The City Council declined to confirm Ada Chan’s controversial appointment to the Planning Commission. One episode from San Francisco, her opposition to a restaurant in a commercial district before the SF Planning Commission and Board of Appeals, probably struck many of our City Councilmembers as beyond the pale. Restaurants are popular, you know.

The Nomad Café brings Park(ing) Day to the DTO – finally!

In a video interview over at Oakland Focus, SKS principal Paul Stein says, “we studied crime maps and statistics, and downtown Oakland is safer than downtown San Francisco.”

Famed New Urbanist planner Peter Calthorpe formally proposes a Personal Rapid Transit system for Alameda Point connecting to downtown Oakland. The cost estimates are to be submitted today. He compares the system to the one debuting soon at Heathrow Airport, though that is twice as expensive as his PRT projections and didn’t need to overcome messy right-of-way issues. When it opens, it may be the first successful example of this decades-old technology.

A teenage TV star pays Rockridge a visit.

Mayor Dellums, under criticism for his poor safety plan and his lack of time at his office, is refusing to release his estimate of the budget deficit, which he claims was completed September First. Here’s what Ignacio had to say about it:

“Every council member is not happy with the fact that we have not received the information yet,” he said. “It’s definitely going to make it more difficult. “… It’s going to be tougher. Every month that passes obviously is more future deficit.”

That’s much nicer than I would have been.

It’s unlikely that the budget deficit numbers can be complete as negotiations with the city employees’ unions are not finished. The city employees don’t think that negotiations are going well (for them), and have complained to their allied elected officials, presumably with the hope that they’ll interfere with the professional negotiating team.

Councilmember Desley Brooks, on the receiving end of a MediaNews editorial today, persuaded her fellow councilmembers to adopt an emergency moratorium on tattoo parlors until health inspections can be required. My heavily tattooed peers think that’s reasonable, as long as the ordinance can be prepared before the moratorium expires in 45 days.

Rebecca Kaplan and Kerry Hamill had one of their first face-offs in Jack London Square. Observers I spoke to agreed that Ms. Hamill came across as kind and capable, but Ms. Kaplan had an impressively thorough grasp of problems and solutions for Oakland. Both open their Uptown campaign headquarters on Broadway this week, but Ms. Kaplan’s is in the DTO proper while Ms. Hamill’s is above Grand Ave, technically in Auto Row, opening her up to unflattering comparisons to a car salesman.

Does your office intend to weigh in since the directive below violates several provisions of the Charter?

It is pretty clear in the charter that city employees are not to report directly to the mayor. The City Administrator “serves at the pleasure of the mayor” but administrators who report to her do not. As one local blogger opined to me, “If I didn’t know that he’s just completely clueless and doesn’t know any better, I’d called it an Octavian style power grab.”

The East Bay Express notes that today is Edgerly’s deadline for resigning, according to leaked reports to Mayor Dellums’ meeting with her.