Were it a country, the Bay Area’s economy would be larger than Saudi Arabia’s, getting rich from its residents’ minds rather than minerals pumped from the ground, according to a new report.
The Bay Area’s annual growth rate of 4.3 percent over the past three years was nearly double that of the U.S. as a whole, bringing the region’s gross domestic product to $748 billion, behind only 18 countries, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, a think tank backed by the local business group, and consulting firm McKinsey.
“It’s impressive. The diversity of the Bay Area economy should hopefully lead to more resilience in the next downturn,” said Micah Weinberg, president of the think tank.
Tech jobs boomed since the end of the recession, growing 45 percent to to more than 750,000 workers in July 2017. Overall employment in the region grew 26 percent.
The per capita GDP of the nine-county Bay Area, nearly $80,000, ranked first among similar U.S. major metropolitan regions, reflecting the affluence of a growing tech workforce.
The Bay Area also led the country in patents issued. In 2015, it garnered 24,350, the most in the country and more than triple the New York region’s total.
PwC, Wells Fargo, the San Mateo County Economic Development Association and the North Bay Leadership Council supported the study.
Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of research firm Beacon Economics, expects growth to continue but said soaring housing costs are hurting the region’s economic diversity.
“You’ll have continued growth in the Bay Area. I don’t see any reason for it to slow down,” said Thornberg. “Tech continues to thrive, but tech grows at the expense of older parts of the economy. Because of the region’s unwillingness to densify … every time a new Google worker moves in, an old economy worker moves out.”
Census data showed that the Bay Area lost a net of 45,670 people to other places in the U.S. from July 2016 to July 2017. Those departures were offset by a gain of 58,156 people from abroad during the same time period.
Across California, less expensive regions like the Inland Empire, Sacramento area and San Joaquin Valley are seeing greater population growth. Last year, Riverside County alone added 36,744 people, the third highest of any U.S. county, according to census data.
People leaving the Bay Area and the state altogether were concentrated in lower-paying sectors like sales, transportation and food preparation, which meant they would be less affected by the state’s high tax rates, according to Beacon.
Thornberg is encouraged by a housing boom in Oakland and the rest of Alameda County, which issued permits for around 6,000 housing units in the last year. But he said more had to done, particularly in low-density areas like San Mateo County.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” he said. “It’s got to be a regional effort.”
Federal policies including trade tariffs and immigration restrictions also threaten the region’s future, said Weinberg, of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.
“Trade and immigration policies are the things I’m most concerned about in their effects on the Bay Area,” Weinberg said. “To the extent that there continues to be a real chilling effect on immigration of all types and international cooperation — that’s really the biggest threat.”
A few months ago, Bay Area Council representatives visited Washington to advocate for issues including free trade, Weinberg said. The reception from the White House wasn’t encouraging, he said.
“The administration seems hell-bent on pursuing the failed policies of mercantilism from the earliest 20th century,” Weinberg said.
More restrictive immigration policies, such as the elimination of H-1B visas for skilled workers, could choke the supply of foreign employees as well as new company founders, Weinberg said.
Egon Terplan, regional planning director at San Francisco urban planning think tank Spur, agreed that tackling challenges like housing and transit are critical for the future.
“This is one of the most dynamic economies in the U.S. It’s worth ensuring that it maintains its competitive edge,” Terplan said.
Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf Article: Link
NBLC’s Endorsements for November Election
in UncategorizedFor this midterm election, it is crucially important to voters to show up at the polls. There needs to be a strong voter turnout to send a message that American voters are paying attention, engaged and want their voices heard. NBLC is pleased to announce our endorsements for this November’s election:
Candidates:
Santa Rosa City Council – District 2: John Sawyer (Inc.); District 4: Dorothy Beattie; District 6: Tom Schwedhelm (Inc.) – Note that Schwedhelm is running unopposed
Petaluma – Mike Harris for Mayor; Dave King (Inc.) and Michael Regan for City Council
Rohnert Park City Council– Pam Stafford (Inc.); Susan Adams
Santa Rosa Junior College Board: Jeff Kunde
College of Marin Board: Wanden Treanor (Inc.); Diana Conti (Inc.)
