Stories you shouldn’t miss:
1. The owners of the Oakland A’s, who have been publicly pushing for a ten-year lease extension at the Oakland Coliseum, rejected such an offer last night from the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority, the Chron and Trib$ report. It’s not clear why the A’s ownership turned down the deal — details of what each side wants in a lease extension remain confidential. East Bay officials, however, said they disclosed the details of their offer to Major League Baseball.
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2. Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates is proposing that several East Bay cities along the east shore corridor join together to raise the minimum wage to $13.11 by 2018 so that businesses in some cities won’t have an advantage over those in neighboring communities with higher wages, Berkeleyside reports. Under Bates’ plan, Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, Albany, and El Cerrito would all raise their minimum wage steadily over the next four years.
3. The Oakland Raiders missed a deadline Monday to submit a letter of intent of the team’s interest in building a new stadium as part of Oakland’s Coliseum City project, the Trib$ reports. The Raiders had been considered the lead anchor of the project, because they’re the only sports team in Oakland that has not said it wants to leave town.
4. The East Bay MUD board voted to tap freshwater supplies from the Sacramento River for the first time, because of the historic drought, rather than force area residents to ration water, the CoCo Times$ reports. The board also is asking residents to continue to voluntarily cut their water consumption by 10 percent.
5. The UC Board of Regents voted to pay $10 million to a whistleblower and former chief surgeon at UCLA, who was fired after he alleged that university doctors had been taking improper payments from the private medical industry, the LA Times$ reports.
6. And a major wetlands restoration project at Breuner Marsh on the Richmond shoreline broke ground yesterday, the CoCo Times$ reports.
$ = news stories that may require payment to read.
