Uncategorized

Amid rumors about mystery Bay Area buyer, poll on creating ‘new city’ sent to locals

By Katie Dowd : sfexaminer – excerpt

Amid a flurry of rumors about a mysterious buyer who has purchased 52,000 acres in Solano County, local residents have received a survey gauging support for a “new city with tens of thousands of new homes.”

Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy confirmed to SFGATE on Tuesday that Solano County residents have been receiving the push poll, and former Fairfield councilmember Marilyn Farley told SFGATE that she received the survey via text message.

The survey is extensive, and it may be the first window into what Flannery Associates plans to do with its newly acquired Bay Area empire.

The group, which incorporated in Delaware, where it is not required to name the people behind the business, has been the subject of speculation and even a possible government probe. Starting in 2018, Flannery began purchasing parcels of land from Fairfield to Rio Vista. (One of its first purchases was near Flannery Road in Rio Vista, possibly giving the group its name.) By its own admission, Flannery paid over the market rate to acquire that land, but in the years since, nothing has been developed on it. The group is now the largest landowner in the county.

The clandestine nature of the purchases — and the fact that Flannery’s properties now flank three sides of Travis Air Force Base — led to concerns about national security. Rep. Mike Thompson, whose district includes parts of Solano County, told SFGATE last week he has been “pushing” the Treasury Department, the Department of Defense and the FBI to investigate the acquisitions…(more)

Where are Wikileaks and Julian Assange when you need them. They should experts to figure these things out.

Politics

Chaos Is Not a Viable Leadership Style

by Theodore Kinni : strategy-business – excerpt

Sowing seeds of confusion and discord is no way to run an organization.

Thirty years ago, the business world had a fling with chaos theory — the idea that although nonlinear systems, such as markets and companies, are inherently unpredictable, some order exists within them nonetheless. Tom Peters told us that chaotic markets harbored valuable business opportunities. Meg Wheatley said that chaotic companies were more adaptive, creative, and resilient than hierarchical companies. But I don’t recall anyone recommending chaos as a leadership style.

To be sure, there are prominent leaders today who adopt chaos as their modus operandi. Take Brandon Truaxe, the CEO of Deciem, a fast-growing Canada-based beauty products company that expects to record US$300 million in sales this year. Since January 2018, here are a few things he has done. Truaxe fired his social media team and started posting strange messages on Deciem’s Instagram account, including, as described in Elle, “closeup videos of him talking disjointedly about the popular skin-care line’s vision, a river flowing around a mass of garbage, and a photo of a dead sheep, captioned with a promise to never test products on animals.” He fired co-CEO Nicola Kilner, which prompted chief financial officer Stephen Kaplan to quit. (In July, Kilner rejoined the company.) Truaxe also emailed the company’s employees, “I’m done with DECIEM and EVERYTHING. No need to discuss.”.

One big benefit of being a chaotic leader is that you get a lot of attention. In this social media–driven, attention-addled, 24/7 world, it could be that the quantity of attention matters more than its content. Indeed, even as media and customer reactions to Truaxe’s actions turned negative, the company’s products continued selling briskly. “All they’re (his actions) doing is creating more sales for me,” Truaxe told WWD.

Well, maybe. But before you adopt a chaotic leadership style for its Barnum-like marketing effects, you probably should pause to consider what it does to the people and organizations that you are charged with leading. Chaotic leaders are like Loki, the trickster of Norse mythology, who sows the seeds of confusion and discord.…(more)

Look no further than Elon Musk, who completely destroyed Twitter, and who knows what else in an inexplicable mania to blow it up and start over. Some governments seem to be on a similar track. They are so compelled to rush headlong into the unknown future that they throw many successful business practices out the window while the confusion leaves businesses with no choice by to bail. If there is one thing the market hates it is confusion, or so we are told.

Politics, Transportation

Cruise Car hits Fire Truck

VIDEO: SF fire truck, driverless Cruise car collide, injuring passenger, company says.