Measures:
YES on Measure AA: Transportation Authority of Marin’s (TAM) renewal of existing ½ cent transportation sales tax to fund local transportation improvements and programs for traffic relief
YES on Measure M
YES on Measure N: Santa Rosa Housing Bond
YES on Prop 1: Issues $4 Billion in bonds for housing programs and veterans’ home loans
YES on Prop 2: Authorizes state to use revenue from Proposition 63 (2004) for $2 Billion in bonds for homelessness prevention housing
YES on Prop 3: Issues $8.877 Billion I bonds for water-related infrastructure and environmental projects
YES on Prop 4: Authorizes $1.5 Billion in bonds for children’s hospitals
NO on Proposition 6: Repeals the 2017 fuel tax and vehicle fee increases (SB 1) to fund road, bridge and highway repairs and requires a public vote on future increases. If passed, it would remove funding for the Marin/Sonoma Narrows, local road improvements and impact safety.
NO on Proposition 10: Repeals the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and allows local governments to enact rent control. If passed, it would depress future housing construction and worsen the housing crisis. The use of CBD oil has become more popular due to its remarkable effects on pain, stress, anxiety and other conditions.
Please remember to vote and encourage everyone you know to register and vote, too!
Please Take and Share this Survey on Post-fires Housing Needs in the North Bay
in UncategorizedThe North Bay along with the rest of the San Francisco/Silicon Valley Bay Area is experiencing a housing affordability crisis that is negatively impacting families and their employers. The catastrophic fires of 2017 exacerbated this situation by destroying thousands of homes. While some of the initial immediate post disaster relief work has been completed, rebuilding the community will be a longer road ahead, and it will require a great deal of research and planning. In particular, as the region rebuilds and builds the housing necessary for our next generation of people and their families, we need to be sure that we’re responding to their changing needs and preferences. Please help this effort by responding (anonymously) to this survey and letting us know more about what your current needs are and what you would prefer to see in the future. This survey will be used to inform public and private sector decision-makers. It was developed by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and is being distributed in partnership with the Rebuild North Bay Foundation and the North Bay Leadership Council.
This survey is 55 questions long and will take less than 10 minutes to complete.
Here are the links for the English and Spanish versions of the survey.
English:
Northbay Workforce Housing Needs Survey – English
Spanish:
Northbay Workforce Housing Needs Survey – Español
All of us would benefit from more workforce housing
in UncategorizedThe need for workforce housing in Marin County is demonstrable, pressing and clear. While there are many reasons why workforce housing is needed, the impact on the economic future of Marin is one of the most compelling.
While others try to sort out traffic numbers and percentages of commuters coming from outside of Marin, Marin employers need no such clarification of where their workforce resides today, and perhaps more importantly, without more housing, where that workforce will reside tomorrow.
In today’s talent-driven employment market, employers are challenged daily to fill open positions. With an unemployment rate of 2 percent, ALL positions in Marin County are hard to fill. No doubt you have seen “Help Wanted” signs throughout the county. While you may not see signs for higher-level positions hanging in storefront windows, please know that we hear daily about the ongoing effort and expense to recruit and retain the needed workforce.
Not being able to house our workforce impacts all of us in Marin in several ways. The inability to fill positions reduces productivity, innovation, profit and more importantly, quality of life. The inability to fill key positions causes organizations to grow where talent is readily available or at its worst, relocate to a location with a good talent supply.
Another impact that affects employers is the need to pay increasingly higher wages to retain and attract talent, especially those that can’t afford to live in Marin County and can find work closer to home.
Kelley Hartman, senior vice president of Nelson Staffing, says, “The shortage of housing in Marin only exacerbates the talent shortage. The median list price per square foot for housing in Marin County is $656 (according to Zillow), which is higher than the San Francisco Metro average of $496. Coupled with the extremely low unemployment rate, high housing costs mean that employees working in Marin
County can — and do — demand higher wages due to this talent shortage.”
The cost of commuting often eats up whatever incentive increased wages provide. Hartman says, “Nelson recruiters have had to get much more resourceful in looking for candidates for Marin County positions. Reaching out to candidates in Sonoma and Alameda Counties with a more dense employment base has been a regular practice. However, more often than in the past, candidates tell us that the traffic and excellent employment opportunities in their own backyard do not offset salaries which are only marginally higher than what they could earn locally.”
The constant pressure to increase wages to fill positions takes its toll on employers’ bottom line as wages have to be adjusted for all employees as new employees’ wages are raised. That payroll increase leads to companies having to raise prices or fees to keep up with rising labor costs. And consumers feel it in their wallets as they pay more for products and services.
