While South Bay activists continue to lobby for the discredited "Defund the Police" movement, LA may provide some useful lessons with its Community Safety Partnership. Founded in 2011, this partnership promotes healthier relations between police and their communities. Though police are often centralized in the reform conversation, “[b]oth sides” must be engaged, and change must emerge from within—not outside—police departments and communities." Joel Fox reports from the Southland.
Read MoreLocal social media was abuzz last week after D6 Councilwoman Dev Davis alerted the community to an upcoming plan from SJ's Environmental Services Department that considers forcing homeowners and businesses to switch from gas to electric appliances. Sandra Devlin, co-founder and board member of the grass-roots Families and Homes group, alerted City Manager Jennifer Maguire in a March 4, 2022 letter to the deeply flawed citizen outreach regarding the plan. In an edited excerpt from her letter, below, Devlin notes that the city has contacted numerous progressive social justice non profits for their input, but essentially ignored homeowners who may bear the brunt of the cost.
Read MoreMuch has been made in local media about the millions upon millions spent on so-called "affordable" housing. And how all those millions don't make a dent in the problem. Michael Shellenberg, author of “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities,” connects the dots in Reason magazine and concludes that a blinkered insistence on a Housing First strategy is the root of the failure.
Read MoreEast Palo Alto city council earlier this week rejected their version of SJ's COPA--an overly complex, overwrought ordinance that would privilege nonprofits in the residential real estate property market. CM Antonio wonders "whether we as legislators should place nonprofits in the business of being real estate brokers," and if the scheme would actually have any impact, or is just a symbolic, feel-good gesture. From a Palo Alto Daily news op ed.
Read MoreOn March 1, East Palo Alto City Council met and failed to pass a dubious, overly complex ordinance that would privilege nonprofits in the real estate market, at the expense of mom and pop property owners. Councilman Carlos Romero moved that City Staff take the rest of the year to work on an updated ordinance and that it returns to Council before the end of the year. SJ's Housing Department's version of the ordinance (called COPA in San Jose) has run into withering criticism from all sectors of the real estate economy as an onerous, intrusive, and byzantine ordinance--and one that potentially would actually increase housing costs in the city. The following are notes from community leaders regarding the EPA vote.
Read MoreWhile our San Jose City Council continues to enable the Housing Department to misspend hundreds of millions of SJ taxpayer dollars every year, real people are left to live in San Jose’s creek and riverbeds. Dean Hotop, a concerned citizen of San Jose, outlines the steps ordinary citizens can take to compel city government to deliver results regarding our homelessness and environmental crisis, rather than just writing big checks to nonprofits that do little to solve problems. This article originally published as an email from Hotop to a concerned citizen email list.
Read MoreLocal media and pundits like to frame local politics as a never-ending battle between labor and business interests. But does this dialectic withstand serious scrutiny, or is it just lazy thinking that privileges monied interests? Independent candidate for SJ District 3 City Council Irene Smith has talked to both business and labor leaders, and discovers--guess what? --they're a lot more aligned than people realize. From her Medium post.
Read MoreThe SJ Housing department has a formal obligation to solicit broad and meaningful citizen input on its major policies. With the department's widely criticized COPA program (privileging unaccountable non-profits in the housing market) nearing a council vote, David Eisbach, in an open letter to the community, takes a close look at how that input process actually takes place. He finds more stagecraft than good faith exploration of citizen perceptions and concerns.
Read MoreNational media is still considering the political ramifications of the overwhelming rejection and recall of a trio of hard-left schoolboard members in that liberal suburb to the north. But aside from the politics of it all, perhaps a bigger question lingers unanswered: how on Earth did the democratic processes fail so spectacularly in SF? How would three schoolboard members with policies so out of touch with their voters get elected in the first place? Lia Rensin--a volunteer with Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies (a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Northern California committed to removing ideological and political agendas from Ethnic Studies courses throughout the US) --provides perspective.
Read MoreTimothy L. Coyle, a veteran California consultant specializing in housing, proposes actions by which local legislators can make California’s housing market affordable and fulfill high demand. For instance, the housing element law and CEQA as we know it should be abolished—making way for cost-effective construction opportunities.
Read MoreSpurred by recent SJ Merc reports on collapsing ridership and dubious cost and construction timeline estimates by VTA, city, county, and state transit and political experts have joined the growing chorus for fundamental change at the embattled transit agency.
Read MoreIn an exceptional pair of stories this past weekend, SJ Merc reporters Maggie Angst and Eliyahu Kamishar delivered some top-notch reporting about the blistering criticism the Feds have delivered to VTA regarding dubious BART extension costs and timelines, as well as the sad (and tremendously expensive) tale of VTA and Caltrain's ridership implosion since the pandemic. Randall O'Toole of the Thoreau Institute provides some useful historical background as to how VTA took the wrong turn decades ago, and why we are still paying for those mistakes. O'Toole's piece is an Opp Now exclusive.
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