Archive for October 2024

Gustave Caillebotte: The House Painters, 1877 Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association’s Susan Shelley, in the OC Register, analyzes the State’s $10 bn Proposition 2 for school building repairs. Sneakily in its ballot language lies the promise to use a “Project Labor Agreement,” a.k.a., collective bargaining contract that’s widely known to increase wage expenses and privilege union…

Image generated using Dall-E Looks like the ABC’s of our regional agencies all end up spelling MTC. If Prop 5 passes, Bay Areans can expect to see massive tax hikes to pay for BAHFA’s next multi-billion-dollar housing bond. But who runs BAHFA—and ABAG, for that matter? Marin Post’s Bob Silvestri argues that the MTC is…

Friends, This is the time. The time for D3 to come together.  To collaborate and put differences behind.  And to unify around a new beginning for our community’s politics. I’m talking, of course, about the sad collapse of local faith for our elected councilmember, Omar Torres.  His authority as our representative has been fundamentally compromised by revelations…

Image by Sunshine Profits Prop 5 will release a massive infusion of affordable housing bonds into local elections, like the Bay Area’s dead-but-not-forgotten RM4. Yet what does “affordable” mean? In his comprehensive post-mortem of that $20 billion boondoggle, Marin Post’s Bob Silvestri examines how BAHFA’s cure for housing is worse than the disease. Lower-income property…

Image by Wikimedia Commons Local election “experts” recently framed their analysis of the upcoming election around a whopping piece of misinformation, falsely asserting: “Let’s first talk about the Bay Area—of course, overwhelmingly Democratic.” The truth: in Santa Clara County, there is no majority party. Allow us to hit “repeat” on our Opp Now exclusive article…

Hello all,   I was recently interviewed by SJ Spotlight regarding the sanctioned supportive encampment (SSE) at Watson Park; here are 2 considerations. 1. Consensus will be reached between the neighborhood and City on community commitments; San Jose will achieve those commitments and honor their agreement. 2. The nonprofit must continually update all stakeholders and…

  Dear Neighbor, There are a lot of things we don’t notice until they break.    The washing machine that springs a leak when we have a week’s worth of laundry piling up. The coffee maker that breaks when we have a big presentation at work in an hour. The remote control that runs out…

San Francisco’s now-infamous Dream Keeper Initiative looked the other way when contracted nonprofits bought first-class flights, luxury meals, and (yep) concert tickets on the City’s dime. Today, SF Chron dives into the initiative’s former leader Sheryl Davis—who paid herself $11,000 to produce an interview podcast linking to her personal website (which advertised her children’s book).…

The LA Times’ Michael Lens discusses that CA’s biggest cities aren’t building housing fast enough to keep up with population increases. He suggests the solution lies in reforming local zoning laws (already commonly sidestepped by SJ developers) and building planning practices—starting with prioritizing more multifamily apartments. We can reframe our planning for housing around these…

Image by Wikimedia Wikimedia Commons Last Dec, Opp Now filed a BART public records request for two simple stats from 2023. We got a reply—nine months later. BART Director Debora Allen’s also experienced the agency’s lack of communication and transparency since elected in 2016. At a recent meeting, Allen revealed she’d been asking BART the…