The lack of workforce housing, and failure to even begin to create housing in a reasonable ratio to jobs being created, has led Marin County to be hard hit. Focusing on the traffic obscures the bigger problem of the looming economic impact that the failure to house our workforce is driving. Without more workforce housing, we will be subject to a shrinking middle class a struggling economy, loss of tax
revenue, and less options for goods and services while paying more and more for what we need.
And let’s end with what we seek in workforce housing. Marin’s housing shortage is driven by the “missing middle.” The missing middle is both a range of housing that is in between single-family homes and high-rise apartment buildings, as well as the workforce who needs housing that is attainable on their salaries. Missing middle housing includes in-between housing like rowhouses, duplexes, accessory
dwelling units and apartment courts. The price point of this housing is what we need in Marin County where two-income working couples make too much to qualify for affordable housing but often too little to buy entry-level single-family homes.
Marin County employers are there to support the residents of Marin County. Now, it is time to work together to house the people who make our county a vibrant, safe, wonderful place to live. All of us should want the hospitals, schools, public safety, commerce and other essential organizations to thrive and be staffed by the best talent they can find. By creating more workforce housing, we all will benefit.
Joanne Webster is CEO of the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce; Cynthia Murray is CEO of the North Bay Leadership Council; and Steve Saxe is co-chair of the Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative.
Pessimism Porn Redux
in UncategorizedIn our Policy Watch from March 2009, we wrote about the dangers of Pessimism Porn during the recession. We said, “Are you obsessing over the bad economic news, unable to leave your PC as you cruise the Internet searching for more tales of downturns, layoffs and financial failures? Is it hard for you to put down the business section of the paper or stop listening to MSNBC or its ilk? Do you find yourself craving news of the latest economic disaster while running out of people who want you to share it with them? If you answered yes to these questions, then you are experiencing Pessimism Porn (as coined by Hugo Lindgren in a New York Times article of the same name, February 1, 2009). This is the latest meme used to describe people gorging themselves on dismal financial news and economic forecasts.”
As you read that passage, it may occur to you that we are experiencing something similar now but with the political news. We are hooked on the cable news shows with their constant Breaking News stories of the latest flouting of our political norms and the political leaders’ responses.
In that 2009 issue of Policy Watch, we said, “If you find yourself getting addicted to Pessimism Porn, watch out. There are consequences to such as irrational despondency. This wallowing in the mud of despair can lead to a loss of perspective and focus. If you dwell too much on the negative you can over-react to the breaking news and work against your own best interest. You can find that your obsession is interfering with other parts of your life. You may get a “rush” from each news item, leading you to seek out more extreme sources. And you may lament that the people around you just don’t react the way you expect over the bad economic news, causing you to feel isolated and alone. Of course, you could also feel superior and part of an insiders’ club of people in the know — who know that the worst is coming!” We think that warning applies today, too.
And though written in 2009, we think Thomas P. M. Barnett, at Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog, gives sound advice on pessimism porn:
“I made a decision a long time ago not to make my career a bet on bad things happening. I think that approach simply corrodes your strategic thought capacity. Human history is progress, so if you’re constantly having to screen out the good to spot the bad, your vision will be unduly narrow. If you bet on progress, you can easily contextualize the bad, because progress is never linear. But if you bet on retreat, you must consistently discount advances as ‘illusions’ and ‘buying time’ and so on, and after a while, you’re just this broken clock who’s dead-on twice a day.”
NBLC helps fund new economic study showing economic growth in Bay Area
in UncategorizedWere it a country, the Bay Area’s economy would be larger than Saudi Arabia’s, getting rich from its residents’ minds rather than minerals pumped from the ground, according to a new report.
The Bay Area’s annual growth rate of 4.3 percent over the past three years was nearly double that of the U.S. as a whole, bringing the region’s gross domestic product to $748 billion, behind only 18 countries, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, a think tank backed by the local business group, and consulting firm McKinsey.
“It’s impressive. The diversity of the Bay Area economy should hopefully lead to more resilience in the next downturn,” said Micah Weinberg, president of the think tank.
Tech jobs boomed since the end of the recession, growing 45 percent to to more than 750,000 workers in July 2017. Overall employment in the region grew 26 percent.
The per capita GDP of the nine-county Bay Area, nearly $80,000, ranked first among similar U.S. major metropolitan regions, reflecting the affluence of a growing tech workforce.
