Frustration is mounting among business owners in Santa Monica, where incidents of crime and widespread homelessness are affecting daily operations for the coastal community. LA Local TV 11 reports.
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It's easy, after scanning the tenth article about who has access to keys to SJ Parks, to get skeptical about the status of our local political discourse. Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti finds a way out—reclaiming wonder—from his "A Coney Island of the Mind," 1958.
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There's been a lot of discussion in the Opp Now community about the risks and benefits of AI—as workers, as writers, as artists, and as polemicists. Jacobin magazine's Marianela D’Aprile chimes in with an essay worrying about the potential anti-social elements of AI, as it might strip away our ability to think for ourselves and understand others.
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Not long after SJ's Housing Dept was blistered by an internal audit over lax oversight of housing nonprofits, a grand jury rips the County Housing Authority re: mishandling property transactions. The Merc reports.
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Prop 5 would make it easier for local taxes and regional bonds like RM4 to pass in the future, by reducing the threshold for approval from two-thirds to 55%. In Part 3 of this exclusive Opp Now series, past mayor Lydia Kou warns that voters will lose their leverage—surrendering it to wasteful, out-of-touch Sacramento pols—if they choose to set a lower bar for approval. With pressure to meet the state’s "impossible" housing need assessment, bonds that don't even target affordability could require property owners to subsidize people who make more than them.
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Says past Palo Alto mayor Lydia Kou: Sacramento completely failed at promoting housing production, yet still wants cities to comply with the “un-compliable” Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). In Part 2 of this Opp Now exclusive, Kou explains how cities that fail to meet the RHNA cycle midpoint quota by 2026 will lose control of the approvals process. Expensive, lousy projects will fall short of RHNA but still plague midpen neighborhoods with traffic congestion, environmental havoc, and an unraveling of the social fabric.
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California is one of 10 states to employ a full-time legislature, while the remaining 40 others propose and pass bills part-time. In the OC Register, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association president Jon Coupal argues that full-time lawmakers—effectively “professional politicians"—haven't proved they're worth the extra cost to taxpayers. More beneficial than allocating extra time for legislature (a fair promotion?), says Coupal, would be ensuring they make informed, grounded decisions.
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According to former Palo Alto mayor Lydia Kou, it’s not only arrogance and sloppy math that undid RM4, the $20 billion housing bond that got unceremoniously yanked off the November ballot at the eleventh hour. In Part 1 of this Opp Now exclusive, Kou argues that the measure’s failure can be traced back to an impossible housing needs assessment figure, which was pushed through with little to no public input.
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Greg Totten, CEO of CA District Attorney's Association, spells out three of California's biggest crises that Proposition 36 seeks to ameliorate (via tougher crime legislation and mandated treatment protocols): retail theft, fentanyl, and homelessness. Totten's in-depth analysis of these problems, as well as Prop 36's proposed tweaks to Prop 47, reads below. From a chat with California Insider.
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Roberta Moore of San Jose's Housing and Community Development Commission (HCDC) chimes in on the City's proposed Seismic Retrofit ordinance, which is intended to keep our buildings structurally safe but—she says—could reap disastrous consequences for property owners, while failing to protect San Jose's most vulnerable properties. An Opp Now exclusive.
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According to SiliconValley.com, the city is considering an incentive plan that will waive business taxes and parking requirements for downtown businesses that purchase or lease office spaces downtown of over 1,000 sq ft. Former SJ CM and local business leader Johnny Khamis hopes it's the start of a new era of biz-friendly policies at 4th and East Santa Clara. An Opp Now exclusive.
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On his way to Milpitas last week for a meet-and-greet, presidential hopeful Chase Oliver—dubbed by the Rolling Stone as the “most influential Libertarian in America”—chatted with Opp Now's managing editor Lauren Oliver about some of Bay Area voters' biggest issues. The conversation, a special Opp Now exclusive, reads in its entirety below. (Psst: Stick around to the end for Oliver's #1 pick for your Libertarian reading list.)
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