New fare information available now

 

By Allen Payton

According to the BART website’s East County Extension page, parking permits for the new Antioch Station which is planned to open in May along with the Pittsburg Center Station, will be available for purchase beginning January 16. According to BART Director Joel Keller there will be 1,000 parking spaces and about 124 reserved spaces available. However, he said the reserved permits don’t get you a specific spot, just one of the reserved parking spots in the lot.

1/5/18 UPDATE: On Tuesday, January 16, 2018 at 11 AM, BART will open up the waitlist for passengers that would like to sign up to reserve a monthly permit, which guarantees a parking space until 10am each weekday. There will be a limited number of these permits available and they will be available on a first-come/first-served basis. The cost for the monthly permit will be $105 per month. You will only be charged for the permit if you are offered one and not until the extension officially opens. You may sign up to join when the waitlist at www.Select-a-Spot.com any time after January 16, 2018 at 11am. This website is also available through a link on the www.BART.gov/Parking webpage.

Monthly reserved permits will only be available at the Antioch Station. The Pittsburg Center Station will not offer any reserved parking permits, due to a limited number of parking spaces at the station.

There will be other parking options available as well:

Daily Fee Parking

Both stations will offer daily unreserved parking for a fee of $3. This parking is first-come/first-served in any marked “Fee” lot. Look at signs to the entrance to each section of the lot to determine if it is a “Fee” or “Permit” area. After 10am, any unused Permit spaces are open to all parkers for the Daily Fee.

Permit Parking

The Antioch Station will offer “Permit” parking. Customers with permits will be allowed to park in the designated areas of the parking lot. Permit spaces are available until 10am each weekday morning. After 10am all unused Permit spaces are available to anyone for the Daily Fee. All permits will be available on the www.Select-a-Spot.com website. There also will be a link to that website on www.BART.gov/Parking

Types of Permits:

• Single Day reserved permits will cost $6 a day.
• Airport/Long-Term Permits will cost $7 a day.
• Monthly reserved parking permits will cost $105

New Fares

The BART Board adopted the parking fees and fares at the December 7, 2017 board meeting.

BART is applying its existing distance-based fare structure to calculate fares for the new service.  For the 9.1-mile trip between Pittsburg Bay/Bay Point and Antioch Station, the Clipper fare will be $2.00 (starting Jan 1, 2018 there will be a $.50 surcharge on all paper ticket trips).  All BART discount programs will be applied to these fares.

The table below shows 2018 BART to Antioch sample fares using the adult Clipper card, a fare paid for with a paper ticket will be an additional 50 cents.To view the animation of the Antioch BART Station, click here. To view the animation of the Pittsburg Center BART Station, click here.

By Don Martin II

ANTIOCH, CA…January 1…New Year’s Day meant the Winter Classic was happening Antioch Speedway Monday afternoon. Oval Motorsports began their 21st season of promoting the 3/8-mile clay oval with a special four division program featuring A Modifieds, B Modifieds, Dwarf Cars and Hobby Stocks.

The A Modified Main Event was won by Williston, North Dakota’s Travis Peery. Peery competed at tracks in Medford, Oregon and Yreka, California before moving to North Dakota. He took the lead from Raymond Lindeman and then had a battle with five-time champion Scott Busby during the final 10 laps.

On a restart with 8 laps to go, Busby used the inside line to take the lead from Peery. However, when Chester Kniss rolled in Turn 4, the ensuing red flag negated Busby’s pass. Peery chose the inside on this restart and withstood an outside groove challenge by Busby over the next two laps to hold the lead. As Peery brought it home to victory, 2017 race winner Nick DeCarlo made a late pass on Busby for second. Busby settled for third ahead of reigning track champion Bobby Motts Jr. and Jeff Faulkner.

Fred Ryland took the lead from his wife Patti Ryland early on and won the B Modified Main Event. F. Ryland is the reigning Merced Speedway champion, and he held off reigning Chico and Marysville champion Philip Shelby down the stretch for a well-earned victory. Les Friend finished third ahead of Craig Nieman and Mark Garner.

Reigning champion Mike Corsaro scored an impressive victory in the Dwarf Car Main Event. Two-time champion Danny Wagner led the first half of the race before overheating issues sidelined him. During the second half of the race, Corsaro led with Jack Haverty and Michael Grenert in close pursuit. Grenert made a pass on Haverty for second with six laps to go. Two laps later, Grenert made a slide job move around Corsaro in Turn 2, only to drift too high as Corsaro raced back into the lead down the backstretch. Corsaro scored a hard-fought victory ahead of Grenert, Haverty, Chuck Conover and David Michael Rosa.

The Hobby Stock Main Event featured an entertaining side-by-side battle between Chris Long and Orland Raceway star, Brad Ray. After technical inspections following the race, Ray was disqualified and Long was elevated to first. Orland Raceway champion Jeremy Langenderfer was riding along in third when he spun on the last lap, handing the position to Chris Bennett. Bennett’s third place became second with the disqualification of Ray.

