By Nico Savidge : berkeleyside – excerpt

The stunning decision will leave Robinson’s Southside district, which includes People’s Park, without a representative on the City Council until a special election later this year.

Berkeley mayoral candidate and Councilmember Rigel Robinson will resign from office and end his campaign this week, he told Berkeleyside on Tuesday, citing “harassment, stalking and threats” that he says have made continuing his political career untenable.

The resignation will leave Robinson’s Southside district — a dense area near UC Berkeley that was thrust into a national spotlight last week as the university cleared and walled off People’s Park ahead of a planned housing development, which he supported — without a representative on the City Council until a special election to fill the seat later this year.

The move, which Robinson described as a “retirement,” also reshapes the race for Berkeley mayor, and is a stunning turn for a young elected official who seemed to be eyeing an ascent through the ranks of East Bay politics.

Robinson became the youngest council member ever elected in Berkeley when he won the seat representing the student-centric district months after graduating from UC Berkeley in 2018, then cruised to re-election in 2022 without an opponent on the ballot. The mayoral campaign he launched last year counted endorsements from three of his City Council colleagues, along with influential advocacy groups such as the Housing Action Coalition and East Bay YIMBY, and a long list of politicians from around the region and state, including Attorney General Rob Bonta…(more)

RELATED:

Opinion: Why I am stepping down from the Berkeley City Council

It’s time for me to prioritize my well-being and my family. By Rigel Robinson

YIMBY leaving office.

By Paul Rogers : mercurynews – excerpt (includes audio)

Sea levels are rising, and what to do about homes and beaches in harm’s way is becoming a major flashpoint

Raging storms brought major damage to California’s coastline last winter. They washed out West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, smashed the Capitola Wharf, burst levees on the Pajaro River in Watsonville, flooded the Santa Barbara airport, and sent two tornadoes barreling into Los Angeles.

Most of the destruction is largely repaired now, or at least under construction. But at the end of a quiet residential street in Half Moon Bay, a different kind of coastal upheaval is gaining momentum — one that could decide the fate of billions of dollars of property and affect hundreds of public beaches from San Diego to the Oregon border as rising seas pose a growing threat to the state’s beloved 1,100-mile coastline.

In 2016, a severe storm caused 20 feet of bluffs to collapse into the ocean in front of Casa Mira, a complex of 10 townhouses that sits on Mirada Road about two miles north of downtown Half Moon Bay. Worried their homes were in imminent danger, the owners obtained an emergency permit from the California Coastal Commission to put down boulders, called riprap, along the crumbling shoreline to block the waves from causing more damage…

The Coastal Commission staff recommended the project be approved. Even though the agency has been granting fewer sea wall permits in recent years, saying that they can cause erosion on public beaches, the $5 million sea wall would protect a section of the popular California Coastal Trail and a sewer line, the staff said. And the homeowners agreed to pay for park benches, signs and bicycle racks on the trail, along with a staircase to the beach to improve public access.

In July 2019, they drove four hours each way to the Coastal Commission meeting in San Luis Obispo, then waited nine hours for their item to come up on the agenda.

To their shock, the commissioners said no.

Delia Bense-Kang, an advocate with the Surfrider Foundation environmental group, testified that the project would “set a terrible precedent” and that “managed retreat,” a technique where homes are either moved back or removed entirely, was a better option. The commissioners agreed…(more)

It is one thing for citizens to expect the government to pay for mitigation but another to not be allowed to protect their homes. How is this different from living in a flood or fire zone? Is the government going to stop allowing people to protect their property under new “managed retreat” protocols? This looks like a supreme court case, in my opinion.

By Joe Garfoli : sfchronicle – excerpt

The thing to remember about Thursday’s protests seeking to save Berkeley’s People’s Park is that they’re not really just about saving People’s Park.

They’re more about saving an ideal. And here, the dwindling number of park preservationists has lost the plot. In all ways.

They refuse to acknowledge that Californians have become YIMBYs. Yes, even in Berkeley, long known as NIMBY central. Now, even “the man” in the last half-century of this saga — aka UC Berkeley — is on the side of the people. California desperately needs to build more housing. Scores of UC Berkeley students live in their cars or couch surf because of a lack of student housing. People’s Park is a place where the university plans to build housing for 1,100 students and supportive dwellings for roughly 100 homeless people, perhaps many of those who live there now… (more)

This guy is not a journalist. He is a plant. You can see what is the most flagrant use of media space to make blandly false statements. Almost as bad as the SFMTA PR hacks lying about a report they put out in September that shows a decrease in bikes and pedestricans on Valencia that was reported by two of their supporters. Now they claim there is a 50% increase and are berating their supporters!

What a two ring ciruse we have running our streets into the ground.

By Paul Mitchell : capitolweekly – excerpt

While the Attorney General, Secretary of State and California Courts wade into whether former President Donald Trump will be on the Republican Primary ballot in 2024, California counties are in the process of mailing out ballots that will be sent the first week of February.

