http://www.martinezgazette.com/news/sto ... ry-projectSo this is pretty much why I've been rather... absent on the forums. Got my name in the paper yesterday which was cool. Basically I'm working on an internship where I update a book for Contra Costa County (CCC), my county, and we're starting with the city of Martinez. My internship under my college ends in 5 days but I will probably continue on with them for the rest of the summer as there's quite a bit of work to do still.
So far I'm finding local government to be very responsive to my inquiries. Like I've had a meeting with the city planner which didn't seem all that hard to setup and I've asked people at the Martinez city office for help and get instant responses. It's kinda cool. I can only hope higher levels of government are so responsive though.

As far as the website goes, there's a poll for whither the city should annex the Alhambra Valley or not. It's interesting to see how frequent Annexation is at the local levels. =P