The Berkeley City Council adopted its two year-biennial budget Tuesday night, with the caveat—now becoming the standard refrain of the day—that the results of currently ongoing state budget action will mean that Berkeley will be tinkering with its finances into the fall. Since no one expects that the results of the Sacramento deliberations will be more money going back to local governments in California, this will mean that Berkeley’s budget adjustments will either be cutbacks or revenue increases, or some combination of the two. -more-

The Berkeley City Council took significantly more than a symbolic stand against international sweatshop labor Tuesday night, approving a Sweatshop Free Ordinance to limit the amount of city money going to companies that exploit their labor. -more-

Asa Dodsworth faces an ever-mounting pile of potential fines from the City of Berkeley. His crime? He says it’s front-yard gardening. -more-

In nearby Richmond, Garden Club activist Jayma Brown had raised concerns with city officials after she was told during a monthly neighborhood council meeting that the city had banned front-yard gardens. -more-

A pastor, a couple of community organizers and a group of parents, educators and students met at The Way Christian Center in Berkeley recently to discuss plans for a new charter school in the city. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education will seek input from Berkeley High School before crafting any policy seeking to reform its School Governance Council. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education approved more budget reductions at a board meeting Wednesday in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s May revision of the state budget. -more-

In a push to reduce drug and alcohol use by Berkeley’s public school students, the Berkeley Unified School District will collaborate with the City of Berkeley government to form a committee by September to address the issue. -more-

The City of Berkeley began the formal process this week of what could be a decade-long or longer multi-million dollar environmental upgrade of the Aquatic Park bayside tidal pool. -more-

The Bevatron, at least large parts of it, will be reincarnated, in concrete form—its concrete ground back to powder and used for new construction. -more-

Although no one is giving any guarantees just yet, there appears to be a strong possibility that three Alameda County cities will have the opportunity to implement a ranked-choice voting system for the municipal 2010 elections. -more-

A $28.4 million chunk of federal money is coming to Albany’s U.S. Department of Agriculture Western Regional Re-search Center at 800 Buchanan St. -more-

Two of BART’s three largest unions have voted to authorize a strike, but BART spokesman Linton Johnson said Wednesday, June 24, that “it’s outrageous to even talk about a strike in these economic times.” -more-

One of two men accused of murder for the 2006 death of a man who succumbed to a gunshot wound shortly after stumbling to the door of a University of California at Berkeley sorority house has pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, a prosecutor said Friday, June 19. -more-

CityCentric Investments will ask the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board June 25, Thursday, to modify a use permit to change a previously approved mixed-use building in West Berkeley into an affordable senior housing project. -more-

To an old urban designer, the best view of Oakland’s new Roman Catholic Cathedral is from the raised edge of the wooded park that runs along Grand Avenue between Harrison and Children’s Fairyland at Grand and Bellevue. Looking under big trees across the narrow northerly arm of Lake Merritt, you’ll notice a remarkable transformation. Dominating the lake-edge since 1970, the 27-story Ordway Building, Kaiser’s second tower, is now suddenly humanized by the low spreading social complex of a new Catholic center, whose novel sanctuary, a glassy oval crown, completes the northerly end of a striking ensemble. -more-

News from Iran this week prompts reflections on the utility of violence as a solution to problems and questions about the ability of humans to govern themselves. On the first topic, it’s been all too easy to contemplate a simple solution to perceived potential threats if Iran ever managed to develop nuclear weapons: a pre-emptive attack. But after the world has seen a large percentage of Iranian citizens take to the street to protest what looked to them like a rigged election which their side might actually have won, it’s going to be hard to view Iran as a monolith which can be ethically stopped by broad military action. It seems that many Iranians are prisoners of their government and therefore can’t be held collectively responsible for, e.g., President Ahmadinejad’s intemperate statements about the Holocaust. -more-

