, a Metaphor for our Times

No, not TARP, as in Troubled Asset Relief Program—you know, that US government program to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions.

We’re literally talking tarp, as in the four varying-sized lengths of black, plastic tarp that drape down the steep slope behind this very big house on top of a ridge in Walnut Creek. Actually that’s what this house has instead of a back yard: tarp, tarp, tarp, and tarp. The sheets of tarp cover the steep areas of bald dirt and gullies that get muddy and slippery when it rains, as those areas have with the storms of the past couple weeks.

The owners unfurled the tarp several years ago at least, and they haven’t taken it down since. They leave it up all year, even during the long dry months of summer.

They apparently had the money to buy this Big Ugly House, no doubt for a million or two or three, but they don’t have the money to reduce the risk of their house sliding down the hill. Or, the house was built in such a way and in such an unstable location that it is beyond help.

If this house tumbles down the hill, it and all its mass will land in the playing field of a local elementary school.

With the rains, it looks like the owners have propped sandbags up on the hill, on top of the tarp, to hold the sheets in place. Let’s hope those sandbags do the trick.

I could go on about how this house, perhaps more than others I’ve featured so far in Big, Ugly Houses, is a metaphor for our strange, shifting times. You get it, don’t you? A big house that someone bought with ideas of grand, suburban living (and with spectacular central Contra Costa and Mount Diablo views). But a house that sadly, for the homeowners and for the rest of us, was constructed on apparently unstable ground.

Obviously, this house is a literal representation of all those homes across America that people bought with risky loans, the shaky foundation that helped bring about our economic crisis and the creation of more government programs with weird-sounding acronyms like TARP.

Walnut Creek schools budget news: It’s bad but not THAT bad

Or rather, it’s not as awful as it could be. That’s the news that a group of parents received this past week from Walnut Creek School District Superintendent Patricia Wool. She was holding one of her series of meetings with parents. In the meeting with parents at my son’s elementary school, she had fresh information regarding the school’s budget.

This was in the wake of legislators signing off on the state budget the week before and figures coming in regarding how much Walnut Creek schools would receive in federal stimulus money. In fact, Wool said these numbers were so hot off the presses, they came across her desk as recently as last Monday, and there was still much finessing to work out.

Essentially, she expects that the 3,200-student school district will have to send out layoff notices to 15-23 of the district’s 175 teachers by March 15. Wool hopes to bring back a fair share of those teachers once budget and enrollment numbers are finalized this summer; it’s just that the district, legally, is required to give teachers notice by March 15.

As for the projected spending cuts, the district, which serves five elementary and one middle school, will look at cutting back on spending anywhere this year from $500,000 to $1 million.

The $1 million figure has to do with what the district should possibly cut in order to be conservative over the next two to three years, what with the uncertainty over the state budget and the national economy, and about whether the district can renew its $82 parcel tax, which expires June 2011. The big question is whether the district should attempt to raise the amount of that parcel tax, or keep it as it is and go for a renewal.

Would voters owning property in the district go along with the parcel tax as it, or even agree to an increase, enough to give it a two-thirds majority vote, as required by law.

In the 2007-08 school year, the district had to trim $1.6 million from its $26 million budget. For the 2008-09 year, the district expected to lose up to $800,000 in state funding, but that number has been reduced to $600,000, 3 percent less than the expected 16 percent. “I’ll take all of the sunshine we’re going to get,” Wool said. “It’s not as horrible as we thought.”

As for federal money, the district will receive total of $749,000over the next two years. That money must be directed to students eligible for Title 1A benefits and for special education. Although this money is directed to certain students and programs, it helps the district overall because it means the district has less it needs to shift from its general fund to cover Title 1A and special education expenses, Wool said.

As part of making the cuts, the district will look at the possibility of increasing class sizes in the kindergarten through third grades, but not by too many children per grade. The district also hopes to maintain the number of classes available for the fifth grades and keep the number of students in the core classes at Walnut Creek Intermediate at 26 students.

DA Robert Kochly, threatening dire public safety consequences if forced to cut staff, was earlier found to be "double dipping."

So, it’s not just Wall Street executives, like those at Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, who have enjoyed lucrative job perks while our national economy sinks into crisis. So have top public sector executives in Contra Costa County. And that includes Robert Kochly, who was much quoted in the past two days saying his office would have to stop prosecuting DUIs, petty thefts, and other misdemeanors if he had to slash his budget by $4.1 million.

Kochly said he would have to lay off 33 attorneys—a third of his staff. “If this is how much of a cut I have to take, I will no longer be able to prosecute misdemeanors — that's firm," Kochly said, according to the Contra Costa Times. "Something has to be done so the whole criminal justice system doesn't disintegrate."