The Bay Area also led the country in patents issued. In 2015, it garnered 24,350, the most in the country and more than triple the New York region’s total.
PwC, Wells Fargo, the San Mateo County Economic Development Association and the North Bay Leadership Council supported the study.
Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of research firm Beacon Economics, expects growth to continue but said soaring housing costs are hurting the region’s economic diversity.
“You’ll have continued growth in the Bay Area. I don’t see any reason for it to slow down,” said Thornberg. “Tech continues to thrive, but tech grows at the expense of older parts of the economy. Because of the region’s unwillingness to densify … every time a new Google worker moves in, an old economy worker moves out.”
Census data showed that the Bay Area lost a net of 45,670 people to other places in the U.S. from July 2016 to July 2017. Those departures were offset by a gain of 58,156 people from abroad during the same time period.
Across California, less expensive regions like the Inland Empire, Sacramento area and San Joaquin Valley are seeing greater population growth. Last year, Riverside County alone added 36,744 people, the third highest of any U.S. county, according to census data.
People leaving the Bay Area and the state altogether were concentrated in lower-paying sectors like sales, transportation and food preparation, which meant they would be less affected by the state’s high tax rates, according to Beacon.
Thornberg is encouraged by a housing boom in Oakland and the rest of Alameda County, which issued permits for around 6,000 housing units in the last year. But he said more had to done, particularly in low-density areas like San Mateo County.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” he said. “It’s got to be a regional effort.”
Federal policies including trade tariffs and immigration restrictions also threaten the region’s future, said Weinberg, of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.
“Trade and immigration policies are the things I’m most concerned about in their effects on the Bay Area,” Weinberg said. “To the extent that there continues to be a real chilling effect on immigration of all types and international cooperation — that’s really the biggest threat.”
A few months ago, Bay Area Council representatives visited Washington to advocate for issues including free trade, Weinberg said. The reception from the White House wasn’t encouraging, he said.
“The administration seems hell-bent on pursuing the failed policies of mercantilism from the earliest 20th century,” Weinberg said.
More restrictive immigration policies, such as the elimination of H-1B visas for skilled workers, could choke the supply of foreign employees as well as new company founders, Weinberg said.
Egon Terplan, regional planning director at San Francisco urban planning think tank Spur, agreed that tackling challenges like housing and transit are critical for the future.
“This is one of the most dynamic economies in the U.S. It’s worth ensuring that it maintains its competitive edge,” Terplan said.
Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf Article: Link
San Francisco area is global economic powerhouse, but here’s what experts say are dimming the lights
in UncategorizedThe North Bay — and the entire nine-county Bay Area — is increasingly becoming an economic force to be reckoned with on an international level, rising from the 21st-largest economy in the world to 19th in three years, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.
“Whether you are looking at GDP growth, income growth, employment growth or productivity growth, we are outpacing all of our peer regions in the rest of the country,” said Micah Weinberg, president of the institute, during Thursday morning’s State of the North Bay Economic Insight Conference, hosted by the North Bay Leadership Council at the Sheraton Sonoma County – Petaluma hotel.
Population growth is the one area where the Bay Area isn’t a leading player in the world economy, he said.
“You can’t grow population if you don’t have anywhere to put the population,” Weinberg said. “We’ve been at very low rates in housing construction for decades now,” even with the recent uptick in housing in the urban core.
In some ways, the North Bay is distinct from its neighboring counties, Weinberg noted.
“It’s important to emphasize that the economy of the three-county North Bay area is actually more of a locally based, internally coherent economy, less dependent on commuting across the broader Bay Area than any other part of the Bay Area,” Weinberg said.
Weinberg’s presentation about the North Bay’s economy concentrated more on the importance of building a resilient and inclusive community than October’s wildfires and ongoing recovery.
“Certainly, that event colors everything we think about when we think about development here in the North Bay,” he said, “not only about the fires we did have, but making sure we’re resilient to the future.”
Here are the key findings from the institute’s latest report:
Number of people considering moving away from the Bay Area:
• 46 percent in the Bay Area
• 43 percent in the North Bay
• 50 percent among millennials
No. 1 place listed for relocation:
• Texas
North Bay residents’ main concerns:
• Traffic and congestion
• Housing
• Cost of living
“What’s extremely important to understand is that transportation and housing are very much linked,” Weinberg said. “If you don’t build housing near where people’s jobs are, those jobs don’t go away. Those people just go a little further, and then they clog the transportation networks that people are trying to use to get to work.”