And even if Trump stays on the Republican primary ballot, there will be more than a quarter-million voters who have previously voted in a Republican Presidential primary who won’t find him on their ballot. And over 650,000 voters who previously voted in the Democratic primary who won’t find President Joe Biden on theirs.

Welcome to one of the most confusing parts of the election process in California: the Closed Primary.

While California has moved its legislative, congressional and statewide elections to an open-primary system, where all candidates from all parties are shown on the same ballot, the presidential elections still use a traditional primary system, with slightly different processes for Democrats and Republicans…(more)

By J.K. Dineen : sfchronicle – excerpt

A 19-story tower in the heart of downtown Oakland has made headlines both because it is one of the few significant housing developments under construction in the neighborhood and because it is one of the world’s tallest “mass timber” structures.

Developer oWow has been gearing up for a January grand opening of the 236-unit complex at 1510 Webster St. But, last week, company president Andy Ball was shocked to learn that the opening could be delayed by months, and perhaps as much as a year, because of something unexpected: a shortage of electrical transformers.

Ball said he called Pacific Gas & Electric on Dec. 11 to place the order for three subsurface distribution transformers, which transfer electrical energy from one circuit to another. He was told that the equipment would not be available until the second half of 2024 — at the earliest.

“It was a bombshell, the last thing I expected,” Ball said. “They are going to put developers out of business. They are going to destroy projects.”…

Sarkissian said it had informed 540 customers that they have two choices: redesign their projects to use above ground “pad transformers,” or “wait until the equipment becomes available.” Sarkissian cited a study by Edison Electric Institute, an industry association of investor-owned electric utilities, showing that approximately 75% of all utilities are experiencing similar shortages.

The issue is that above ground transformers can be large and unsightly, taking up space better used for retail or housing units or gyms or landscaping. In addition, most urban infill districts, including downtown Oakland, require developers to put their transformers below ground…(more)

How are they going to spin this one to blame the cities? Guess they will have no choice but to relax the requirement for below ground transformers if they want to meet their RHNA deadlines.

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Wiener, Ting, and Haney bills undermine ‘all that is sacred’ in San Francisco. Do they know what the fuck they are doing?…

It’s pretty stunning, when you think about it, how the people San Franciscans elected to represent them in Sacramento have worked to undermine the rights of San Francisco to protect tenants and vulnerable communities.

Assemblymembers Matt Haney and Phil Ting and State Sen. Scott Wiener are the lead authors of a series of bills that not only make life easier for big developers but dramatically cut what’s left of the city’s ability to fight wholesale displacement…

The problem, Peskin said: The city can demand that ADUs are subject to rent control, but the state legislation pre-empts that, allowing projects to go forward with state authorization that do not include any rent-control requirements. Peskin:

I just want to say this for the record, so people that are watching, and I consider [Ting] to be a friend, that all of the things that we hold sacred in San Francisco are being undermined by the State of California by our own elected legislators.

So now the Planning Commission is being asked to give away much of its existing authority. There’s not a lot of office space proposed these days; most of the serious issues planning deals with are housing-related.

If the commission goes along with the concept, “it will be signing its own death warrant,” Peskin said. There won’t be much need for a Planning Commission, and there won’t be much opportunity for the public to challenge bad actors who are trying to get permits for dubious projects.

That, apparently, is how our state legislators and our mayor want it.

I just wonder, as Peskin says, if they know what the fuck they are about to unleash on San Francisco.

Unfortunately they probably do. Hope someone will conduct an interview or debate with the Wiener wannabes? Looks like we will need to hold our nose to vote him out. But, voting him out will send a powerful message to Sacramento politicians that SF hates his politics. Maybe give some credence to our demands that they change their tunes and return power back to the local communities that preserved our state in a more pristine manner for most of its history. Between our state leaders we have lost more individual power than we had under Reagan. Reagan gave us CEQA at least.

By Adam Beam : sfgate – excerpt

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A long-sought and disputed project in drought-prone California aimed at capturing more water during heavy rain storms reached a key milestone on Friday when Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration finished an environmental review for an underground tunnel.

The tunnel would be about 45 miles (72 kilometers) long and 36 feet (10.9 meters) wide, or large enough to carry more than 161 million gallons of water per hour. The tunnel would be another way to get water from Northern California, where most of the state’s water is, to Southern California, where most of the people live.

The Newsom administration says the tunnel is a necessary upgrade of the state’s aging infrastructure because it will protect the water supply from earthquakes and capture more water from rainstorms known as atmospheric rivers that scientists say have been increasing because of climate change.

But environmental groups, Native American tribes and other opponents say the project will take more water out of the river than is necessary and will harm endangered species of fish.

Friday, the California Department of Water Resources released its final environmental impact report for the project. The report is the last step of a complex and lengthy state regulatory process. But it doesn’t mean the project is close to being built. The project still must complete a federal environmental review and obtain various state and federal permits. That process is expected to last until 2026…(more)

by Ethan Baron : mercurynews – excerpt (includes audio)

google maps

The CEO of a contentious plan backed by Silicon Valley billionaires for a utopia in Solano County refused to back down from a $510 million lawsuit against property owners, as he faced a mistrustful crowd of local residents.

