Archive for April 2024
☆ Expert: San Jose City Manager deflects blame, misses point of critical state homeless audit
The CA state audit that blistered San Jose and statewide homelessness programs for ineffectiveness called forth a prickly, self-justifying, and lengthy response from SJ City Manager Jennifer Maguire. Scott Beyer of the Market Urbanism Report gives Maguire’s 15-pager a close read, and finds that it’s evasive and doesn’t face up to the legit financial and…
Read More☆ Water district rates about to double
Image by WaterArchives.org Hold onto your (wet) wallets. Opp Now contributor and local City Planning graduate student Susie Murillo takes a look at upcoming plans for the county water district to jack up rates, yet again, with little accountability and dubious reasoning. An Opp Now exclusive. “A rise in water rates may sink all who…
Read More☆ Oliverio: Big lesson from State audit re: CA and SJ homelessness programs: Clear-eyed realism more important than rosy intentions
Former SJ CM and current Planning Commissioner Pierluigi Oliverio takes a look back at how SJ’s and the state’s homelessness efforts went sideways. Spoiler alert: good intentions can go astray. An Opp Now exclusive. History books will likely note that this huge spending in California on homelessness over the past decades had the best of…
Read MoreOn that Labor/Business divide: the statewide edition
Image by Wikimedia Commons California labor groups have their list of priority bills and the California Chamber of Commerce has a list of “job killers” it wants to defeat. Sometimes the two lists collide. The inestimable Dan Walters comments in Calmatters. An annual political ritual was repeated Wednesday when the California Chamber of Commerce released…
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