Thursday’s program also included three speakers with the common theme of “disruption.”
Chris Schmidt, business development manager at Boise, Idaho-based Guerdon Modular Buildings, said there are several advantages to constructing modular buildings rather than traditional structures: controlled environment, safer for workers (one floor), and faster turnaround. The company’s Bay Area projects include hotels and multifamily homes.
Bill Silver, CEO of Santa Rosa-based CannaCraft, which sells 150 cannabis products, discussed the evolving industry and the financial hurdle it continues to face.
“Banking is going to have to be involved in this industry in some way,” he said.
NBLC Endorsements — Vote on June 5th!
in UncategorizedThe June Primary is on June 5th. Please remember to vote in this important election.
NBLC urges you to VOTE YES on:
Regional Measure 3 (RM3):
If you want to see the Narrows finally widened, after decades of trying, please vote “Yes” on Regional Measure 3. Your “Yes” vote will also fund these local projects, including providing $100 million to work on fixing Highway 37 which is congested and at risk of being underwater due to rising sea levels. RM3 funds:
Prop 69:
California Proposition 69, the Transportation Taxes and Fees Lockbox and Appropriations Limit Exemption Amendment, is on the ballot in California as a legislatively referred constitutional amendment on June 5, 2018.
· require that revenue from the diesel sales tax and Transportation Improvement Fee, as enacted by Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), be used for transportation-related purposes; and
· exempt revenue generated by SB 1’s tax increases and fee schedules from the state appropriations limit.
VOTE FOR Judy Arnold for 5th District Supervisor, Marin County:
Judy Arnold is the Marin County Board of Supervisors’ most senior member, having first won the job in 2006 after serving two years on the Novato City Council. Arnold represents Marin County on the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit and Golden Gate Bridge district boards, two regional agencies important to Novato commuters. Arnold stresses that traffic on Highway 101 remains a top priority. She is proud of the success of SMART train service and her work on completing the widening of the Novato Narrows and improving Highway 37, which has seen a steady increase in traffic in recent years. At the Civic Center, she has been the board’s strongest vote in support of business and jobs. She has been the board’s champion of the Marin Economic Forum, a countywide public-private partnership focused on supporting the local economy.
NBLC supports government offices consolidating in downtown Santa Rosa
in UncategorizedSonoma County leaders are poised to move forward Tuesday with a yearslong effort to redevelop their aging and sprawling north Santa Rosa government campus, a measure that could make room for at least 1,400 housing units.
The Board of Supervisors will consider directing county staff members to gauge developers’ interest in building a consolidated 500,000-square-foot administrative center to accommodate county offices that currently are spread among numerous low-rise buildings, most of which are 50 to 60 years old.
The buildings have an ever-growing maintenance backlog, currently pegged at $258 million. County officials think they’re better off building a denser office complex, either on the same site or elsewhere, and freeing up space for desperately needed new homes.
“It’s like when you have a car that you’re spending more money on maintenance than it’s worth,” said Supervisor James Gore, the board chairman. “And you say, what if I sold it?”
Four general locations for the new government center are being floated by county staff: the existing site centered in the area around Administration Drive, downtown Santa Rosa, the county airport business park or another location proposed by a developer.
If the county moves its administrative offices downtown, it could opt to share a site with the Santa Rosa city government, which is mulling its own move out of the City Hall complex on Santa Rosa Avenue.
Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey said the city is interested in getting new housing built on the site, making a combined government center an attractive option for city officials. But Coursey warned the idea at the moment is “one of those moonshot type of things.”
“Under the proper circumstances, it would allow housing to be created — a lot of housing — at the county center and on the City Hall property where we sit now,” Coursey said.
“I think it is a great idea,” he said. “It would take a lot of work to make it happen. We’re in the very preliminary stages of getting to that point.”
The county campus totals about 47 acres, but not all of it is slated for redevelopment: Justice-related buildings, including the Sheriff’s Office and the county jail, would remain. The Sonoma County Superior Court already is planning to move into a new courthouse, but the existing Hall of Justice where the court currently is located could be replaced or refurbished as part of the broader plans for the administrative campus, said Caroline Judy, the county’s general services department director.
The county thinks housing could be built on 60 percent of the campus, allowing for an estimated 1,410 units under the neighborhood’s current zoning rules and as many as 3,892 units if higher density is allowed, she said.
