Outgoing Sacramento City Councilman Robbie Waters is backing candidate Darrell Fong in the runoff election for the District 7 seat that covers the Pocket/Greenhaven and Valley Hi neighborhoods. Waters, who has served as the District 7 council member since 1994, lost the race in June to opponents Darrell Fong and Ryan Chin. Waters came in third place out of four candidates, with 27 percent of the vote. Chin led the group in the June election with 37 percent of the vote. He is now competing in a runoff campaign against Fong, who garnered 32 percent of votes cast. The two candidates must face off again because the city’s rules say that a council candidate needs at least 50 percent of the vo

The Sacramento Pride Festival, an annual event that brings thousands of attendees from throughout California, will be held for the first time on Capitol Mall in 2010, Bill Otton, interim director of the Sacramento Gay & Lesbian Center, announced this week. The Pride Festival and Parade will be held Saturday, June 19. Established in 1984, the day-long lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) pride festival has been held at Sacramento’s Southside Park for the past several years. Otton said the move to the Capitol Mall site will generate renewed excitement for an event that dates back to the early years of the gay civil rights movement in Sacramento and help bring attention to the role

A robotics lab program for children is expected to be built for the Powerhouse Science Center by summer. AT&T, which will announce a $25,000 donation Tuesday, is joining Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Otto Construction and Sacramento City Councilmember Sandy Sheedy to create a portable lab that will be set up at the Discovery Museum. The program will be transferred to the new science center, which is expected to open in about three years. This is the first program for the center to be fully funded, said Beth Callahan, director of development and marketing for the Discovery Museum. "We are on track," she said. A capital campaign is under way to build a science museum on a four-acre campus cent