By Aaron Kinney in Contra Costa Times

March 24, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO — A Silicon Valley billionaire’s extraordinary claim to own the tidelands and submerged lands off his property on the San Mateo County coast appears to have died.

An attorney for venture capitalist Vinod Khosla conceded the point Wednesday during oral arguments before a panel of state appellate judges in one of two lawsuits that seek to restore public access to Martins Beach, a secluded cove south of Half Moon Bay.

Read more at Contra Costa Times

By Matt Levin at calmatters.org

March 23, 2016

After a decades-long decline in violent and property crime, early indications from cities across California point to a significant increase in lawbreaking.

In California’s 68 largest cities, violent crime jumped 11 percent in the first six months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014. Among major U.S. cities, three California cities saw the largest increase in property crime in the country.

Read more at calmatters.org

By Orange County Register in The Sentinel

March 23, 2016

Of all of the well-documented adverse effects of California’s high-speed rail project — the ever-changing cost, ridership, design and other assumptions, noise and vibration issues, the environmental impacts of construction and many others — the most egregious, yet seldom discussed, is the project’s violation of private property rights through the use of eminent domain.

To make way for the train system, thousands of homes, businesses and parcels of farmland will be taken by the state. People are being displaced, businesses are being forced to close, and thousands of acres of farmland will no longer be able to produce crops. Sure, the High-Speed Rail Authority will offer “fair compensation” for the land, but the government knows that most people do not have deep-enough pockets to fight it in court, and there have been widespread complaints about low-ball offers made by the rail authority.

Read more at The Sentinel

By Len Ramirez at CBS SF Bay Area

March 22, 2016

PALO ALTO (CBS SF) — Palo Alto is seeking housing solutions for residents who are not among the Silicon Valley region’s super-rich, but who also earn more than the threshold to qualify for affordable housing programs.The city council has unanimously passed a housing plan that would essentially subsidize new housing for what qualifies as middle-class nowadays, families making from $150,000 to $250,000 a year.

Read more at CBS SF Bay Area

By Richard Scheinin in San Jose Mercury News

March 22, 2016

As the spring house-hunting season approaches, tight inventory and rising prices are casting a lengthening shadow over the plans of starter homebuyer across the United States. And guess where the crisis is most pronounced?

Read more at San Jose Mercury News

By Marc Debbaudt in San Francisco Chronicle

March 18, 2016

Congratulations are not in order for San Francisco’s latest No. 1 ranking; the city with the highest increase in property crime rates in the United States, according to recently released FBI statistics.

A Chronicle report on the “rampant looting of cars” in San Francisco shined a light on one area of this increase in property crime. Sadly, since Proposition 47 reduced (and for intents eliminated) penalties for many property crimes, cities across California have joined San Francisco in seeing dramatic rises in property crime rates.

Read more at San Francisco Chronicle

By Dana Bartholomew in The Los Angeles Daily News

March 17, 2016

VAN NUYS >> When it comes to high-speed rail, northeast San Fernando Valley communities from Sylmar to Pacoima may have dodged a bullet.

But that didn’t stop residents from lashing out against the possible oncoming train on Thursday.

Read more at The Los Angeles Daily News

By Aaron Orlowski in The Orange County Register

March 14, 2016

Citing potentially higher costs that would be passed on to customers, Orange County’s largest provider of water to homes and businesses is intensifying its opposition to a key supplier’s plan to buy desalinated water from a proposed $1 billion Huntington Beach plant.

Officials at Irvine Ranch Water District, which serves more than 340,000 customers in Irvine, Tustin, Lake Forest and several other cities, are trying to derail the desalination deal struck between the Orange County Water District and Poseidon Resources, the company proposing the plant on coastal land adjacent to Pacific Coast Highway.

Read more at The Orange County Register

By Ryan Sabalow, Mark Glover, and Dale Kasler in The Sacramento Bee

March 14, 2016

With California’s two largest reservoirs hitting historically average levels following a weekend of heavy storms, the state’s chief water regulator is cautiously optimistic that the drought may finally be relaxing its grip.

If the wet weather continues, she said, the urban conservation mandates that turned lawns brown and have Californians taking shorter showers may be eased in the weeks ahead.

By D. Lee Taylor in the Monterey Herald

March 11, 2016

Salinas >> The foundation for local governments to invest in such things as affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization has been poured and legislators and policy wonks are now going about the business of framing what the new entity will look like in Monterey County.

The new funding mechanism — a successor to redevelopment agencies that Gov. Jerry Brown defunded in 2011 for budgetary reasons — is called the Community Revitalization and Investment Authorities, or CRIAs, which as Assembly Bill 2 was coauthored by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas. Similar to the old redevelopment agencies, CRIAs will be funded by property tax increments where a slice of the incremental increase (capped at 2 percent annually under 1978’s Proposition 13) will fund revitalization efforts in a designated area.

Read more at Monterey Herald