That’s a pretty alarming thing to be saying, and it sure got him lots of attention by news organizations and blogs, like this one.

Yes, I think it would be very unfortunate if our current state budget crisis forced Kochly to lay off so many attorneys. I don’t disagree with some readers who say these attorneys work hard and do important work. I also think it’s unfortunate that the Sheriff’s Department might have to eliminate the jobs of 75 deputies, or that the county had to cut the positions of social service workers who handle elder and child abuse cases. And the list goes on...

Outside of Contra Costa County’s government, school districts in the area are desperately scrambling to deal with state budget cuts and ways to protect the jobs of teachers. Outside the public sector, companies big and small in our area are fighting for survival. The San Francisco Chronicle might close. The rolls of the unemployed are growing, here in the East Bay, in the Bay Area, in the state, around the country.

Mr. Kochly, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a national emergency. And even though people in your office perform a valuable public service, it doesn’t serve your cause well when you effectively stamp your foot and make headline-grabbing threats. Your statements tell the public that you and your office are hurting the most of everyone and that you and your office provide the most vital services of any government agency.

I would have expected more honorable behavior from our local government leaders right now, at all government levels, and that includes you. It would renew the public's sense of faith in our ability to get through this crisis if our leaders showed a willingness to work together to find solutions that cause the least disruption to public services across the board.

Silly me. Expecting more noble, honorable behavior from our county's top prosecutor, our District Attorney--instead of him and the District Attorney’s Association crying mine, mine, mine.

This is all even more unseemly coming from Kochly, considering this November 2008 Contra Costa Times report that a reader alerted me to.

In this report, columnist Daniel Borenstein revealed the fact that Kochly was one of three elected Contra Costa officials who are “double-dipping.” That is “drawing six-figure retirement checks,” on top of the salaries and health benefits they earn from their elected positions. The others are Sheriff Warren Rupf and Auditor Steven Ybarra.

Borenstein said the practice is legal, but “it shouldn’t be. The large compensations highlight the problems with the state rules that allow the simultaneous payments.”

Kochly earned $239,000 in salary and benefits “last year,” which would be 2007, if Borenstein was writing this in November 2008. That $239,000 doesn’t include his annual pension of $165,000, which he earned from working for the county for much of his professional career and then retiring before seeking the elected office of District Attorney. His DA’s salary, plus his pension, made for a yearly total of at least $404,000.

According to Borenstein, Rupf earned $265,000 in salary and benefits. With $198,000 in annual pension, that brought his yearly earnings to a total of at least $454,000. Auditor Stephen Ybarra earned $208,000 in salary and benefits. Adding in his annual pension, currently about $132,000, that makes for a yearly total of at least $340,000.

Borenstein added: “Once elected to their current positions, they had the option to keep contributing to their pensions like other county employees or start receiving payments. The pensions are based on three factors: years of service, average of the 12 months of the highest salary, and age when the pension payments began.”

Borenstein noted that most retirement plans in the private sector require the worker to terminate employment before drawing a pension. But not in the public sector. Here's Borenstein’s solution, which makes sense to me and probably to a lot of other people: “Public-sector employees, whether or not they are elected officials, should choose between retirement and working. Put another way, pensions should be for people who are really retired.”

So, unless Kochly has stopped his albeit legal double-dipping practices since Borenstein’s column appeared, he might want to tone down his whining. And, as a couple readers suggested, why couldn't he and his top-paid attorneys agree to a temporary pay cut in order to save the jobs of some of their co-workers. Kochly looks like he could afford it.

Police looking for couple who robbed women of their purses and cell phone early Sunday

Police are looking for a man and woman who robbed a pair of women as they walked to their car after leaving the Liquid Nightclub early Sunday morning.

According to police, at about 1:10 a.m., a Hispanic female in her early 20s approached two women as they were getting in their car on Carlback Avenue, near the nightclub on Arroyo Drive.

The female robber asked one of the victims for a cigarette. When the woman reached into her purse, the female robber brandished a knife and grabbed the woman's purse. The robber ran to a waiting car and got into the passenger seat.

The second victim, showing some feistiness--or foolishness--approached the driver's side of that car. In the driver's seat was robber no. 2: a Hispanic male in his 20s. The second victim demanded her friend's purse back. The male robber reached out and grabbed her purse and cell phone, then sped away.

Police arrived and searched the area but with no luck.

Anyone with information on this robbery should call the Walnut Creek Police Department at: (925) 943-5844