Former Wall Street investor Jan Sramek on Tuesday addressed about 150 ranchers and other locals at the American Legion hall in Rio Vista, a hamlet of 10,000 people on the Sacramento River near Antioch. His company, California Forever, billed the gathering as a town hall to inform the public and gather feedback about the plan to build a new city with tens of thousands of homes in the next 35 to 40 years.

In jeans, scuffed brown dress shoes and an open-necked gray button-up shirt, Sramek highlighted his “blue-collar” background in the Czech Republic — mechanic father, teacher mother — and noted that “a series of scholarships” led to his degrees from the United Kingdom’s prestigious University of Cambridge and London School of Economics. He said he left Goldman Sachs, “where shifting pieces of paper around” was “a really easy way to make money,” after 20 months to co-found an “education company to help people train and acquire new skills.”

California Forever, founded in 2017 and funded by billionaire venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Michael Moritz and fellow billionaires LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and businesswoman Laurene Powell Jobs, raised hackles in rural Solano County by keeping their plan secret while buying up tens of thousands of acres, much of the land agricultural, then suing dozens of landowners in May for $510 million in damages over claims that through “endless greed” they conspired to jack up the sale prices of their properties…(more)

How do we send the billionaire venture capitalists back to the paper shuffling jobs? Under which laws is the case being filed? Where is the protection for the US Airforce and the public parks? Must the state legislature specify a distance from sensitive areas to protect them from encroachment by millionaires? The Governor is already trying to raid the Bay’s natural water supply that will be needed to keep the salt water flushed out of the Bay. The real question is priorities. Why is the our government that claims to be deeply in debt continuing to spend money against us while begging for more? ourneighborhoodvoices.com should find a lot of fans in Solano County.

By Astrid Kane : sfstandard – excerpt

Kevin Ortiz, co-president of the San Francisco Latinx Democratic Club, spoke during a protest this week criticizing Valencia Street’s center-striped bicycle lanes.

Two of the most heavily used bike lanes in San Francisco intersect in the city’s Mission District, at Valencia and 17th streets, where there’s a taqueria, a police station, an upscale furniture store and a famous sex shop.

One set of lanes cuts east-west, from the giant rainbow flag in the nearby Castro across the Mission into Potrero Hill. As with most bike lanes, these flank the parking lane, are generally unprotected from cars and, for the most part, don’t offend anyone. The other, running north-south through the ever-trendy neighborhood, has lately become a cultural flashpoint, a fight on par with the conflict over tech shuttle buses.

Four months ago, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency relocated the north-south bike lanes along Valencia between 15th to 23rd streets from the sides of the street to the center, zipping them together for the span of eight blocks before unzipping them again. In the process, several dozen parking spaces were eliminated, too…

Grumbling about this eight-block stretch has been building since summer. But the anger erupted Tuesday when several dozen small business owners occupied the street, chanting and holding signs calling on the city to remove the lanes, as Streetsblog first reported.

The protest came just a few days after the bar and live-music venue Amado’s closed, with its owner claiming that sales dropped 80% after the bike lane was installed and created a hassle for musicians due to a lack of parking.

Opponents have seized on the bike lane as more evidence that the city runs roughshod over the small businesses that fill its coffers with tax revenue and give it character. But how does moving a bike lane by a few feet destroy a business?…

More than Just a Bike Lane…

“Everybody’s focused on the bike lane, but it’s really about a bureaucracy,” said Bill Dickenson, who sits on a steering committee of the San Francisco Small Business Coalition, which organized Tuesday’s protest on Valencia. “The SFMTA is a government agency that has gone rogue in many ways.”…

An April 2023 planning document appears to put the cost at $590,000, funded by several previous ballot measures, but SFMTA confirmed to The Standard that $1.5 million had been spent so far, with the total amount yet to be determined…(more)

by Noah Baustin : sfstandard – excerpt (includes map)

The Bay Area blossomed as the nation’s work-from-home capital after the Covid pandemic drove the area’s tech companies to embrace remote models. But where people are logging on remotely for work within the region varies dramatically from county to county and neighborhood to neighborhood, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In some Bay Area enclaves, the majority of workers clock in from home, but in others, virtually everyone still physically travels to work, according to the data.

As a whole, the Census Bureau estimates that about 735,000 of the 3.9 million Bay Area workers—19%—clocked in from home during the survey’s period. That’s far above the national work-from-home rate of 12% of American workers. The largest share of the Bay Area’s remote workers come from Santa Clara County, with 189,000 working from home, about 20% of the workforce. That may be contributing to the significant amount of empty office space in that county…(more)

Work from home numbers in the north bay could explain why the Gold Gate Bridge has seen a decline in traffic.