The Antioch Speedway 2018 schedule should be made available shortly. For further information on what’s happening at the track, check out the official website at www.antiochspeedway.com.

 

From the Antioch Police Facebook page

Thank you to our alert downtown business owners who called in on a male subject who had been seen breaking a window of a business on Thursday, Dec. 28. The incident caused over $1,300 in damage, however, the callers provided such an excellent description and location of the suspect that our officers were quickly able to arrest him for vandalism and an outstanding felony warrant.

Contra Costa County Fire Investigators have made an arson arrest in Antioch for several recent fires.

37-year-old José Luis Gomes, a transient living in Antioch, was arrested on December 22, 2017, and was charged yesterday, December 27, 2017, with one count of attempted arson, and four counts of arson to a structure. He is suspected of starting a fire at Paula’s Family Florist shop, and three churches, all in a small geographic area around the A Street corridor.

Other similar fires in the area are still under investigation.

Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over

The Contra Costa Area office of the California Highway Patrol will be conducting a “Sobriety Checkpoint” starting on Thursday, December 28 in an unincorporated area of Contra Costa County.  This safety event will be conducted from 9PM to 3AM.  Traffic volume permitting, all vehicles will be checked, and drivers who are under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs can expect to be arrested.  In addition, officers will conduct driver’s license checks on motorists stopped at the checkpoint.

The event is part of the “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign.  Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In addition to this press release, we will use our CHP-Contra Costa Facebook and CHP-Contra Costa Twitter pages to provide messaging to encourage the use of occupant restraints, adherence to the speed limit, and sober driving.

CCCOE to partner with Contra Costa County in expanding community access television programming focused on local education

The Contra Costa County Office of Education (CCCOE) announced Wednesday that the agency will begin to coordinate local education programming for the Contra Costa County Education Channel, EdTV. CCCOE, with support from Contra Costa Television (CCTV), will be providing more access of quality, local pre-K through College educational programming to residents, students, educators and stakeholders in Contra Costa County.

“We are extremely excited to begin promoting education in Contra Costa County through the power of community access television,” said Karen Sakata, Contra Costa County Superintendent of Schools. “This partnership with the County will enable us to provide a voice and a forum to students, schools, school districts and higher education in our County so they can effectively tell their stories through video.”

EdTV, an Educational Access channel, is a basic cable TV service on Comcast Channel 32 and AT&T U-verse Channel 99, and is available throughout most of Contra Costa County. Currently, EdTV is unavailable to cable subscribers in San Ramon as well as WAVE subscribers. EdTV is one of a handful of PEG (Public, Education and Government) Access Channels that operate in Contra Costa County. All of these channels are carried in Standard Definition. Contra Costa Television (CCTV) currently manages five PEG channels. Online streaming of EdTV and availability of online video on demand will also be explored.

“Contra Costa County is home to nearly 400 K-12 public and private schools, 18 school districts, as well as several institutions of higher education, said Terry Koehne, Chief Communications Officer for the Contra Costa County Office of Education. “Each of these local education agencies would have the ability to publish unique, locally produced content and bulletin board material to EdTV, thus providing direct access to a majority of Contra Costa County residents and businesses; that is our goal.”

The role of the County Office of Education will be to work in collaboration with CCTV to direct the overall content and programming schedule for the channel, approve video and bulletin board content through the development of content submission guidelines, and promote EdTV using all communication tools available.

“It is a natural fit for the County Office of Education to take on this role,” said Chris Verdugo, Interim Director of Communications and Media for Contra Costa County. “We look forward to more quality content that promotes and impacts our local education communities.”

City seeks state grant and loan

By Allen Payton

At their December 12, 2017 meeting the Antioch City Council heard a report about their efforts to build a brackish water desalination plant and obtain the estimated $60 million in funding needed. They also heard about the strong water rights the city has, how the plant will help attract businesses to town and the opportunity to be in the water resale business, to provide long-term funding for operations. See the complete staff report on the agenda item, here: Brackish Water Desal Project ACC Mtg Agenda 121217-2

Project consultant Walter Bishop, the former General Manager of the Contra Costa Water District, provided the background on the plant and efforts to get it funded.

“We have hopes Antioch will be on the state funding list, which is expected to be announced this month,” he said.

“Antioch has one of the strongest, historic water rights in the California Delta,” Bishop continued. “The state has granted twice the amount of water rights than it has water. You have real water. It’s not called paper water. Yours has been adjudicated. Your two sources of water are your particular water right and the Contra Costa Water District’s canal water.”

“The estimated value…is between $70 and 100 million. Your ability for you to exercise your water rights…saves the customers of this city about $4 million per year,” he stated. “The more reliable your supply is the more ability to attract economic activity.”

It’s not going to be a desalination plant, because “Desalination is associated with ocean water. This is brackish water. It’s fifty-time less saline than ocean water. It’s one-third the cost of ocean desalination.”

“Treating Contra Costa Water District water is $1,000/acre feet,” Bishop explained. The estimated cost of treating “brackish water is $920/acre feet.”