Dr. Helen Caldicott, the noted author and world acclaimed anti-nuclear activist, will speak in Berkeley this Saturday, June 27, 2009, 7:30 p.m., at a benefit to support SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense) in its legal challenge of the City Council’s waiver of the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act (NFBA) for the Berkeley Public Library. -more-

Stop four deaths in California every day? Senator Loni Hancock could do that with a simple vote in the Senate Public Safety Committee. -more-

Steven Falk, the city manager of Lafayette, said in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article, “The state is broke, counties are broke and cities are broke.” He went on to say “Public pensions are unsustainable in the current form.” -more-

After the dust has settled, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will again be the president of of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Why and how was he re-elected president? Because he was approved once again by Iran’s Guardian Council as a candidate for the nation’s highest office. The council consists of six Islamic jurists appointed by the Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and six from the Majlis, Iran’s popularly elected parliament. They screen presidential candidates through background checks and a detailed written examination. Very few pass the test. Since 2004, the council has routinely rejected reform candidates. If there was fraud in the recent election, it occurred much before the election itself. -more-

The City of Berkeley’s community noise guidelines need an amendment; more than 70 local businesses and residents have signed a petition made necessary by its omission. -more-

An open letter to Robert Fujimoto, the new manager of Monterey Market: -more-

After five months, President Barack Obama’s managerial style has become obvious. He’s focused on his top priorities and he is collaborative and pragmatic; his operating instructions are “never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” This summer, Obama’s leadership will put to the test as he struggles to get Congress to pass comprehensive healthcare legislation. -more-

We seem to be running on parallel tracks on this ongoing discussion of the East Bay’s nagging street violence, like the words from the Longfellow poem: “Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness. So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.” -more-

Another Solstice gone by, another year’s peak passed, another year older, another long half-year of diminishing light. Or, to be jollier about it: the sweet downswing of the seasons, the ripening of all that winter and spring promised. -more-

THURSDAY, JUNE 25 -more-

A man dances salsa in silhouette, then bobs and weaves like a fighter in the ring, backed by a tight piano trio. Lights up; Joe Orrach turns and tells us, “When I was 17, I signed a contract with the U.S. Air Force for the next four years of my life. After three, they decided they had enough. I could’ve told them that after a week!” -more-

When director Mario Gonzales welcomed the audience to Round Belly Theatre Company’s performance last Sunday at West Oakland’s Noodle Factory, offhandedly acknowledging it was Father’s Day, there was some irony: Living Room, billed as an ensemble piece, is more about what keeps the family apart than together, no one more estranged than dear old dad. -more-

Berkeley pianist Daniell Revenaugh remembers, during his student days in the late 1950s at Florida State University, walking at night by a former slave cabin near the campus in Tallahassee, hearing composer Carlisle Floyd, best-known for his nine operas, including Susannah, working on his Sonata for Piano. -more-

In the shady backyard of the Prescott-Joseph Center for Community Enhancement, a grand old Victorian just a few blocks up Peralta Street from West Oakland BART, The Low Bottom Playaz present two short plays, and the actors’ lines as they perform are textured by the rustling of leaves in the breeze at this outdoor venue. -more-

A Midwestern gal takes a bite of the Big Apple, gets her hair bobbed, dances the Charleston in a speakeasy and is busted in a raid; falls for the first ne’er-do-well she meets, instead of the successful boss she’s determined on; evades the toils of White Slavery—and lives happily ever after. -more-

Jack Goes Boating, Bob Glaudini’s play now onstage at the Aurora, is a little bit of a double work-buddies comedy—Jack and Clyde drive limo for Jack’s uncle; Lucy supervises Connie, selling grief seminars in a funeral home phone tank—combined with a couples comedy, though these four are no Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice, much less the lost souls of Carnal Knowledge. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two articles on the Sonoma County town of Glen Ellen. -more-

I have a major pet peeve (well, many major pet peeves, actually) with the building codes. They say far too little about places where people, particularly little people, can fall, and the area in which my knickers get most fully twisted concerns the accessibility of windows. -more-