By Gloria Rodriguez : abc7news – excerpt (includes video)

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A driverless Cruise car and a fire truck collided in San Francisco late Thursday night, sending one passenger to the hospital.

The crash happened at the intersection of Turk and Polk in the city’s Tenderloin district after 10 p.m.

Video shows the Cruise car with its passenger side doors smashed in after the collision with a San Francisco Fire Department truck responding to a call nearby… If you have been following the Autonomous Vehicle saga waiting for the shoe to drop. It finally has. A Cruise car hit an emergency vehicle and injured a passenger. . .

VIDEO: Driverless Cruise car struck by SF fire truck, injuring passenger, company says
abc7news.com

https://abc7news.com/cruise-driverless-car-sffd-fire-truck-accident/13666936/#:~:text=Cruise%20says%20that%20one%20of,one%20passenger%20to%20the%20hospital.

We should take this opportunity to request an audit of the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC). In their zeal to thrust the state into high growth, forced density and future technologies, the CPUC has removed important safety guardrails that protected the public. Our their health, safety, and economic well-being have given way to the demands of corporate investors. Many of the recent CPUC decisions have come in spite of requests and warnings from the public that were backed by scientific and expert opinions that the changes were not in the publics’ interest.

Who does the CPUC work for? Why do they ignore experts on subjects they are clearly not prepared to judge? Why are they forcing us to rush into a dubious future with products and services that we do not need or trust and many will not use? Why are they setting up job cutting technologies that are unproven, untrusted against the public’s will?

They clearly blew it with robotaxis that have been nothing but trouble since they were given the green light to expand. What else are they getting wrong and who are the people that are making major decisions re: public health, safety and the economy?

How honest and competent is the state system that oversees people who have such a heavy hand on our lives? Where does their money come from and what is their incentive for raising the cost of living by forcing the public to foot higher energy bills? First they cut the payments to the solar producers who are feeding the grid to lower the costs of producing energy. Now they want to raise the cost to consumers by adding “taxes” onto the bills they just claimed to have lowered. How dumb do they think we are?

What is the end game and who is pulling the strings? Why is our governor appointing these people to oversee these important decisions that affect most aspects of our lives, from jobs, to housing and transportation, to energy and the economy. Who will step up to take control of conditions that have banks and insurance companies fleeing the state? What do they know that we don’t?

Housing, Planning, Politics, Transportation

Can Bay Area Political Leaders Solve Climate Change?

By Marc Joffe : cato – excerpt

Passing laws, adopting regulations, and spending money to fight climate change are popular activities for both elected and unelected officials in the San Francisco Bay Area. But since they only govern 2.3 percent of the U.S. population, their ability to turn the tide on greenhouse gas emissions is limited. Instead, their costly and coercive policies drive up the area’s cost of living and help drive out residents.

In a previous post I described some of the high cost, low ridership Bay Area transit projects that raise local sales taxes while replacing only a handful of car trips. Since I last wrote, we have learned that San Francisco’s new $2,000,000,000 Central Subway is afflicted by serious water intrusion issues, making the travel experience less appealing for the roughly 1,000 passengers that use the Chinatown station each day.

More recently, local lawmakers have declared war on natural gas, an energy source that used to be popular with some environmentalists because it burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels. But now the intention is to fully embrace electricity even though California is unwilling to add nuclear generating capacity and lacks the enormous number of solar panels and windmills needed to fully power the state…(more)

Uncategorized

San Diego Planning Commission Rejects Voluntary State Density Law

By James Brasuell : Planeten – excerpt

The density-enabling mechanisms of the California law Senate Bill 10 are too much for San Diego’s citizen planners.

The San Diego Planning Commission—the citizen advisory group on planning in one of the YIMBYest cities in California—won’t go so far as to eliminate single-family zoningthroughout the city.

“San Diego’s Planning Commission unanimously voted against a key part of Mayor Todd Gloria’s housing plan Thursday that would have eliminated single-family zoning in much of the city,” reports Phillip Molnar.