It takes treating 7.5 million gallons of brackish water to produce 6.0 million gallons of useable water, he shared.

“The city has to build a new intake and state-of-the-art fish screens,” said Bishop. “There is land at the city’s water treatment plant for a new facility. Plus, Antioch owns 50% capacity rights of the water recycling at the Delta Diablo Sanitation Plant. The plan is to run a new water pipeline from the city’s water plant off Putnam over to Delta Diablo on West 10th Street.”

“With the new pump the city will have a variable speed pump which will be better for the city’s needs,” he added.

“It will help with industrial and other businesses looking to locate here,” Bishop stated. “There is a potential of regional partners with the flexibility to expand the facility. The cost is estimated at $60 million.”

According to the city staff report on the agenda item, so far, the city has received a $1 million loan the “Drinking Water State Revolving Loan program for planning and preliminary design activities.” The city has also applied for a $10 million state grant. In addition, city “staff has met with SWCRB (State Water Resources Control Board) staff and has confirmed the project is eligible for low interest financing up to $50,000,000.”

Final design and permitting for the plant is expected to be completed in 2018 and the project could be online in late 2019 or early 2020, depending on securing funding.

Councilman Tony Tiscareno was first to make a comment about the project report.

“We know that water is the new hot commodity. It can be very expensive,” he said. “I’m getting very excited about this. I thought it was more of a pipe dream than a reality. But it’s turning out to be more of a reality…to protect our water rights. I’ve always been supportive of this. I hope the loan interest rate is something we can do. This is all good stuff.”

Mayor Sean Wright, who represents the city on the Delta Diablo sanitation district board said, “As far as Delta Diablo goes, they were questioning if they had the capacity for all the brine. One of the facilities we plan to build is a holding tank…to time discharges.”

The EIR (Environmental Impact Report) coming forward is for the 6-million-gallon desalination plant. Will a 16-million-gallon desalination plant fit on the site we’re looking at?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Bishop responded.

Wright then asked, “The $50 million shortfall, your confident we can get a low-interest loan from the state?”

“We’d prefer grants,” Bishop replied. “For every $10 million in free money your costs come down $100.”

“We could be looking at the summer of next year for the funding?” Wright asked.

“You’re correct,” Bishop said.

“How are our relationships with the Contra Costa Water District?” asked the mayor.

“I think our relationships over there are fine. I used to be the GM over there,” Bishop shared. “We’re kind of suing the state,” he said referring to the city’s lawsuit over the proposed Delta tunnels “Contra Costa Water is responsible…Your staff was very careful to not name both parties,” meaning CCWD and the state.

Wright then asked, “Is there any potential for revenue generation? If we did a 3P (public private partnership) [will there be] any general fund revenue for the city?”

Bishop shared how “Gary Darling, when he was at Delta Diablo he had a vision of an ultrapure plant. If somebody, a high-tech company…they need ultrapure water, you’re providing the foundation for that. Second, during a drought, when costs go up 25% plus a surcharge, you’ll have the opportunity to have water that other people can use. The price of water during a drought is what the seller sets it at.”

Mayor Pro Tem Lamar Thorpe asked how the city can sell the water to create a revenue source for the city.

“Your water rights allow you to divert 16 million gallons of water a day,” Bishop responded.

The council then voted unanimously to receive and file the report.

By Daniel Borsuk

Contra Costa County Sheriff-Coroner David Livingston has provided at the request of the Contra Costa Herald a copy of his Dec. 1 letter to answer questions whether the department is out of compliance with federal immigration laws that entitled the Coroner-Sheriff Office to nearly $25 million in federal grants in 2016. CCSheriff ltr to DOJ re 8 USC 1373 Compliance 12-1-17

The sheriff’s letter was due Dec, 8, and he essentially informed U. S. Acting Assistant Attorney General Alan Hanson that the Office of the Contra Costa County Sheriff-Coroner is in compliance with federal immigration policy. That is in spite of the fact that beginning Jan. 1, 2018 California law enforcement agencies must begin to enforce Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act or what is better known as the sanctuary state law.

Livingston included with the letter his department’s draft policy on how it will and won’t cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which was issued Dec. 3, 2013 and updated on Nov. 16, 2017.

In his letter to Hanson, Livingston wrote:

“The California Values Act, with we must comply. That Act provides specifically that it does not authorize information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful of an individual, or from requesting from federal immigration authority’s immigration status information lawful or unlawful of an individual, or maintaining or exchanging that information with any other federal, state, or local government entity.”

Sheriff Livingston missed attending the Dec. 7 meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Public Safety Committee meeting, disappointing a number of committee members who wanted to hear him comment and answer questions about the draft policy on ICE-undocumented jail inmates, but obviously were unable to do so.

“I am surprised and disappointed that the sheriff is not here,” said District 1 Supervisor John Gioia of Richmond at the committee meeting. “I don’t know if this has ever happened before where the sheriff has not appeared at a Public Protection Committee meeting.”

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