Good article in the LA Times (free registration required/link expires).
Interesting is the section about Burbank demanding Home Depot build a hiring center for illegals.
“When the company sought last year to build a 115,000-square-foot store on the city’s eastern edge, officials made constructing a center for day laborers a condition of the permit. Then they started drafting an ordinance that would encourage use of the center by prohibiting laborers from soliciting work on sidewalks.
“Burbank City Manager Mary J. Alvord said she never expected the firestorm the proposed center would ignite. City Council meetings were contentious. Residents accused the city of catering to illegal immigrants. The council was split.
“Now, as legal challenges to other cities’ ordinances make their way through the courts, Burbank is in limbo. The Home Depot is scheduled to open in January, but the city plans to hold off on the opening of the center.”
Whether the Monument Community Partnership (MCP) can convince Concord to make a hiring hall for day laborers part of any new Home Depot at a proposed new location in the Monument Corridor (MC) overlooks serious talk that the high-end Expo on Concord Avenue at 242 will be repurposed as a Home Depot just for contractors. This certainly would attract hundreds of illegals every morning no matter what gets built in the MC.
But I doubt councilmembers will tolerate hundreds of illegals so close to downtown as they hang out at the stop light at the off ramp of 242, or loiter and urinate on Bisso near Gasoline Alley as Supervisor DeSaulnier drives to his District IV office. Don’t forget to wave, Mark. New constituents!
For another Contra Costa blogger’s perspective see John Dvorak’s April post on the Day Labor problem in Berkeley. Be sure to read thru the comments, particularly from Concord residents (see comments # 11, 37 & 40).
There is also an article at SF Gate on this topic.