It’ll likely be several years before any of those units comes to the market, however. If supervisors agree to move forward this week, county staff members will release a questionnaire to gauge developers’ interest this summer, then launch a formal request for development proposals no sooner than this winter, Judy said.
Still, the potential housing project could give a major boost to supervisors’ ambitious goal of getting tens of thousands of housing units built in the coming years.
“We’re beyond the vision that we can fix these things by just incrementally adding an accessory dwelling unit or a granny unit here or there,” Gore said. “We need some big wins. I hope we can keep our eye on the ball.”
Cost estimates for the redevelopment vary depending on the kind of building or buildings the county decides to construct. A new mid- to high-rise building would cost an estimated $349.9 million, while building multiple new buildings would cost a projected $375.5 million, according to county staff.
Funding options include debt financing through the issuance of a bond or a potential public-private partnership where the government retains ownership of the land but contracts with a developer to build the new administrative center, which the county then leases back, Judy said.
The plans already won early excitement from a coalition of business and environmental groups that banded together in hopes of convincing the county government to move downtown. The Santa Rosa Metro Chamber, Greenbelt Alliance, Sonoma County Conservation Action and the North Bay Leadership Council sent a joint April 20 letter to Gore expressing unified support for moving the county campus to the city’s urban core.
In the letter, the groups said the move would provide major benefits for the downtown economy — shifting the workplace of about 1,400 government employees — and open the door for an influx of additional housing, both on the current county campus site and near the new one.
“A civic center in the downtown could be just the type of flagship development to boost incentives for business and housing to grow in our downtown,” the groups said in their letter to Gore. “Opening the existing county campus for mixed housing and commercial development creates a much better use for the site. Indeed, with the development of several thousand housing units on this site, plus the financial incentive for more housing downtown due to the increased workforce presence, the county can make significant strides toward its stated housing development goals without putting pressure on our cherished natural resources and open space.”
Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, who represents the county’s western 5th District, raised concerns that moving downtown would put the government offices further away from residents in more remote unincorporated areas. Residents of the lower Russian River area, in particular, could have a harder time getting downtown, said Hopkins, who also questioned whether there could be sufficient free parking provided there.
Yet, Hopkins said she supports moving forward Tuesday. She also hasn’t ruled out support for a move downtown.
“I’m still open to it, but I have some serious reservations that would need to be addressed, including accessibility for west county residents,” Hopkins said.
The questionnaire will give county leaders a better sense of the best location for their new administrative offices and the most realistic amount of housing that could be developed through the move, Judy said.
“We want to learn from the market, before we go and issue something, about what’s considered viable,” she said.
Want a Better Commute? Vote “Yes” on Regional Measure 3 on the June Ballot
in UncategorizedTransportation improvements have been a core priority for NBLC members and their employees since our founding 28 years ago. One project has been at the top of the list all that time: widening the Marin/Sonoma Narrows. The North Bay has a regional workforce and many of our employees are stuck on Highway 101 for way too long every day.
There is now, finally some light at the end of that 28-year wait. A major portion of the Narrows project, the bridge over San Antonio Creek, has been completed and is ready to open to traffic. While widened to accommodate the eventual three lanes of traffic in each direction, there will be only two lanes opened at this time. Also completed is the curve correction near the county line that feeds southbound into the new bridge. Work will then move to raising the northbound side of 101 with the third lanes being added near the end of the project.
The money for this work is coming from the big transportation package passed by the state legislature last year, SB 1. But to complete the widening of the Narrows from the county line to Atherton requires more funding. The source of that funding is in the voters’ hands in the form of passing Regional Measure 3, which will raise the bridge tolls on the state-owned bridges in the nine Bay Area counties (but not on the non-state-owned Golden Gate Bridge).
If you want to see the Narrows finally widened, after decades of trying, please vote “Yes” on Regional Measure 3. Your “Yes” vote will also fund these local projects, including providing $100 million to work on fixing Highway 37 which is congested and at risk of being underwater due to rising sea levels.
Regional Measure 3 will fund:
Regional projects:
Sonoma projects:
Marin projects:
Napa projects:
Regional-Measure-3 mandates strong taxpayer safeguards, including independent audits, citizen oversight and a Transportation Inspector General to hold elected leaders accountable for spending. We need a comprehensive, long-term solution to reduce traffic, improve travel times and bring our public transportation into the 21st century. Please vote “Yes” on Regional-Measure-3.