That key part was the Senate Bill 10, a voluntary statewide bill that “[allows] a single-family home to be torn down and replaced with a new structure of up to three stories with up to 10 units in much of the city,” according to Molnar…(more)

Uncategorized

How attack on Pelosi, violent threats to Bay Area lawmakers inspired an unusual bill

By Alec Regimbal : sfgate – excerpt

Assembly Bill 37 would allow Calif. lawmakers to start using unlimited campaign funds to hire bodyguards or install security systems.

On April 21 of last year, a convoy of roughly 20 truckers gathered outside the Oakland home of state Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, with the express purpose of intimidating the Democratic lawmaker. They crowded the streets in front of her house, honking and demanding through bullhorns that Wicks, who was home at the time, come outside. After police arrived, the convoy departed…

Those events and others like them are the inspiration behind an unusual bill that’s currently working its way through the California Legislature: Assembly Bill 37, which would remove the cap on how much campaign funds state and local lawmakers — as well as those who are running for such offices — can put towards security, and would for the first time allow candidates to use political donations to hire bodyguards…

One might ask why these public servants need protection from their constituents. What are they doing to anger the public they are supposed to support?

Uncategorized

Community Land Trusts Are Working to Create New Homeowners

Community Vision CA – from LinkedIn

Did you catch our partner Oakland Community Land Trust in The New York Times? We are thrilled to see them featured in this story about the history, power and significance of Community Land Trusts (CLTs).

CLTs are critical vehicles for advancing #CommunityOwnership of community assets. Over the years, we’ve continued to deepen our partnership with CLTs, including through initiatives like our California Community-Owned Real Estate (CalCORE) program.

CalCORE works to address the capital and capacity barriers that many community-based developers face. By bringing together cohorts of small and emergent developers, with a focus on Black, Indigenous and people of color-led CLTs and CDCs, CalCORE provides community-based real estate entities with opportunities for network building, cohort training, one-on-one advising and project support, as well as access to pre-development and project capital.

We are honored to have partnered with Oakland Community Land Trust in a variety of ways over the past several years, including as a participant in our first CalCORE cohort.

Read the full NYT story: https://lnkd.in/gbNAsnsJ

Uncategorized

AMERICA: MOVING TO LOWER DENSITIES POST-2020 CENSUS DATA

By Wendell Cox : newgeography – excerpt

Driven, at least in part, by the huge increase in the potential for remote work, US residents moved in large numbers to states with lower urban densities in the two years and three months (27 months) between the 2020 Census (April 1) and the 2022 Census Bureau population estimates. The date of the Census was also nearly the same as the start of the Covid pandemic, during which working from home increased substantially.

During these 27 months, an annualized average of 1,111,000 residents moved across state lines in the United States. This is an increase of 64% relative to the annual average net domestic migration of 679,000 between states during the previous decade. 2010s. The average urban density in the United States was 2,544 per square mile in 2020, according to the Census.

Moving to States with Lower Urban Population Densities…(more)

Uncategorized

SF’s 50-Story Beach Tower and Neighborhood Nightmare Is Nothing But a Jumpscare

By Adam Brinklow : thefrisc – excerpt

The city’s pro-housing officials call BS on the building, which doesn’t meet basic requirements. So why are YIMBYs gung-ho for it?

If the thought of a 50-story tower looming over the San Francisco Zoo and Ocean Beach like a fairy-tale giant stresses you out, the Planning Department has good news: It says the high-rise at 2700 Sloat Blvd., as proposed, is not going to happen, and was probably never something to take seriously in the first place.

When news of the proposed tower — more than 500 feet high, more than 700 units within — broke a few months ago, reactions on social media and in public hearings were as zealous as they were predictable…

“This project is a distraction. It defies logic,” the department’s director Rich Hillis tells The Frisc…

[Update 7/27/23: The Board of Appeals Wednesday night rejected Hickey’s bid. At the hearing, planners argued the law is written to avoid big, bulky development in zoning like this, and that smaller separate buildings are better urban design policy. The height wasn’t a factor for planners, although many commenters were preoccupied with it. Hickey did not say if he plans to continue his quest through other channels.]…(more)