Future blend: Community-supported high-tech learning could save workers stranded by technology
in UncategorizedSonoma County is like California in a bottle. Many of the issues that are confronting other regions and the state overall are fermenting in conversations like the one this week at the North Bay Builders Exchange.
The organization of construction contractors – now preoccupied with rebuilding neighborhoods destroyed and damaged in the October firestorm – hosted the latest Future of Work MeetUps for the CA Community College Chancellor’s Office.
Keith Woods, the CEO of the exchange, said the shortage of qualified construction workers was slowing the recovery. But he also recognized the challenge was even bigger than replacing the homes and businesses that were lost in a few catastrophic hours.
“One of my heroes, Stephen Covey, may he rest in peace, said ‘You can’t talk your way out of a problem you behaved your way into.’”
The participants shared an ironic laugh. The rest of the morning was invested in finding a way for Sonoma County to behave its way out of situation where not every child acquires the skills for a first career, and then a second and third career.
The Future of Work MeetUps are designed for just this kind of engagement. The big picture: Technology and market forces are changing the nature of businesses, the talent they need to be successful, and the skills that Californians need to prosper. Some workers are likely to be “stranded” as the market for their skills disappear.
Working with the California Economic Summit and other partners, the Chancellor’s Office in recent years developed and is implementing the Strong Workforce Program – a strategic investment to align college programs with the skills needed to prepare Californians for jobs that pay better than minimum wage.
The Chancellor, at the direction of Governor Brown, is now developing a plan for a statewide online college designed to serve the two and a half million Californians who need additional skills but are not getting them from campus-based classes.
The group of 80 business, community, government and educational leaders in Sonoma saw potential in the platform, and focused their questions and comments on what it would take for the new pathway to successfully serve the hard to serve: young mothers who can’t afford day care, Spanish speakers who also may not be digitally fluent, and young adults who didn’t fare well in traditional school settings.
Executive Vice Chancellor Van Ton-Quinlivan said the new model would include individualized support, as well as a research component to identify and solve for issues slowing progress – attributes of other highly successful nonprofit or governmental online universities.
The platform also will be competency-based so students can learn and progress quickly. Classes will be offered with multiple start times to increase access to classes when students need and can take them.
The program will likely begin with a few focused pathways to refine the learning system and demonstrate the value to students seeking skills for a better paying job. For instance, Ton-Quinlivan said, some 93,000 openings exist for “first line supervisors” in 17 different industry sectors in California, from food service to retail.
The Chancellor’s Office is looking for employers willing to partner with the online college to develop these priority pathways.
The majority of the leaders surveyed at the Sonoma MeetUp anticipated that automation will have a meaningful impact on employers in the region – from the high vineyard and winery operations to office work – with 39 percent choosing “noticeable disruption” and 35 percent choosing “some disruption.”
Danielle Cagan, vice president of external affairs for CSAA Insurance Group, said her company was investing in data analytic platforms so workers need to learn to interpret the reports instead of creating them.
Cynthia Murray with the North Bay Leadership Council said: “The question is how do we prepare people to partner with robots — more creative thinking, more problem solving, all the things people can do and machines can’t. Every one of us is likely to be stranded if we don’t continue to add new skills. Each of us is going to have to keep up.”
Within minutes, the Sonoma leaders also realized the statewide learning platform would be most successful if the community was engaged to improve early learning programs, as well as K-12 education.
All students need to understand their choices and be prepared to pursue their dreams – whether that is a technical field like construction or a professional path through a university.
“The discussion on choices is really important,” said Santa Rosa City Schools Board President Jenni Klose. “Students are going to make choices at 17 or 18 when they graduate, and then they are going to be making choices every few years for the rest of their lives. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be stuck with my 16-year-old choices.”
The leaders agreed to start a task force to assess what they could do better as a community to prepare students for college and careers, avoiding the historic trap of tracking students into technical fields or professional ones.
Lisa Carreno, Sonoma County regional director for 10,000 Degrees, a project supporting low-income college students, called out the obvious in a community still very much recovering from disaster: “A broader community discussion about resilience needs to be elevated – throughout our education system and in our health care systems. It is one of those invisible things that we need to start talking about.”
The event was sponsored by the CTE Foundation of Sonoma County, Sonoma County Office of Education, the North Bay Leadership Council, Santa Rosa Junior College. For information on future MeetUps, please visit the event page.